Random Musings: Rolemaster & Shadow World 2/12/17

Being stuck in severe winter weather is a good excuse to get some writing and work done! I’m still polishing up my next few blog topics but thought I would write a quick blog on some misc. thoughts. This is more to clear my head and refocus my thoughts on various RPG items that are floating around.

  1. There is definitely an “ebb & flow” to the Rolemaster Forum activity. Generally, it seems like the hot topics are created on the RMU forums–intense debates on rules. Right now things just seem slow.
  2. Despite my own frequent blogs about alternate rules I’m having less and less interest in rule sets. Every time I come up with something new, Peter or some one else proposes something as interesting, valid or workable. It feels like a rabbit hole that never ends. In the end I am much more interested in game content than rules. I change rules frequently–with a small group of players it’s less game testing and more about how the rules interact with the narrative flow of the game. My players learned long ago that advocating for rules that allow for min/max, power gaming or mechanistic advantages are missing the point.
  3. Being stuck indoor has allowed me to take a deeper dive in Emer III. I read it when it first came out and scanned several times since, but hadn’t really churned through it or processed new info. I have taken each “canon” SW product and pulled out any world or overview info and added it to our Master Atlas. If you comb through all of Terry’s work and separate local and regional info from world spanning info it results in a much more comprehensive MA. Ours is heading towards 400 pages without creatures or the timeline.
  4. Emer III is fantastic. Like each new product, it continues to fill in gaps in the world building that were hinted at over the last 30 years: Jinteni technology, the Dragonlord, Tower of Vour, Krylites. At 208 pages it covers a lot of new material and straddles a difficult line of overview and specific material. Terry has always been good at that–intensely detailed NPCs, equipment and layouts with broad overviews that still convey a flavor or style.
  5. I’ve said this before but almost every Loremaster or Shadow World product could cover years of gaming. Sure, like everyone else I always want to see new material from Terry, but there is currently enough material now for a lifetime of play. Every product is dense with possible adventure hooks that would be make into a long term campaign!
  6. I’ve been working on an outline to finish the Grand Campaign. My goal was to try and include a snippet of material from each product–that way a group could experience a little bit of each product and visit or explore SW “greatest hits”. Unfortunately I think there is just too much material now! What I have ended up doing is moving several plot lines down to optional to maintain the core adventure path.
  7. My players are finishing up “Priest-King of Shade”. Ideally it would have gotten the PC’s to 12-15th lvl but they are all around 10th lvl. That’s fine–they are segueing into “Empire of the Black Dragon” (which is meant to be Pt. 3 of the series). Empire is less linear than Priest-King; more the style of “Fortresses of M.E.” so the playtesting is an important part of generating adventure layouts for the final product.
  8. I’m hoping I’ve found someone to redo my layouts for Empire. It’s basically 4 facilities, each very different in style and purpose. We shall see!
  9. BASiL Mentalism. A number of people have contacted me about putting up the Mentalism spells. I’m working on it! Unlike Essence or Channeling, I felt that Mentalism needed more work. I started formatting them and ended up making significant changes to the Monk style spells and making changes to the Telekinesis spells.
  10. It’s great to see new contributors to the RolemasterBlog. I hope that the other people that showed interest will participate as well!

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I missed my regular post last week as I was away on one of my gaming weekends. This time I got to play my 1st level Lay Healer as well as GM my Forgotten Realms game.

I have been accelerating my players progress so far and this time at the en dof th esession they finally broke 5th level. This is where I wanted them to be and now the game starts to get serious.

There were a few interesting things that came up over the weekend.

Firstly is the sequence of dice rolls in this posts title. I really, really try not to fudge dice rolls. roll in the open and my players know that.

Any weapon, in any combat those three numbers you really do not want to come up in that order. That was the one and only contribution to a combat by my Hobgoblin chieftain with his ‘trusty’ scimitar. You can work out for your self what happened to him.

I have been working on pushing the limits of how big a force you can throw against low level characters before the sheer number of random rolls will overwhelm them. If you have twenty archers then the odds are that one will get an open ended every single round (I haven’t done this, it is just an example).

The party were making their way up a single track goat trail into a mountain range. They were approaching the tree line when up ahead they could see a flock of monstrously large birds dive bombing something out of sight. The elves in the part could see the birds taking to the air again with dripping lumps of meat in their talons and eat rising bird was being mobbed by the other members of the flock. One character has no maths skill at all so for him there where ‘a great many’ birds. The other elf was better educated and put the number between 70 to 80 individuals.

The creatures were Gorcrows and I had used them to replace the Stirges specified in the original D&D module that was the backbone of the adventure. The birds were feeding on some horses that they had killed. The horses were an important clue for the players as they were looking for a lost patrol and these were their horses.

I wasn’t going to throw 75 beasties at the party in a single shot. I had a few Gorcrows spot the party and break away. This gave me 15 to play with against 5 characters. The birds circled a bit like your classic vulture and then first few peeled away to dive into the attack. These first few were dealt with using a sleep spell. This gave the party some confidence that they could tackle them. The next wave was 5 or 6 gorcrows and a combination of sleep spells and thrown weapons brought them crashing to the ground. Finally the third wave of 7 dived down to attack, too many to sleep even when fast casting without prep. A few got through the barrage of magic and thrown weapons but the birds didn’t stand a chance. A few hits of damage were done here and there a single A crit.

The fight and scent of fresh blood had attracted the attention of the main flock. As the party saw the cloud of birds turn into a stream angling towards them you have never seen players evaluate their options so quickly!

The used what cover they could find to hide them selves from the birds (who fell upon their fallen comrades) and made their way into the next valley where they had their first encounter with wild magic. This is not too dissimilar to an Essence storm.

Wild magic can produce a great number of different effects and have different manifestations. This particular one was very large and actually covered the entire area that the main adventure was going to take place in, several square miles of mountain range. At the first encounter all they got was tingling feelings and hairs standing up on their arms or the back of the neck but as they continued they saw the full scale of the anomaly. In game terms they started to recover power points almost by the minute. The further in they got the more power they regained. It was only when they tried to cast a spell that things were not so good. Every spell cost no power to cast but it did deliver a Stress critical equal to the spell level (1st = A, 5th = E and a 6th would have been an A + E critical).

As a GM my objective was to make the players seriously consider each and every spell they cast. It certainly did that.

The adventure I was basing the session on had two major features, the first was a terrible D&D style trap that had no connection the time or place that the adventure took place in and a collection of monsters.

The monsters were supposedly in a sealed tomb that had not been disturbed for 300 years before a landslide revealed the entrance. The doors were magically sealed so no monsters could wander in from outside.

I removed everything that should have starved to death. This left just one encounter that the players fully understood and chose not to engage in. As it was with magic doing as much harm to them as to anyone they were attacking that was probably the right answer.

I was worried that this would be an anti climax but actually the players enjoyed a relatively easy win for a change and a nice clean “we had a task and we completed it” session.

The next encounter was another mass battle. one thing had lead to another and the players know they have to meet someone in a monster infested forest. Everyone one knows this is a monster infested forest and the party are well armed and provisioned.

We had the players trying to ambush and war band of goblins and hobgoblins while they [the goblins] were trying to set up an ambush. The goblins spotted the party so decided to set an ambush. So the party were trying to sneak into position when the goblins got the drop on them.

I had about 30 goblins to play with but I decided the chief would not commit his entire force against just 5 travellers. So 12 of his toughest attacked the party. The party reverted to type again and sleep spells flew about willy nilly accounting for over half the attackers. Once melee was engaged the superior level of the party soon took its toll on the goblins.

I then allowed the party to turn the tables on goblins. The odds were 18 to 5 or more realistically 18 to 4 as one of the party is a non combatant. The result was again more goblin mince meat.

All of these mass battles were really won by the parties use of sleep. They have two casters who can cast up to Sleep VII. In addition the party are now feeling more confident in their own abilities and starting to work more effectively as a team.

The party are all now 5th level and I think at this point they are growing into their strengths, the sorcerer is starting to diverge from the warrior mage who is diverging from the elemental warrior and so on.

Next time though they will need to find a new tactic as the monsters will be getting significantly tougher!

 

Seeing the Light—Religious conversions for Channelers in Rolemaster.

I write a lot about Clerics. One interesting phenomena, often featured in popular fantasy literature is the reluctant conversion or initiation of a character into an avatar or priest of a God. Perhaps the PC encounters the God during gameplay and creates an opportunity to pledge fealty. Maybe the God directly recruits the PC as his agent and follower or changes in the pantheons require the PC to choose a new God.

One of the limitations of RM is the inability to switch professions at later levels—precluding a PC from “converting” or choosing to enter a life of a Priest. Certainly a bit of hand-waving and rewarding the player with the appropriate Base List could work, but the PC would still have skill costs assigned by their original Profession choice. To me this is just another limitation of the Profession system; a system that was once advertised as having “no limitations”.

This also speaks to the awkwardness of emulating the Open/Closed/Base paradigm for the Channeling realm. Conceptually it doesn’t work well; was the reason I started my own re-write for Spell Law; and I suspect the need for the Channeling Companion. By its definition, Channeling ability must be given or granted by a God or God-like being. Rather than define Open/Closed/Base from an access viewpoint (a PC must spend DP’s to gain a spell list), it must be defined by a bestowed viewpoint (the God chooses which spell lists are granted–though the PC would still spend DP’s). In other words a God would likely provide Channeling spells to followers based on their need and their position in the church. So even low level admin or devout follower might have some lower level “Open” utility lists. This will just depend on the setting and as Peter pointed out, you could simplify all of this by just merging Channeling into Essence and Mentalism. My game allows for characters to access any or all of the “realms” so I end up with the same result using a different solution.

I like the idea and I like the dramatic potential of the ability to change religious loyalty and in the last few years have really embraced active gods in my Shadow World setting. As a Deux a Machina, I have more flexibility with a Lord of Orhan than a nosy Loremaster, and from a narrative standpoint I can provide unambiguous direction for the group when needed. Again, In my setting there is not difficulty in granting Channeling lists to a new convert—but how should that work in standard RM RAW?

Converting from one God to another is fairly straightforward: just replace current base lists with the lists of the new god. In regular RM this might not require any changes, as Clerics all receive the same Base spells. For people using Channeling Companion or have embraced the concept of God-aspected spell lists this would create a significant change in PC abilities. Can a PC willingly switch Gods—perhaps motivated by the powers/spells they might receive by changing allegiances? Fiction is ripe with stories about characters worshipping dark Gods for additional powers, but what about switching Gods within the same pantheon or “alignment”? Would the discarded God feel betrayed? Punish the PC? Would the new God require a Quest or some other token of loyalty before granting Aspected spells or even Power Points? I think this raises great adventure possibilities!

In the end, the narrative should drive the rules—right? But I would rather create flexibility rather than “one-off” rules to explain away system conflicts. Whether you use Professions or not, the Channeling Realm may benefit from some fluidity or tinkering in your game.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Rolemaster – My View

Rolemaster in its various versions has a wide range of strengths (real and perceived) and weaknesses (again, real and perceived). Although people like to talk about the wide range of skills, attack tables, and various formulas that go into the game (in both positive and negative terms), for me those discussions miss the greatest strength of Rolemaster: flexibility. Looking at all the Companions published for RM2, it’s easy to overlook one point: all those rules (Professions, skill changes, new spell lists, and so on) are possible because Rolemaster is such a flexible system.
Although I’m not a fan of “levelless” gaming, the fact that RM can be modified to this style is a testament to its flexibility. I do a fair amount of modern setting gaming (espionage, Old West, and so on), and have modified the basic Rolemaster systems to work with those settings without missing a beat. Of course, you have to redo the weapon tables for firearms (most of the published Rolemaster modifications for firearms, in my opinion, don’t do the job) and make some modifications to ATs to bring them up to more modern armors, but it’s still possible. In fact, taking magic out of the game entirely helps you see how flexible and simple core Rolemaster really is.
Of course, there are weaknesses, too. For the type of gaming I often do, the RAW combat system is a major weakness. The round seems to be calibrated for spell casting, and taking spells out and adding in firearms means you have to cut the round down to about two or three seconds (at most) in order to model firearms correctly and maintain fun and balance. And I’ve never been a fan of the combination of abstract melee and specific missile combat in the same round. The flexibility of the skill system can lead to skill bloat if GMs aren’t careful about limiting them ahead of time (I play RM2, and we actually redid the skill lists to fit my campaign setting, shifting some skills from primary to secondary or secondary to primary and cutting out quite a few), but planning before playing makes this less of an issue.
I’ve always considered the magic system one of Rolemaster’s strengths, but I also modified most of the Channeling Professions to reflect the fact that a deity has direct control over a character’s access to spells. If you enforce the casting limitations in RAW RM2 you have a check to balance some of the more powerful spells and casters.
All this flexibility leads to (in my opinion) Rolemaster’s greatest weakness: you need a competent GM to run a proper campaign. With all the options and variables in the system, a GM needs to understand what she and her players want from a game, and be willing to say “no” almost as often as she says “yes” when it comes to rules. Just because a Profession is in a Companion doesn’t mean you have to allow it. The same goes for skills and spells. A rookie GM has a steep learning curve when it comes to any version of Rolemaster. That can make it difficult for newcomers to pick up the game, and it’s also not helpful when a veteran GM modifies Rolemaster beyond recognition and introduces concepts that may make perfect sense to veteran gamers but make no sense to someone new to the hobby.
Something to consider, at least. What do you readers think?

Rolemaster Spell Law: Revisiting and rethinking Project BASiL.

Our rewrite of Spell Law was always going to be a work in progress: every new idea, every game session of playtesting or a random thought makes us rethink our basic assumptions. So a recent comment on the Rolemaster Forums  and various blogs on the RolemasterBlog has me thinking about “Realms” again.

Peter makes the argument against the Channeling Realm and his solution rolls various Channeling spells into either the Essence or Mentalism realms. I think my discussions of BASiL realms can be misleading—I don’t see “Realms” as separate properties of power; instead we see “Realms” as the separation of magical powers by casting mechanisms. In RMU this is the same distinction between generating magic effects via spells versus magical effects via rituals. We just take it one step further and further divide spell casting into more distinct mechanisms. This just happens to mirror the original Essence, Channeling, Mentalism to some degree, but we added 4-5 other “Realms” so the comparison starts to lessen. (I just haven’t gotten around to put up these other Realms yet). Peter refers to this as Schools of Magic which I think is a pretty good model to view it.

I think RMU and RM in general has it wrong to use the same spellcasting mechanism for all three realms (SCR, 1-3 round casting time .etc). Furthermore it’s clear that some spell lists just don’t fit the assigned realm or that casting process. We attempted to correct that in BASiL and just took the process where it led us. That meant that “Imbedding/Alchemist” magic needed a better casting and process methodology; “performance magic” (bard, dance, sing etc) needed a more unique process and “written” magic (runes/sigils/glyphs/symbols/circles) didn’t really fit into a 1-3 round casting time.

I’ve blogged about increasing distinctions between Realm powers, but in my thinking over these latest posts and blogs I think I made a mistake—one that I write about often. It’s difficult to completely remove all the tropes/memes and biases built up over a lifetime of gaming and I question my thinking all the time when writing new material, but I stuck to a trope I should have reconsidered. Why shouldn’t the Essence realm have healing spells?

In BASiL I made a clear distinction between Essence (manipulation of the physical world) and Channeling (miraculous and affecting spiritual issues): sort of Science versus Faith paradigm. So while it was clear to me that Spirit Mastery, Souls, etc were solidly in the realm of the metaphysical, I kept healing in the Channeling realm (and self-healing in the mentalism). I do remember questioning this during the Spell Law redesign but I kept healing in Channeling for “balance” purposes!!! My hypocrisy.

Spells that heal tissue, stop bleeding or knit tissue and muscle are very much a physical process and should be included in Essence. At the same time the healing spells in Channeling should be less technical and more miraculous—or just more effective—given their source to divinity. So it looks like I’m moving the Healing Law lists to Essence and writing new and improved healing spells for Channeling.

For more thoughts on the Spell Law rewrite:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

 

 

 

Advanced Technology in Shadow World

For those that want to utilize it, ancient advanced technology is a narrative aspect to the Shadow World setting. Advanced technology was not just achieved by the Althan/Ka’ta’viir civilization in the 1st Era, but also utilized by several other notable cultures during the Interregnum: Taranian, Jinteni & Worim.

When we think of technology in fantasy role playing we often visualize laser pistols, laser swords, shield devices, power armor—objects that are just more powerful version of standard fantasy weapons (crowsbows, swords, armor etc). I posted up an older file on using technology in SW here, but the convenient fact is that although it’s tech, it can be handled easily within the RM fantasy magic rules. Laser Guns cast “Firebolts”; Lightsabers inflict Electricity, Fire or Plasma Crits; Anti-grav belts cast “Levitation”, etc.

While there have been numerous ancient high-tech civilizations and contemporary cultures that use “science” (Krylites), none of them reached the advancements of the Althans or Ka’Ta’viir.(Tech Level 13+). Truly advanced technology can transcend common form factors and seem inscrutable to normal understanding. In other words, they will seem magical.

Here are a few advanced technologies that might be a good fit in your Shadow World game:

Post Physical Entities: This is a term often used to describe an “upload society” where consciousness can be transferred to a computer network, object or virtual emulator. Shadow World modules already features stored Ka’ta’viir intelligences (Cloudlords) and the Thalan are a good example of a post-physical entities (PPE’s). From a game standpoint, introducing an ancient Althan/Ka’ta’viir consciousness could be interesting. The entity would probably have their own agenda, limit information flow and perhaps “guide” the players to their own purpose. This could provide a useful guide for the GM to direct the PC’s through the adventure or tie multiple adventures into a greater campaign. Mechanically, PPE’s should be treated as an NPC, only limited by the ability to interact with the physical world. Additionally the PC’s may not even realize the “entity” is an uploaded consciousness or ancient being.

A.I.: Similar to Post Physical entities, A.I.’s are already featured in SW. Two prominent ones are the A.I. in Andraax’s tomb and Morik in Eidolan. Unlike PPE’s, A.I.’s are a technical/software artifact and may be limited by their learning ability, programming and information resources. Like PPE’s, A.I.’s should be treated as NPC’s.

Time Control: Ka’Ta’viir use a “Chronagenic” process to hibernate. Not to be confused with a cryogenic process; rather than freezing or preserving a person through physical or biological means the capsule seals the entity into a time singularity. It’s not clear whether the Althans had additional control over time (barring localized events). Jinteni also had some time dilation abilities (Emer III and Inn of the Green Gryphon). Time travel and control have always been tricky in RPG’s: a GM needs to decide the long term effects of causality and impact on the game narrative. There are three basic mechanisms for time manipulation: devices (machines & portals), spells (I’ve uploaded a Time Mastery spell list on the RM Forums  ) or Essaence effects (Essaence Storms and Foci). Time Travel introduces an introducing plot device to allow PC’s to explore other parts of the immense SW timeline. In fact, you could probably roll randomly for page, paragraph and line or 1-100,000 years to pick a date in the timeline to send the players. At the least, they could be spectators to interesting historical events and experience some of the intriguing past of Kulthea!

Matter/Energy Conversion: A truly advanced society will have mastered matter – energy conversion. This is more than simple fusion, it’s a two way process to generate power from any matter OR the ability to produce objects or material from energy. This probably has less game-world impact than other technologies but it does allow for devices to be powered indefinitely (by harvesting small amounts of matter for energy), self-repair of devices and vehicles or for generating objects “out of thin air” like a Wish spell.

Molecular Assembly: Before they have the ability of creating matter from energy, a post scarcity society will have obtained the ability to create any object from scratch using “feedstock” raw material. These Replicators or “Cornucopia Machines” are just highly advanced 3D printers. In Sci-fi and economic theory, such a machine would be a major societal disruptor allowing for the easy creation and accessibility of wealth. This technology was the basis for the post-scarcity society presented in Star Trek. In your SW game, this technology could be useful but not unbalancing on a limited basis—perhaps program/design access is prohibited except to authorized users (i.e. weapon mfg)

Mal-Metal: Malleable, changeable or programmable materials would be common in an advanced society. This allows for amorphous forms—wings that can change shape, weapons that can morph into others with a thought, adjustable cloaks, armor that can distribute impacts or force etc. This type of technology would be very useful to a PC and would be indistinguishable from common magic item tropes. Obvious examples would be morphing weapons (retain weight/mass but changes shape), fluid bracers that cover the arms as greaves at a thought etc. In SW, “Malloys” (malleable alloys) could combine advanced tech with materials like Keron, Eog or Ithloss.

Bionomics: A step past cyborg implants, Bionomics are organic based technological capabilities built into a person at the molecular and cellular level. These could be energy projections (disruptors, beams), shields (force fields or environmental shields), wetware computing power for advanced mental and calculative abilities. Unless they were born from a very specific parentage, installation of Bionomics would require substantial surgical procedures and DNA manipulation.  Bionomic abilities could be treated as innate spell abilities powered by a reservoir of cell energy (use CO. stat?).  In our campaign, Bionomic technology was a significant part of the Xiosian heritage.

Von Neumann Self Replicators: These machines combine the technologies of molecular assembly and matter/energy conversion to build copies of themselves. This is a powerful concept but might not have too much relevance in a gaming environment. However these could also work on a nano scale—“Nannite” clouds that replicate and perform programmed tasks (healing, buffs, metamorphis etc). Examples of “Nannites” might be found in upcoming SW material!

Solid State Technology: When we think of machines we often conflate it to devices with moving parts and collections of components. An advanced society will utilize microtization, exotic meta-materials and atomic level functionality to produce devices that work as machines but won’t have moving parts. To PC’s this will give machine or software functionality to solid objects–just like magic items.

Neural Control/Interface: The Ka’ta’viir were not only advanced technologically, they were able to utilize the Essaence AND access Psionic/Mind powers. At the height of their powers (Late Imperial Era) many devices were controlled through mere thought. In the game, neural interfaces should be treated as quasi-mentalism or accessed via “Attunement” skill (treat as Absurd or -150 due to the complexity of this technology or allow a PC to have some Althan heritage and reduce the penalty).

While primarily a fantasy setting, Shadow World also has elements of a post-apocalypse setting and a sci-fi setting. Maybe the PC’s will initially be unaware they are encountering technology and not magic but these elements could add flavor to your campaign!