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50-in-50 Latest Release: Curse of the Ancient Tomb

Curse of the Ancient Tomb has the characters exploring a recently uncovered tomb. The tomb is not merely a tomb, but also a prison for a powerful, and now undead, being, and their powerful weapon. The tomb itself has dangers, one subtle but a potentially serious problem, and neither the occupant nor its weapon are remotely safe. Characters could easily run into serious problems exploring the tomb.

This is, to the best of my knowledge, the biggest adventure yet. You get 32 pages including a battle map, adventure, magic items and traps. It is the most purely Rolemaster booklet we have produced with. I would love to see a D&D players face when they read…

“Warding Evil. This is a 40th lvl spell that will repel “Evil” or “Undead”. Any such within 10’ of the Ward must make an RR each round or suffer a “D” critical effect.”

It is the very thought of a 40th level spell that should give a D&D player kittens!

For more sensible people who play Rolemaster then this is an excellent little adventure!

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RPGaDay2018 Day 5: What is your favourite recurring NPC?

In my Forgotten Realms campaign we started off playing some D&D modules converted to RM. The second module the players ran though was FRQ3 Doom of Daggerdale.

The villain in this module was Colderan the Razor and when my players ran through this Colderan survived and has started plotting his revenge against the characters. He has been behind several plots now and in when other modules I have used would have introduced another evil magic user I have substituted in Colderan.

In my players perspective this NPC has slowly been revealed to them as the root evil behind countless plots and intrigues.

You may remember back to some plot outlines I have suggested in the past of evil alchemists and how they could stockpile magic in the form of potions or use a range of low level magic to good effect? All these posts were inspired by what Colderan was up to in my Forgotten Realms campaign.

ADDENDUM

I should have mentioned this at the time of writing but it slipped my mind. Egdcltd has just released a supplement on NPCs that fitted in well with the recent NPC related questions.

100 NPCs You Might Meet At The Tavern

Characters will often spend a substantial amount of time in taverns, whether following up leads, meeting contacts, resting or looking for clues and information. Some of the people met may be important for whatever quest the characters are currently undertaking. But what about the others?

Taverns and inns are not frequented just by people who are immediately needed. They will have other customers and staff as well. Rather than simply glossing over these individuals, this supplement provides a detailed list of 100 different people to flesh out a tavern. Each is given a name and described. Some of them may have skills and knowledge that characters find useful and others could be a potential source of adventure hooks.

This supplement currently in the Christmas in July sale on RPGnow for $1.99.

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RPGaDay2018 Day 4: What is your most memorable NPC?

Sorry, I am already playing catch up on this. I was kind of hoping to post every day and sometimes multiple times a day.

So my most memorable NPC was probably a Spacemaster mercenary, “Doc Murray”. He used a lot of the character enhancing meds, so he could haste pretty much on demand and could ride out stuns and bleeding criticals, if I remember correctly. The character was originally inspired by Rogue Trooper from 2000AD but without the blue skin.

He was pretty much a tour de force of heavy weaponry with the light machine gun and grenades as his weapons of choice. There were times when he joined the characters as a mercenary and they needed extra muscle and he returned to hunt the PCs down as it was known that he knew them and could get close.

Despite appearances he was not an Armsman profession but a Criminologist. This was before I had moved over to No Profession but I found myself gravitating towards using Criminologist more and more for NPCs as they were simply the best ‘all rounder’ and if you wanted to put an NPC into multiple adventures the generally low skill costs across the board made the Criminologist a good choice.

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RPGaDay2018 Day 3: What Gives A Game Staying Power

I think there are two elements to this but they could be rolled into one, ‘playability’ but I want to break them out into ‘characterisation’ and ‘compulsion’.

The real answer is probably “A great GM” as that can make any shit really enjoyable just as a crap GM can make the best game unplayable but I don’t want to go there.

Characterisation

What I mean by characterisation is the ability for the player to play exactly the character they had envisioned. This is one thing that I think RM does extremely well as there are very few hard limits. If you play ‘no profession’ then there are even less limits than stock RM. By that I mean in RM2/RMC a fighter can only learn spells from open lists and up to level 5. There is no fireball or even shockbolt on those lists so now if you really wanted fireball then you needed to look at a different profession and for that you are looking at importing companion professions and before you know it you are in massive bloatiland. This is not a NP rant but the case is still true that RM really allows you to build your character the way you want it to be. There are no arbitrary rules like magic users cannot wear armour or clerics cannot use edged weapons and all that stuff.

If the players are really invested in their characters then I think they are more likely to really buy into the world and the story. If the players want to keep on playing to find out what happens then that will give the game staying power.

Compulsion

Some games or actually settings or even just campaign concepts just have to be played. They are so compelling that they bring out the best in GMs and players alike. Games like these I think come with a certain amount of ‘scaffolding’ in that the players just know how their characters should act or speak. I mean things like a pirate based game has such an iconic central theme that everyone knows how a pirate should behave, you can almost smell the salty sea air and the seaweed encrusted docks. The same can work with oriental adventures as the whole culture and customs thing is so easy to envisage. If the game experience has just the right balance or elements to make the game compelling then the players will keep on coming back.

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RPGaDay2018 Day 2: What do you look for in a RPG?

For me there are two ideal components.

  1. A compelling setting, either a world I want to explore or a genre that I can get excited about. Right now when I am not playing RM I am dabbling with Ghost Ops. In actual play it is super light and fast to run but is miles apart from RM in just about every way.
  2. The absolute minimum of rules. I have a brain, common sense and imagination. I can fill in the blanks once I know the flavour of the game. I know many GMs and even players dislike it when things come down to arbitrary GM decisions but I quite like that. I would never simply decide that an attack hits or misses but on the other hand there are times when I don’t want the characters to drown just because the rules say they do, I want them washed up on strange foreign shores.

So I think my perfect game is one that absolutely demands to be played so much that it is all you can think about when I should be working on other stuff but has a rulebook I can memorise and run without referring to. That may be a tall order but I have played a few of them. To be honest even RM fits into that definition if you have a setting you love. All the heavy lifting is done during character creation, resolving most skill checks and role play situations require no rules. It is only combat that chains you to tables. (I am assuming here that each player has their spell lists printed out as part of their character record)

 

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Rolemaster Profession Review: Taking a Look at Witches.

In a previous blog, I offered up some suggestions on a obvious core profession that should have been included in Rolemaster: The Shaman.  Today I thought I would dive deeper into another profession that could also be core to the system: The Witch.

For that follow other blogs and specifically The Other Side, Tim is an avid “witch guy”. (I think he actually designed the witch for some version of D&D). Anyway, Tim wrote about witches in early D&D and referenced some work by Tom Moldvay. You can read that blog HERE. The first take away is Tom’s summary of core witch abilities:

According to Moldvay a witch class should include the following:
1. The ability to use herbs for healing and magic.  

2. The power of fascination, like a super-charm ability.  

3. A combination of both Clerical and Magic-User abilities.

4. The ability to practice sympathetic magic.  

5. Be worshipers, in secret, of a religion otherwise forbidden in a particular era.

6. Powers based on nature and the cycle of seasons, similar to Druidic* powers.

To me, those abilities draw from standard western tropes, and at the time helped form the basis of an alternate D&D profession. But let’s look at these in the context of Rolemaster.

#1 Healing & Magic Herbs. That one is a bulls-eye for Rolemaster that has a much more detailed and integrated system for magical and natural herbs. Additionally, this doesn’t even need to be a basis of magical spells, just herb lore and/or various similar skills. Or, a Witch could use Herb Mastery as a Base list.

#2 “Super-charm”. This touches on the witch trope of casting glamours, using love potions and charming unsuspecting targets. It would be easy to use Spirit Mastery as a Base list for the Witch profession.

#3 A combination of Clerical and M-U. Again, Rolemaster can easily define a witch as a Hybrid profession using Channeling and Essence.

#4 Sympathetic Magic. Tom is probably referring to curses, hexes, talismans that are common in Witch folklore. Here we could give the Witch a “Curses” or “Disease” list.

#5 Secret society. As a Channeler, a Witch should have a patron god. It doesn’t have to be a secret god, just that the witch doesn’t practice within an organized religion. Or, the witch could worship an ancient “dead” god or a minor god of indeterminate morality. That doesn’t suggest that witches must be evil or suspect! Why can’t you have “good” witches?

#6 Nature Magic. Giving a witch nature based spells could make sense. One or two Druid or Cleric Open/closed would round out the witches base lists and their witch-like abilities.

So for those wanting a traditional witch, it’s fairly easy to bolt together the profession using existing skills and spell lists. Of course, RM Companion offered up a variant with “Candle Magic”, “Familiars” and other tropey spells. But we can’t discuss professions in my blogs without deconstructing the topic!!!

While Tom Moldvay offers a traditional package for a witch, does that work in non-westerncentric fantasy settings? What is a witch really, using the broadest sense of the concept. A few thoughts that use Moldvay’s foundation, but might be more flexible for various types of settings.

  1. The ability to use “natural magic”. Whether that’s herbs, nature, familiars or something else, a Witch accesses fundamental powers rooted in the natural world. You could argue these are Arcane Powers.
  2. Well-rounded. A witch is mostly solitary or lacks a open organized society or group to work within. Therefore they have a broad skill set for both offense and defense. This does not just need to be subtle charms or passive aggressive curses. A witch could easily utilize fire magic or other elemental powers in certain settings.
  3. Power flexibility. Whether a hybrid or just has access to a variety of power types, a witch should be versatile but not formally trained.
  4. Secret Worship. A witch should have a patron god, but worships secretly and protects the god’s identity. A witch will be secretive and elusive about their powers. This provides them with a sense of mystery and solitary nature, even if they operate within an organized society. (see the 50 in 50 blog HERE). Witches don’t have to be hermit crones living deep in a swamp.

Once you dismiss the specific powers of potions, charms, cackling and glamours you have a versatile, unique and powerful professional template. Using these 4 basic criteria, a witch could be very adaptable to many settings without regressing back to fantasy norms.

 

 

 

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RPGaDay2018 Day 1: What Do You Love About RPGs?

So we have RPGaDay2018 starting today. You should get a post a day for all of August from me and something to think about.

The answer to this question is sort of a rod for my own back. I suspect I am somewhat autistic. My mind tends to race with ideas constantly and if I cannot get those ideas out I tend not to be able to get to sleep. RPGs give me entire fantasy worlds to set my mind free in and then simply jotting some bullet points down may be enough to get the idea out.

One of the hardest things about blogging apparently is knowing what to write about. It is fine for the first few weeks when you have loads of fresh ideas but if you are in it for the long haul then constantly having to come up with fresh ideas can be a problem. With a brain like mine this is rarely a problem. In fact this is my 351st post on blog and I tend to write an average of about 600 words each time so that is over 200k words or the equivalent of an 800 page novel according to Google.

RPGs are also incredibly flexible. I can play with my friends in our periodical game two or three times a year, I can play One GM, One Player games several times a week when my player is back from university, I can play almost daily using PBP and I can solo play. Of all those options I use Rolemaster for all the regular games. I tend to Solo play either games I have bought but never got to play and much simpler game systems so the rules do not impinge too much on the stream of consciousness style of play that Solo play requires. Right now my favourite Solo game systems are FUDGE based, which is not something I ever thought I would say.

From a writing point of view RPGs keep pushing me into new directions. I am writing adventures at the moment with the goal of making them extremely flexible. You have seen this with the undead adventures where I am trying to make the level neutral. I am also working on making them HARP compatible and I have even bought the RMFRP single volume rules. Don’t worry I am not about to abandon RM2/RMC for RMFRP but I want to start statting things for all three ICE systems. You may even get some RMFRP stuff in the fanzine!!