Thanks to Marc and his discord server I have had an opportunity to look into someone else’s RMu game.
Everything I run will of course be coloured by my own preference for play style. Marc was half joking when he said about me “You don’t don’t use any rules.” when we were discussing our GMing styles.
One of the things that came out of talking to Marc and seeing his campaign discussions is how RMu is always going to struggle with other people’s expectations. That gave me an idea, the so called Black Companion.
Part of the inspiration comes from Shadow of the Demon Lord supplements. In the descriptions on DriveThruRPG they explicitly list which core and companion books they use.
One of the difficulties with writing for Rolemaster, in the past, has been knowing what optional rules are in play as nearly all the optional rules end up increasing the power level*.
There will be some alternative methods or missing elements in the core books when they are released that have been discussed on the forums but rejected by the dev team. I am thinking of dedicated two handed weapon tables, charging rules, movement costing AP and alternative Called Shot rules. Those are the few that spring to mind. What I am thinking of is collecting these together and getting the authors to formalise their ideas based upon all the feedback that happened on the forum and then publish them as a ‘Black Companion‘ or alternative rejected options. Once we have a freestanding reference source of them then people an choose to adopt the included rules or not. At least they will all be using the same house rule to solve the same problem rather than having 50 variations to solve one problem.
So over the next few months I am going to trawl through the RMu Beta forums and try and identify these rejected, good ideas. Get the authors’ permission and then collate them all. It may even be easier for me to collect the ideas, summarise them and then just ask the originator’s permission to publish.
*Power Level in RMu could prove to be a real issue. How are we going to deal with adventures written for one power level but played at another? I would seem to be a case of having to adjust every single NPC in the book which is going to be a pain in the arse!