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Memorial Day Weekend Musings

Hard at Work

For those of you that are enjoying a holiday and long weekend despite the pandemic and social distancing, we wish you the best in these trying times! Due to the out of service status of the Rolemaster Forums, ICE is a bit of a “black box” right now, but nonetheless things still seem to be happening.

  1. Conversation over at the Discord Servers covering ICE, RM and all their products and games. There seems to be 50 active members so that’s something.
  2. Navigator RPG. Peter has published his Navigator game system and will be expanding into fantasy and other genres at some point. (correct me if I’m wrong Peter)
  3. New “50 in 50”! So, while I still owe #50 from the last challenge, we are moving ahead with another 50 small adventures, game hooks, plot devices etc. I have mine already fleshed out, I’ll discuss in a sec.
  4. Emer IV. The last redesign that will complete the continent seems to be moving forward with artwork. As I have mentioned before, while we all like new Amthor material, there is already a lifetime of content between Jaiman and Emer modules already published!
  5. Belatedly, I finally got “The Lair of Ozymandius” out as part of my 50in50 contribution. I think it was only 2 years late!

Although I’ve had to shut down my businesses, staying at home didn’t end up being very productive for writing. Fortunately, now that things are loosening up I’ve been able to get a lot of material written that I’ll be releasing over the rest of the year. Not sure what I’m going to do about BASiL Mentalism with the forums down. My queue looks like this:

  1. Edit of Priest-King. Just completed the first pass through with notes by Nicholas and now have to feel in a few areas that I left out.
  2. #50 of the 50in50: The Tower of the Elephant, which is my own interpretation of the famous Conan story.
  3. New 50in50. For this new challenge, I’ve decided to do 5 adventure hooks for 5 different categories: The Weapons, The Tombs, The Towers, The Heists and The Magicians. I’ve got 5 mostly fleshed out, so once we start publishing these won’t fall behind (hopefully)
  4. Chapters 3-5 of Legends of Shadow World. #3 is mostly complete and I have to polish up #4 and #5 which are more basic battle arenas.
  5. SW Players Channeling Guide. I consolidated all of my various Shadow World religions, spell lists and errata into a book with a focus on player use.
  6. Book of the Pales. I’ve been picking away at this, but got a burst of work done so I can see the end of it. sort of.

If you want to see any of my product, you can see it here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?author=Brian%20Hanson

If you like something, rate it! Thanks to everyone who emails or messages me.

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Combat in 3D environments.

3D Combat Risers - Deluxe Set - Clear Mithril
3D Combat Risers for Game Simulation

Back in 2016 I wrote this BLOG that I want to revisit a bit due to some recent work. I wanted to start a discussion on combat in 3D environments with a focus on 3 “terrains”: underwater, aerial. and zero g. While there are specific challenges to each of these, they all share 1 specific trait–the ability of characters to maneuver and fight in 3 dimensions. Before I delve into this, a small disclaimer. There is probably rules for each of these in one of the dozens of RM supplements. I don’t have any of them and I’ve read even fewer. I might be going over “old ground”, but for purposes of this blog, we can also discuss how this might work in RMU. I’m not aware of any rules in the new version for 3 dimensional interaction.

Rolemaster combat assumes combat will occur on a hard surface and attacks will come from front, flank and rear (and maybe overhead on occasion). When you add in a third level of coordinates AND the ability of a players to rotate, turn and pivot simultaneously then things can get more interesting. How should this be handled? There might need to be a separate set of rules for each situation, but conceptually they are similar enough that a shared mechanic might be possible.

Underwater. For anyone experienced with snorkeling and/or diving knows that it can take time to feel comfortable with varying degrees of orientation underwater. But with some skill it’s easier to swim upside down, inverted or rotate comfortable and maintain perspective. But non-native swimmers don’t move through liquid easily or quickly. The resistance of water, lack of fins or flippers and encumbrances of clothing and equipment make movement slow, fast weapon attacks extremely difficult and thrown weapons entirely useless. From a pure movement mechanic perspective, perhaps a simple approach is to set a underwater movement rate/rnd and then establish a % of activity from normal baseline. Other rules could be developed around increased damage from vacuum spells, decreased damage from heat/fire etc.

Zero G. In some respects, Zero gravity is the opposite of underwater: inertia, momentum and mass over enhance basic movements and there is no real force except hard objects or force to offset momentum. Not having real life experience in zero gravity it’s hard for me to intuitively model game mechanics. One idea I have is to leave movement rate the same, but require MM roles to maintain orientation, change or stop an action and orientation roles anytime a change occurs.

Aerial. It’s easy to think of aerial combat in terms of our own experience with lift and thrust. Assuming a magical flying mechanism does not require momentum to generate lift, than aerial combat is a combination of underwater and zero g. A bit of limitless rotation and orientation but with two resistance forces: gravity and inertia.

There are really two overarching issues to tackle: environment specific mechanics that effect movement, combat, spells, breathing etc and the resolution of player orientation, attack vector, environmental awareness and perceptual capacity. This last piece feels like it could be dealt with using a simple unifying mechanic.

In my own adventures, Priest-King has a significant amount of underwater adventures, Empire of the Black Dragon has both underwater and zero g and Legends of Shadow World has some zero gravity as well. I generally GM it with a loose hand and the players tend to find fixed “anchors” to launch from, provide protection from some directions and minimize disorientation.

Does anyone have any thoughts or innovations?

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Thoughts on mortality.

I’m not sure that’s a good title for this blog post, but I’m writing this “on the run” but look at that picture. To me, that could have been my roleplaying group back in the early 80’s. How about you? If that seems familiar it’s because A LOT of Rolemaster players are in their 40’s and 50’s now.

First, I should say it’s fantastic that we can enjoy the same game we have played for 30+ years or have rediscovered RPG’s later in life with friends and family. However, my second thought is that everyone I’m seeing on the RM Forums (out of commission right now), RolemasterBlog.com and the new Discord server are all around my age. Where are the new young Rolemaster players–like in that photo? We know that RPG market is growing…

Before this starts off like a lot of our blog posts with critiques of ICE let me say this. I.C.E. is a “virtual company” with no real employees or hard assets. They are leveraging their existing IP and putting out a few new products through a mostly volunteer basis. I have no expectation that they ramp up into another serious production/print/gaming company.

The issue that I want to raise is about authorship. Who will be writing new products for I.C.E. in the future? My brother Matt developed the SW Players Guide, built the Nomikos Library resource, contributed to most of the ICE material published in the early 2000’s and was on the ground floor for RMU development, but he’s mostly moved on to other endeavors. It seems like Nicholas and perhaps one other person does the bulk of the writing for HARP. RMU is being shepherded by a small volunteer group of 2-3 people and Terry is the sole author for Shadow World. While I’m not a published ICE author, I do write quite a bit of content–but I’m 50. I can see myself writing stuff for another 10 years, but that’s not that long. RMU and Priest-King have both been in development for 10 years and that doesn’t seem that long ago. Terry is 60. He has a impressive publishing resume, but how long will he be inspired to write? Nicholas has a busy and demanding career; how much work can he realistically do?

Let’s tie the two together. I.C.E. was founded by young people in college, most in their early 20’s. The growth in RPG players is: overseas, youth and females. Does I.C.E. now need to recruit new, relevant writers to appeal to today’s player demographics? What happens in just the next decade as we all enter our 60’s and even 70’s? Will our writing be relevant or we just existing for the small core of die hards our own age? Who takes over after that? Does ICE sell it’s catalog to a young upstart company or established gaming entity?

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Rolemaster Survey

Survey says... Good answer - Survey says | Make a Meme

Another cloudy day of stay-at-home quarantining, so I thought I would throw this out to our faithful blog readers! Please respond in comments by #, answer as few or many as you would like.

  1. Favorite magic item. Do you have a favorite item found in a RM book or module or something you made up yourself?
  2. Best 1-5th lvl spell for a non-spelluser to have. What single low level RM spell would be the most useful to a non-spell user?
  3. Favorite spell. What is your favorite RM spell. Why?
  4. Favorite weapon. Most of my players seem to make weapon choices based on the attack chart and/or how common it might be as a magical item. However, weapons can be a great component of a character build. Putting aside efficacy, what RM weapon is the coolest?
  5. What is the best adventure module you’ve played using the RM rules. It doesn’t have to be a ICE product.
  6. Favorite profession. Why?
  7. Favorite setting. Do you have one or do you just run adventures without a setting?
  8. Favorite Shadow World NPC. If you are familiar with SW, do you have a favorite?
  9. Coolest skill. Yes, perception might be the overall utility skill, but what skill (from any RM edition) do you think is the coolest?
  10. Best non-cover artwork. We’ve discussed cover art quite a bit in this blog and elsewhere, but interior art is also important in providing tone and atmosphere. Do you have a favorite piece of interior art found in an ICE product?
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Shadow World Spin Cycle: Assassins of Dol Amroth

MERP 8106 Assassins of Dol Amroth - [PDF Document]

While the purpose of by “spin cycle” blog articles is to re-purpose MERP and other modules for use in Shadow World, Assassins of Dol Amroth (AoDA) is an excellent module for quick, easy to run adventures in any setting.

Cover Art. First, the cover is another great Angus McBride piece, showing a female assassin ready to ambush a shadowy mounted figure. Is she the hunter or the prey? There are small details like the soft boot covers for stealth, the gargoyle broach and the color patterns on the inner cloak (is it reversible?) that add a lot of depth to the scene.

Scope. Rather than a hybrid regional overview with adventures, “AoDA” is a simple product comprised of 3 adventures: Murder on the Docks, A Home be the Sea and The Hill of Shades. There are 18 pre-set PC’s; 6 for each adventure with stats and descriptions. The professions are basic MERP: Warrior, Scout, Thief, Ranger, Animist, Bard and Mage that could easily be adapted back to RoleMaster.

Adventure 1: Murder on the Docks. This is a short, simple adventure, pitting the group against a formidable assassin in a run down warehouse. Reading it through the first time, some things weren’t made clear and there wasn’t a clear segue into the next adventure, but it did keep the theme of “Assassins”! Total of 6 pages with artwork, most of it dealing withe warehouse layout. I think it’s good for a short gaming session.

Adventure 2: A Home by the Sea. In a run down manor, the PC’s will encounter another group of Assassins. Again, this is really a self contained adventure that could be played in a single session. Of the eight pages, most of it are lengthy room descriptions for the manor layout. This was true for Adventure 1’s warehouse descriptions. Kudos to the author–many MERP modules had only the briefest descriptions for rooms.

Adventure 3: The Hill of Shades. The denouement of the module is the players confrontation with the Assassins guild in their secret hideout. Again, these are straight foward single session adventures, but easy to use and great drop in for a campaign to build player experience.

Overall, this product is more a generalized adventure series than a true Middle Earth product, but it’s fun and basic. Artwork is generic and most has little to do with the content and the layouts and maps are about as weak as you’ll see in any ICE product. However, if you need some filler material or want some challenges regarding assassins then this could easily work. For Shadow World, this is a great drop for virtually any city.

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2019: A record year for Dungeons and Dragons.

If you hadn’t seen the headline already, D&D was the best year in the game’s 46 years. You can read more about it HERE. Some interesting takeaways: 39% of players are female and sales of the introductory boxed edition increased by 300%.

Now, we can all comment once again on “what if’s” and marketing and product strategies that I.C.E. could employ with RMU, but I’d would rather focus on the broader issues:

  1. The rising tide raises all boats. Rolemaster and other systems all road D&D’s coattails and benefited from D&D’s popularity and market growth.
  2. Back in the 80’s I vaguely recall that the female RPG player market was not even 10%: 39% AND GROWING is fantastic and shows how much popular culture has embraced, and been embraced by women.
  3. In general, this is a positive trend for RPG’s–15 years ago, it felt like the industry was dying.
  4. D&D has it’s share of famous people players–what about Rolemaster? I think Joe Abercrombie (famous for a fantasy writer) mentioned playing Rolemaster on a blog post. Anyone else know of a famous RM shout-out?
  5. Finally, not being familiar with D&D since the early 80’s (although I did play Pathfinder with Matt a few years ago), is RM/RMU that much different than 5e? I’ve read that D&D has embraced skill systems and other attributes that were novel 40 years ago. RMU aside, what makes d100 RM worth exploring by some of these D&D players.
  6. Europe. Sales increased by 65%. That’s a good fact.

It’s nice to see a hobby that I’ve enjoyed for 40 years still popular, growing and well represented in mainstream pop culture!

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ROLEMASTER PROFESSION REVIEW: THOUGHTS ON THE MYSTIC.

I have to say that I was surprised at the lack of love for the Mystic in Hurin’s and Peter’s recent posts. Why? Because Mystics ROCK!!! I’m not sure I ever played one, I started GMing almost exclusively early on, but I’ve always been intrigued by the profession. Like the Astrologer, Seer and Alchemist, I thought the Mystic was a new profession concept in the early 80’s that upended the “boring” D&D classes I was accustomed to.

So what is the Mystic? Unless Terry or another original ICE developer weights in, we’ll never know exactly what they had in mind 40 years ago–but to me it’s clear that the Mystic is a pure spell caster Assassin/Spy. I’m not sure Peter or Hurin are picking up on that–and if you only look at the spells it might be tougher to see the “Mystic DNA”. First, take a look at the skill costs:

  1. Ok armor DP costs. That’s typical for Mentalists in general, but it implies a more combat oriented profession.
  2. Stalk & Hide: 2. That’s the lowest skill cost for any pure caster, and implies the stealthy nature of the class.
  3. Perception: 2. Again, this is only beaten by the Seer and matches the Illusionist.
  4. Ambush: 4. That’s not low, but it’s by far the lowest for a pure caster. The Mystic ambushes!!

Just based on those skill costs alone, we already have the basis for a stealthy, perceptive character whose primary attack is ambushing.

Base Spells. So there is not much appreciation for the Mystic spell lists, but let’s take a closer look:

Confusing Ways. This is a fantastic spell list with some great utility. The first 5 spells: Distraction, Confusion, Blur Vision, Fear and Stumble are all combat effective and still fall into the character concept. Most of the other level spells are as useful, although the lack of spells lvl 16-19 could be easily corrected.

Hiding. Again, this is another solid list with some cool spells: 3rd lvl Shadow, 7th lvl Screen, 10th lvl Shadow Mystic and 13th lvl Flattening. The combination of Hiding and Confusing Ways spells with some combat effectiveness makes the Mystic and formidable character class!

Mystical Change. The “piece de resistanance” of the Mystics spell lists, this allows the caster to change their appearance or impersonate other creatures or persons.

For me, those three lists and the skill costs are a great character template. I would also argue that the Mystic’s low level spells are almost all useful–which isn’t necessarily the case for other pure spells users (I’m thinking of you “Mr. Boil Water”!).

I think the confusion with the Mystic is with the other 3 spells: Liquid, Solid and Gas Alteration. Those spells seem off-brand, or perhaps another mentalist type given how core the skill costs and the other lists feel.

Personally, I would jettison the 3 alteration spells and maybe drop a weapon skill down to 4 and make a few small tweaks to some other skills. I’ve never been a proponent of a mandatory 6 base lists: a profession needs just the right amount of base lists, and often it feels like some base lists are just there to meet that arbitrary requirement.

A slight bump to combat abilities and those three lists makes for a great Assassin archetype. The Mystic is a great profession and one that deserves more respect!!!

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Rolemaster Profession Review: Thoughts on the Warrior Mage.

Hurin wanted Rolemasterblog to tackle the Warrior Mage next, so I put aside my blog on the Mystic and spent some time reviewing and thinking about the Warrior Mage. I can’t recall any of my players choosing a Warrior Mage, but I know that the Warrior Mage is VERY popular among players and controversial as well. Hurin is doing a rebuild of WM spell lists and is a proponent in general, so I thought I would take an opposing view of the profession!

One of the first issues for me, is that the Warrior Mage doesn’t feel like a “Profession” like other RM semi-spell users. Instead it’s really a multi-class, A Fighter-MU that combines the 2 most popular PC aspects: combat and elemental attack spells. Not only does it merge the best of 2 classes, but it fully embraces the Fly, Sleep, Charm, Fireball cornerstones of the fantasy Magic-User.

What’s in a name? Most RM Professions carry an implied conceptual design with their name–a topic we visit with these blog posts. Most people have a clear concept of a character when they hear words like: Bard, Ranger or Paladin. These Profession names evoke class tropes, literary references and a skill and power framework. We don’t call a Ranger a “Animist/Fighter” or a Paladin a “Cleric/Fighter” even if those descriptions are technically accurate. Profession names carry enough referential information that we can even argue over skill cost minutia. Of course some of these Professions imply a setting or specific social construct but the Warrior Mage does none of that. What do you think of when you hear Warrior Mage? Probably that it’s a great character because there is both fighting ability and useful spells–but what’s the context? It’s merely a Chimera–a combination of two primary ABILITIES, but without any conceptual framework. While we may disagree on small details of varying Professions, we immediately get the concept of an “Astrologer”, a “Beastmaster”, a “Dervish” or a “Moonmage”. There is connotation. I just don’t get that with a Warrior Mage. To me, it feels like a work-around and a class designed by a player not a GM. A RM Magician can already allocate DPs to learn combat skills–the Warrior Mage just accelerates and amplifies that outside of the game balance. The Warrior Mage spells feel cherry picked for power and utility–in some ways they feel BETTER than the Base lists of the pure Magician spell caster!

Spell lists picked and designed by a player. There are several versions of a Warrior Mage, but let’s stick to the original in RMCOII. In this version, the Warrior Mage receives 3 Base lists and a suggestion for a 4th: Minds Touch, Elemental Ways and Highriding. The 4th suggestion is Body Renewal, a Monk base list. If a player could individual choose spells and put them into their own lists, I’m not sure you could do better than these. I’m not making a argument for the inherent power of the spell lists–I realize that there is an argument that they are “overpowered”. I just don’t like the incredible bias of these lists.

Minds Touch. Basically combine Spirit Ways with Telekinesis and you get the 4 incredible spell abilities: Charm, Sleep, Telekinesis and Telepathy. All great for in-game use!

Elemental Ways. Why bother with a handful of Elemental Spell lists organized by the Element, when you can just bundle the ALL the best spells of a Magician into a single Base list! Fireball, IceBall, Fire Bolts, Ice Bolts, Water Bolts, Shock Bolt at 2nd level and Lightning Bolt by 12th.

Highriding. My favorite! Flying, Longdoor, a Tensers Floating Disc and even Teleport. Wow!!!

The final suggested list is Body Renewal–a Self Healing list that rounds out the Warrior Mage as virtually a self-sufficient offensive machine. While the WM base lists don’t have spells from 16-20 why bother? Most games seem to run at player levels less than 15th, allowing the WM to put together a basket of great spells by 10th.

Profession as a Trope. So I want to return to the Warrior Mage as a template beyond a Fighter-Magic User or semi spell user/Essence. I’m not opposed to a simple Essence semi-user, but that doesn’t really fit into the RM system does it? Is there a better set of spell lists that aren’t: a teenager’s masturbatory idea of a PC; imbue the Profession with a concept or connotation like other Professions?

I’m going to think about this further. Since I can already build a Magician that spends Development points on a combat skills (yes, at a high cost), I want to see a Warrior Mage concept that is unique or inspires roleplaying ideas. Of course, I always think of Professions in relation to Shadow World–in that setting there are some ideas that could make great templates for a WM: Cloudlords, Xiosans or the Guarla of the Raven Queen. Any of those might work as an organization of Semi-Essence professions, albiet with specific organizational spell lists rather than the RMC II Base. I’m interested in seeing what Hurin comes up with! What are your thoughts?

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Spell Law Deconstruction: Building Spell Lists to 50th lvl.

Image result for spell law

Now that I’m posting up some more spell lists–Mentalism primarily, I’m tracking comments and feedback on the forums and here at RMBlog. The number one issue I see is the desire for spell list reductionism, maybe build 10 spells per “list” and allow for creative scalability similar to or identical to HARP.

That is a compelling thought, but after writing a ton of spell lists I wanted to put my own thoughts in order.

  1. Distillation. Rebuilding classic RM spell lists typically requires some trimming. Many spells within a list are redundant: not just the spells that progress as I, II, III etc, but different named spells that do similar things. Distilling the essence of a list can really reduce the total number of spells which makes a scalable spell system very appealing!
  2. Spell scope. I’m not a fan of kitchen sink style spell lists, but do see a fundamental difference between the realms. Essence should be very tightly focused around a key aspect, Channeling should allow for much more variability based on the particular god and I see Mentalism lists following a shared mental mechanism. Using these basic rules provides different ways to build lists in different realms.
  3. Compatibility. A major motivation to maintain the 1-50th spell lists is basic compatibility with RM and Shadow World.
  4. Built in scalability. Many of my lists are built around 3-6 spells, that progress from I-V and maybe include a mass effect. If each spell repeats every 5 levels that takes up a chunk of the list, but also gives a repetitive appearance that seem suitable for scaling. However, the spell versions don’t just scale progressively, but change in target size, AoE, Range and other aspects that provide “more bang for the buck”. General scaling assumes increased power point cost/expansion of range, area, damage etc. So from an efficiency standpoint, higher versions of the spells in BASiL provide a better impact/PP than just linear scaling. “Spell II” isn’t just 2x better than “Spell I”, it can be 3x better or have expanded efficacy or powers as well.
  5. Opportunity and tactical cost. By having built in scaling, players can use higher or lower level spells based on the target, PP consumption and risk/reward calculations. Of course, that’s also one argument for Scaling spells, but the PP usage will be much different per #4 above.
  6. Level assignment. One of the more difficult aspects of designing a spell list is deciding what level to make a spell. Part of me wants to calculate an estimated “power cost”, while other times I’m thinking of utility and game balance. For instance, the big three: Charm, Fly and Invisibility can be very unbalancing to the game, but perhaps shouldn’t be based on “power needed” or some other arbitrary assessment. Some lists just can’t be distilled into 10 spells with scaling options. Some spells need to be higher level to reflect their real power and also make them unavailable to lower level players.
  7. Vertical versus horizontal acquisition. RM (and probably RMU) is build around horizontal model of spell acquisition. Generally players will know more spell lists than overall spell levels. For instance, a 5th lvl caster may have access to 5-10 lists but can only effectively cast to 5th level without risk of failure. In BASiL, it’s the opposite. I use a levelless system so players generally know a few spell lists to higher level. That gives them more powerful, niche abilities. It’s just the way I like my game to run–hard specialization versus the generalization of RAW.
  8. Keystone spells. I still like cool spells that can be found at 10th, 20th and certainly 50th level. I try to add something unique or interesting at these levels for players to look forward too, or to give the list a “bump”!

I guess sticking with RM I wanted to improve on the originally 35+ year old Spell Law and incorporate spell ideas and powers introduced since then. But if I were to start over, I would take a hard look at a HARP scalable system. Or maybe just use HARP rules?

Many of you also build your own spell lists. Do you have build guidelines, mechanistic philosophies or other design criteria that help you in the process?