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Monks kick butt. Meta-physical or not.

It’s no secret that Monks are my favorite profession. From the early days of AD&D to the later days of Rolemaster, when I have been a player it’s always been Caylis the Monk. As I have mentioned before, I like the independence of the Monk—a class that uniquely breaks the whole trope of the balanced party. Monks don’t need equipment (10’ pole, oil flasks or iron spikes), don’t need armor or weapons, have stealth, resistance to disease and poison and can hit as a magic weapon…WAIT…just had an AD&D flashback….

In Rolemaster there are no inherent class abilities, but…Warrior Monks have low cost of adrenal moves, adrenal defense, wear no armor and have unarmed combat ability. One of my favorite AD&D skills the Monk had: Slow Fall. This was duplicated as an Adrenal Skill in Rolemaster and still one of my favorites and allowed for great gameplay situations. Some would say that a simple levitation spell does the same thing but that’s more of a RM Monk thing than a non-spell user Warrior Monk.

So, a funny thing. In my efforts towards a level-less/classless system I greatly reduced the number of skills—basically corralling them into ‘meta-skills’ for parity and utility. (rather than unlimited parsing). Part of that process was removing ‘magical skills’—abilities that broke into the metaphysical realm, and this included the Slow Fall skill (which really makes no real sense) My changes nerfed some of the Monks skills—specifically Adrenal Defense which, while AWESOME, also made no sense. My solution—just allow normal parry allocation for martial artists. Rather than a physical parry of blade blocking blade, it’s assumed that martial arts provides a reactive defense against armed opponents including missile parry. This means that a martial artist will lose OB to increase DB like any RM combatant—where before they got the AD bonus at no cost to their OB. At the same time, we applied individual weapon modifiers and unarmed combat gets a MAJOR bump due to its low situational penalties: multiple attacks, multiple opponents, reverse, 180d etc.

In my rewrite of RM I probably hurt my favorite profession. That’s ok. Monks are still awesome and shouldn’t be given special spell-like abilities to enforce their character tropes. In my rules,

  1. Monks are the few characters that get targeted skills in Adolescence plus focused skills in Apprenticeship/Vocation. This means they have a more narrow, targeted skill set than other starting characters with more general and broad skill range.
  2. I don’t expect unarmed combat to be effective against an armored foe or animal/monster so the idea of Monks hitting non-corporeal creatures was silly anyway.
  3. In an anthropomorphic setting, Monks are at little disadvantage since most of their opponents will be human-like.
  4. I do use a meta skill ‘Meditation’ that provides for controlling metabolic activity (feign death, oxygen use, blood loss, calming etc). Monks have that as part of their adolescent and vocational skill package.
  5. I allow for unlimited* skill development so a focused vocation like Monks can develop a higher level of a few skills.

In my campaigns, Monks are still cool but certainly lack special powers granted in other game systems. Strangely enough, my work towards a level-less system was driven by the Changramai Monks of Shadow World. (and to the same degree Loremasters, and Navigators).

In our world, there are real Monks with amazing skills and tribulations. How about the  Marathon Monks of Mt. Hiei?

 

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RPG Maps. A new tech solution?

In my opinion, maps and layouts are the linchpin of RPG’s and adventures. While you could argue that form follows narrative, it is possible, and perhaps easier to build a story around a map than it is to come up with a story first. Peter touched upon this with his decahedron blog post: how many of you thought to use this great 3d layout?

I am a poor artist, mapmaker and layout illustrator–that’s fine when my group never sees the source doc, but a horrible handicap when creating products for print!  My perfect solution would be to find an artist that can create awesome maps and layouts and I can fill in the content. What I call the “Elton/Bernie” solution. Unfortunately, I have yet to find my art muse…

What if there is a better solution for our map woes? What if there were a way to create “Fenlon” style maps on demand, quickly, that can provide filler for a GM’s campaign?

I present to you, the “Uncharted Atlas” per Atlas Obscura: “a Twitter bot made to produce a new map every hour, each with its own array of  mountains and rivers, fjords, island archipelagoes, and deserts. 

The landscapes are rendered in the pen-and-ink style of maps printed at the front of certain fantasy novels à la Tolkien, complete with alien names: “The Pez-mes-Lüch Coast,” “The Confederation of nos-Us,” “Outer Háukwuénoé.” (the designer built a language generator, too).”

Tell me this isn’t the future? I recall talking to Matt about the future of Rolemaster/Shadow World years ago. The solution, above all else, is maps. Terry writes amazing content but the most useful material is campaign and tactical level maps. Check out the original Loremaster series or Court of Ardor. Those Fenlon maps marked roads, trails, terrain, cities, forts, ruins and other useful markers. As a GM that’s all I really need to create an adventure (plus my random encounter tables). Campaign Cartographer already has a “Fenlon Style Pack“: how about combining the style of Fenlon with the instant computer generation of Uncharted Atlas?

Fairly soon, cool maps will become a computer generated solution. Personally, I can’t wait!

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Grand Apathy? Where are all the 50th lvl characters?

“The Hero’s Journey” is an oft used theme for fantasy fiction; an unknown and lowly character is drawn into a grand adventure, grows and ultimately defeats an existential threat. As a fiction narrative, it provides a predictable but satisfying arc, and for an RPG the Hero’s Journey is the very essence of a PC’s path.

Anecdotally, few campaigns actually last long enough to see a PC progress from 1st to 50th lvl, and there just seems to be few high level 20+ adventures as well. The more common Hero’s Journey is from level 1 to around level 15–leaving unaddressed how many higher level NPCs actual populate the world. There have been conversations on the RM Forums about the distribution/frequency of spell casters in various world settings with the implication that no matter how common low level casters are, there needs to be at least one 50th lvl caster on the other end of the spectrum. In short, there are 50th lvl NPCs somewhere—so where are they and why don’t they do anything when the shit hits the fan?

Fiction and gaming is ripe with examples of world threats being confronted and defeated by modest means—it’s the very essence of the Hero’s Journey trope. But given a world shaking threat, why don’t these high level NPC take care of things? Obviously, that wouldn’t make for a good story or campaign arc. For example:

  1. Middle Earth. Why doesn’t Gandalf just jump on a Giant Eagle, fly to Mount Doom and drop that damn ring into the volcano?
  2. Star Trek. How do you create narrative conflict when you a technologically powerful civilization? You handcuff them with the “Prime Directive”.
  3. Shadow World. The bad guys (Jerak Ahrenrath) have no trouble utilizing their powerful members to create havoc—including stealing the Northern Eye. Why wouldn’t the Lord of Orhan just command their Arch Clerics and most powerful followers to get together and deal with it? It’s not as if the disruption of the Essence Flows is a small issue, or beneath their notice.

The obvious answer is that allowing powerful NPC’s to intervene eliminates these challenges for lower level PC’s. So an excuse is built in to prohibit or explain the lack of high level intervention:

  1. Aloof. The Gods are indifferent to the common plight or mundane issues of the world.
  2. The “Balance”. The use of high level power would destabilize the world.
  3. Destiny. Only the “chosen one” can solve the problem.
  4. John Galt. The powerful have withdrawn from the world of man.

If the very foundation of RPG’s is built around the common man solving meta-threats what role is there for high level characters? In order on create an appropriate challenge for a 50th lvl player, you need to come up with an appropriate threat: end of world ritual, evil god empire, extra planar entity, Lord of the Demons, etc. You would think that such a threat would demand the involvement of every powerful character in the world—but where were they for threats just slightly below world destruction?

As I outline out a half dozen adventures for 50th lvl I have to come up with threats so serious that they would require the involvement of powerful PC’s and would challenge them but aren’t realistic adventures for lower level adventurers. That seems easier in D&D when there are real differences in levels than in RM where there aren’t any innate class abilities, and spells and skills follow a graduated progression.

What possible threat requires a group of 4-6 50th lvl PC’s? It’s been an interesting exercise, both mentally  and creatively.

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“Let the Wookie Win”: Turning a group loss into a campaign positive.

I recently read this blog and it got me thinking about the standard adventure and campaign progression. It also immediately brought to mind this scene and quote from an Indiana Jones movie.

Single adventures usually follow a linear narrative that provide a final challenge or battle that the players want to, and should win. But what about longer campaigns? Is it a series of wins, each providing experience and levelling up or is it a campaign of fits and starts? Can the players and groups lose at the end of a chapter? How about at the end of the novel? Gaming should be both fun and rewarding and few GM’s want to end a long running campaign with failure but significant set backs and even tragic losses during the campaign will make the eventual triumph that much sweeter.

An early blog I wrote was on “Newmans“–long running adversaries for the PC’s. If these adversaries are less enemies and more competitors it’s natural that they should succeed as well. But what about the opponent of “ultimate evil” or “mob boss”–should they put some points on the scoreboard or get a major win?

Of course a GM may want to build some early losses into an extended campaign–but those are intentional and meant to control the narrative. What about unpredictable losses? In RM the critical system and open ended rolls works both ways. Short of TPK, can a GM turn a unexpected tragic encounter into a positive for the campaign? Of course: most fantasy RPG’s have some form of resurrection, Rolemaster has healing spells for almost every unimaginable injury and equipment and items can be replaced eventually.

Anyone have thoughts? Have you turned a catastrophe into something better?

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BASiL Deep Dive: Automaton Spell List

Part of my deconstruction of Spell Law was to come up with simpler rules for various alchemical processes that could be more easily used “in game”. One of the appeals of original RM was the framework for creating magic items, but the time and effort involved in making items needed to occur outside gameplay. The alchemist was better as an NPC or the spells should have been shifted to Closed lists (like the detailed healing spells lists in the Channeling Realm).

What sort of alchemical processes could be simplified to be usable in actual game play?

  1. Simple Alchemical Formulae or Devices:  acids, grenades, glues, glow lanterns etc that can be made in hours or a day.
  2. Single use simple embedded items: charms, candles, elixirs, salves, lotions, oils, powders that are consumed when activated.
  3. Basic constructs: drones, miniatures, robots, engines, machines that can be powered and controlled.

With #3 above in mind, one of my favorite new spells lists is “Automaton”, a Closed Essence list I created as part of my BASiL project. My intent was to create a very simple and flexible spell list that allowed for basic automata: motive power (movement), direction (control), and agency (sensory data). Basically simple robot capability with a few lines of programming code.

All of my BASiL spell lists include 1-2 pages of GM/player notes that provide more detailed direction on use and limitations but I didn’t include those in my file uploads to date. I’ve had a few questions about this list and we’ve grappled with some in game usage with one of my players so I thought I would dive deeper into the list as I envision it.

  1. First, the list isn’t just limited to a “robot” or stereotype anthropoid construct found in RM “Creatures and Treasures”. This spell list could function on any mechanical or compound device: a propeller, pulley, wheel axle etc.
  2. The spells do not create structural integrity or range of motion–functionality must be built into the object or target. For instance, animate dead might create a skeleton undead and it’s assumed that the spell “binds” the bones together into a coherent form again. These spells do not do this: cast on a stone statue it wouldn’t imbue flexibility or fluidity to solid stone. However, this spell could animate a corpse. A GM will need to adjudicate some items. For instance its conceivable that a paper origami dog has flexibility to move it’s legs, neck  or wag it’s tail.
  3. The strength and durability of the target is not improved or increased by this spell. (The paper dog would be destroyed if it got wet, a glass rod would still shatter if exposed to hard surface or torque).
  4. Tasks and Triggers should be seen as simple computer code. “And”, “If” and a few word sentence. This spell does not impart sentience or even basic A.I.
  5. Animate has a duration, otherwise it could create a perpetual motion machine or free work. Because of this duration (and perhaps spell list accessibility) it isn’t practical for a primary drive system in skyships, airbarges, paddle boats etc.
  6. Animate spells are constrained by the size of the object powered–not by the size of the moving part only.  So you can’t use a Animate I to power a TINY engine to drive a 120′ warship. Basically I’m trying to tie in concepts of HP & torque into the RMU size framework.

One of my players has really been clever with this spell list and while occasionally he pushes it’s use, I feel the size and duration limitations balance it out well and make it useful for in game play.

You can download the list here (Peter still haven’t figured this file thing out yet)

Automaton

 

 

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Misc Whiskey Thoughts & Challenging RPG paradigms.

  1. First, we are really close to the end of the month and we’ve almost had 1 blog per day! Thanks for everyone’s efforts.
  2. This is going to sound close to criticism…but it isn’t. Obviously all of us that participate here as either bloggers or commentators have specific viewpoints and solutions and we tend to gravitate towards our own rule models when challenged or when rules are discussed. I try very hard to think outside the box, question my own pre-conceptions and challenge established tropes–my own personal Socratic Method. Many times when I blog I’m not taking a partisan stance–I’m trying to create a dialogue to test our views and solutions. To be honest, I can and do generate new Professions all the time. What I have found is that the only real distinction is in “Base” spell lists–otherwise skill costs are washed out by level 10. Nonetheless it is interesting to create and model cultural or pop-cultural profession models with class distinct skill costs. But doing that, I am led back to a more flexible system of “free market” approach that utilizes a cost/benefit system that actually reinforces the very tropes and archetypes that people enjoy.
  3. RR’s, Saving Throws & Innate Stat abilities. So what came first? Spells or spell defense? Does that seem a stupid question? Spell Law was conceived with the concept of Magical Saving Throw already accepted–a PC can “resist” magical influence. As we discussed in an earlier blog, RM took a step forward in at least acknowledging the difference between a physical manifestation of magic and meta-physical one. WTF does that mean? I’ve been working on this…and came up with a few frameworks. Now, I think Dan and his work with RMU Spell Law has improved upon classifying spells by “Force”, “Elemental”, “Informational” etc… Even in it’s earliest editions, Rolemaster had already identified various spell manifestations: physical bolts should be treated as a missile attack, elemental ball attacks were similar but used the targets DB, and most other spells called for “Resistance Rolls”. Not bad–but can we do better? Maybe the solution isn’t conveniently classifying spells by certain types to define avoidance/resistance ramifications but through the spell itself. That might mean that spells are treated more individually like original DnD than the commoditized Rolemaster system. I’m doing major work on BASiL combining it with various stat driven mitigation rules. For example “Levitation” is found on my version of WIND LAW, GRAVITY LAW and (not yet published Mentalism spells). So Levitation/Wind Law uses a cushion of air which can be countered by “Still Wind” while Leviation/Gravity Law would not be affected by “Still Wind”. Should an unwilling target be allowed to “resist” against either one one of these? Can we resist an air cushion or a manipulation of gravity!?
  4. BTW: Matt is over in Europe for a while longer. Peter, I’m heading to Iceland in June to reinforce my love of the Iron Wind!
  5. Only 3 people for our 50 adventures in 50 days? Sad.

Alright…time for bed but I have more to say about all this (in a more comprehensive manner!)

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Random Musings: OSR, Retro-Clones, Open Source Rolemaster?

I want to start by quoting two sources that really struck home:

“I still love RM but the customer base is just too small to make a living from unless you are Terry.”

“Going hand and hand with that is the fact that for better or for worse the OSR is a thing. For the past decade and a half there been a group of hobbyists actively publishing, promoting, and playing classic editions of Dungeons and Dragon and similar RPGs. This is result of everybody taking advantage of the freedom granted by the open content found in the d20 SRD to expand the quantity and variety of material that supports classic D&D.” SOURCE.

I don’t know if Nicholas or Terry read this blog regularly, but I consider myself first and foremost an RM and SW supporter. At my age, I don’t have time or energy for other systems. But I’m feeling frustrated—less for me than the opportunities I.C.E. might be missing by not opening up their IP. There is a renaissance occurring in old school game rules and RM is not riding that wave. I want to publish RM material and I want to publish SW material no matter the size of the market—I’m much less concerned about monetizing my work or earning a living, but being paid or compensated IS affirmative feedback on your efforts.

Ironically, it seems that the bulk of Rolemaster system products are the result of collating house rules in various Companions or relying on third party authors rather than any centralized approached to core product development. In other words, Rolemaster has always been a polished form of crowdsourced content. Maybe RMU pulls these previous efforts back into a cohesive thread, but…will there be corresponding game and support material and modules to carry the new rule set? If not, that’s a big problem in today’s gaming environment.

Here at RolemasterBlog we are going to put out 50 small adventure/encounter/NPC/layout “squirts” in 50 days. Would these be more appealing, sell more, or pull more attention if they could be labelled as supporting “Rolemaster”? Terry and SW are slightly different—previous attempts at third party authors resulted in some good modules but not necessarily Shadow World modules. Terry wants to control content and protect his IP. I get that.

But just imagine the alternative. I apologize for sounding a bit morbid, but none of us are getting younger. Check out the ages for the active members of RM Forums. Most of us are late 30’s, 40’s or 50’s. Where is Rolemaster in 10 years if the fan base continues to slowly decline and new product output continues at the same current level. It’s called a death spiral–see the chart at the top. This is the Business/Industry Lifecycle curve: I use it extensively in my work as a mental model for analyzing businesses.  Of note is the inflection point that occurs after business/industry maturity. You either reinvent, reinvest or re-imagine or you become irrelevant or non-competitive. Certainly the whole RPG industry is tackling this with varying degrees of success.  I believe that that the answer is not in traditional strategies: marketing, research or new product development. It’s embracing the free flow of information, open sourcing, crowd funding new content, organic development and creative development seeding.

How can you develop new young writing and creative talent without a growing or stable fan base? In my mind, open sourcing Rolemaster, leveraging online creative communities and allowing new media channels to incubate and screen quality content is the only mid to long term strategy for Rolemaster to prosper.

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Random Musings: Dealing with Undead in Rolemaster.

Like a lot Rolemaster’s content, much of the mechanics around Undead are design artifacts from D&D; more specifically the issues of “Turning” and “Draining”.

Turning. It’s generally accepted in RPG’s that Clerics have the holy ability to “Turn” undead: basically, repel or even destroy them based on the level of the cleric. In D&D this is a class ability and in Rolemaster was converted to a Base spell list which is essentially the same thing, an implied core ability of the Cleric/Priest class.

There is a lot of talk on Turning in various D&D blogs—here is a good summary and discussion. Like many accepted fantasy tropes, once you step back from Turning as a core ability of the priest it’s pretty obvious that this power should be granted to specific types of priests—ones who follow or worship the god of life or death. In other words, an aspected list. Why should a Priest of the God of Fire have the ability to affect Undead? In fact, I moved Turning ability into a separate list Repulsions—basically a closed list.

I feel there are a lot of problems with the original Rolemaster repulsion spells—they try to maintain some of the elements of the D&D system by organizing undead by Class and then having spells affect a certain # of Class types. It’s just complicated for no reason. Why not treat Repulsions like a sleep spell? Any targets within the AoE must make an RR with the effects (cower, flee, destroyed) be based on the Fail? Higher level Undead will either resist or not fail by much while lower level Undead could easily be destroyed. You get the same solution without the complications of counting up the # of Classes present. Instead the spell is driven by the attack level and AoE.

Draining. The original RM had Undead causing Co drains. Later Companions introduced Life Levels with a corresponding spell list to regain lost life levels. D&D has LEVEL DRAIN—that was crazy. Why even try “Life Levels”? A while back Peter wrote a blog post touching upon stat drains as an effective Undead effect. I like the oringal simplicity of stat drain and a corresponding mechanism to regain the lost temp stat through time/rest or a restorative spell.

Stat drain is a great universal effect that could be applied to a number of agents besides Undead:

  1. The Unlife. The Unlife could drain a non-physical stats like Self-Discipline or Presence.
  2. Different types of Demons could drain different stats.
  3. Unholy Objects. Cursed or “evil’ weapons could leach stats point when used in general or when a specific power is used.
  4. New spells could allow a caster to drain and use a targets stat points for their own use. (like in Runelords).

The Undead don’t have to be complicated or identical to D&D–simple mechanisms and solutions work best within the flexibility of the Rolemaster system.

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Rolemaster Combat Hack: Expanded weapon modifiers for Rolemaster.

Even in the earliest editions Rolemaster Arms Law contained a detailed chart of weapons with a variety of data: mods to hit ATs, length, weight, speed, notes etc. Beyond any additional to hit bonuses we never really referred to that chart at all–but it did give hints to useful information that could be incorporated into combat.

Recently RMU expanded various “combat maneuvers” and combat situations into the rules. Some of these set penalties can be offset by the appropriate combat maneuver skill (contra skill) or are just specific penalties based on certain situations (close quarter combat). Two situational penalties did take the actual weapon into effect: subdue and close quarters, but the rest just set a base penalty. (rear attack, protect, etc). It seems obvious that this concept can be expanded much further; that each weapon or weapon type should have custom penalties based on it’s speed, reach and style. For instance, the effort to strike behind (rear attack) should be much different for a martial artist than someone wielding a 2-hand sword.  Or the penalty to protect should be lower for someone wielding a polearm than someone with a dagger.

This simple solution adds another layer to weapon complexity without any new rules, creates real differentiation between weapons for specific combat circumstances and reduces the problem of multiple weapons sharing the same attack table. An additional benefit is that if new combat situations are created or a new weapon added, it’s easy to expand the chart without any other design work (like creating a new attack chart). We’ve added these mods right on the character sheet for easy reference.

(Another category I’m going to add is a “Thrown” penalty for melee weapons and initiative modifiers for use with our initiative rules)

I’ve uploaded the chart in Excel for ease of editing.  At the top is a simpler version which classifies weapons into 4 categories based on weapon reach. Below are a breakout of individual weapons, and SW special weapons. (Pete, not sure I did the file upload process correctly…)

RM Weapon Modifier Chart

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Random Musings. Resistance Rolls in Rolemaster.

One of my recent posts discussed the basic concept of “Stats as Skills”. This ties into my whole experimentation with modifying the RM ruleset and creating a level-less game. Part of my research has led me to re-examining the whole concept of the “Saving Throw”. There has been a few other blog posts HERE and HERE.

Interestingly, Saving Throws are basically the same solution as Fate Points—a common house rule used by many RM players—but used IN ADDITION to RM resistance roles. Saving Throws were originally used to adjudicate powerful kill attacks (disintegration and dragons breath) predicated on a HEROIC assumption: unique and powerful individuals could somehow avoid a kill result based on luck, force of will or some superhuman effort. DnD established some arbitrary categories and situations that allowed for a Saving Throw and apparently in later additions switched to a stat driven resolution.

Rolemaster adopted the same conceit, but rather than a “all or nothing” approach, introduced a % of failure result (or the inverse of MM partial success) AND recognized the difference between “Resisting” a magical/metaphysical attack (RR vs spells) and “Avoiding” a physical/force attack (DB vs. Elemental Bolts). An improvement over DnD for sure, but is there a better way to handle RR’s?

Along the same lines, isn’t the use of both RR’s and Fate points allowing for double indemnity? It’s basically the same rule principle but gives the PC’s 2 mechanisms to avoid an unwanted effect.

I’m still playing around with various solutions, but have made a change in our upcoming session regarding Poison & Disease. Both Poison and Disease would seem to have little relationship to a PC’s level. They are physical, not meta-physical attacks, no different than an arrow or sword strike. A poisonous or viral attack is either delivered or not, and the impacts better addressed by the PC’s constitution and not level. So for Poison/Disease I’ve switched from level based attacks to the standard difficulty penalties to reflect the deadliness of the agent. (basically +30 to -100 although I use a broader, more graduated range). On the target side, the RR is now a Static Maneuver modified by the STAT (not bonus) plus any racial mods for Poison and Disease. So why the STAT and not the STAT bonus?

If the average player stat is 75 than a Routine +30 effect will be resisted pretty much all the time, barring a natural “01” roll. Results are than treated as a partial success/failure like any other MM/SM’s. A success still delivers the minimum effect since there was a successful bite/attack/puncture in the first place. Partial Success (76-100), Failure (26-75) and Absolute Failure (0-25) all induce the applicable effect categories.

Since I’ve moved Poison and Disease into a physical attack resolution all I’m left with for Resistance Rolls are Magic and Fear. I’m of the mind to make Fear also a level-less resolution, resolved with SD stat, with Fear attacks also defined by difficulty penalties like Poison and Disease.

That leaves me with Magic/spells. I’m still pondering this. Anyway, rolling Poison/Fear/Disease into the MM/SM resolution framework continues my push into a level-less game, better unifies game mechanics and doesn’t require any charts!!