All the recent talk about stats got me thinking about some different ways to make stats more important or useful in standard RM or RMU. These are just rough, thoughts, mind…no actual play testing in most cases.
d20 SRD Monsters in RMU
Following on from a thought I had in response to BriH’s post earlier last week I have been thinking about creating a completely open and free to use monster book. Rather than Creature Law this would be Creature Libre.
The two parts of the puzzle would be an open source of monsters something like the the d20SRD monster index and the rules for monster creation. These we already have at least in part from Creature Law (PDF page 342).
Furthermore, by using a standard source (the d20SRD) and a public platform (this blog) anyone can contribute monsters to the project. Over this weekend I will re-read the creature creation rules and come up with a template.
The only issue will be art. Once all the content is written then I guess it worth looking at some kind of crowd funding to get the art done?
This is definitely on my To Do list and moving up the priority. If anyone is interested in publishing any unofficial RMU material, if you want or need a monster then let me know and I will prioritise those monsters!
Legends of Shadow World Pt 4. The Plains of Despair.
Due to a vacation it’s been a few weeks since out last session playtesting our “Legends of Shadow World” tourney series for 50th lvl characters. Last night the group reconvened for Chapter 4: “The Plains of Despair” (or alternatively The Fortress of the Dread Lord).
Narrative wise, it felt a bit broken; the PC’s got killed or beaten badly in Chapter 3 and the few weeks off disrupted the story line. However this is playtesting, so the group was brought back to life, I doled out some moderate damage, adjusted hits, PPs and item charges etc and sent them on their way through a Portal.
This one was tricky for me–while the main encounter is between the PC’s and a small group of powerful creatures there is also this “army” that the players could confront. How do you handle 5 PCs versus thousands of soldiers? Combat mechanics aside, the good news is that all those cool high level spells in Spell Law, the ones that affect 1 target/lvl or large AoE, come in REAL handy!
The PCs actual triumphed in this one, maybe a bit too easily. Unlike the others, this Chapter ends with a victory–the group retrieved the artifact they had been chasing. Now the players get to return home, get a break and then head out. Chapter 5 ties up all the threads and puts the group in direct confrontation with the mastermind behind it all.
Now that I have run 4 chapters I can start processing issues around high level adventures. This was one of the intents of this project. Some issues and questions I am hoping to resolve:
- How does RM combat work between high level opponents? Is it the same as low level since high OBs are offset by high DBs, buffs, and parrying?
- Spells. Do spells scale appropriately or do some high level spells break the game or aren’t effective enough?
- Do spellcasters really have an advantage at high lvl vs pure arms users?
- How do you design challenging encounters for those levels?
- How do players roleplay a 50th lvl character? Especially iconic personalities like Navigators and Loremasters?
- What types of opponents are effective?
- What types of environments can the players handle?
- Do high level characters lend themselves to Rolemasters gritty “low fantasy” mechanics?
I’m collecting feedback from my other two playtest groups and hopefully have meaningful data I can post soon!
A few thoughts on a sunday afternoon.
- I’m really looking forward to the upcoming 50 in 50 project that we’ve been working on. It’s easy to get caught up in optional rules, RMU reviews and game mechanics at the expense of writing or discussing actual gaming content! Personally, coming up with 25 short adventures or encounters that had an interesting hook was a challenging creative exercise. Peter and I had all of the outlines done in 2 months and are now working on the final edits. I’ve blogged about it before, but RM would be better served if there were more ready to play adventures being published. In related news, I think our next challenge: 5 adventures for 50th level has turned out to be a great exercise!
- Speaking of alternate rules…I think fumble ranges need to be INCREASED–dramatically. It’s one thing to pick up a weapon, spin it about and perform some flourishes; it’s another to use any object in combat or fast moving, dynamic situations. We already use # of skill ranks to offset combat maneuvers and RM rules has an optional rule that fumble range can be reduced. For instance, I’m thinking a fumble range of 25 for a flail, with a minimum of 5, reduced by # of skill ranks.
- RM Deconstruction. I’ve been wondering if I need to take another look at the actual stats. Do we need 10? I think Self Discipline, Presence, Intuition, Empathy need further thought. On one hand, I can see what they model. Can Self Discipline and Presence be combined into a “Will” stat? Can Intuition and Empathy be merged?
Anyone have any thoughts?
Deconstruction of Character Creation and Game Modeling of Skill Systems in RM.
Peter’s recent blog, RMU – to infinity and beyond, created a firestorm of comment activity. 64 comments to date! Much of the back and forth touched up on professions, attributes, knacks and character creation. Certainly, the thrust of the debate was centered around the Professions vs No Professions commentary that Peter and I have continued on the RolemasterBlog and previously on the Rm Forums.
Rather than add more comments to Peters blog post, I thought I would take this topical opportunity to discuss the base modeling of the RM skill system (and other game systems too). As I did with BASiL, my own rewrite of Character Law (I named it SWARM) started with a complete deconstruction of the RM rule set. It’s an ongoing process and even now I’m tinkering and rethinking things based on comments here by Peter, Hurin and ITD. I’m going to discuss my own solutions, but the point here is to examine the underlying principles of the skill system, not argue for my own resolutions.
There are 5 basic rule mechanisms that are used in the RM skill system: Stats, Development Points, Skill Costs, Skill Rank Bonus and Profession Skill Bonus.
- A standard RPG/game trope, Stats quantify a PC’s various physical and mental traits—the basis of the character make-up. In RM stats are then used to determine “Stat Bonuses” which are added to the appropriate skills. While there is disagreement about the need for actual stats, everyone agrees with and understands the nature of stat bonuses—it is a measure of a characters “Natural Aptitudes and Abilities”.
- Development Points. DP’s are “coinage”—used to purchase skills by rank. In RM, DP’s are variable and based on a select group of Stats, while in RMU characters are given a fixed amount. Either way, Development Points are modelling the “Capacity to Learn”.
- Skill Costs. In both RM and RMU skill costs are driven by a PC’s profession. Some argue that Professional Skill Costs are a product of formative learning channels, aptitudes or learning paths. This is an argument for WHY there are Profession Skill Costs—but this is not an argument on what Skill Costs ARE. Skill Costs are a measurement of “Profession Aptitudes” & “Time & Effort” to learn a skill.
- Skill Rank Bonus. The Skill Rank Bonus progression basically remains unchanged from RM to RMU; for each rank, there is a subsequent, cumulative bonus that is added to your total. Skill Rank Bonus models a “Learning Curve”.
- Profession Skill Bonus. Finally, each Profession is given pre-assigned Skill Bonuses based on the characters Profession. In RM it was a level bonus and in RMU it’s a per rank bonus. The is modeling “Profession Aptitudes”.
The first and foremost problem I see here is that Profession Skill Costs is modelling two separate distinct factors: professional aptitudes AND time and effort. The second is that Profession Skill Bonuses are then duplicative; they are both modelling Profession Aptitudes. Personally, I think that’s sloppy game mechanics—it would simpler to just adjust Profession Skill Costs and eliminate the Profession Skill Bonus. Reducing the cost of a skill is the same as giving a profession skill rank bonus.
Ultimately, the simplest measure to test is: Total Skill Bonus/DP’s spent. Adding layers of complexity to model the same effect (Profession Aptitudes) is pointless.
I think it’s a cleaner solution to make each mechanism discrete unto itself, rather than have several game devices that only serve to reinforce professional tropes. Here would by my suggestion for RMU using Professions:
- Stats – Natural Aptitudes.
- Development Points. Either stat variable or fixed. (I can see both arguments)
- Skill Costs. Time & Effort only. The same skill costs for all professions—this is modelling how hard it is to learn a particular skill or lore. Skill costs can vary by skill but NOT by profession.
- Skill Rank Bonus. Learning Curve.
- Profession Skill Bonus. Profession Aptitudes.
This solution provides distinct functions of each rule component—no duplication. Plus, Profession Skill Bonuses allow for easier to understand Profession distinctions and an easier process for creating new Professions. You no longer have to assign skill costs by Professions— and you can be more aggressive on the total Bonuses per Profession. Giving a Fighter +4 bonus/rank for 1 Hand Edge is a real differentiator and results in the same outcome as giving them a low skill cost. Plus, this solution eliminates huge charts of professional based skill costs as well.
If, like me, you are using NO PROFESSION you might want to try my solution which is slightly different.
- Stats – Natural Aptitudes.
- Development Points. Either stat variable or fixed. (I can see both arguments)
- Skill Costs. Time & Effort only. Skills all cost 5* with +1 cost per extra rank per level with unlimited advancement. (the +1 resets each level—this measures the law of diminishing returns).
- Skill Rank Bonus. Bell Curve. I use a 1,2,3…9,8,7,6….1,1,1 progression. This keeps low level characters from maxing out the cost/bonus curve of important skills.
- Variable Skill Bonus. Rather than Skill Bonuses assigned by Profession I give players +6 in bonuses to assign as they see fit. This option models “talents” or “knacks” and gives players more flexibility and customization of their characters outside the profession paradigm.
In the final argument, having Profession Skill Costs and Profession Skill Bonuses is redundant and unnecessary.
For summary:
| Mechanism/System | RM | RMU | Suggested Solution (when using Professions) |
| Stats | Natural Aptitudes & Abilities. | Natural Aptitudes & Abilities. | Natural Aptitudes & Abilities. |
| Development Points | Variable Learning Capacity | Fixed Capacity to learn | Optional – Variable or Fixed |
| Skill Costs | Professional Aptitude & Time and Effort | Professional Aptitude & Time and Effort | Time and Effort (same costs for all Professions) |
| Skill Rank Bonus | Learning Curve – Decreasing | Learning Curve – Decreasing | Learning Curve – Decreasing |
| Skill Bonus | Professional Aptitude | Professional Aptitude | Professional Aptitudes – Enchanced |
RMU – to infinity and beyond!
There was a comment to my last post that read:
Is Rolemaster Worth Saving?
This is a bit of a gloomy post but if you don’t like it skim down to the ‘…and finally’ which hopefully is a bit more fun!
Over the decades I have bought a great many role playing games. Many of them, or most of them, got played once and are now just on top of a wardrobe. The death blow for all of these games was either I didn’t enjoy running it or my players didn’t want to play it.
It doesn’t matter which side doesn’t want to play, if either withdraws their support the game is dead.
My first RMU play test ended when my players didn’t want to play it anymore. These are all players that have played RM2 and RMC since the early 1980s.
My second play test is going a bit better especially since I have adopted JDales new tables.
Now what happens if the RPG community treats RMU as so many of us have treated other games, that it is condemned to the top of the wardrobe? What if the existing RM community condemn RMU to the wardrobe of oblivion?
The first reaction is to say “stick to RM2/RMC/RMSS/RMFRP (delete as applicable)” but that is not going to work. If ICE is committed to RMU then there will be no more legacy publications. All the new Shadow World material will be HARP or RMU compatible. There will be no more companions and no more guild companion articles. I guestimate that 95% of all the forum discussion is about RMU in the beta boards. If you are not playing RMU then the ICE community will wither away for you.
The second option is to house rule just about everything you don’t like in RMU so you get a working system that your players will play. That fixes it for you but not for the RPG community.
This is a rather gloomy look into the future but it is a real possibility. The RM community is not big. RMSS did not convert all the RM2 players. RMFRP did not convert all the RMSS players. RMC is the most recent version of RM that you can buy and none of the RMSS and RMFRP players will have converted. Very few RM2 players have converted to RMC. It was recently revealed that the core books have only just achieved Silver status on RPGnow. What that means is that 250 copies of the core rules have been sold up until 2 weeks ago. 250 copies in 4 years is not a lot of sales!
Given the really negative impression touted online about chartmaster, rulesmaster and rollmaster any new version of RM has to overcome these prejudices and misconceptions and go on to enthuse a new generation of players. That is not going to be easy in this world of thousands of free or almost free games and in a time when OSR and simplified games are rising in popularity.
I suspect that ICE have a massive marketing challenge ahead if RMU is to be a success. Given the effort so far in getting RMU as far as beta two and the current ‘behind closed doors’ changes, I think that the greatest effort is yet to start for the RMU team.
…and finally
My adventures regardless of whether I write them for my own game or for publication always have a title. I frequently take a film title or a song title or lyric. I was on a long journey recently and one song stuck stuck in my mind. The song was Here Goes Norman by The Undertones.
My gut reaction was when hearing the song was a sort of Bates Motel style of adventure but then I thought what if Norman was the victim in the story? Think along the lines of The Hunchback of Notre Dame with the outsider vilified by the public. So with the title of There Goes Norman what adventure hook does that inspire with you?
Project BASiL: Mentalism Spells & Misc.
Most of my emails and forum messages have been asking about when I’m going to post the Mentalism spells for my Spell Law re-write. While Essence and Channeling were fairly straight forward, I’ve ended up re-working Mentalism several times–and now I’m doing it again! Part of this was a desire to really differentiate the realms: Essence is manipulation of the physical world and elements, Channeling is driven by the God’s aspect, “life forces”, and miraculous effects, and Mentalism are spells of mind and will. But what does that mean? What should Mentalism spells encompass for powers?
While Mentalism was never proffered as being Psionics, it was a good reference point for me to re-organize Mentalism spells, clarify their limits and group spells accordingly. Interestingly, I found that like Essence and Channeling, new spell lists and groupings created new profession possibilities.
Here are my initial power/ability groupings and associated lists/powers (same as Base lists). Most of them are just a single or a couple of lists to create a mental “Discipline”–most Mentalists might focus on 2-3 Disciplines for specialization.
Body Enhancement: Body Control, Self Augmentation, Body Weaponry, Self Healing, Body Resistance
Clairavoyance: Item Visions, People Visions, Place Visions (yes those names are pretty bad–suggestions?)
Glamours: Phantasms/lllusions, Hallucinations, Visual, Sound, Smell, Touch
Mesmerization: Mind Control, Enthralling, Suggestion
Mind Enhancement: Mind Shields, Mind Lore (Absorption list)
Precognition: Future Visions, Awareness, Dreams
Pyschokinesis: Move Objects, Manipulate Object (heat, bend, reform, break)
Pyrokinesis: Control Fire, Manifest Fire
Sense Projection: Astral Projection, Remote Sensing
Subterfuge: Cloaking, Distractions
Telepathy: Absorb Lore, Read Mind, Sense Minds, Mind Speech, Mind Attacks
Right now I’m around 30-35 “Base Lists”, 10 Closed (which are lesser/consolidated versions of base) and a handful of Open (limited to 10th lvl). Similar to the other BASiL lists, you can easily move things around: “Telepathy” becomes the Mentalist Base, Pyschokinesis and Subterfuge becomes Mystic Base and Body Enhancement becomes Monk base–the rest drop into Closed and/or Open.
My goal was 50 total lists which I think I’m at, but it needs another pass through. If anyone has any ideas, thoughts, spells, spell lists etc feel free to comment. After all the Companions, Guild lists, and add-ons I have no illusions that anything I’m doing is truly original. For me it was re-organizing, filling in blanks, eliminating redundant and or useless spells etc. Happy to hear any suggestions!
Player Combat Charts
Do you give your players a copy of their combat chart for rolling their own attack?
I know lots of people do this but I am not one of them. I believe the objective is to speed up combat. Everyone has one copy of every chart they use so there is no page flipping back and forth through Arms Law. The GM only then has to manage the NPCs attacks.
I do something similar with Spell Law so everyone has a copy of their spell lists so the spell casters are not queuing up to get their hands on spell law to see what spell to cast.
I think combat tables are different. Here is my thinking.
Now imagine this. The players had discussed their plan. They were going to take out any patrols on the castle wall, dumping the bodies over the wall into the marshy ground beside the moat.
The players attack a knight with surprise, from behind. They make their roll, add their OB and I then have to tell them the knights AT and DB.
The knight has a DB of 90! Yes, that is right a DB not dependent on shields or being aware of the attack. Telling that to the player is certain to raise an eyebrow at least. Do you honestly think that the characters are still going to throw the knight, armour and all over the wall and into the moat?
Or how about the poor knight is wearing cursed armour? It looks like AT17 but protects as AT2. What will the players think then?
I think giving the combat table to the players, for me, is giving away too many spoilers. Those situations do not come up every day or every session but they do come up.
I have ‘cured’ my players from excessive meta gaming. We had a situation where all the players fell into a detailed and somewhat heated discussion about their plans while they were in easy earshot of an informer. There was no possible way for the characters to share the information that the players were sharing without vocalising it so I rolled a perception roll for the informer and he heard it all. Several crimes were part of their plans and one of the bad guys was the local sheriff. Things got hot for the characters pretty quickly and one of the players said that his character would never have said all that out loud in the middle of the market. The obvious answer was to ask well how did you think the characters were having this discussion? Other players were still interacting with people in the market while the discussion was going on. I was still describing the evolving scene as more stalls opened and more towns folk filtered into the market and so on.
From that point on the players all accepted that all their communications are their characters communications unless they have explicitly said they are passing a note or using some kind of magical method.
Bandying around the foes AT and DB to me seems to be too much information to be giving the players. I think it has the potential to change the characters tactical thinking based upon things the character simply cannot know. If there are two enemy in from of you and you don’t have a very good OB, you are going to pick the one with a poor DB, it is simple self preservation surely?
Which Version of Rolemaster Do You Normally Play
For the past eternity, or so it seems, there have been small polls running here that ask a random question.
I recently did a reshuffle and so we have a whole new set of questions going on now but I thought I would share some of the results.
Today it is the results of the Which Version question.
I am not that familiar RMX (by which I mean I have never even seen the rules) so I don’t know which family it falls into but even without RMX the RM2/RMC camp is by far the largest segment.
It is nice to see that we have 14 RMU playtesters here.
I suspect that because just about everyone who writes on here is in the RM2 and RMU camps it is not unsurprising that RMSS & RMFRP are less well represented. On the other hand it could be that RMSS and RMFRP are less popular systems.
I don’t really know.
Any thoughts?
The challenge I see with RMU as opposed to RM2 is the apparent lack of willingness to look beyond fantasy (and even then it’s their definition of fantasy). RM has always suffered (IMO) from the lack of a solid, accessible setting, and RMU just seems to accelerate that trend. They also took steps (especially in the combat system) to render it almost useless for non-magic settings if you leave it RAW. The flexibility that came with RM2 (and even RMSS in its own way) seems to be disappearing.
In addition in a recent comment Hurin had noted the amount of HARP that seems to have found its way into RMU. There is nothing wrong with HARP but HARP is not Rolemaster and definitely not RM2!
That got me thinking. Last year I bought HARP Fantasy and HARP SF. I bought them because I want to run a SF game soon and as I have said many times before I have lost my Spacemaster books.
So HARP is certainly not locked into a fantasy setting and not into one single fantasy setting. Shadow World is statted out for HARP and HARP has its own core setting of Cyradon. HARP SF plays out in Tintamar but by default it also shares the same setting as Kulthea and Spacemaster because of the Shadow World connection.
One of the things I like about HARP is that the last release was to truly unify the fantasy and sf rules and make them interchangeable. I only needed the fantasy rules as monsters make great aliens.
There is a massive gulf between RM2 and HARP and I agree there is a lot of HARP in RMU. The skill system is the same, character creation is very similar. The move in RMU to less combat tables is almost a single step towards the HARP way of thinking and that I think is the problem with RMU. The only weakness as I see it with HARP, looking from a RM background point of view, is the combat system and the criticals in particular. The same old critical comes around again and again way too often and even in the same fight. The rest of the combat system works really nicely as far as I can tell.
Another interesting thing is that the HARP forums are far busier than the RM forums if you exclude the BETA test forums. If you include them then you also need to include the HARP development forums as well. I see a far greater variety of voices in the HARP debates than in the RM ones these days. There is an active HARP community around the game and new HARP books are eagerly awaited,even if most of them are just re-releases to bring them in line with the unified Fantasy/SF rules.
Whether HARP’s firearms are as good as intothatdarkness’s firearms is a completely different question but the fact remains that HARP does have viable settings and it does have modern day and SF elements that make it go well beyond the fantasy genre.
I think RMU is trying to learn from HARP but is struggling to take the old guard with it to some extent. Which is a pity as we are the old guard.