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Rolemaster Fanzine Issue #3 is here!

I am really pleased to announce that the third edition of the Fanzine is now on sale on RPGnow.

You will notice that I have skipped a month in the dates. We have an April, May and July. It just takes too long to get a print publication approved.

I cannot select the articles to include, write the additional fanzine content, page layout and submit the newsletter fast enough when RPGNow take up to 18 days to approve, print and mail out the first proof.

By jumping a month I have bought myself another 30 days, taken off some of the pressure and everything feels much more relaxed.

I think the highlight is the adventure outline Alchemical Zombies but you will have to get a copy if you want to check it out. 🙂

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Monster Weekend

I have spent the weekend thinking about monsters. I have said many times before that I am a monster snob. I think Gelatinous Cubes and Black Puddings are better suited to nouveau cuisine than for battling player characters. I just cannot buy into them.

I think I put my finger on what it is that a monster needs to have for me to want to use them and it comes down to two factors.

Really?

I like my monsters to feel real, like they could actually exist. If you tell me that Orcs are an evil corruption of Elves then I can kind of get that. The reason they exist is that someone made them. They are evil because they were intentionally made that way.

I can buy into Dragons. Technically, I have seen just as many living dragons as I have dinosaurs. I have no problem in believing dinosaurs were real so why not have fantasy dragons in a fantasy world?

Puddings, cubes, cloakers and mimics just do not reach my credibility threshold when it comes to monsters.

No Fear!

My second criteria is the fear factor. I like my monsters to induce a sense of fear in my player characters. I don’t mean necessary the Resistance Roll inducing game mechanic sort of fear but the ‘Are we going to get out of this alive?’ sort of fear. In a recent game session the characters slowly retreated from ground floor to first floor to the attic as the monsters surrounded and closed in on them.

One of my favourite monsters is the Drider. Think spider centaur. The top half is a dark elf failed priestess of an evil spider goddess and the bottom half is giant spider. the reason for their existence is a punishment for failing to meet the goddesses standards. My players characters nearly met one once. They looked up at her nest and retreated. With a Drider you have to think an plan in three dimensions. They would throw amazing shadows down cave passages as they advanced. Retreating may not be an option either if you are being hemmed in by web filled passage ways. All you can hear is up ahead is the scuttle of spider legs on stone while silently above you another drifts down on a single strand of web out of the dark.

I have written something like 27 adventures in the last two months and one of the recurring themes is that of trying to scare the characters. I don’t think a straight, in your face, battle is that scary. Players know that most of the time the odds are in their favour as they are the heroes of the story. The GM is not out to kill them. At least I am not out to kill my players characters.

Give them a foe they cannot see, or cannot count, or do not understand and all of a sudden this is a not only a battle but it is a puzzle or trap on two legs (if you know what I mean).

These monsters are easily killable if you can catch them or split them up into manageable groups and that is the challenge. En mass the heroes may die, if they cannot control the fight the heroes may die.

So this brings me back to my thinking this weekend about monsters. A Kobold is not scary because you know it is weak. When you reach a certain level a giant is not that scary once you have killed eight of them. So I have been planning monster variations. Twists on existing monsters. These are subtly different from their brethren, just enough so that when they meet the heroes it makes the players think ‘That is not right!’.

After all, I do think there should ever be a ‘comfort zone’ in a dungeon, should there?

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Looking Forward

The second half of 2017 (yes,  know that June is technically in the first half of the year!) seems to be about completing projects.

After much badgering, Lightning Source found the print master for the RolemasterBlog Fanzine issue 1 and that is now in print and available.

This weekend  I will start the selection process for issue 3 and start to write the new unique content. I want the Fanzine to diverge from what is posted here and contain more playable content, more detailed NPCs, more new magical items and more fully detailed hoards using the treasure rules in C&T. Out posts here are open for all to read but the Fanzine is easier for a GM to keep close to his or her chest and not spoil the surprise if an adventure has a sting in the tail.

Why a fanzine?

I was asked last week, “Why a fanzine?” The answer is that paper has a longer life than a blog post that rolls off the front page on the site in just a few days or weeks and is then rarely seen again. A fanzine will hopefully be bought by one member of a gaming group and passed around. Hopefully for every one copy bought ten people will read it.

Moving forward I am selecting posts that have the most upbeat and positive views of RM. I don’t want someone to read it and think ‘these are the fans and all they do is complain’.

I hope to have the June issue in the can by the 10th of June and then we will see how fast it gets into print. Issue 2 was much faster to produce and layout than issue 1 and I can apply all of that to issue 3.

Now we are easing off on the blog posting this leaves more time for completing other projects. There is much hinting at the 50in50 project. We now have almost all fifty plot outlines sketched out, thirty of the fifty are written up in long form. I have also seen some of the graphics and battlemaps and they are looking great. We have mooted a September start and I cannot see that being a problem at all.

40th to 60th level adventures

Brian is full steam ahead with his 40th to 60th level adventures and I would like to join him in that. I have two ideas of my own for that. As it happened I was reading the stats for Titans last night. I had no idea how tough they were but surprisingly low level (15th). Thankfully it is easy to level them up to make a tougher version.

Gamemaster or Rolemeister

I also have, possibly two, child friendly versions of Rolemaster to write over the summer. I really want to keep the rules for each to under 30 pages and the cards used for skill, maneuver and combat resolution will all be generated by an algorithm which will save me a lot of work. I think that will be branded as Gamemaster rather than Rolemaster or some other variation. I quite like Rolemeister but I am not sure it is appropriate for a childrens RPG.

If that doesn’t keep me busy I have some games to run. My RMU playtest is back up and running. My playtester has returned from university for the summer. Before I know it my autumn gaming weekend will be coming up.

Not much gaming content in this post but if you get bored over the weekend look up Titans. They are seriously impressive.

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Professional Gamemasters For Hire. The solution for boosting the RPG community?

After reading that blog entry, I can’t keep thinking about the possibilities around an expansive system for hiring and paying GM/DMs to run games. Curious, I looked up “DMforhire.com” and found a DM in Canada offering his services through that website. Looking it over, it’s clear that John is offering a premium service: props, music, miniatures, theatrical touches etc. John is obviously just promoting himself—what I envision is a “Uber” of GM services. A scalable platform that:

  1. Allows GMs to create an account and offer their services. This would include the types/systems, play style, availability, pricing and a feedback system that rates the GMs.
  2. A scheduling and payment system to allow a GM to host an event that will manage signups and handle payments.
  3. A search function that allows a group to find a GM or an individual to find a game session.

This software solution is already “off the shelf” functionality. A combination of Angies List, Constant Contact and Meetup and some websites already trying to offer part of the concept. This includes sites like: nearbygames.com and rpggamefind.com. What I’ve found is that these “game finder” sites don’t really work—they are not enough content, participants or incentives.

However, I think the issue is not the number of interested games, but the number of available GMs. If you read forums and blog sites you’ll find quite a few articles about the challenges of GMs: finding time to prepare material, the cost of game books, the cost of snacks, players not taking things seriously etc. Being a GM is rewarding, but it can be time consuming and costly. Let’s say that an average GM can charge $5/hr: that’s $25/hr or $150 per day long session. Does that seem like a lot? Maybe for ready to play material, but what if the GM is writing proprietary material, providing appropriate miniatures (and painting them), drawing battle maps and drafting dungeon layouts. 10 hours of prep, 6 hours of game time comes out to about $9/hr. So not great, but if you are a top rated GM that can charge $10-$20/hr/player then it starts to look better.

Almost like a DJ, a GM could build their brand by a combination of hosting games and selling their own content. Would this motivate more people to become GMs, create their own material and work to improve their craft? Is a GM no different than any other performance artist, director or event planner? Is professionalizing GMs the last step to formalizing the RPG economy? A recent thread post over at the RM Forums made me think that this solution addresses a lot of issues that people are just picking around the edges.

Some other possible benefits:

  1. Brand building could allow game companies to target to rated GMs to use their game systems.
  2. By paying, players should get a more professional and polished session.
  3. Since they are paying, players may take their role-playing more seriously, and game sessions may be less prone to distractions.
  4. More GMs mean more game sessions, which boosts active players, grows the community and thus, the industry as a whole.
  5. A more formal structure gives game companies the ability to sponsor top performing GMs. That could entail paying travelling expenses to convetions, new products or even subsidizing their service fee.

I’m not suggesting a “pay for play” solution across the board, only as a supplement to the current hobby. Most parts of this have already been tried: scheduling software, find-a-game websites, sanctioned GMs, and sponsored GMs to participate at conventions. The one piece missing? GMs being paid for their work, effort and creativity. I think it could be a solution worth exploring.

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Rolemasterbloggery: Happy Anniversary–to ME!

It completely escaped my notice until today, but April 26th was 1 year since my first post on Rolemasterblog.com. Since that first blog I was able to put up 114 posts in 12 months–almost 1 blog post every 3 days! I’m not sure how long I can continue that pace; part of the reason Peter and I would like to see other contributors on the blog (plus it’s nice to have new voices, thoughts and viewpoints).

I’ve started reviewing some of these older posts; even in one years time some of my ideas and positions have changed.  Plus I couldn’t even recall half of what I wrote so it’s fun to reread some of them to remind myself what I was thinking at the time. In no particular order, here are a few that I thought are worth revisiting:

5/15/16. Skill Atrophy. Judging by the response, there wasn’t a lot of enthusiasm for this rule proposal, but, we’ve been using it for quite some time and I still like it. For anyone that took the winter off from exercise, you know that loss of physical fitness is a real phenomena. Skill atrophy models that,  it incentives players to continue spending DPs on core competencies,  and it tackles skill bloat at higher levels.

5/28 Missile Parry.  We’ve been using missile parry for so long I think of it as core RAW. Our missile parry encompasses the missile DB of Adrenal Defense, the secondary skill for blocking missiles and adds cinematic elements of master swordsmen knocking arrows out of the air. Like other combat modifiers, parrying a missile is subject to a modifier based on the missile type and the effectiveness of the weapon iteself. So blocking an arrow with a war mattock is not going to be that effective. ( Martial Arts generally have the lowest penalties).

6/4/16. Cool Shadow World Mounts. Terry’s use of cool animals for mounts is a great ADD for SW!

7/12/16. Quantitative Labeling.  I moved almost completely away from qualitative labeling in my RM game. Difficulties are just assigned penalties, creature sizes are numbered etc.

11/9/16. Interview with Terry Amthor. Always worth a re-read. I keep thinking of new questions to ask Terry but he is just too busy!!

12/12/16. Chartless Rolemaster.  This wasn’t the best written post, but it’s an important argument. Barring attack charts, crits and fumble charts we’ve eliminated virtually all charts in our RM game. My recent blog about character creation in 15 minutes and there is a path and counter narrative to the “RM Complexity/Chartmaster” complaints.

For this coming year, we are focusing on more game content rather than just rule hacks. Our 50in50 will introduce 50 adventure hooks: 1 per day for 50 days. For my own goals, I’ll be putting out a 50 page magic item supplement, a adventure guide for the Shadow World “Pales”, 5 high level adventures (hopefully with some help), SWARM ruleset…plus Mentalism realm for my BASiL project!!! In that time, I’m really hoping to have ICE/Terry move ahead with publishing “Priest King” and starting the review of “Empire of the Black Dragon”.

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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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By Jove I think I’ve Got It!

<I have a horrible feeling that is a miss-quote from Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady>

I have been thinking a lot about my Rolemaster feeder system rules and I think I can build two systems one for 4yrs to 8yrs and one for 9yrs to 12yrs. It took the example criticals that BriH suggested (“Bam!! Foe hit in face and forced to blink for 1 rnd”, “Kapow!! Foe is disarmed”) and some comments by Edgcltd to give me the inspiration.

I think I can build a game for 4 year olds. I am going to have to examine the National Curriculum in some more detail to see what skills I can expect children to have but that is actually a useful framework to work to.

So down to by game concept.

Imagine rendering skills down to a number of gold stars. You get no stars for having no ranks (-25) and then roughly one star for every +25 or so as we would think of it. So a typical OB would be in a 1 star to 5 or 6 star range. DB would be 1 star for a shield. Magic armour may be 1 star or maybe even 2 star.

You attach roll would normally be in a no star to 4 star range with open ended rolls taking it up to 8 or more stars.

Stat bonuses would typically be no stars or one star.

If any of you have young children or have had them you may be familiar with a number line. It is used for teaching addition and subtraction (check this out if you don’t know what it is https://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/number-line-using.html)

So I am sticking with cards as they remove the need for dice and being able to self print cards makes the game easily expandable.

Each card will have the attack/skill roll as a number of stars in a top corner. The body of the card will have a number of criticals on a vertical number line. The player when they want to make an attack draws a battle card, sees how many stars on the card and then counts on to add their OB, and counts back to take off the defenders DB and then reads across for the result. That is where the “Thwack! Foe is knocked down and out!” comes in.

Healing would be cinematic and fights last until everyone is either knocked out or runs away. At which point the surviving characters help their friends to the their feet and the adventure continues or the character wakes up in a cell held by the villain.

I think I need three professions; knight, archer and magician.

I think I need 4 stats. Players will be given 9 stars to share between the four stats.

Strength will combine Strength and Con.

Agility will combine Agility and Quickness

Sympathy will combine Empathy and Intuition

Cool will combine Memory and Reasoning (yes, being a geek is cool!)

Presence and Self Discipline are not needed in this simplified version.

The nine into eight means that everyone gets at least one stand out stat.

There will be at least three races Human, Elf and Dwarf. This is not yest fixed in my mind. I think I would like more but not sure which.

There will be battle cards, skill cards, movement cards and spell cards. The battle cards will work as I described above. Skill and moving maneuver cards will work in a similar way but the content of the table will resolve the static action or moving maneuvers. Spell cards will a pack per spell list with half being utility spells such as Light and the other attack spells like Lightning Bolt. So there will be many Lightning Bolt cards each with its own attack roll and unique critical table. The utility spell cards will have the roll for BAR or SCR built into them.

So that is a whirlwind tour of Rolemaster for 4 year olds.

I am thinking of calling it Gamemaster Kids as I have not had any response from ICE when I emailed them and that would mean I am no longer using any of their IP. The version for lightly older players could then be Gamemaster Heroes. That would be the true feeder system into RMU.

 

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Gender in RMU

Here are some unrelated gender based observations.

I have been lucky enough to game alongside 23 players in my gaming lifetime. Of those 20 were men and 3 were women.

I have glanced at some of the fantasy rich ‘fandom’ peer groups and there is see an almost 50/50 or maybe even female dominant population, people like your Whovians and Pottermores to name but two.

As far as I am aware there are no female developers on the RMU dev team although I could be wrong on that.

I have only seen 3 pieces of RMU art, the covers of Arms/Character Law, Creature Law and Spell Law and not one of them features a female hero, or villain for that matter.

Looking at Arms / Character Law there are just three(!) uses of ‘her’ but 432 uses of ‘his’ in the examples. There no uses of ‘she’ but 375 ‘he’s.

Leadership or just being bossy?

In all the examples there is only a single positive female reference and that is…

“Working together, they can search the area faster,
Kamina splits up the work and coordinates the effort
(putting her leadership into play) and they begin to
search. The average of their perception bonuses is (90 +
70 + 75) = 235 / 3 = 78 + 10 (Kamina’s ranks in
leadership) = 88. Just one perception maneuver is made
at +88. It would take one person thirty minutes to
search, so for three it takes just 10 minutes (30 / 3 = 10),
so they get one perception maneuver at +90 for every 10
minutes they spend searching. The GM decides this will
be resolved as a Percentage Maneuver, since the key is
definitely there in the long grass, and will eventually be
found if they keep looking.”

So actually her efforts are irrelevant as the GM has decided that the key would be found anyway regardless of Kamina’s leadership ability.

I am not entirely sure how positive an image that is either. Is Kamina being portrayed as bossing her friends around? Maybe I am just jumping at shadows there.

The world of fantasy and Sci Fi is full of really cool, strong, positive female characters, Ellen Ripley (Alien), Hermione (Harry Potter), Katniss Everdean (Hunger Games), Tris Prior (Divergent), Jessica Jones and Annabeth Chase (Heroes of Olympus) to name a few. So why is RMU devoid of anything that may want younger female roleplayers want to engage with it?

Is there a reason that I have missed somewhere?

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From Little Acorns

I want to tell you a little story.

Once upon a time Kwickham emailed me and said that he wanted to publish his Aiorskoru game world and that I had blogged about it. He suggested that I could repurpose those blog posts, edit them into standalone documents and put them on RPGnow and maybe make a few Dollars.

So I did.

That got me thinking so I packaged up my professionless and level less RMC rules and put them on RPGNow, there is a link to them on the left here, and I get downloads of those every single week.

In another email exchange Kwickham was telling me about a game he has written and is still developing called ABS12. ABS12 is as simple a system as it is possible to get. There is just a single stat and the entire system runs on 1d12 rolls. This gives 12 possibles all of equal probability, there is no bell curve  created by using added dice rolls. My part in the exchange was to describe a game I had often thought about writing but had never committed to paper. In a single email I laid out al the core rules with examples. That game became 3Deep, again see the links on the left.

I make a few Dollars a month from selling these documents on RPGnow and the other OBS sites.

I recently had an idea. I thought I could repurpose some of the blog posts here and create a Rolemaster Fanzine. It would take almost no time to copy ‘n’ paste a selection of blog posts into a word document and a quick editorial pass to resolve links into the actual addresses for people to use. So I did it. I created a RolemasterBlog Monthly as a PDF on RPGnow.

Then I thought PDFs are all very well but if you are reading it on screen you may as well read the same articles on the blog and that way you get all the comments and links too. The blog is a much richer experience in my opinion. Unless you love physical books that is.

So I make a print on demand version. This was the first document I had ever done the complete layout for print on including the cover design.

I have on my desk right now the first proof copy of the first edition of the RolemasterBlog Monthly, the Rolemaster fanzine. 
This was a mile stone for me. To have a real physical book. I have noticed a couple of layout problems with the proof but I fixed them last night and I have uploaded the corrected print files.

Despite that, it is lovely and glossy and feels nice. At 36 pages (A5) it is no mammoth tome but then it is only intended to be a fanzine. Everything I learn in producing this I will apply to all future issues and so on.

I honestly hope to have the final print copy on sale (you cannot do free books on RPGnow) within 10 days.

With the actual launch I will announce it first here. If you love the touchy, feely experience from dead trees then I hope you like the RMB Monthly!

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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?