Category: Rolemaster

Following on from my last post…

I am thinking of an adventure for 1st or 2nd level characters. The intention is that you run this before you finish your character creation. If you are going to start at 2nd level, run this at 1st. If you are starting at 3rd, then run this at 2nd level.

An adventurous interlude will give new players a chance to use some skills before they have spent their last round of DPs, so they can make some last-minute changes or improvements before starting for real.

It also means that if anyone takes a nasty injury that is going to take weeks or months to get over, that time period can be glossed over as they will be starting the campaign for real long after, and one experience level, after the end of this training wheels adventure.

My initial idea is for this:

Someone/wealthy merchant/relative of a character hires the characters to retrieve a stolen item.

The item is now aboard a merchant ship in the harbor.

The ship will leave on the dawn tide tomorrow.

The characters need only retrieve the item to claim their reward.

On board the ‘merchant’ ship the characters can discover a disproportionate amount of weaponry.

There is no cargo.

The crew will be outwardly respectable, but below decks they are rough and ready.

I will create the crew from the Reaver culture.

The item will be found in the captain’s quarters, in the captain’s possession.

This little adventure can be solved by stealth, sneak in, steal the item back, and sneak out.

It can be achieved by force, if you are extremely lucky, by storming the boat and taking the item.

The expected route will be an attempt at stealth that will only get them so far, a confrontation with the captain and some of the crew. A fight on the deck of the ship, allowing movement over different levels of deck, rigging, ropes for swinging on, and gang plank.

A chase scene as part of the getaway.

The merchant ship is obviously really a pirate here in disguise, which will give the new GM a chance of a recurring villain, as this ship can turn up in docks and ports repeatedly through the characters’ careers.

If they are successful, it also gives the GM a potential quest giver in the initial merchant.

All of this can be done just using Core Law.

I will also put together a rag tag crew of several different player races, to help differentiate the crew and showcase some of their strengths and weaknesses.

With no monsters or magic, I think pirates is a good source of ‘obviously the bad guys’.

I confess that I haven’t so much as read Core Lore yet. I started to, I read the first dozen pages, but I have no one to play it with at the moment, we have an ongoing 5e campaign, and one of my main RM players is busy with other stuff, so my game is on hiatus again.

I then decided that I would wait for Spell Law to arrive, hoping that it would be before Christmas and I could then read and make characters and maybe run a one-shot in this odd week between Christmas and new year.

No Spell Law, and my reading goals have gone awry as I had books for Christmas which have been taking my attention.

I am impressed that RMu is still the No.1 best selling title on DTRPG nearly a month after its release. That is no mean feat. It has been momentarily displaced by War Hammer and Traveler, but to take the top spot back again is even more impressive. It is much more common for titles that lost that top spot to start to slide down the rankings.

So far the book has sold between 500 and 1000 copies. I hadn’t realised that the RM community was that big, and I am assuming that the magic here is that old Rolemaster was such an iconic game system that there are a lot of people that played it decades ago and are curious about the new edition.

We, as a hobby, are terrible for buying games that we will probably never get to play. I hope that those people that are not Rolemaster die-hards are not just buying Core Law just to collect it.

This is where ICE struggles a little. There is no introductory adventure included in Core Law, and with all attention focused on the core books and getting them published, there is not likely to be an official introductory adventure coming any time soon.

I think that is a real pity.

I think that I will use this idea to make a Core Law only introductory adventure issue of the fanzine and kick that back into life.

But, for that to happen I will really have to read the rules and make some characters. Maybe this is the motivation I need?

Ongoing issue, but since ICE has moved to to a .co.uk site all of my previous links are now defunct.

Therefore, my Master Spell List blog, Master SW blog etc the links may not be useable.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2576550882/permalink/10160089414675883/?mibextid=S66gvF

Hi. You can now download some of the maps of Shadow World for free.
OBS: They are NOT behind any pay wall. This is my way of honor the crator for all wonderful years he gave us all.
You can get to the files in 2 different ways.

1. go to my FB page. https://www.facebook.com/groups/2198307846888743
2. Go to the patron page and search for “shadow world”
   https://www.patreon.com/user?u=31775885

I will update info on the maps on my facebookpage, so be sure to check in on that from time to time.
i probably have a 10-15 maps so far. Not all is up yet.

RMU is finally out! After years of waiting, we finally have a finished (sort of) product, so the best thing I could think to do to honor this moment is to immediately start assessing its rules and suggesting tweaks! This will hopefully be the first post in a series of RMU rules evaluations.

The rule under discussion today has to do with the way stats function in this latest iteration of Rolemaster. Unsurprisingly for those of us who have been tracking its progress, the “old” model of stats is preserved, with characters having temporary stats with determine bonuses for use in skills, and potential stats that serve as caps that the temporaries can grow towards.

This won’t be anything that some others haven’t discussed before, but I too have a handful of issues with the stat system as it is currently configured. Here are some of the gripes:

1️⃣ Rolling for Stats – This actually isn’t a gripe and I’m curious where people fall on this issue; for years I was a stat-rolling loyalist. RMU does give the option to use stat-buy and I have converted to that camp. I like that all players start on equal footing, so I’m already using one of RMU’s optional rules.

2️⃣ Potential Stats – This is actually one of the bigger issues I have, in that I’m not sure potential stats have much functionality. D&D doesn’t have them, and even with stat raises each level, characters don’t typically max out all their stats until pretty far into the leveling process.

My solution? I’m ditching them. All stats now have a “potential” of 100, so if a character wants to focus on developing one or two stats to the exclusion of others, so be it. With most skills drawing from three different stat bonuses, I think the effect will be negligible.

3️⃣ Smoothing the Stat Progression (even more) – RMU features a much smoother bonus curve compared to old RM2, but still requires referencing a table, and still has big spikes at the high and low ends. I suppose my question is why? Is this more realistic in depicting real-world ability progression?

On the ICE forums, Hurin has advocated for a simpler formula for stat bonuses that is easy to remember: (Stat-50)/3. This gives a simple linear progression that requires one less chart. I have actually toyed with a variation on this of (Stat-50)/4 which brings the stats a little closer to the RMU default curve, but this progression also rewards bigger bonuses before characters hike stats into the 90s. Again, simple is better and either one doesn’t seem to affect game balance.

4️⃣ Standardizing Stat Gains – As in prior versions, each player gets two stat gains each level, with the amount now partially determined by the stat itself, rather than the difference between the temporary and potential. You still roll however for the amount gained. Here’s another element where chance can separate players rather than choices made in character development.

As a result, I’m putting in standardized stat raises. Each level, two stats can be raised by a +1 bonus — the stats themselves then raise by the corresponding amount each level, whether using RMU’s curve of the smoothed progression, but the bonus is what really matters). This actually brings up another issue of whether we even need stats at all, since really all they do is provide bonuses. I believe a few of our RMU play-testers have gotten rid of them completely and just have players purchase bonuses, but I actually like seeing stats purely as a visual of the character as a whole and how they compare to the rest of the population.

So there’s my thoughts and rulings on just one aspect of the final RMU rules. My house rule fixes aren’t too drastic, and are centered on taking chance out of character development. Players deal with enough chance already due to the fall of the dice during adventuring, so any chance I have to take away another gripe of life’s RNG seems like a good thing to me.

Thoughts? Any surprises for anyone in the finalized version of RM Core Law?

RMu is out and available to buy as of today.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/416633/Rolemaster-Core-Law-RMU?affiliate_id=730903

This is the first book but it gives us characters, combat, and the regular GM fayre [poisons, disease etc]. You also get many of the customisation options.

What we are missing are spell law, creature law, and treasure law.

As we have a lot of non-human playable races, you can fudge some of the classic foes, your orcs, goblins and trolls etc. using the playable races and build them as basic NPCs.

Even without magic you can run a cool Robin Hood themed game or anything set in the real world or alternative history settings. There are many cool Crusades historical novels that spring to mind as potential first settings.

What I am going to do next is start reading and do a series of “Read Together” posts working through the chapters, and if I get any problems I can put them to JDale on the official ICE discord.

In the meantime, happy reading.

I thought it was worth revisiting one of my posts from 2017.

The writing and work process. Embrace the 80% rule.