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Publication Round Up

We have two new things for you this week!

Thar’s Rustlers in Them There Hills is one of my 50in50 creations. The crux of this encounter is that the villains simply know more than the players and make best use of that knowledge. In this case they know the terrain, they know know their horses, how to ride ‘well’ and how to get the most from their mounts.

How big an impact this encounter will have on your campaign is up to you. The amount of stuff my players leave on their horses would make this encounter a serious pain in the arse!

Issue 14 of the Fanzine brings together more of Brian Hanson’s BASiL lists, this time for Mentalism as well as a couple of articles on undead and creating end of level style bosses. Oh, and we also get some more of Craig John’s wonderful Shadow World art.

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Rolemaster Ambush Skill: How Could it work?

In the original Rolemaster, Ambush was one of the skills that worked differently than others. I’m sure at the time, they were just trying to fit a square peg in a round hole to get the desired result, but actually it was quit brilliant and should have been pursued in greater detail for other skills.

What do I mean? That the # of skill ranks can serve as a rule mechanic just like total skill bonus. RM made Ambush a skill rank only skill where the other skills were purely total skill bonus. But why not have both for all skills?

What does Ambush skill really entail? The skill description requires that the skill be developed with a specific weapon, but does that really make sense? Ambush is not about the weapon, it’s about surprise and the ability to target kill points on a body. A competent assassin can kill with a knife, a stapler or a pen by targeting soft spots or vulnerabilities. The type of weapon is irrelevant as long as it can physically carry out such an attack.

So what might be a way to handle Ambush using both # of skill ranks and skill bonus? Here is how we do it. The ambush skill bonus is used for the Offensive Bonus-no matter what the weapon or object. The GM chooses the attack chart/size based on the weapon and type of damage it might inflict (a flail would not be great in close quarters, while a wooden splinter would be great but do very little damage w/o a great attack roll). Obviously this is a close quarter attack, ambush shouldn’t work for missile, or thrown weapons (that’s a called shot with surprise bonus). The skill bonus reflects the versatility of training using any weapon or object to kill. Also, it recognizes that the ambush weapon is being used to kill with a direct strike and perhaps not how the weapon is normally used. If the attack is successful, then the # of Skill Ranks is used to adjust the critical roll. A bit different than the original rules: some would argue that this allows the assassin to use any weapon or object to kill a target. Correct.

In any event, that’s how we play it. does it seem overpowered? The Assassin would need to get into striking range without being detected (a different skill/ability), have some type of damage inflicting weapon, and generate a critical result attack.

Just my take, using my own hybrid system (S.W.A.R.M.). What’s yours?

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The Tree of Sighing Blades

This is a very late post for our latest 50in50 adventure.

The Tree of Sighing Blades is an unusual and special tree, and its sap has special properties that are greatly desired. Harvesting the sap is not easy, though, as the leaves of the tree are very sharp and constantly fall and swirl in the air, apparently seeking out any who try and making it a dangerous proposition.

This is another of our battle map issues. We are still using the squared map but the hex map is in the pipeline!

Tomorrow my first priority gaming-wise is to put together the Issue 14 of the fanzine which is all built around BASiL and Mentalism.

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Inherent ability or skill: another look at Perception.

Back in December I wrote a post about Perception and whether is was even a trainable skill. I think a lot goes into “perception” ( alertness, visual acuity, intuition, reasoning) and the way it’s used by Rolemaster makes it an incredible skill that covers a huge expanse of ability.

But even if you could make an argument (and many did) that perception is a trainable skill, it’s vast multi-disciplinary scope is harder to argue. For instance, while a fighter may be able to perceive an opponents sword skill, the apparent movement of troops or even a carefully laid ambush it’s harder to accept they might be able to detect a trap or secret door if they have no relevant experience in such.

Doesn’t that make sense? No matter how alert or perceptive you are, you can’t perceive small details or glean information on a subject with which you have no skill, training or education. I consider myself a perceptive person, but I can’t look at a horse and draw any conclusions the way Peter could. In other words, perception should be tied to subject matter fluency.

Of course one solution is to add a ton of perceptual sub-skills: perception: reality distortion, perception: traps, perception ambush etc. The list is virtually limitless and would add dozens of new skills to an already bloated system.

With that in mind, I’ve been trying something new and it’s working quite well: I’m using the SKILL RANKS of the appropriate skill/lore as a bonus or modifier to the perception check. If there are no ranks then it’s -25 (along with any difficulty modifiers). So the Thief with 18 ranks in locks/traps gets a +18 bonus to their perception roll related to locks/traps. It’s simple, makes sense and once again creates a use for skill ranks as a measure of proficiency.

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Rebel Without a Chance

In Rebel Without a Chance, the characters come across a halfling village where many of the residents have been mentally dominated by a half-orc that they rescued. The remainder are trying to free themselves. The dominated residents will try to get the characters to leave the village; if they stay, the characters will not know for certain which halflings are affected, and therefore potential enemies.

This was one of the earliest adventures I wrote for this series.

The villain in this one is quite clearly an evil mentalist, if not by profession then by deed. You can set the level to create a suitable challenge for your players.

Referring back to the recent post on Murder Hobo PCs this adventure hook has the nice twist in that almost everyone thrown against the party is a completely innocent halfling controlled against their will.

 

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Thrown Weapons in Arms Law. A critical component of combat.

A recent thread over at the RMU Arms Law Beta Forums discussed the viability of thrown weapons. The general impression is that thrown weapons aren’t used regularly by most players; according to the poll over 60% of player use thrown weapons 0-20% of the time. There are a number of reasons stated or implied for the low use of thrown weapons:

  1. Limited damage.
  2. Limited range.
  3. Limited “ammo”; once you throw it, it’s gone for the remainder of combat usually.

But there might be a systemic problem within Rolemaster combat that minimizes the use of thrown weapons–I’ll get to that in a bit.

First, let’s distinguish between larger thrown weapons like spears and war hammers and smaller less potent weapons like daggers, darts, shurikens, needles or even ball bearings. All of these smaller weapons are cool, add personality to players and NPC’s and are portrayed as being quite deadly in popular fiction. But in many RPG’s, small thrown weapons aren’t that potent; or as seen in the forum thread, rarely used.

Terry includes a lot of thrown weapons in his NPC’s. Wrist dart guns, axes and  shurikens are frequently used, but they are often magical (return via long door) or have other bonus properties (exploding flame cartridges or sleep powder). These “add-ons” overcome some of the real or perceived  limitations of thrown weapons, but also reinforce the idea that mundane small thrown weapons aren’t that usable.

So solution 1 is to enhance thrown weapons with Weapon Runes, poisons, or powders/pastes. I like this solution as it adds even more utility to the Herb/Poison skill and can be a accessible solution for lower level players.

Where and when does one throw a weapon? The base 50′ movement rate/rnd allows players to shift from long distance ranged weapon use to melee in a single round. 50′ is usually too far for effective thrown weapon use, and within 10′ it’s basically melee engagement. Throwing while moving incurs fairly high penalties and basically removes the ability of the player to use a more effective melee attack at the end of the movement phase. It feels like a small window of opportunity and combined with low damage, makes thrown skill less important when allocating scarce development points. Certainly everyone modifies or house rules their combat rounds, so ask yourself how your methodology encourages or discourages thrown weapons.

Therefore, Solution 2 addresses issues that might be arising from the RM combat rules itself by allowing for thrown weapon use in melee. If we consider normal melee engagement distance to be between 5′ to 10′ then allowing small thrown weapons at the outer limits of that range, as an extra attack, to be advantageous. We’ve worked this into our system with the “combat sphere” in our initiative rules and our individual weapon modifiers. With this system, if the “thrower” wins the initiative they’ve created a small space/distance to effectively throw (similar to the combat sphere of a polearm wielder). That means an opponent with a shorter weapon will be at a disadvantage against the thrower.

However, you don’t need to add those extra rules –just permit  thrown small size weapon use in melee with the understanding that the small give and take positioning of combat allows for gaps needed to throw. Allowing more flexibility with thrown weapons and adding some enhancements can make these small, even innocuous, weapons quite deadly!

 

 

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Revenge is inevitable. The blowback of a murder hobo party.

 

Today I wanted to talk about unintended consequences of game play and connect two previous blog posts about “Newman Groups” and “Murder Hobos“.

Let’s be honest, PC’s in Rolemaster and other RPG’s kill a lot of people and creatures! Even if you focus on role-playing and noncombat situations, most game mechanics support adversarial and violent action. In our last session alone, the group killed (or incapacitated, maimed or left for dead) over 20 creatures–and that wasn’t a particular violent session. Not all of their opponents were purely evil or non-sentient; in fact, most were sentient humanoids or thinking creatures–they just happened to oppose the players or obstructed their goals. These opponents may have had family, friends or compatriots that would feel anger or loss, and probably want some sort of justice or revenge on the PC’s.

Now multiply that ten-fold or more. By the time a player is 20th level, they’ve probably killed THOUSANDS of people, creatures, monsters and animals.  In reality, the adventuring party is constantly creating new groups of enemies that might want to hunt them down.

I’m not making a moral point; Rolemaster is predicated on a detailed combat system with sometimes brutal or gruesome criticals. Killing is normal and common. But should there be consequences for years of endless murder and mayhem?

 

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For whom the setting tolls

One topic that we keep coming back to is RM’s setting. There is nothing inherently wrong with a generic fantasy set of rules but it does set any single game at a disadvantage in the gaming market place.

The reasons why generic is a disadvantage is twofold. Firstly, settings get people excited. Middle Earth = exciting and evocative, Game of Thrones = exciting and evocative, Generic = bland and boring.

Generic also equals work. If you have a setting you know and love, Middle Earth, Shadow World or the Forgotten Realms as examples you have to immediately do work to make the game rules fit the setting. I must have spent months recreating significant NPCs from D&D to RMC before starting my game. That is easy for me as I know RMC inside out but for a GM that has just bought a new game then it is a lot to ask.

Something that Terry does well is use vignettes at the head of a chapter to bring his setting material to life. Game mechanics on their own are actually pretty boring. The setting on the other hand can be compelling and surprising. In separating the rules from the setting you are not really helping anyone.

The counter argument is that RM is an advanced system that experienced GMs upgrade to and these are most likely to have their own home brew setting. So why spend all that time and effort creating a setting that no one is going to use?

I can sort of see the logic. Most of us are in our 40s and 50s and came to RM by upgrading from D&D. So if we all upgraded to RM then others are likely to as well.

The problem with that is, in my opinion, that the gaming world has changed a lot since the 1980s. You are no longer restricted to the games that your FLGS stocks. Sites like RPGnow and Drivethru have so many games that no one can every hope to play them all. The result of all that choice is that there is a game or set of rules out there that model whatever it is that you want to play almost perfectly, off the shelf and without the burden of bending a generic set of rules to fit.

Also, over the past 40 years all those traditional systems that we upgraded from have themselves updated and evolved. AD&D 1st edition was far from perfect, as Hurin said recently ‘Once you have seen 1d8 damage you have seen them all.’ but now critical systems are plentiful if you like your damage covered in blood.

Those systems we upgraded from have also mostly flourished and grown over the years and as a result every possible taste is catered for. Just look at the number of genre books available for GURPs as an example. GURPS is an example of a generic system that really identified the lack of setting as a weakness. To address that weakness they put the time and effort into fitting GURPS to each and every genre so the GM didn’t have to.

I am lucky enough to have been given some of the core Harn World books by the publisher. It is my task in the coming weeks to read through them. I will be blogging about them as well. Here we have a setting ready for any system. I know that Shadow World can be an acquired taste, the mix of fantasy and tech are not to everyone’s taste.

As we are not allowed to publish for Shadow World (thinking about our 50in50 adventure hooks) we could easily publish these and add in Harnic locations. These could be ‘box outs’ so the GM can use it or not at their discretion.

So how many of you have played RM or HARP in Harn? What did you think of the setting?

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The Knitting Circle of Whispering Valley

I did NOT write this one!

As a ‘drop in’ bit of added texture to a campaign the knitting circle are a great addition. Brian is certainly stronger in the locations and campaign centric 50in50 ideas.

The Knitting Circle is an organised group of women who operate behind the scenes in the communities of Whispering Valley. They are the true power in the region and have various magical powers, providing healing and defence of the locals. These are normal women, not a secretive coven of witches, but ones with magic who subtly affect the area.

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What is HARP?

As you’re here, I know you’re familiar with Rolemaster, and I’m here to tell you about HARP.  HARP stands for High Adventure Role Playing, and while it shares many things with RM it is its own game.

Currently, HARP has six books available: Fantasy, SF, SF Xtreme,  College of Magics, Martial Law, and Folkways. You can run fantasy games with just the core book if you want to, but for science fiction you really need both SF and  SF Xtreme.

HARP Similarities to RM

  • d100/percentile dice based with open ending
  • Modular: the mentioned expansion books for fantasy
  • Brutal and amusing critical hits and fumbles

HARP Differences from RM

  • Eight stats instead of ten.
  • Your attack roll is your critical roll, reducing dice rolling.
  • Critical tables are by damage type rather than by weapon, reducing the amount of time it takes to look up a critical result. They also top out at rolls of 120, instant death criticals, so it is much easier to top the charts.
  • Rather than learning a spell list associated with their profession, casters can alter their spells during casting.  This comes with an increased casting time, power point cost, and an increasing casting penalty the more  scaling options the caster wants to use. Each spell is learned as a skill that the caster must have enough ranks for number of power points used in the spell for all scaling options. Characters will have to take casting penalties into account to scale their spells to cast while wearing armor.
  • To create a mixed race/species or genetically adapted character, the player must purchase the Genetic Adaptation talent once or twice, one Greater Blood Talent, or exactly two Lesser Blood Talents.
  • Choosing a character’s culture gives adolescent skills and is a great starting point for character backgrounds.

Encouragement

If you’re a fan of RM and sometimes want something lighter, give HARP a spin. Or if you’re interested in RM but it seems too daunting, give HARP a go.