Over Christmas, I set myself three goals, one of which was to read the Call of Cthulhu rules. I had only ever played the game, never run it, so was familiar with the rule in practice but had never sat behind the keeper’s screen.
It is now the middle of Feb and I am still reading.
Alongside that, quite a while ago I borrowed Dark Space from one of the guys in my Rolemaster group and I have now bought the book from him as he has said that he will never run it.
This throws up the issue of insanity in Rolemaster. I have written an article about this in the latest Fanzine. The gist of the article is about how dodgy using something as glib as a low-level neurosis spell is on a player or a player who has never experienced mental health issues trying to play a neurosis for laughs could be if you have someone sat at your table that has been struggling with their own mental health.
I don’t think the argument that a group may have been playing together for years and none of you have mental health problems so this doesn’t apply to you doesn’t stack up. People can and do hide issues for years. I know that my long term GM suffered from Schizophrenia for decades before getting a diagnosis. It is also recognized that role-players as a group have higher instances of mental health issues than the population as a whole. Presumably, the possibility of living someone else’s life for a while has an appeal. I cannot find the research right now but I think it was based upon a sampling of US role players so that may not apply globally but I cannot see why it shouldn’t. People are people all over the world.
Since writing the article in the fanzine I have been thinking about this a bit more. Not from a mental health perspective but from a game mechanic point of view.
Dark Space has two options. The first is to use Stress and Depression criticals from RoCoIII, which I am really not that impressed with. The second option is to use a new Stat called Rationality (Ra). The Ra stat is a complete carbon copy of the CoC Sanity stat and you lose Ra points depending on what the character experienced and loss of Ra leads to temporary or long term insanities, which you roll on a table. This pretty much imports all of the potential problems with CoC into Rolemaster.
The Criticals solution is equally crass. It just tells the player to play their character as either depressed or suicidal with a percentage chance of suicide each week.
I am thinking about a solution that has more shades of grey to it. We already have Co drain from the undead, could we have mental [temp] stat drain from a variety of stats. So studying some material that makes you question your very understanding of how the universe works could give you a resistance roll with your Re bonus as an assist but failure leads to a reduction in your Re stat, x number of points for every 10 points of RR failure. But, here is the first of two clever bits, if the trauma were emotional you could use In as the pertinent stat and damage the In temp as a consequence.
We can import the idea of temporary mental health issues from CoC. If you lose 20% of your remaining temporary stat in a short period of time but rather than rolling on a table what we, as GMs, do is you talk to the player and discuss how their character should react to this to that trauma. This negotiated behavior means that two characters facing the same emotional hurt could react very differently. One player could choose to be callous and unfeeling, wall themselves off from others and emotional bonds. Another player may choose to make their character desperate for emotional support.
As GM you are there and agreed with how the player was going to play this personality change. That means that you can use it to reward good role-playing. You know the criteria so you can measure performance against expectations.
Now we have a system that allows you to model different types of stress and trauma, it gives the player an active role in portraying the effects and the character gets rewarded for the player playing their character well.
You could also introduce parapsychology and psychiatry as skills and use these to restore lost tempory stats. There has long been a lack of clarity in how undead Co drain was supposed to be recovered.
I’ve just adapted and reworked three of my favorite old RM2 Druid lists for RMU. You can download them in the Downloads>RMU section at the top of this website (just click on ‘downloads>RMU if you don’t get a dropdown menu). Let me know what you think!
This is of course part of our ‘Druid Week’. Peter and Brian and Mark have already weighed in on the Druid in their own blogs, so here is my take. I think we do have a split here between on the one hand Mark and Peter, who tend to prefer the RM2 Animist, and on the other hand myself and Brian, who generally feel that the Animist’s spells sucked. I personally play a combat-heavy game, which I imagine deeply affects my expectations, so keep that in mind: these lists are made to give the Druid some mojo.
Despite our different perspectives, I think we can all agree that the RM2 Druid’s spells had balance issues. I agree with Peter’s critique of the power level of several of the RM2 Druid’s spells and lists. However, I would also note that RMU has corrected most if not all of the general Druid issues (apart from the three specific lists I redid) of yesteryear:
–The Druid’s Peace list is unnecessary (and absent) now in RMU, since the Druid already can take spells to put animals to sleep (Druid Base: Animal Mastery) or calm other living targets (Closed Channeling: Calm Spirits).
–There is also no longer any Plantskin spell in RMU,
and indeed the wider issue that made Plantskin so great in RM2 (namely, the
wonky attack charts and the fact that armor types such as 1, 4 and 12 were
ridiculously good) has been corrected across the board in RMU. RMU has also
more appropriately balanced armor-granting spells.
–RMU has also tempered the effects of spells such as Spike Growth and Animate Stone, to make them more balanced. For example, instead of the Spike Stones giving 1d4 +100 dagger attacks, we now have Earthen Spikes which just gives a single A puncture critical.
So, RMU has pretty much fixed the general balance issues with the Druid. They have added one combat-oriented list, Nature’s Ire, true, but it is much more balanced than the old RM2 Druid lists. I think this will allow more people to accept a more combat-oriented Druid into your RMU game if you wish. And if you don’t wish, and instead prefer the original RM2 Animist to Druid, then you can just cut out the RMU Druid’s Nature’s Ire list, and you’ll have your Animist virtually intact from what he was in RM2. The spells will be almost exactly the same.
But the old RM2 Druid spells were really great, and they have not survived into RMU. I still love the flavor and the feel of the old RM2 badass Druid, so I’ve tried to resolve the balance issues by reworking these three lists, to give the Druid more combat options while keeping the balance in-line with other casters.
–Druidstaff brings back the beloved (or behated!) list from the original RM2 Companion I. I’ve tried to solve the issues here by toning down bonuses across the board. I’ve also made the ability to throw the Druidstaff a separate spell that costs Powerpoints (rather than being an inherent quality of the staff). This list is especially good for a Druid who wants to use spells at a long distance and a staff up close/medium distance.
–Insect Mastery brings back a list that was first introduced as an extra Druid list in RM Companion V, and later copied in slightly modified form into the RMFRP Channeling Companion. I have modified it to fit the new RMU action economy. Since the original list often did not give very good guidance on specific spell effects (esp. attacks), I have also given specific statistics for the insects themselves in the notes at the end (basing them on the templates one finds in RMU Creature Law, which gives stats for Bee/Wasp, Giant Wasp, and Ant Colony). I’ve also given stats for the insects’ enlarged versions. I’ve also added a few new spells (Detect Insects and Speak With Insects) to fill a few gaps (thanks to JDale for some suggestions there!). This list is especially good for a Druid who wants to be more of a controller, harassing and poisoning enemies with swarms of insects.
–Stone Mastery rebalances one of the original RM2 Druid lists that was overpowered. I have tried to maintain the flavor and distinctiveness of this list, though, because it was one of the unique things about playing a Druid. I have toned down the most problematic spells in various ways: Magic Stone is now Bursting Stone, which is more in line with the general power level of other casters’ spells of that level (it just gives an A Krush critical). The list also provides variety insofar asa its attacks are not bolts or balls, but real physical items: Hurl Stones uses RMU’s Rock attack table, for example. Druids have been literally brought down to earth. This list is especially good for the Druid who wants to focus on medium- to long-range combat.
As with my other spell lists, these are drafts, and my main concern is balance. So do enjoy, but if you see something that you think is still to powerful, let me know!
The following lists are my solution to what I feel is one of the weaknesses of the Ranger class in Rolemaster: a lack of combat spells. You can access them in our Downloads: RMU section, above.
The Ranger has some good utility spells, but imho it has always lacked some combat oomph. These two lists give a lot of oomph. Too much? let me know what you think.
Each of these two lists allows the Ranger to create a personal ‘Wyrd weapon’ (ranged or melee), a magical bow, blade, or other weapon attuned specifically to him or her (or it). They then use that bow or blade to buff their own attacks, striking more intuitively with it (Intuitive Strike), using special arrows with it (Elemental Arrow), having it change shape to grow spikes, etc.
The concept of a ‘Wyrd Bow’ originated I believe with James W. Canavan Jr., who published the list of that name in the Guild Companion in 2000 ( http://www.guildcompanion.com/scrolls/2000/jun/wyrdbow.html ). I have adapted that list to RMU, and also used it as the basis of my ‘Wyrd Blade’ list that extends the favor to the melee Ranger.
Note that the intent is that a Ranger character will only take one of these two lists, picking between being primarily a ranged or primarily a melee character (yes, the shadow of Drizzt is long!). A character can only have one Wyrd blade at any given time, so developing both lists would not be very practical or effective.
These are rough drafts, so please let me know what you think.
In response to Peter’s most recent discussion of the Bard, I offer this new Bard base spell list, Mockery. Although I designed Mockery for RMU, I believe you could use it for earlier editions. If you try to do that, I recommend changing any instances of the words ‘action point’ to a -25 modifier per point.
You should be able to find a Word file of the list in the Downloads>RMu section in the banner above. I have included both the original version and a new, less silly version for those of you who have no sense of humor 🙂 .
Why this new list? As I’ve noted recently on
the ICE forums, I feel that some of the RMU semis (Bard, Dabbler, and Ranger
especially) lack effective combat spells. This isn’t a problem unique to RMU:
this is a problem RMU has inherited from previous editions. These classes have
always had lots of utility spells, many of which are great; but my group is
quite combat oriented, and in this department, these classes have few options,
despite the fact that semis pay a lot of development points for their spells. I
hope then to address the paucity of combat options by creating my own lists.
So what does the RMU Bard, specifically, need? Having just pregenerated a Bard character for my upcoming Gen Con sessions, I feel I now have a bit better handle on the class, both its strengths and its weaknesses. One weakness is that it isn’t very easy to make a combat Bard. In my opinion, a combat Bard needs more quick, low-level combat spells: some instantaneous ones that are minor debuffs (similar to the useful, instant-speed buffs other semis like the Paladin get); and some non-instantaneous spells that impose major debuffs or exercise battlefield control.
Being an Essence semi-spellcaster, the Bard needs these sorts of spells even more than Channeling or Mentalism semis in my estimation because the Bard has to develop Transcendence, at a cost of 4/6, in order to wear any armor at all (Channeling casters can wear up to heavy leather without Transcendence, and Mentalists can wear any armor except helmets). My level 2 Bard couldn’t even put on soft leather without it interfering with his spells. This makes for a very squishy caster, especially at low levels. Thus, the Bard needs some good, low-level combat spells – ideally debuff and control-oriented to fit with the class concept – in order to protect himself and make himself less of a liability in combat.
Please note that the spells on this new ‘Mockery’ list are not ‘songs’ that follow the rules for Bardic Songs in Spell Law 10.1. The Bard has two lists (Controlling Songs and Inspiring Songs) that follow these rules for songs, but that means they can be slow and clunky to set up. The spells on the Mockery list, on the other hand, just follow the normal spellcasting rules. I see the Mockery list in particular as the Bard’s backup plan, allowing her more combat utility, especially in cases when the party is surprised by hostile creatures.
Another thing to note is that some spells on the Mockery list have what I believe is my own new mechanic: they allow modifications to their RR based on the ranks the Bard has in a particular skill. These modifications allow the Bard to use the ability she has developed in otherwise non-combat skills, such as Composition and Social Awareness, to enhance her spells, thus making these skills more useful in combat. This also makes for some interesting tactical choices. The Bard can for example choose between casting more powerful spells that are easier to resist (i.e. have no RR mod.), or less powerful spells that are harder to resist (i.e. have an RR mod.). The Bard can also choose between casting lower level spells with no RR mod., or higher level spells with a mod.
One last thing to consider as you read the spells on this list is that, while many of them are quite powerful control spells, they have one big downside: they are only effective on targets that have a language the Bard knows. Thus the Bard is especially good at controlling foes she can speak to, but much less effective against mindless undead, giant amoeba, etc. The Bard is also better at facing foes if she can spend some time researching who they are, and learning their language (which most Bards consider a very Bardic thing to do), or if she knows/learns spells on other lists that allow her to speak her target’s language. That is one important balancing factor for the list.
This is a rough draft, and I welcome all comments and criticism. I am especially interested in any comments relating to the power/balance of the different spells. I sometimes found it hard to judge what level a spell should be, given that I introduced another variable (RR mods for skill ranks) to the power equation.
I’d also like to give a shout out to JDale and Technobabble66, one of the developers of RMU and a poster on the ICE forums respectively, since they gave me some good ideas that I have incorporated into this list.
So, what do you
think? Is this the Bard you’re looking for?
A Note on Hurin’s RMU Houserules: Thanks to Peter’s kindness, I now have a section of the blog devoted to my RMU houserules. Over the years, I’ve had quite a few requests from posters on the ICE boards to formalize my houserules so that they can use them. Over the coming months, I plan to use this section of the blog to do just that: to post for everyone’s use all of the rules I currently use, as well as all the ones I will make in the future.
Since this is my first time posting my houserules, and I’m still figuring out how to post documents and make them downloadable, I am also posting the spell list here. I don’t want to post all about the list and then not have you able to access it! So enjoy.
Bard Base
Mockery
Level) Spell Area of Effect Duration Range Type
1)
Minor Mockery * 1
target 2 rounds 100’ F
2)
Clumsify 1
target 1 round 100’ F
3)
Annoy * 1 target 1 round 50’ F
4)
I Wouldn’t Do That 1
target 1 rnd/5 fail 100’ F
5)
Fyre of the Fae 10’
radius 3 rounds 100’ F
6)
Trip 1
target 2 rounds 100’ F
7)
Confusify 1
target 1 round 50’ F
8)
Stinkify 15’
radius 2 rounds 50’ F
9)
Major Mockery * 1
target 3 rounds 100’ F
10)
Sartorial Savagery 25’
radius 2 rounds 50’ F
11)
Taunt 1 target 2 rounds 100’
F
12)
Boogeyman 10’
radius 2 rounds 100’ F
13)
You Mock Me 1
target 1 round 20’ F
14)
Pyre of the Fae 30’
radius 3 rounds 100’ F
15)
You’ve Been Served 1 target
5 rounds 50’ F
16)
I Really Wouldn’t Do That 1 target 1
rnd/5 fail 100’ F
17)
So Tiny * 50’
radius 3 rounds Caster F
18)
Mass Taunt 10’ radius 2 rounds 100′ F
19)
He’s Copying Me 1
target 1 rnd/10 failure 50’ F
20)
Mass Stinkify 30’
radius 2 rounds 100’ F
25)
Mass Confusify 20’
radius 1 round Caster F
30)
You’ve All Been Served 25’ radius 5 rounds 50’ F
35)
Ultimate Boogeyman 50’ radius 4 rounds 100’ F
40)
Seriously, Don’t Do That 50’ radius 1 rnd/5 fail 200’ F
50)
Lordly Mockery 50’ radius 3 rounds 300’ F
1. Minor Mockery * – [RR Mod.: -(caster’s
ranks in Composition: Writing)] Caster’s mocking limerick unnerves the target.
Target is at -10 to all actions.
2. Clumsify – Caster’s cautionary sonnet
informs the target of the immense gravity of the current situation, how
terrible it would be to screw up, and the inescapable difficulty of life in
general. If the target attempts a melee attack, missile attack, or spell, the
target must first roll a fumble on the appropriate table and apply all results.
If the target attempts a moving maneuver, that maneuver is performed at -75. If
the target makes no melee or missile attack and casts no spell, Clumsify has no
effect.
3. Annoy * – Caster’s biting stream of
insults prevents target from concentrating and breaks any current concentration
(see rules for ‘concentration’ in Arms
and Character Law, 7.1).
4. I Wouldn’t Do That – [RR mod.: -(caster’s
ranks in Social: Influence: Duping)] Caster sings a cautionary little ditty,
explaining the finer points of why trying that
sounds like a very, very bad idea. Target suffers -50 to one skill of the
caster’s choice.
5. Fyre of the Fae – Caster’s passionate scorn
causes enemies in radius at the time of casting to glow bright red in
embarassment, making them easier to see. The glow adds 10 OB to all attacks
against them, and prevents the targets from benefitting from any
concealment-type spells (e.g. invisibility, unseen, cloaking, shadow, blur,
etc.).
6. Trip
– [RR Mod.: -(caster’s ranks in
Performance: Acting)] Caster warns target not to trip over an unseen imaginary
deceased turtle. If the target moves more than 1’, it must roll an RR; failure
means it falls prone and is stunned for two rounds. (Note the target only makes
the RR if and when it moves).
7. Confusify – Caster’s willfully incoherent
poem compells target to pause and ponder the fundamental principles of logic. Target
is incapable of making decisions or initiating action; target may continue to
fight current foes or in self-defense.
8. Stinkify – Caster calls attention to the
unique body odour of one target in the radius. Target’s allies within the spell
radius who fail their RR will not willingly move closer to the target, and must
move at least their BMR away from target each turn of the spell’s effect, if
they have an open path.
9. Major Mockery * – [RR Mod.: -(caster’s
ranks in Composition: Writing)] Oh no, did the caster really just say that!?!? Target is red-faced and overcome
with existential ennui, at -30 to all actions.
10. Sartorial Savagery – [RR Mod.: -(caster’s
ranks in Social: Social Awareness)] Caster’s savage derision calls everyone’s
attention to the target’s most questionable fashion choice. The target and all
of the target’s allies within the radius who fail their RR suffer -30
Perception due to being unable to stop glancing at target. Affected allies also
must spend 1 action point/round laughing uncontrollably at target’s apparel (or
lack thereof).
11. Taunt – Caster’s incredibly annoying mime
impression enrages target. Target must spend its next two rounds charging
towards and attacking caster with full OB. If target’s path is completely blocked,
target will attack anything and anyone in its way. Target can make a second RR,
using SD stat bonus rather than Essence RR mod, to avoid striking allies;
failure means target will use full but non-lethal force (eg: grappling/shoving)
to get allies out of the way in order to continue charging.
12. Boogeyman – [RR mod.: -(caster’s ranks in
Social: Influence: Intimidation)] Caster’s deep-throated shout of ‘I’m your boogeyman!’
strikes fear into all enemies in a 10’ radius. Targets suffer -15 to all
actions and -30 to any fear-based RRs.
13. You Mock Me – Target is convinced that
one of its allies (chosen randomly if any real allies are within sight;
otherwise, an imaginary ‘friend’) is mocking the target behind its back. Target
spends all action points for the turn moving towards and attacking this ally.
14. Pyre of the Fae – As Fyre of the Fae, but
with expanded area of effect.
15. You’ve Been Served – [RR mod.: -(caster’s
ranks in Performance: Music)] Caster disrespects the target’s dancing skills so
harshly that the target feels compelled to show some moves. Target must spend 2
ap/round dancing.
16. I Really
Wouldn’t Do That – [RR mod.: -(caster’s ranks in Social: Influence: Duping)] As
I Wouldn’t Do That, except the
penalty is -100.
17. So Tiny * – Caster’s mocking couplet
makes the target seem far less imposing, preventing the target from casting any
Fear spell or spell effect, and negating any fear effects the target has
already imposed within the area of effect.
18. Mass Taunt – As Taunt, but with expanded area of effect.
19. He’s Copying Me – Caster prevents target
from casting any spells by mimicking the target and humming annoyingly when
target tries to cast a spell.
20. Mass Stinkify – As Stinkify, but
affecting all enemies in radius, who must move 2x BMR away from all other
affected targets.
25. Mass Confusify – As confusify, except it
affects all enemies within 20’ of caster, and targets may not attack caster for
duration (even if they were already fighting caster).
30. You’ve All Been Served – [RR mod.:
-(caster’s ranks in Performance: Music)] As You’ve
Been Served, but with expanded area of effect, and targets must spend 4
AP/round dancing.
35. Ultimate Boogeyman – As Boogeyman, but
with expanded area of effect and penalties: targets now suffer -30 to actions
and -60 to fear RRs.
40. Seriously, Don’t Do That – [RR mod.:
-(caster’s ranks in Social: Influence: Duping)] As I Really Wouldn’t Do That, except all targets in the radius are
incapable of using the chosen skill (caster can only choose one skill total for
all targets).
50. Lord Mockery – [RR Mod.: -(caster’s ranks
in Composition: Writing)] Future Bards will tell the tale of the unrivalled epicness
of this insult. Emotionally shattered, the targets are rendered catatonic in
disbelief.
Note: Spell on this list
only affect creatures that can understand complex (i.e. non-bestial) languages.
The caster must have at least skill rank 2 in one language the target speaks.
This time last month I was talking about 2 page adventures. My thinking was that a book on how to random adventures may be more useful to GMs needing an instant, low prep adventure than try to sell written adventures.
I have described adventure writing as a fool errand and a thankless task in the past.
Over the past month I have taken the tables in one of the adventure writing books and automated them.
The basic version spits out text intended to be read by someone about to use them to write an adventure. I have edited them to spit out text intended to be read by the GM at the table. This is a mammoth task. There are 19 tables, of a typical 10 entries each and in the original wording said things like this.
Number 1 on the Adventure Hooks table says:
Dying Delivery On some occasion when the hero is out wandering the streets or is otherwise all alone, a dying man bumps into him, hands him something, says a few words, and dies. The deliverer can be dying of a curse, poison, a wound from a weapon, malnutrition caused by his long captivity, or from some bizarre and inexplicable cause. The dagger still protruding from his back is the most common cause of death among dying deliverers. The object given to the hero can be a famous weapon or artifact which has long been missing and presumed destroyed, an object which could not possibly have found its way into this wretch’s hands (such as the king’s crown or the most holy talisman of the local church). or a sheaf of papers. If it’s a sheaf of papers, it can signify any number of things; it can be a certificate of birth, proving that some nobody is actually the heir to the kingdom (naturally, agents of the current “heir” will kill anyone who possesses it ); it can be proof that an upstanding citizen is really the head of !he city’s criminal syndicate (of course, said upstanding citizen is very anxious to get his hands on the papers, and on the heart of anyone who’s read them); it can be a duplicate sc roll describing a ritual of monstrous demon summoning whose elements are suspiciously reminiscent of events going on right now in the city. And the man’s dying words are the real hook. In general. they should tell the hero where to look next. If he names his killer, the hero will know to go take a look at the accused. If he describes where he was attacked, the hero will probably go there. If he tells the hero where to take this maguffin, then the hero will probably go there (even if he isn’t necessarily inclined to hand over the goods). If he says something inexplicable, like “Emerald eyes of the ram;’ before dying, then the hero will be baffled until later, when he hears of the golden statue of a ram with emerald eyes being commissioned by some famous personage.
You can see how that is all useful advice but what I am doing to breaking that down into yet more random options and then presenting one of them as the actual plot hook. A combination of separating out all the possibles and a change in emphasis in the way the plot hook is presented.
The intention was, past tense, to build this huge sophisticated tool that when you click a button presents a nearly complete adventure. You just needed to incorporate Setting, NPC and monster stats and the adventure would be good to go.
Taking the idea one step further it would be to have a goal of producing an adventure a day. If one had a tool, similar to JDales NPC generator that, for example took an option for level and biome and would select suitable monsters for you complete with stats or at least book references.
Copy and paste all these elements into a single document and all you would need is a couple of hours of proofreading and tweaking before the adventure was ready to publish. I was aiming for a sort of 1 a day production schedule.
When adventures are that ‘disposable’ it doesn’t really matter if they don’t make much money individually. They will sit on DriveThruRPG in perpetuity providing a trickle of income.
But my mind doesn’t often let ideas just lie there. It would have taken months of work to build the finished tool. Then you would still have the odd grammatical problem. I have build tools like this before and you always get an occasional mismatch when you are trying to build natural sounding sentences programmatically.
I want to add in another piece of information.
I released and adventure called something along the lines of The Jungle Collection. I am a bit vague about the name as I released two versions with slightly different names, one for RM and one for Zweihander. In total the adventure has earned me $96, $62 for the Zwei version and $34 for the RM version.
What I didn’t want to do is spend months creating a piece of software and then discover that the adventures it creates are crap. So I thought why not run it once. Look at the quality of the output and make one edit to it to improve the output. Then take what I have and write it up as an adventure, put it on sale and then rinse and repeat.
So I did that. I ran the programme, took the output and it took me 5 days to turn it into a viable adventure. I then put it on sale. The way I had set the book up was with all the adventure stuff at the beginning and then an NPC Rosta and monster stats in the last three pages.
So I thought why not just create some new NPCs and get some different monster stats and target a different system? This is what I had done with the Jungle Collection.
So I made the setting a spaceship and released it for Traveller, Stars Without Number, OpenD6 Space and White Star. Then changing the ship from a spaceship to a merchant ship I released it for Zweihander and this week I will make a Rolemaster version, an OSR D&D version and probably a handful of other fantasy systems.
The goal being to have released possibly 10 versions within the 2 weeks since running the script. So far I have made a little over $26. The Jungle adventures made $96 since mid-March so about 6 months or so.
So why so many versions?
My logic goes like this. Rolemaster is pretty niche, but has a loyal following. You cannot make a rolemaster adventure pay for itself as there are just not enough players and GMs who buy adventures.
Zwei on the other hand has sold in the hundreds of thousands of copies in the past 2 years. How many of those get played is a different question but the game is current and has a following. Traveller has a long history and strong following, it is nearly as old as D&D, and talking of which D&D has a pretty big following. Ultimately for a ‘drop in’ adventure that has no hard setting the bigger the audience the more you are going to sell.
There are diminishing returns when it comes to audience size. I could make the adventure suitably unique and sell it on DMs Guild but there are tens of new releases every day and the chances of yours getting noticed is slim to non-existent. The 0D&D/OSR community is smaller than the 5e community but still massive by Rolemaster standard. The rate of releases is somewhat less and the chances of getting some attention are somewhat higher.
All of these variations will then give a massive total audience size and make the project financially worth while, or so I hope.
I idea of nirvana for this is to have a piece of software that will turn out a print quality adventure in an hour. Whether that will ever happen I cannot say.
What you will see is a new Rolemaster adventure released this week called Plague, Famine & War I. That will be the first product of this plan.
I will let you know how I get on.
Progress Report!
I have had so much feedback for Navigator RPG that it is taking a while to get a new version of the playtest done. When the PDF gets updated this week it will be the third version. The document has already grown by 3 or 4 pages which is cool. It gets prettier by the day as well.
The playtest is two weeks old and as of this morning there had been 224 downloads and the PWYW donations have totalled $39.17 of which I get $27.42. That is from 13 paid purchases.
So far I am extremely happy with the results. By the end of the week I will be uploading an even better version of the game. I cannot remember if you have seen this version of the cover?
This weeks release also has the starting adventure to help get people going. The previous versions had playtesters using the original White Star beginning adventure.
I promise to write about something else next time, in fact I have something in the pipeline that could be exciting.
So Navigator is one week old. This morning I uploaded an updated PDF with the amendments suggested so far.
To give you a few numbers, the playtest doc has been downloaded 191 times and I have had 10 people make a contribution. So far they have contributed $31.66 which gives me $22.16.
For context, RMu playtest was downloaded under 150 times. To order print proofs as premium softcover and premium hardcover will cost $17 plus delivery.
Download numbers do turn people into playtesters. We know this from RMu, there we have a long established and loyal following and yet we only ever see less than half a dozen voices, if you strip out JDale. JDale does an amazing job of fielding all the questions. Although I think I detected a hint of frustration this morning in the size rules discussion. I can easily see why, we had the same discussion a few years ago and now they are trying to finalise the books for editing it comes up again.
From a feedback point of view I have received feedback from four people, including Terefang who has been most helpful and constructive.
Four is not a big enough cohort so I still have work to do. There is an interesting balancing act here. The game is basically a layering on of RM style attack and critical tables, HARP style magic and a few extras like action points for the combat round but on to an existing game. The underlying game has been playtested to destruction by being very close to the original D&D and even in its Sci Fi incarnation it has had extensive testing and has had thousands of groups playing it since its release.
The question is, have a fundamentally broken anything? That remains to be seen.
One piece of feedback I got from a Reddit user was this.
I followed your link and saw “Star Master” and “tables.” I did RoleMaster back in the day. These days I much prefer low crunch. That isn’t much in the way of feedback, but this might be. I didn’t receive much feedback on a recent request. I read this article, which made me think I should answer its questions when I ask for feedback. If you do, maybe you will have more nibbles on your feedback hook. Good luck! SS
ShakeSharp – Reddit
I have read up and answered the questions and it was indeed helpful. The interesting thing was the opening sentence. For me this isn’t an issue. I am not expecting to sell thousands of copies. I haven’t invested tens of thousands of dollars in buying the old ICE stock and intellectual property and I haven’t spent eight years or more writing my version. As this is a fun project there are no labour costs, and I don’t think anyone at ICE has been paid either, except artists. My $22.16 just about covers an expense I am expecting to spend in a few months time. The whole project is self funding.
For ICE, the problem of a “Done Rolemaster in the past, don’t want to even bother reading the book.” attitude could be a bigger problem to overcome.
This first week was almost exclusively Twitter marketing. This next week I am going to branch out a bit, but this is where my lack of resources will show. Having said that, my Wild West game got an average of 8 downloads a week, given a big spike at the front and a long tailing off. So 190 in week one is a really good start.
Breaking News…
Part way through writing this post, I have just had an email with a document full of feedback (Thanks Alex). I haven’t read it yet but this is exactly what I have been hoping for.
I have also always wanted to be able to use “Breaking News” as a title.
I will give the feedback a good reading through today. This also proves that the playtest is real and happening!
I am not going to post every day about this, but the first few days are the most interesting.
On day one the booklet was on the front page of DTRPG on the newest releases and on the latest free/PWYW lists. This brought in ‘free’ traffic as I didn’t have to anything.
By the time I woke up this morning the book was the 28th newest release, meaning you had to scroll sideways twice to find it. By 4pm it was 33rd, so four ‘pages’ deep and 17th on the latest free/PWYW titles. Incidentally that suggests that half of all the new releases are free or PWYW.
I have limited resources to bring to bear from a marketing point of view. I have decided that I will apply them sequentially rather than all at once. If I was bigger I would throw everything out at once and hope that I would achieve that idealistic ‘viral’ event where your audience do your marketing for you. I am not there, my audience is too small.
So on day one I announced the product on Discord. I had joined all the relevant discord servers I could find about a month ago. I didn’t want join, shout out about my game and then go silent again. That looks too spammy. What I did was join the servers, joined in any conversations I could make a contribution to and if I could I mentioned I was working on a game. Then yesterday it was entirely natural to mention the release of the game.
I also did a few tweets using my developer twitter account. That only has 188 followers. Not a lot of clout there. I really wished I had started building my twitter following months of even years ago.
By 7am GMT the game had had 87 downloads of which 3 were paid.
This morning I have been working twitter. I had some successes and a couple of disappointments.
I had tried to engage with the official DriveThruRPG twitter account. They have 21,500 followers. As the playtest was free I was hoping they would give me a shoutout.
No response at all.
I have done blogging for High Level Games. They have about 3,000 followers. I tried to engage with them and again nothing.
On the other hand I reached out to The Kind GM, 8,700 followers, and he could not have been more helpful.
I also spoke to Gavin Thorpe, a sci fi writer, game designer (Games Workshop) and world builder with 11,000 followers and again, he was more than willing to help a fellow creator.
So where are we now?
As I said, for me it is 4pm.
I have had 104 downloads and 6 paid sales. I have created a Discord channel for the game and that has gained 1 new user (that sounds pathetic but from little acorns!). The income so far will more more than pay for the soft cover standard colour interior book. It will also start to pay towards the Hardcover premium colour one.
I am busy for the rest of the day so I am not expecting anything great to happen. In the morning I will continue to reach out to twitter followers I have established contacts with.
Just for reference remember RMu = 145 downloads in several years. NavRPG 104 in about 30hrs.
(These are for Terefang, do you like the gutter are margins?)
It went live shortly after midnight, this morning.
There are two points to this post. The first is of course to tell you all that the game has reached this point. I have been teasing about the game for a while but have intentionally not posted any details.
The second point is that I am going to keep something of a development diary for the game on here. I am not being intentionally bitchy but I am going to couch it in terms of comparing Navigator RPG to RMu.
The posts could help anyone else thinking of publishing their own game.
I know I have told this joke before but I think of it every time I am tempted to criticise anyone else’s work.
There is a guy driving, lost, along some back roads. Up ahead he sees a farmer on a tractor parked in a gateway eating a sandwich. The driver stops and asks “What is the best way to get to Birmingham?”, after a moment’s consideration the farmer replies “The best way, you say? Well, I wouldn’t start from here.”
That is the point, we don’t know where anyone else started from, we don’t know what their needs are, how much they have invested into a project or their goals.
I see this as a four stage project, behind closed doors, this is the part I have finished and the time spent on RMu before Beta 1.
The second stage is the public playtest. This is where RMu and Navigator are right now, both in stage 2.
Stage 3 is putting the full game on sale. At that point I expect RMu to massively out perform my little Navigator RPG. Fantasy is a bigger genre, in fact the biggest, RMu and Rolemaster has an existing fan base, ICE is a recognised brand and ICE has a massive marketing budget.
ICE’s marketing budget is not in cash, although it may have a cash war chest as well, but in PPP. The total value of RM books and software sold each year is roughly $10,000. I know this because every company in the UK has to post their accounts online. The company doesn’t have massive expenses as no one is drawing a living wage and that sort of thing. Publishers receive 70% of the ticket price from a book sale on DTRPG. So from the declared earnings, you can multiply up to find the total revenue and then multiply up to take into account the £:$ exchange rate.
Publishers receive Publisher Promotion Points from OneBookShelf at a rate of 20+(revenue/10) each month. So $10,000 gives 1,000 PPP plus 12 months gives 1,240/year. I have not seen any evidence of these being spent so it looks like ICE have a stockpile of nearly 20,000 PPP.
To give you an idea of what they can be spent on, to be Deal of the Day costs about 400-500PPP, home page featured product costs about 70-80PPP and that will put an advert for your product on the home page of DTRPG which will be shown 2,500 times. To put a featured product advert at the top of a game section costs 30-40PPP for the same 2,500 impressions. The traffic to specific sections is lower so your impressions last longer and can be more specifically targeted.
The most cost effective spend is the Deal of the Day. ICE have the resources to be DotD once a week for 40 weeks and then of course that will generate sales which will earn more PPP and keep the wheels on the promotional wagon. If a full set of RMu books costs $100 they would only need to sell 50 a month to earn sufficient PPP to afford another DotD.
One can achieve a virtuous circle where your DotD spend puts you at the top of the Best Sellers list and then there are the metal best sellers lists. The more times you cover is shown on the best selling lists the more sales you are going to generate.
The nub is that RMu can buy its success and its way to the top. Its success is guaranteed.
I don’t have that luxury.
Starting Today
Starting today we are both in Stage 2, playtest. I am at the beginning and RMu is at the end.
RMu has to go through editing, layout and art commissioning. Nav doesn’t. Because I am doing everything in the open the editing, can be done by the community. Layout, well that isn’t going to fundamentally change from the public playtest. Every time a change is suggested and implemented the playtest document is going to be updated. So the layout and text will change many times over the playtest but everyone will always have access to the current state of the game. This is a difference between RMu and NavRPG.
At the end of the playtest everyone who downloaded the playtest will get the full game as a PDF. Even if they didn’t contribute. Even when the game goes on sale the PDF version will be free. It is the printed books I will charge for. I think GMs actually like to have physical books at the table.
I also don’t write games to then act as gatekeeper. The more people who play the game the better, even if they are using the free PDF.
The playtest game is listed on DTRPG as a PWYW title. This is what Kevin was complaining about this week. His adventure had 100 downloads and almost no one paid anything for it. He also got some middling star ratings.
That is the nature of the beast for PWYW. I am under no illusion that people are going to rush out and throw money at the game. The reason I have made it PWYW and not free is so that even £0.05 purchases will accumulate. When it comes to creating the print on demand books, these are going to cost me somewhere up to $200. I am perfectly happy to swallow that as I it is my business plan to make money on the physical books. On the other hand every single cent donated to the playtest will soften that upfront hit.
In Theory
All of this is all ‘in theory’ only.
So far in the few hours since the game went live it has had 7 downloads. RMu had 145 downloads of the playtest documents. America has not woken up yet, at least not enough of it to think of downloading free games.
This is the first marketing objective. Get the playtest version downloaded and into the hands of gamers.
Stage 4
I have talked about stage 1, writing; stage 2 playtest and stage three release and marketing.
Stage 4 is the long term success of the game. I don’t think that RMu has much of a future, although I hope I am wrong. Most games get bought, played and then languish on shelves never to be played again.
One way of measuring the popularity of a game is in its community support. Only some of a games fans will ever write and publish something either under a fan license, a Community Content Programme, a Compatibility License or just create compatible products that don’t need any form of license.
ICE has shown itself to be resistant to open standards and community content. NavRPG on the other hand is at the other far extreme. It is a simple core designed to be extended by the players and GMs. It is released under the OGL, Open Gaming License, which gives anyone the right to modify, remix and republish the work. No barriers.
My negative forecast is based upon the idea that RMu has not addressed the most pressing negative opinions of the gaming community. The whole chartmaster, rulesmaster thing. They are already talking about dumping most of the stuff actively being discussed on the forum into the first companion.
This is, in my opinion, repeating the sins of the past.
Rolemaster was, I beleive, the 4th most popular game in the industry in the early 80s. Now it is a vestigial hangover played by maybe less than 1,000 people worldwide? The forums certainly have a very small population. Looking at all the places where communities gather the RM based ones are tiny and largely inactive.
I think there will be a flurry of activity, a mass of sales, and commercial success followed by a trailing off of interest and in two, three years we will be back to the same hard core of forum users that we have now but with a few few names in the mix.
The difference will be that we will now be discussing RM2, RMC, RMSS, RMFRP and RM. RM2 did not go away when RMC came along and RMFRP and RMSS is no different. I can see a lot of RM fans not moving to the new game simply because they love their old game. They have all the books they want, all the house rules to make it play the way they want and they know what they are doing.
The the die hards the new version will be missing 90% of what they want and need because all those companions just won’t work quite right.
That is a bit gloomy I know. I will definitely buy into RMu but my group of friends are definitely RM2 despite the fact that we are playing the core of RMC. They have imported all the RM2 stuff they miss into the game.
Navigator’s Future
I think the total sales figures will take a long time to get in the same realm as RMu. No marketing budget doesn’t help. On the other hand I think the open attitude will help build an active community. That is where I am putting my efforts. Right from today onwards, actually I started about 8 weeks ago, everything is about building a community around NavRPG. Making people feel included, and welcome.
Yesterday City of Spiders, one of the first 50in50 adventures became a Silver best selling title on Drivethrurpg.com. That is no mean feat. We still get sales of those adventure hooks most weeks. It won’t be long until we get a raft of them going silver.
I am going all out to complete outstanding projects before the end of the year. Ladt week I was working on my Wild West game. That is now ready to go to kickstarter. That is new territory for me. I gave had to pause that for a few days as jump through the legal hoops.
As I cannot go any further with DS:WW right now my attention has turned to Navigator RPG.
Navigator RPG
Since Friday I have completed the Star Knight meditations and Mystic Gifts. These replace the Telempath’s psions in Spacemaster. I have also converted all the equipment over from White Star to Nav and started building the Nav version of Arms Law. Ladt night I finished the last of the melee weapons tables. Tomorrow I start the ranged weapons which include bows, guns and energy weapons.
When I am working on projects like this they often seem really simple before I start. They then go through a phase where for everything one part I complete I notice two more sections that I need to do.
I am in that phase now but I don’t think it will be long until I am crossing things off faster than I am adding them.
As of today you can create a character using any race, culture, profession learn and use psionics and beat each other up using hand to hand combat and ranged attacks, even grenades and make maneuvers.
No one will die because there are no critical tables.
There are no spaceship rules, no monster/aliens/robots. The only healing is through gifts and meditations. There is no natural healing yet.
There is no universe either.
I am sure there is a lot more that I haven’t thought of but the current list is not overwhelming.
I am mentioning all this as I think I am only a week or so away from sharing what I have so far.
I do need some help though. See right at the bottom of this post if you are feeling creative.
City of Forgotten Heroes
I started to detail the city last month in the fanzine. The first month I did the marshes around the city, the city walls and the gate house on the causeway. This month was the library, complete with ghost book, the orchard and a new location called the architect’s tower.
In the October issue will be the palace, the cistern and Octomancer.
I think I will have completed the entire RMu adventure path before the end of the year. I estimate the entire thing will take characters from creation to 12th/14th level.
I mention this because I am aware that sometimes I can seem really enthusiastic about something and then it disappears from view. I don’t just drop things, it is just that actually doing the hard bit of writing it all up isn’t very exciting and having a monthly publishing schedule means that nothing moves quickly.
Amusingly, I don’t know what the end of the adventure path is. I am not entirely sure how to get from the past bit I have written and the point where the characters save their world and defeat the BBEG.
I am sure it will come to me. I have 7 weeks to think of it and get the characters from where they are to where they need to be in time from the final climax in December.
I wonder if I will complete the adventure path before RMu is released? It is supposed to be in Nicholas’s editing queue now. How long will that take and the same goes for art commissioning and layout.
On September 22nd there are 100 days of 2019 left and we were promised RMu in 2019.
Help
What I could do with is a bit of help coming up with witty and graphic critical descriptions.
At the moment I have need of the following critical tables. Puncture, Slash, Krush, Fire, Unbalance and Impact. I would really appreciate some suggestions for the criticals. There are 120 entries on a critical table and I have six to do giving 720 lines to come up with.
All help will be greatly appreciated. Just comment below.
I am going to get to the big step forward later but I am going to tell you a story first.
My step son is an artist. He qualified with a degree in Fine Art last year and to the best of my knowledge he is the only one of his contemporaries that is actually keeping body and soul together working in art. He works most of the week as a freelance artist’s technician and the rest working on his own art in a rented studio space. As you expect as a artist, living in London, he has no money.
At the hospital I was in in Aberdeen a local philanthropist had built a 1000 space multi-storey car park for the hospital. The hospital has 1000 beds so he had one parking space for visiting every patient. The parking is also free. His inspiration for the car park was when he wanted to visit a friend in hospital and could find nowhere to park.
When we were talking about this my step son commented that this was the flaw in philanthropy, it is all on the whim on the philanthropist and what else could that money have been spent on.
I counter argued that this was the strength of philanthropy. If more than one person had been involved in the decision process they probably would have argued that improving the public transport links would have alleviated the pressure on local parking and been more environmentally friendly.
Aberdeen Royal Infirmary is actually the main hospital for a massive swathe of rural Scotland and while the arguement for public transport is true, no public transport system can reach every tiny hamlet or cluster of houses and with the frequency to make visits to see patients viable.
I can see the point that if you don’t own a car, that better or free public transport would be attractive. I think that as soon as you get to the committee stage probably nothing would have ever happened at all for years.
The point of this story is that I have noticed that I am applying the same principle to Navigator RPG. By keeping it all to myself I can forge ahead without the possible delays in discussion. This is really selfish but when I do ask for help it is when I really don’t know what is the best solution.
The title of this post was Stepping Forward. So the big step forward last night was that I have working rules for stats, species (race), talents, cultures, skill costs and I have one fully working profession. It is now possible to go end to end and create a viable player character.
This weekend I will work on filling in more of the blanks, creating more cultures and completing more of the professions. Neither task is particularly exciting so I will mix that in with writing more of the core rules.
What I am building here is the RPG equivalent of one of these…
Everyone’s vision of a lego house, city or star port will be different but with one of these the only limit is imagination, and we are good at that.
