“He who embarks on that fickle sea, requires to possess the skill of the pilot and the fortitude of the navigator, and after all may be wrecked and lost, unless the gales of fortune breathe in his favour.”
Scott, Walter. The Complete Novels of Sir Walter Scott
If you need a laugh, bypass this entire post and go straight to the video at the end!
I want to talk about a few things today. The first if that I am really excited about Navigator RPG. The game has reached release and is live on DriveThruRPG. The game is a free (Pay What You Want) PDF and is also available in full colour softcover and hardback editions.
But why do you care, this is not Rolemaster?
Because it is a complete rebuild going back to the original sources, or close to, and creating everything a new.
There is a huge amount that you will recognise.
Players select their race, they are called Species in the SF version, a culture, their profession, they roll all their stats on d100 and then spend Development points to buy skills.
There is stuff in here you will instantly recognise. You have your stats, professions and skills.
You have maneuvers, attack tables (one table per weapon) and critical tables.
The game is also a toolbox. When I talk about species, they are built out of talents and flaws, but I also show how to make your own. So I provide a few to get you playing and give you the tools to make as many as you want.
The same hold true for cultures and professions.
Everything in here is intended to be extended by the GM.
Open Gaming
Equally as important is the fact that this game is covered by the Open Gaming License. It means that anyone can take what I have done, add to it, change it, publish it even sell it.
Even if ICE were to disappear tomorrow, and forever. If someone bought up the Rolemaster IP and said they were never going to write another thing for it. You can use these books to play Rolemaster, well technically, Space Master but there is more to come.
Pilot RPG
The quote at the top of this article is a quote by Sir Walter Scott, from Rob Roy. This game is Navigator RPG. The next book will be the Fantasy version. That is Pilot RPG, but more ships pilot rather than fighter pilot. There are also going to be some draconic mounts involved.
Finally…
For a bit of light relief I am not going to embarrass myself.
I have started a YouTube channel. It is mainly about the stuff I make and the mistakes that happen along the way. There is going to be quite a bit of Rolemaster in there, as you may have guessed I quite like the game.
The first few videos are desperately poor! I tried and failed to make an unboxing video for Navigator RPG.
Here it is. Please consider subscribing to the channel. When I started this blog I think I wrote twice a week for a year before anyone commented on a post. Starting out can be a bit like stumbling around in the dark, without feedback.
I promise the videos will get better over time!
Congrats, looks great! I know people have discussed a new version of Space Master using the RMU ruleset, but I just can’t see that happening given the development timelines we’ve seen to date. This may fill that gap! I’m going to check it out and see if I can be inspired to write an adventure for it.
There are bits of RMu in this. I haven’t copied anything from it verbatim but there is good stuff in RMu.
I have 1 page written of Pilot RPG. That will be the fantasy version of Navigator RPG. Whatever happens to ICE, the way of playing is now preserved beyond the one company.
As the game is free, it can be legally shared with anyone interested.
Congratulations Peter! On both Navigator and the new channel. It is good to finally see what you look like!
I had a quick run through the Navigator rules, and it looks very easy and straightforward.
One thing I did notice in the attack charts was that medium armor seemed to be even better than heavy at some results (131-4 especially) in terms of the severity of the critical delivered. Heavy took less hits, but as we all know, it’s the crits that kill. Was that intentional?
Otherwise, it looks like a lot of fun!
It is the trade-off between hits and critical severity. I made a spreadsheet to calculate these things, and the critical charts and, yes, they are not entirely linear but I think they do a good job. Someone else of course can explode the condensed tables into 10 or 20 ATs and smooth that out if they feel so inclined.
The game needs more weapons, just as it needs more of everything.
Did you see the stat bonuses? They are pure Hurin.
[stat -50] /3 !!! Nice!
How did you find the art? It is all very nice.
Some of it is stock art bought from Forge Studios. They had a sale, so I bought it up en masse. Most of the full-colour stuff is public domain.
Talking of art…
The fantasy version, Pilot RPG, was inspired by this image.
Imagine that as the wrap-around image on the cover of the ore rules. Ship and figure on the front cover and the temple on the back.
Very cool!
i would like to see another rm/merp/harp fork apart from AgainstTheDarkmaster
in the german lands we have a merp/rolemaster/harp fork under the name of “Aborea” that uses d10+Attr+Skill roll high, 0 explodes, but no critical tables.