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Broadcryers

Broadcryers are part of the fabric of life in Waterdeep. These are the newspaper hawkers that we know selling the single page ‘broadsheet’ short scrolls that are popular in Waterdeep.

Short scrolls are a single sided scroll maybe 20cm by 30cm (8″ by 12″) that pass for a newspaper. There are several available and each is printed within the city. The most popular are ‘The Vigilant Citizen’, ‘The Blue Unicorn’, ‘Daily Luck’ and ‘Northwind’.

As a rule they carry tabloid style tittle tattle, scandle and rumours as much as any real news. The writers of the short scrolls are a mix of anonymous perveyors of rumour, often in reality scribes who become privy to private affairs through their work or through overhead snippets of information and semi professional reporters of news. The concept of ‘Journalism’ does not exist but chroniclers of events have been around since the dawn of the written word.

As a GM I absolutely love the short scrolls. Based on the premise that with all tabloid journalism 99.9% is made up crap designed to sell newspapers I can use Broadcryers to bawl out headlines which could be ‘rumours’ fit for investigation by the party of PCs, complete fabrication, events spun off from different PCs operating in the same area or a way of introducing colour and flavour into the world, names of important NPCs and what they are up to.

In the same way that Freddie Starr never consumed any hamsters I am in no way constrained by the truth.

Something that is interesting though is that according to all the official Forgotten Realms publications (City of Splendors: Waterdeep, Blackstaff Tower and Downshadow) these are printed not hand written. The printing press revolutionised fifteenth century Europe. As soon as you allow printing presses into the world you open a pandoras box of potential uses for this technology. If you look through Spell Law ways of mass duplication is something that is not are covered by the normal spell lists. Possibly you could use a Prosaic list for this or research a suitable spell but as it stands this is something that technology can do that magic cannot.

The reason Broadcryers and their short scrolls came to mind is that all week I have been making up stories to fill the short scrolls for my PBP game. When rules, reality and even truth are all optional it is really good fun creating little newspaper stories.

 

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I am avoiding RMU! (and the missing subterfuge skills!)

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You may have noticed that I have not mentioned that much about RMU. The truth is that I have had a collegue on annual leave, I have had to go on 6 sessions of full day training, I have been away my self (a paintballing weekend) and various other demands on my time (blame the Greeks). I simply have not had time to read the books in the detail they deserve and conversely there is a really detailed discussion going on on the ICE forums that is far better than anything I could write with the added advantage of feedback from the actual authors.

If you want to know more about RMU then head over here http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/. I will deal with each book in turn when I have the time to do it justice.

RM2 vs My brand of RMC

One of my PBP players today asked me where have all the subterfuge skills gone. RM2 players are used to having dozens of skills detailing the minituae of every aspect of life it seems. For example they have Build Trap, Set Trap, Detect Trap and Disarm Trap in addition you can learn Trap Lore to give you a knowledge base to work from.

In my world I still have Trap Lore but the only skill for traps is Disarm Trap. As I explained to the player if you are looking for traps and it is a trip wire or pressure plate sort of affair then Perception is the skill to use. Just tell me what you are looking for and roll the dice. If it is a complex lock mechanism that you are studying in detail and you want to know if it has an embedded trap then the Disarm Trap skill is suitable.

What about the building and setting of traps? As I see it if you are relying on a trip wire or noose then I would use rope mastery, if it is a snare to all intents and purposes then why not use a foraging roll? If it is none of those but you can explain to me how you want it to work and how to set it up then I am good wth that. Not everything has to have a roll but if there is a chance of failure then we have 10 stats we can use. I am inclined to use a different mix of stat bonuses from case to case depending on the design of the trap. Some will require a more reasoned approach others nimble fingers and a steady hand. Trap Lore would come into this as well. If the principles are well know and obvious then a knowledge of Trap Lore will warn you of some of the common reasons for failure and tips to aid success.

So is this Build Trap, Set Trap or Foraging?

So the most important thing is what are you trying to catch? If the answer is a rabbit then using the trap above is without a doubt foraging. If you want to catch an Orc then under RM2 you would need two completely different skills (Build and Set). Why is that?

Why Remove Skills from the Game?

I am not on a mission to remove skills from the game. What I noticed was that with every companion there were new skills being added. This puts pressure on the GM to give more Development Points each level, makes leveling up slower, makes each RM2 Character incompatible with any other game that didn’t use the same mix of companions and as almost every skills is coloured by how much scope each GM gives it makes playing the game under two different GMs potentially confusing.

Thieves are one of the nicest ‘skills based’ professions there is. They have good combat skills and their skill costs are pretty cheap normaly 1/3 for most subterfuge skills. RM2 then breaks this by adding so many skills that just to build and then set a trap requires two skills (effectively make a cost of 2/6) and two chances of fumbling (a net 10% chance or two attempts at not rolling 1-5 of an OE down roll).

It is not just thieves and subterfuge skills. Spell casters have Spell Mastery but also Spell Trickery. Why? I have rolled both these into one skill. We have different difficulty penalty gradings from Routine to Absurd for a reason. There is no reason as far as I am concerned to constantly break everything down and down into ever more granular skills.

There was a debate on the ICE forums about how many development points (DPs) do GMs give. Up until this current game I have always stuck to the original core rule for development points but I did used to give six free ranks as ‘hobby’ skills. This time I have tried using 25% of the characters normal DPs as hobby skills instead. Chances are I suspect that it will even out as pretty much the same but I would not be surprised if the the characters end up more limited by this method. I am thinking that if a character has just DPs to spend they are more likely to buy skills that are cheap for their profession. With a flat 6 ranks to allocate then you can pick from across the board of secondary skills irrespective of cost.

Rolemaster Lore

Rolemaster has ample scope for individualising a characters knowledge and learning from any possible background or upbringing. You can have as many Lore skills as you like and as many Craft skills as you like. This I do not have a problem with. I think it is one of the great things about rolemaster that every character cn be so unique AND true to the players vision. What I do not see is a cnstant need to add ever more skills or bloat to the a game system that already allowed heroes to be exactly what the players controling them envisioned.

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How loud is your campsite?

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I was thinking about your typical party campsite the other day. We assume both as players and as GMs that a lot is happening during those hours camping that we do not normally play through. The fighters are practicing, repairing bits of armour, food is prepared and pots washed and so on.

It is easy for a typical PC to be ‘learning’ 15 to 20 skills each level and all of these will require a certain amount of practice time. I used to work in adult education and we would allocate about 20hrs for a student to grasp a basic skill. It is also generally bandied about that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill.

I imagine some campsites get quite tense with the characters trying to learn academic skills getting really hacked off with the fighters shouting, grunting and clashing weapons all evening. Combat practice is really hard to do quietly. I was at a fencing competition on Friday and there you have steel weapons but cloth armour or polycarbonate breastplates. The sound of the combat carried maybe 300meters or more. Imagine steel weapons against iron bound shields and steel breast plates. The typical ‘off guard’ or off duty party could probably be heard half a mile away on a still evening and that is without the swearing when the character fumbles a smithing roll whilst hammering out dents in his armour.

If your party, as I often do when playing, says they are going to make camp away from the road so they are not obvious you are in reality talking a very long way if they are going to carry  on the normal business of maintaining their skills and equipment. This doesn’t even take into account particularly keen ears of non-human races.

I think this is one of those things I have just taken for granted ever since I have been roleplaying back when I was 14 or so and that has just always been the way parties camp. In future I think unless other precautions are being taken you will be looking at an active zone nearly a mile in diameter when a full on PC party makes camp. No wonder orcs, trolls and goblins wander into camp so often!

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RMU Beta 2 Spell Law

Rolemaster Unified Spell Law
Rolemaster Unified Spell Law

Now this is a different beast!

Everything I disliked about Creature Law does not apply to Spell Law. It looks like a professional, high quality product and give or take the odd rough looking table, it is. It is still a weighty tome but you have to look at it from a players point of view and a GMs’ point of view. As a player you could easily print off just your spell lists and you would have one page (sometimes two) per spell list and you get all the parameters, spell descriptions and any applicable notes that are important. Every spell list stands on its own two feet. This necessarily means that the spell list section if physically large but you do not have to read it all back to back.

As a GM the supporting material for magic has to be great enough to actually be supportive. Rolemaster illusions are absolutely amazing magic and much better in RMU that it was in RM2 and RMC. If you are coming from the D&D world then you need that detail on illusions as they are nothing like you are used to. This spell law still has the utterly rediculous rule that the weight of the illusionist specifies the weight that can be bourn by the illusions. Never trust the halfling illusionist but the obese guy in the corner may be in danger of a heart attack but his illusionary bridges are amazing. Under the RM2 creatures and treasures there was a most potent artifact (slippers) that allowed illusionists to stand on their own illusions, now illusionists have this ability for free!

I am pleased to see ritual magic wrapped into the core magic rules. I love rituals and having a coherent set of rules that apply to both players and evil villains alike is cool.

All in all I would say this book is a natural progression from Beta 1 and a marked improvement. There are lots of little changes, each quite minor but the sum of all of them is significant. There are bits of RMU I have already adopted into my normal play because they quite simply were good ideas well executed and this holds true.

The thing I am most interested in seeing is how Action Points work. they are briefly mentioned in Spell Law but are part of Arms & Character Law which I am only just starting to read now. It sounds to me like the initiative rules have take a major revamping!

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RMU Creature Law First Impressions

Copyright; 2002-2014 by Aurigas Aldbaron LLC. All rights reserved. No reproductions without permission.

RMU-Creature-Law
The new public playtest editions of RMU are monsters. Creature Law weighs in at 898 pages (Spell Law is now 475 pages) and to do them any justice is going to require time to really read them. That said I thought I would share some first impressions and first up is Creature Law.

I am really pleased to see the inclusion of the genric NPC tables. In old versions of Character Law there was always a table that gave you each profession and typical stats and skills at 1st, 3rd, 5th level and so on so if you needed a quick NPC you could just lift one off the page. Well this is now back and it is better than ever before. They are now called Archetypes and they have been developed for every level from 1st to 50th. Rather than having a list of Magicians from 1st to 50th and then Thieves 1st to 50th now you have generic descriptions such as Offensive, Defensive, Skilled, Semi Spell User and so on. The advantage to this method seems to be that however many new professions* the powers that be decide to add to the game these tables should continue to hold true.

Staying with the Archetype tables this gives me something else that is valuable. When you are creating new PCs for the first time with a new ruleset, having a benchmark you can measure your creation against is a useful tool.

You are not going to buy Creature Law just for a list of generic NPCs. You want monsters and lots of them. This leads me on to a negative point. Creature Law does not look or feel like a second beta version. What if feel like is something any one of us would cobble together in word if you were making a load of new monsters for a particular game. The tables of stats are all over the place. It just feels like a mess. Worst of all the terrible terse enviornmental codes still exist. I do not know anyone who likes these and these days they serve no purpose except to make the book hard to read, understand and use.

All in all I would say I am disappointed at first glance. This book simply is not of the same quality as the other RMU works to date and feels like someone was ruhing to get their homework in on time.

To sum up, great ideas but terrible execution.

* I get the impression that the intention is after the initial release of RMU core rules is to release companion after companion. I understand that the percieved wisdom is that every company has a need to continue to generate new sales but the main criticisms of Rolemaster has been that it is too complicated, has too many optional rules and too many charts and tables. Following the same route again that taking a new set of rules and then adding in more and more options, complications and charts just seems to be repeating the mistakes of the past.

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PC Perils #6 When is a rock not a rock?

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Take a little look at this photo. You may well think that this is a rock, quite a big rock but a rock all the same.

The Bowl Rock from Lelant Down, Cornwall

The thing is that this isn’t just a rock, this is ammunition!

The rock is sitting in the valley below a hill fort known as Trencrom, Anyone who has read any Conan books just has to love anywhere that ends in “-Crom”. Aside from being a neolithic enclosure and iron age hill fort Trencrom was the home of Trecobben the giant. Trecobben killed Cormelian, wife of Cormoran the Giant living on St. Micheals Mount by hurling a hammer at her and Cormoran returned fire with rocks and boulders. What you see above is one of Cormorans ‘near misses’.

Cormoran himself is famous for being the giant killed by Jack the giant killer in the ‘fairytale’,

Cormoran The Giant with Jack the Giant Killer

But I digress, the thing is that the rock that missed is half burried in the earth so is at least twice as massive as depicted in the photograph. Many a time I have told players that something is hurling a rock at them but once you have seen what sort of rock it is it really adds more weight to that sentence. The next time you decide to take on an enraged giant just bear in mind it will be throwing boulders the size of small houses at you and if Cormoran was typical in giant terms, he threw that rock about 3 miles (nearly 5km).

Parry that!

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Spears, The Ultimate Weapon

There are often discussions on which is the best or most powerful profession, bsst or most powerful spell or spell list and so on. I am going to share my thoughts on Spears.

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A great many professions can only realistically expected to develop one weapon skill. This is especially true of the pure and hybrid spell casters whose points cost are normally along the lines of 9, 20, 20 , 20 and so on. If your concept of the spell caster was layed down in your formative years playing D&D then it is almost instictive to think dagger or staff for your weapon. The lord of the rings movies atleast give Gandalf a sword. I think spears should be the ‘go to’ weapon of choice.

Here is my reasoning.

  1. Most spears are wooden and contain very little metal. This is a good thing for all spell casters excepting the Mentalists for whom it is a non-issue.
  2. As a spell caster you are unlikely to be in the front line during combat but the reach of the spear allows you to take part but at a safe distance, preferable from behind a big burly fighter. (or evenmore prefferably behind a Amazonian warrior princess in little more than a chain mail bikini, or is that just me?)
  3. Talking of the reach of a spear, they get a nice healthy initiative bonus on the first round of combat. If you really need all the bonuses going your way then going first in a fight is no bad thing.
  4. Still talking about the reach of a spear, no one seems to carry 10′ poles any more but a spear is the next best thing.
  5. At least once you will give in to the urge to use your pole vault skill using your spear. I know this isn’t just me as there is an illusionist in Heroes and Rogues (Ryssa Tyrpal) who does exactly that!
  6. If your version of Arms Law allows it then you can use your spear with your shield (-10OB for one handed in the RMC Arms Law).
  7. The spear is a sort of cross over weapon. If you look at the similar weapons table  assuming your GM allows you to throw your spear at half skill then it is worth carrying some javelins (or Pilum) as these are similar. Your one weapon skill now allows you both a melee and ranged weapon.
  8. Spears are similar to quarter staff or the wizards friend as I like to call it. Everyone knows that the most powerful daily items seem to be either rings or staves so if you are lucky enough to get a magic staff at least you can fight with it! If you are dumped in the middle of nowhere with no kit then you can probably find a big stick you can use as a staff (or failing that as a club as a spear is also similar to cudgel)
  9. Spears are similar to lances! Oh yes, if the party is going in a mounted charge against that knot of orcs then you can join in the fun. You can take this even further, a bit of displacement here, blade turn there, a shield spell and an illusionary (for the non-mentalists) set of plate and you can even go jousting.
  10. In total a spear is ‘similar’ to 10 different weapons from pilums to pole arms but importantly none of them are swords. Every Tom, Dick and Harry carrys a sword so when it comes to dividing up the treasure they all fight over the swords and bows but your spear skill gives you a massive selection most of which no one else can use.
  11. For Mentalists, of all sorts, spear, shield plus chain or plate armour and you can go carousing with the fighters and no one bats and eyelid. Try that in wizards robes and it is a real conversation killer. The wizard failing to chat up the barmaid is frankly embarrassing, a fighter failing to chat up the barmaid is par for the course and no one will give it a second thought.

This was going to be ten good reasons for carrying a spear but as you can see the spear gets 11 or 10. What more can I say?

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Book Review The Loremaster Legacy

It seems like a lot of the fantasy fiction I have been reading lately has been more about relationships against a fantasy background that the hack and slash of yesteryear. In the same way that Trudi Canavan explores relationships against the backdrop of the magicians guild in The Black Magician Trilogy and other works so it is with Terry K Amthor’s Shadowstone Chronicles Book One The Loremaster Legacy.

The work itself is a coming of age story of two young nobles who get caught up in events beyond anything they had imagined. As the first book, in an ongoing chronicle, this book is very much about their beginnings, finding their feet in the world and discovering their talents all while events threaten to over take them.

The fantasy world setting for the novel is of course Shadow World and as readers of this blog many of you will be somewhat familiar with the setting. From that point of view I think the Loremaster Legacy brings that world to life wonderfully. You get to meet or at least see at work many of the great figures of Shadow World as well as glimpses of the technology that lurks constantly in the background. In many ways this book is as much science fiction as it is epic fantasy.

As a novel it is easy to read and is engaging and as the first instalment of a series it leaves a great many hanging threads and unanswered questions. You do get to meet the Loremasters, Priest of Arnak, Dragon Lords as well as characters from off world which goes to demonstrate both how rich a world setting Shadow World is and the scope of the chronicles to come.

I have read the book twice now and I am impatient for the second part. My only criticism is that the book introduces a substantial cast of characters and at times it can be confusing as to who is who, Jad and Tad were the two that had me confused for a page or two) and a few of those characters leave little lasting impression. That aside this is a damn fine book.

If you are a gamer in Shadow World then I would say this is a must read book.

If you are a roleplayer of any genre then you will certainly identify with the central characters as they start their careers.

If you are neither then why are you reading this blog, although you are welcome of course.

Terry K Amthor’s The Loremaster Legacy is available on Amazon here as well other online sites.

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Unified Rolemaster Beta Two is coming!

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At the beginning of month we had the usual director’s briefing from Nicholas Caldwell at Guild Companion Publications. This month (June 2015) we were told that Beta 2 of RMU is almost upon us.

Three days ago they tweeted that the second beta is coming soon. I really hope they are beating the drums in preparation for the release.

ICE-Tweet

 

 

What is slightly worrying is that we have had RMU beta one since 2012 and issues are still coming to light now, the most recent I can remember being the way healing magic works. I myself only just noticed that Spell Law has introduced material components, of sorts, for Wall spells for the first time. You cannot cast a wall spell unless you are withing 50′ of a piece of the material you want the wall to be made out of. So no water walls more than 50′ away from a water source, no walls of wood in a desert and so on.

The initiative and round sequence got people agitated last time and if it isn’t changed then it will end up as something most poeple will ignore or house rule around, I believe. I find it just too cumbersome to use at present and slow. I am all in favour for light and fast in my games. If they have changed the initiative and round sequence then that will require serious examination. This is always going to be a thorny subject for the RM community as it seems that the creators have a desire for accuracy and real world modelling that is not necessary shared or matched by the actual players.

For RMU to succeed it has to be the game system that draws in tens of thousands of new players to the game. RMU Beta 1 was not that system (again, in my opinion).

Another achillies heel for Rolemaster is that it is such an fantasically flexible system with its modular approach that for the existing user base it is perfectly possible to take what they like from RMU and integrate it into their current games without having to make that commitment to buy the new system. I have already done this to some extent. I really liked the idea of the Vocational Skill and I am now using that, I liked the experience system so I am using that and I like many of the spells in spell law and I am encouraging players to research them and I will research RMU spells in a game where I am playing. Really RMU can be reduced down to nothing more than another companion or set of companions from which you can pick and choose what you want to integrate into your world.

There is no way any RPG games company can force people to upgrade to a new version and very few of us will because we have invested too much in learning the exisitng rules, buying the books and creating our worlds around those rules. To throw it all away is a lot to ask just to buy a new set of rules designed to achieve the same objective but without all the community support that is out there right now.

What I have not seen yet is a USP orUnique Selling Point for RMU that is going to go out there and grab the next generation of table top gamers.

Multimedia, multi-screen or multi-device?

Bearing in mind that we are still only waiting for Beta 2 and nothing is finished yet maybe what RMU needs is to take the Unified part and take it off paper, so on release day make sure that there is an RMU combat minion, RMU ERA and even RMU fantasy grounds module.

I have made a fairly simple pdf of all the most commonly used GM charts (base spells, RRs, MM and SM tables). I have this on a tablet pc when I am GMing and it saves me about 50 book checks every session at least. It is just a flick of a finger to scroll through all the most commonly used charts.

None of those components are required but if you want to go electronic then they can make life easier. I have all the rules for my game, every npc and all my adventure notes all saved in dropbox and therefore on my PCs, phone and tablet. It doesn’t matter where I am, I can answer player questions or create an adventure.

I personally do not think that is enough to grab an entire new generation of players but it is a step in the right direction.

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