Articles and discussion on Roleplaying including Shadow World, Forgotten Realms.
First off, Happy New Year! Over the holiday break I’ve been able to plot out a number of blog topics for the coming year and working on at least one new interview. I’m also hoping that my long gestating Shadow World module: Priest-King of Shade will make publication this year! (It seems unlikely that “Empire …
Continue reading “Thoughts on Resurrection in Rolemaster & Shadow World.”
So, it’s December 12th 2016 and the official Iron Crown website has been down for 3+ days, stalling a number of thread discussions on RMU development. This momentary pause got me to thinking. Rolemaster has always been criticized for being “chart heavy” but with RMU and a few tweaks, most of the charts can be …
Continue reading ““Chartmaster” or “ChartLESSmaster”? Simplifying Rolemaster is Simple!”
The changes we made to casting mechanics for Essence and Channeling seemed obvious (to us) and were fairly straightforward, but we really struggled with the Mentalism realm. It could be argued that mentalism is the least restrictive of the realms: no armor penalties, a broad range of spell abilities and not much for casting requirements. …
Continue reading “Revisiting Spell Law. Spell casting mechanisms Pt. 4 Mentalism.”
This is pt. 2 of an ongoing blog segment on Rolemaster “skill consolidation. The first part on the Channeling skills can be found HERE. While character differentiation is important, the absorption of secondary skills into primary skills caused not only skill bloat but also a huge disparity in the value of various skills. For our …
As part of our efforts to create a viable “no profession” Rolemaster rule set we’ve focused on distilling skills down to as few as possible meta-skills. I think I’m down to 45 or so total skills in our S.W.A.R.M. rules but after reading some of Peter’s ideas I think I can get it down further. …
Continue reading “Rolemaster House Rules: Skill Consolidation”
You how some days you just know it is going to be a long grind and that is just the preparation for the next game session? i have one of those weeks in front of me. I have discovered a new task to hate and that is equipment lists. I remember the days of not …
I hate potions. Ok, perhaps I don’t feel that strongly but I certainly don’t use them a lot., and thankfully Terry doesn’t use them either in his Shadow World setting. So what is it that bugs me about potions…. Potions are a common trope in early fairy tales and mythology, a standard in RPG’s and …
Now that we’ve laid the theoretical groundwork in Pt. 1 I wanted to explore each realm in a bit more detail. Since the original Spell Law, Essence has included the traditional spells established by D&D: fireballs, teleports, sleep, charm, fly etc and most of the general accepted “rules” of Magic-User spells. Casting Time. Spells take …
Continue reading “Revisiting Spell Law: Spell Casting Mechanics Pt. 2 Essence”
There has always been basic indications that the Rolemaster spell realms operate under different mechanics. Essence and Channeling are affected by armor, Mentalism by helms, verbal and hand gestures are necessary components of Essence but not so much Mentalism etc. At the same time, the general casting mechanics of 3 rounds for most spells were …
Continue reading “Revisiting Spell Law: Spell Casting Mechanics Pt. 1”
You know that guy…the player that begrudgingly agrees to play the Cleric for the “good of the team”. After dispensing some essential buffs, he waits around to dole out some healing and maybe, just maybe, get a few licks in during combat. Add to that, the group leader role is usually played by the more …