The Rolemaster Blog

Sorry for the unfinished post, but I got sidetracked! Anyway, I thought I would put up a few other RPG blogs that I check into regularly. I wish there were more sites dedicated to Rolemaster and/or Shadow World, but it’s pretty lean! That doesn’t mean there isn’t great content out there. My preference are blogs with unique opinions, reviews or thoughts rather than aggregator sites. There are some great posts on defunct sites that are also worth looking for, but for this post I’m keeping my list to sites that are regularly updated. Here are a few that I read:

Akratic Wizardry has shifted focus over the years–in the past there was some coverage of Rolemaster/MERP and currently has veered over to other game systems. Nonetheless, there is some good writing and interesting topics worth checking out.

Grognardia. I’ve mentioned this site many times in my own blogs. James has an appealing writing style and an eye for topics that is pure nostalgia. For many of us, roleplaying games is a continually effort to recreate the wonder and joy of our first experiences with gaming in our formative years. Reading Grognardia brings some of that back!

Gnome Stew. I typically check in once or twice a month, but I appreciate the macro-view of gaming issues, gameplay and theory.

Swords & Dorkery. I’ve always enjoyed Mike’s blog, and he is still at it!

Roleplay Rescue’s. A grab bag of blog topics, but there is discussion of wargaming and Panzer! As an old school Squad Leader gamer, I always like to read about turn based table top wargaming.

What blogs do you read or I should check out, let me know. Also, if you have any interest in contributing to the Rolemasterblog let us know. A handful of bloggers writing once/month would help us keep our content up!

One mechanic that is often brushed aside in RPG’s relates to language barriers. Early D&D provided most players with a number of languages, a common racial tongue and an alignment language. It was not uncommon for PC’s to have access to a dozen or more language channels within the group.

Ostensibly, in the Shadow World setting, there should be much more material addressing languages and communication. SW is a setting that covers 100,000 years and is made up of smaller landmasses divided by mountain barriers and impassable Essaence flows. Even assuming the same root language, locals will differ by dialect and common etymology. Erlin, which is often the default “common language” should still vary by region, continent or culture.

My experience is that players will sink very little, if any, DPs into languages. I suspect they lean on the GM to solve any language barriers to facilitate gameplay. Language is just a hand wave problem! I get it, as a GM, I don’t want to impede the story and needed exposition due to the “realities” of language so I find myself solving that problem for the PC’s rather than creating a roadblock.

So what are some options:

1. Languages are more easily learned at an early age, so the GM could spread around some useful languages as part of adolescent development. Even a few “root” language can bridge a basic communication gap among a variety of SW cultures.
2. Account for it when planning a session. If the group is encountering a new culture, travelling in general, or might have a relevant meeting with an NPC or similar info source, come up with a mechanism for communication. Perhaps the NPC has a spells, device or another language that will work.
3. Spell Law. There are a number of communication spells in Rolemaster. They may not be the most exciting lists or have broad utility (depending on the game style), but information can be a key element of gaming success. The players should know that not everything will be spoon fed to them, and it’s incumbent on players to not only equip themselves with the right gear, and arm themselves with the right weapons, but to have appropriate non-combat related skills and spells.
4. NPCs. I discussed hirelings in a previous blog. If languages are an important element in our game, than the players should prepare by hiring/using a translator when interacting with others.
5. Magic Items. This feels a bit of a cheat, but the group could find/buy a magical “translator” (or Althan tech that seems magical).

Anyway, I’m curious how much emphasis GM’s place on language barriers in Shadow World. What are your thoughts?

At the risk of repetition, many of the generic elements of Shadow World were simply the inclusion of general Rolemaster material in earlier books to support the RM rules. If you were to parse out Terrys “canon” work, it’s clear that his material is more specific to his world setting than fidelity to RM.

In my first “Retconning Post“, there seemed to be some collective agreement about eliminating “Lugroki” (Orcs) and some mixed comments on my other suggestions. I also realize that this retconning topic is similar to my recent “Canon or Can It” posts, but in these blogs, I’m focused on questioning baked in canonic items rather than elements of Shadow World that were only mentioned sporadically–like Jewel Wells. Many of these items are revisiting past posts, but with the future of Shadow World unclear it’s worth discussing how Shadow World could be tightened or improved if ever given the opportunity.

1. Giants. So my first item are “Giants”. I blogged about this a few years back so you can click the link to read more in depth thoughts. Where are Giants in Shadow World and do they belong there? Terry only mentions Giants 40 times in the Master Atlas and ALL the references are either in the “Lands” section involving other areas not fleshed out by him (not Emer or Jaiman) or the “Creatures” section. There are no mentions of Giants in the timeline or other supporting material, no Giant NPC’s other than the Titans (which are something altogether different), 1 mention in Haestra (used as an adjective re: Titans), 2 mentions of Cloud Giants (only that they are rumored to exist in the Mountains), none in Emer III . Like many other creatures, Giants were originally included to marry the Rolemaster material with the default SW setting. Certainly Giants are a classic creature in D&D and human mythology, but do they belong in Kulthea? My belief is that Terry’s writing should direct these questions–and he didn’t use Giants.
2. Elves. I also blogged about Elves in the past, and I still feel like they need some adjustment and posted up some thoughts on the Forums HERE. Elves were a favorite of Terry’s and he definitely ported over some Elvish standards from his love and work on Middle Earth. Could Elves be modified to clarify some issues? Dyar certainly raise a host of issues around the “Evil Race” theory and the modal language around “Dark Elves”, “High Elves” and “Common Elves” seems simplistic now. What, if anything would you change about Elves?
3. Unicorns. “Black Unicorns” ridden by the Heralds of the Night are cool…but not sure about the standard one. Thoughts?
4. Undead. Here is my past post on Undead. For me there are two issues with Undead in Shadow World. First, how does it fit into the metaphysical underpinnings of the world regarding souls, resurrection, the afterlife and the deities (who aren’t really gods). Second, I think using traditional Undead creatures: mummies, vampires, ghouls etc pull the player out of setting immersion into standard fantasy RPG tropes. Personally, I like the undead “Class” system combined with either physical or non-physical manifestations. I’ve also married the concept of Undead to the Unlife–it’s more likely that intelligent undead are a manifestation of the Unlife than a trapped soul or angry spirit.
5. Physical Travel. One of the original conceits of the Loremaster/Shadow World setting was the physical isolation of various lands due to geological barriers and Essence flows. I think this concept needs to be emphasized more in any future Shadow World products. What reason for the Navigators if travel was dangerous but nonetheless accessible to most anyone?
6. Dragons. The Shadow World includes 160 mentions of Dragons–they are an integral part of the setting. But based on Terry’s writing, there are relatively few “real” Dragons: just the 6 Dragonlords and handful of named, older/great Dragons. I like that. Dragons are rare, powerful and perhaps not even “evil”. In fact, the Master Atlas names a handful of other Dragons: Kaedan (undead Gas Dragon), Ssamis T’zang (light dragon) and Motar Voorg (red-gold dragon). The remainder of “Dragons” are lesser types–drakes, wyverns etc that are tied to dark forces. I think it’s all great but perhaps needs to be clarified a bit more.
7. Navigators & Loremasters. Both of these “professions” have unique sets of spell lists that sort of upend the normal Rolemaster professional limitations. One could argue that these lists are the 4 extra base allowed by pure spellcasters, but it’s not clear that Navigators or Loremasters are recruited at a young age and trained from childhood. In fact, Terry mentions that Loremasters and Navigators start with some other profession; sort of a dual-class situation:

Two groups which are key to the scheme of Kulthea are the
Navigators and the Loremasters. Both of these associations—
through rigorous training and aptitude—have access to lists which
are Arcane in nature. No one without the full regimen of training
could possibly learn these lists. Those within the circles of these
groups may choose these as their Base Lists (in fact, to be learned at
all, they must be chosen as Base Lists). As noted in Spell Law, .,
Pure Spell Users may choose up to four other lists to be their “Base”
lists. In the case of Loremasters and Navigators, they may also
forfeit as many as three of their Professional “Base” Lists (those lists
becoming like “Closed” lists) and select more of the following
Arcane lists for their Base. Thus, while they theoretically retain one
of the other Rolemaster professions, they are also a hybrid with
either Loremaster or Navigator lists. Note that a Loremaster or
Navigator is actually some other profession initially, then chooses
the additional discipline afterwards.

Since Lorematers and Navigators are invariably NPC’s it’s easy to hand-wave this mechanic, but rule carve-outs complicate the marriage of rules to setting.

These are just a few examples of SW content that could be “retconned”: changed, modified, clarified or eliminated. What are your thoughts?

We’ve discussed “Level-less” Rolemaster before here on the RMBlog, but Vladimir’s recent post on the ICE Forums had me thinking and I wanted to put some quick thoughts down.

While RM was a bolt-on to D&D, character levels were never an integral part of Rolemaster. Levels didn’t impart any names or titles, there were no special abilities granted at “X” level, and no other real benefit of levels except to measure the “when” of imparting more development points except for 2 areas: spellcasting and saving throws.

1. Spellcasting. Early RM only allowed a caster to cast spells up to their level. This restriction was removed in later alternate rules and now with newer editions “overcasting” is not only allowed it’s basically baked into the system via special skills (grace or spell mastery?). My understanding of RMU is that character level and spell level are now disconnected. The other aspect of spellcasting and character level is casting time. I believe this has been discarded as well. Either way, it’s fairly easy to separate character level, spellcasting level and casting time.
2. Saving Throws. This is a bit trickier since it’s DEEPLY ingrained into RPG psyche that more powerful, higher level characters are better able to avoid, fight off, repel spell effects, poisons, diseases and other similar type of attacks. However, when you have a system like Rolemaster that is completely skill based, level based RRs seem like a artifact from a past era. I blogged about it HERE and HERE.

I’ve eliminated any RM mechanics based purely on the character level. Level is just a measure of experience/development points, but meaningless otehrwise. My question to you all–what MECHANISTIC function do you think levels serve?

Happy New Year from the Rolemasterblog. 2021…what a year…I’m going to call this past year a loss and move on to the next, but wanted to put some thoughts in order and reflect on a few items.

R.I.P. Terry Amthor. 1958-2021. For the Rolemaster and Shadow World community, there is no greater loss than Terry’s passing. While Shadow World is his most comprehensive work product, Terry was an icon in the early days of roleplaying: one of the founders of I.C.E., author to seminal MERP products, author of the Mentalism realm to note a few. While the future of Shadow World seems dim, many of our lives were brightened by his creativity.

RMU. Another year gone by and RMU is still in process. While I use my own rules (SWARM: Shadow World Alternate Rolemaster), I see RMU as a critical milestone for the company. I’m not sure if there is another ruleset left “in the tank” for ICE given everyone’s age and their resources. I imagine someday in the future–the IP might be bought out and given new life as a legacy product.

Priest-King of Shade. PK was submitted in 2013 in first draft form. Since then, during the editing passes, I have made roughly 200 changes for spelling, punctuation and grammar and added roughly 4 pages of finishing material. That’s not a lot of editorial work–the product is basically complete. However, I always felt it was a long shot given Terry’s reluctance for third party work, and the other priorities in the queue at I.C.E. However, my goal has always been, and still is, to get at least 1 Shadow World product officially published! I still have hope!

Rolemasterblog. This was not a great year for the team here. It looks like we only posted about 60 times TOTAL–a little over 1/week and I had 40-45 of those. Our past output of 1 blog/day seems unreal!

RMBlog Adventues and DrivethruRPG. Our RMBlog adventures production sort of whimpered out…BUT…for 2021 we sold a total of 1280 units via DrivethuRPG. That’s something!!!!! The top selling hook was The Inn of Dusk with 60 sold, followed up by Grosks Tavern with 51 sold. Thanks everyone!

My Shadow World Stuff. This was not my most productive year getting new material up on the Forums or RMBlog. In January I put up the last Chapter 5 of my “Legends of Shadow World” 50th lvl adventure module, and the Shadow World “Channeling Handbook”. That was it….

There were some good conversations over on the Forums, including this one about the nature of “Evil”.

Best wishes for a great 2022!

Happy Holidays to everyone. I have a light work week, so I’m hoping to catch up on some blogging. In the meantime, here are a few podcasts that discuss Rolemaster. It’s always interesting to hear other peoples perspectives! Sorry for the format, some of these are showing as embed’s in the preview and draft but aren’t showing in the published version. Peter?

So what do we do now? With the tragic passing of Terry, the future of Shadow World is uncertain to some degree. Hopefully we’ll see some posthumous material that is being reviewed: Emer IV and perhaps Wurilis? But even recovered work in progress may take many months or even years to edit, add artwork, design and publish. Is it possible to publish 1,2 or even 5 new products in the next decade? Most of the long-term Rolemaster & SW crowd will be heading or well into their 60’s. The ICE team will be in their 50s, 60s or 70s…

In my mind, there are few realistic options and not a lot of time to re-invigorate or revise Shadow World. That’s upsetting to say and hard to think about given how much effort I’ve put into my own material, and the lifetime of enjoyment I’ve had with RM and SW.

But I want to imagine another option: Shadow World is “re-imagined” and retconned with a comprehensive plan to grow the product line and perhaps it’s user base. There are lots of ideas and opinions floating around about what new products could be produced, how kickstarter or other strategies could finance a new product launch schedule, or how opening up the IP to third parties could drive new product development. No matter what happens, I would argue that a conversation needs to occur about fundamental SW canon that may need to be modified to lay the ground work for future material and to appeal to a new user base. You may see this as retroactively editing, revisiting or reimagining Terry’s work, but let’s just refer to this as retconning.

Over the last 30 years, trends and tastes in game settings have evolved and changed. While SW is a comprehensive setting, with many books and thousands of pages of material, some of the material feels unwieldy, dated or not user-friendly. If it were up to me, I would take a hard look at the following:

1. The Timeline. It’s been mentioned that the timeline is a bit daunting and perhaps overwhelming for new GMs. I think it’s a great reference, interesting reading and a source of adventure seeds, but it is still problematic. Specifically the time of the Interregnum which spans 100,000 years: that is just a massive length of time. During this period the planet “healed”, races were reintroduced to the world (some by the Lords of Orhan), and 3 major civilizations existed. The Jinteni, Taranians, and Worim civilizations lasted thousands and even tens of thousands of years during the period. Any yet, despite the eon that separates the Third and Fourth Era’s (let’s call those modern times) from this ancient period, much of those past civilizations survives in some form. Artifacts, transport systems, buildings, vehicles etc. And, the Lords of Essance and Althans predate the Interregnum and they are a significant part of the Shadow World setting. The Interregnum needs to be shortened—perhaps to 10,000-20,000 years total. That is still an extraordinarily long time, and puts the end of the Althan era to 30,000 years in the past. Shortening the interregnum solves a lot of problems.
2. The Great Barriers & Hemisphere. The “East”is the mysterious hemisphere of Kulthea that is given a handful of pages in the Master Atlas. Apparently, the East is ruled by powerful Ka’ta’viir, but little else is given. Why these Lords of Essaence can’t travel into the “Western” half is unknown. They were a spacefaring race and able to utilize instantaneous transportation via technology and Essence. Plus they have had thousands or tens of thousands of years to figure it out and conquer the West. A handwave concerning the “Eyes of Utha” and the Great Barriers kinda works. But not really. My solution: eliminate the barriers and adjust the current hemisphere into the whole world. Just forget and remove the “Eastern hemisphere”. First, it’s never a story that is going to be told, it has no impact on any gameplay (unless the players are travelling in the extreme East or West regions) and it makes SW feel unfinished and awkward. The Eyes can still serve a legitimate purpose of taming and regulating the Essaence flows, and the “barrier effect” can be changed to a disruptive shield in the ionosphere rather than a wall circumnavigating the world. This explains the difficulty in reaching the planet surface and justifies the quarantine of the planet (Spacemaster setting). There is already more lands and continents left to be developed as it is; who needs the “East”?
3. Anti-Essence. I’m not sure when the anti-essence was introduced in the SW Master Atlas. It wasn’t in the first edition, IIRC. There is no doubt that the anti-essence was meant to explain some aspects of the Unlife, but feels more like a standard duality trope found in most fantasy: Yin/Yang, Positive/Negative, both sides of the “Force”. It feels tidy at first glance, but I think it creates confusion among the roles of “good” and “evil”, Channeling, gods of Charon, Lords of Essence, evil spell lists, undead and a host of other factors. If you do a search of “Unlife” in the Master Atlas PDF you’ll see how confusing it comes across. There is a discussion about this right now on the RMForums. I think introducing the anti-essence was unnecessary and problematic. Get rid of it.
4. The Bestiary. The original Flora & Fauna book in the Master Atlas was mostly a reprint of Creatures & Treasures and helped establish Shadow World as the default setting for Rolemaster–which was meant to be a ruleset for generic settings. But Shadow World shouldn’t be a generic setting and can’t be if it’s ever going to grow it’s audience. It needs differentiators and Shadow World should lean into as many unique elements as it can. There are enough generic “pseudo-medieval” setting with the the slate of standardized monsters, creatures and humanoids. A revamp of SW fauna will require quite a bit of new material, but it’s needed. And in relation to that….
5. Lugroki. Let’s revisit “Orcs and Goblin”. Ok, Terry changed the name of Orcs, but they are still what they are. Are they needed? There are plenty of interesting humanoids and reading through Terry’s works, Lugroki aren’t really featured that often. The Master Atlas only has 34 mentions of Lugroki–they are the default “horde” critter, but aren’t that relevant in actual SW gameplay.

That’s a few items I would change if it were up to me. What do you think? Are there things you would like to see modified, deleted or changed?

Like myself, many of you have been able to watch the new documentary about the Beatles: Get Back. Put together by Peter Jackson (LoTR), it’s an intimate view of the creative process of art. A view of the most groundbreaking bands of our lifetimes. I was born in 1969, so the Beatles were already relegated to history when I became conscious of musical styles, but I am fascinated by the creative process and generally in awe of any artist that can create reality out of imagination. Both of my brothers are talented musicians (some of you may know that Vroomfogle is my younger brother), but I chose not to follow any musical path, even in high school, much to my regret.

As a youth, I had my eyes set on art school and I was considered a raw talent in line drawing and perspective art but that did not survive the realities of “teenager’ism”. My brother, OTOH, was taught the novae styles of “upside down” drawing” that activated right brain activity. In hindsight this development path seems obvious–but right/left brain activation bias does create inhibitions later in life. My recent experiences with art class rendered my with mild headaches after a lifetime of finance and linear thinking.

So, what does this have to do with Rolemaster or Shadow World? Glad you asked. I’ll be blogging about some recent posts on the RMForums on SW, but I wanted to draw it back to a broader perspective.

I think everyone is wondering what the future of Shadow World might look like. I don’t have any answers to that, but I there are clearly some paths:

1. SW freezes and becomes a legacy work.
2. SW generates no new IP, but publishes guidelines for other game systems.
3. SW has a fixed “canon” but allow third parties to generate “canon” material for new publication.
4. SW allows for new publications that violate “canon’.
5. SW allows for “ret-con” of TKA material, and allows for some aspects of the previous options.

Circling around, if you are familiar with the creative process, work product is a evolutionary process. SW has had many flavors, Terry’s product has varied between whimsical, grimdark and and anime BUT it has changed. More importantly, and will be addressed in my next blog, Terry’s work was not faithful to Rolemaster and perhaps needs to be “tightened up” or establish a new basis: “Shadow World RPG”. Based on what we know, Terrys’ story of Shadow World was not restrained by the RM rules–he told the story he wanted, which was not different than Pete Fenlon’s campaign in ME. The story was more important than the rules.

But beside that, Terry’s writing style changed over many years: like the Beatles, his artistic references also changed. In fact, he went back to almost every previous work and expanded/revised it. Some may argue that was an easy economic decision, but I think his writing style and goals may have changed as well.

At this point this heads towards some recent RMForums threats about Essence, Channeling, “Evil” lists and the “Unlife”. I’ll get to that later.

My belief. Terry/Peter created an amazing sand box over that last 40+ years! There is so much material you can play for years…yet, it needs a ret-con to continue. For those of you that have read most of the RMBlog for the last 6-7 years, you may have a sense for my direction–I want to revise some weak parts of Terry’s world.

What are your thoughts?

I’m not sure if this is an outlier, or now the normal pricing for these older products. $2050. Just WOW.

Hmmm…not sure if that works as a link…anyway a copy of Emer is priced at $2k

(https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-World-Continent-Rolemaster-Roleplaying/dp/1558061266/ref=sr_1_9?keywords=shadow+world+rolemaster&qid=1636058374&qsid=140-0874663-2043210&s=books&sr=1-9&sres=1558060421%2C1558061800%2C1558061495%2C155806169X%2CB01A0BNY1A%2C1558062009%2C1558060294%2C1558060987%2C1558061266%2C155806138X%2C1558061746)

In my previous POST, I made an argument for ICE to license interesting, but perhaps lesser known fictional settings as a way to leverage Rolemaster and/or springboard RMU.

While I didn’t dive too deep into it, my thought was a RMu or RM “lite” version of stripped down rules that could be used as a source book for other settings. Basically, what MERP was compared to Rolemaster. There was a lot of people asking for a RMu lite version to precede the full publication of the rules: some argued that it would get the game to market a bit quicker and raise some awareness, while others thought it would be entry point for new players. My thought was that source books for new settings would solve two issues: growth through licensing IP and ease of entry by simplifying the rules.

For clarification I thought I would propose 3 fictional setting from fantasy literature as case studies.

1. Joe Abercrombies “First Law” series. For those not familiar with Joe’s work, it’s considered “grimdark” with gritty, and unforgiving combat scenes. There is already several online discussions about what RPG system would work best for Joe’s world, but no one mentions Rolemaster. While the world of the First Law doesn’t feature traditional monsters or feature a lot of magic (neither did Middle Earth), RM’s combat system and low fantasy approach would work great for this setting. Plus the world is anthropomorphic–which also works well with RM. The downside is probably the removal of most of “Spell Law” from the source book–but the setting should drive the ruleset, right?
2. Alex Huston’s “The Crimson Queen“. I mentioned this book here back in 2017. Reading the first of the series made me think it would make a good RM setting. The subsequent books felt a bit lesser, but it’s a interesting (if typical FRPG) setting, but has a following. I described it as being RPGLit, and while that is not high praise, it argues for a game system.
3. Steven Erikson. The Malazan series. Look, it’s my favorite fantasy literature bar none. Every time I read it, I can’t help but think how Rolemaster could tackle the setting. The magic would need to get re-configured, but that just requires a larger source book. Certainly Power Points are the best way to handle the constant casting, and the combat is very gritty. Some aspects of the Malazan world touch more upon conceptual rules rather than the quantitative process embraced by RM–I discussed part of this HERE.

So good readers, what setting in literature, film or other might be a great fit for ICE/Rolemaster/HARP or Spacemaster? Again, it doesn’t have to fully embrace every aspect of the ruleset–but fit’s the style and feel of the game.