Tuesday night was the first proper Rolemaster session I have run. I was prepared or it to be either a one-shot that degenerated into a learning experience, and prepared for it to be the start of a campaign.
The opening adventure was Creatures of the Night. It didn’t go strictly to plan, the first thing the characters did when the murders started was try to use the church tower to get an overview of the town.
Leaping from plot hook to showdown without passing through the adventure.
I set up my adventure using a story panel, to get what I imagined would be the general progression.
Of course, no plan is ever going to survive first contact with a player character party.
I am a fan of the story element. It made it very easy to just to the right place in my notes when they bypassed most of it and jumped to the church.
The “Church Horror” encounter was with the Gargoyle. That was one 5th level beastie against three first level characters, two fighters and a thief.
That fight was touch and go for a while. The three against one odds was the main deciding factor. One character was down to half a dozen hits, and bleeding at the end.
They have yet to explore the crypt, if they even bother.
That is probably where they will end up. There are more people who have disappeared than have been accounted for by the remains found with the gargoyle.
Two of the missing bodies are in the crypt, just waiting to be released. This is part of a side plot that they haven’t discovered yet.
So, at the end of the first real session, no one died, they all gained some experience and one mystery has been solved. Not a bad evening.
I uploaded the 44th issue of the Rolemaster blog fanzine yesterday (Sunday 6th). I am not sure how or why, but I seem to have settling on the 6th of the month as release day for it each month. I suspect that without a deadline it simply would not get done.
While I was in adventuring mode, the fanzine contains two adventures this month, I also wrote my next 50in50 adventure. I have passed that to Egdcltd/Adrian for his editing and battlemap making.
The 50in50 is going slower this time. First time around we were banging things out weekly right up until near the end. This time it is more like two a month, and 50 in 100 sounds a bit sad.
There was no way that anyone could have played everything the first time around in 50 weeks, we wrote just too much material. The supplements this time are slightly longer. I have been leaning towards short adventures or situation that would take one or two sessions to complete, possibly more.
You can tell by the cover that these adventures are not city/urban adventures for a change! I also think that they are ideal for characters at above 6th level.
So, after last week’s problems we had a much more successful session using Fantasy Grounds Unity.
My group has pretty much settled on Tuesday nights being game night. We all had characters now, and the group ran into a band of five goblins, two hobgoblins, and a goblin chieftain.
The fight was fairly bloody, on both sides. Somehow the players all forgot about the need to parry, or even to move.
Out numbered, and out gunned the result was fairly predictable.
I am hoping that it was because it was all new, but the game session did end up focussing on the map and tokens than on any roleplaying. This is what happened when I played in a 5e game online as well.
The good thing is, even the players said that it was very wargamey or boardgamish.
I want to run something more theatre of the mind next time.
Things I liked was the line of sight in Fantasy Grounds Unity maps, and I like the character creation.
What I found difficult was that there was a massive lag between someone rolling an attack, and the Tabler Resolver appearing and showing the right attack table.
I am not sure if I can bypass that. I don’t know how to add damage to a foe, and the conditions. I would still like to use the condensed combat system by hand, but I am not sure if that is going to be possible.
I have read online that FGU is still being optimised, so I am hoping it wall become more responsive over time. I don’t really want to buy a new laptop just to run FGU.
The other alternative is to let someone else GM. Wouldn’t that be a shame, if I only got to play 😉
As part of my practice and learning I have been making quite a few characters. I cannot decide which I want to play. I am hovering between an Illusionist and a Mentalist. I am also considering building a monk tomorrow and seeing how he turns out.
After last week’s hiccup, I have managed to track down the source of my problem using FG Classic. It turns out that my Satellite broadband provider closes all ports on inbound traffic, unless you pay for their premium services.
Having spent days trying to figure out why port forwarding would not work, reading hundreds of forum posts and guides, it did turn up on a forum that this was the root cause. I sent off an email and got a sales message back about upgrading.
The other alternative was to upgrade to Unity, and run a cloud hosted game.
I bought unity, and the RMC package at the same time, and I got an upgrade discount, so that is not bad.
We had a session on Wednesday evening and made some characters, played around with sharing maps and moving tokens around.
My experience with FG was all Classic, I think I am going to have to rerun some of the FG College videos just to come up to speed.
Now, I am spending time just making characters, which I will be able to utilise as NPCs, and just becoming more comfortable with character creation.
In the next week or two, I would like to get to the point of running a short adventure for my old face to face group.
My only concern is that when I have played, not GMed, online games have degenerated into almost table top battles, everyone more concerned about pawing over the map and positions. The actual roleplaying seemed to take a back seat after a while.
That was the main reason why I was not a fan of online playing.
Hopefully, if we are on our guard against it, it will not be such a problem.
After writing adventures for over 35 years, one of my goals is to try upending my players’ expectations. Coming up with a new monster, adversary or spin on standard adventure tropes doesn’t truly challenge my players; most who have been gaming for decades.
For me, the discipline is not just “one upping” the group or seeing them through an adversarial lense (GM vs Player), but to literally challenge their long held perceptions that create standard encounter reactions that might as well be behavioral tics.
If you’ve read some of my 50 in 50 Adventures, you may see where I’m going with this post. For instance, in The Cabin in the Woods, appears to be a straight up bandit encounter, but there is a “more than meets the eye” aspect. In The Hermit of Castle Ruins, the typical foe may not be the villain the villagers think he is. Feldaryn’s Flying Ship introduces one of my favorite NPC tropes: the mysterious mage who is NOT as powerful as the players assume. (Because every old man is tattered robes must be a powerful mage in disguise!) I could go on with most of my other adventure hooks–most have some twist or reversal that will require the players to think on their feet or change their viewpoint.
Here are a few of my favorites:
“The Usual Suspects“. I’ve only done this once, for a stand-alone adventure. But basically one of the PC’s is actually the bad guy! In the process of chasing down a shadowy figure, the group actually eliminates the bad guy’s opponent, or recovers an object needed by the baddie. The fun is watching the player try and manipulate the group’s decision making to his/her benefit.
“Friend not Foe”. Similar to The Usual Suspects, this is the simple idea that the MOB is actually a good guy, friend or potential ally of the group. What happens when they rush to combat and kill someone that should have been a friend?
“The Burden of Power”. While all players are in an endless quest to level up, advance their characters wealth, abilities and equipment, there could be a cost to that. If the player possesses a famous weapon, what stops NPC’s from attempting to steal the object, challenge/kill the PC to acquire it or attack the group when they are injured and at a disadvantage? Does being powerful also make them a target from rivals, adversaries or less powerful NPC also trying to level up? It’s one thing to obtain power, it’s another to hold onto it!
“The Sting”. I’m surprised how easily it is to con my players. Feldaryn’s Flying Ship is a good example of using a mysterious character to manipulate and fool the players into doing all sorts of things–many to their detriment. When my players get complacent, greedy or foolhardy I know it’s time to bring in a “Sting”. Nothing sobers them up like losing a treasured item, having their wealth taken in an elaborate ruse or being used as pawn’s in someone else’s ambitions.
“Paranoia”. One of the harder plays to run successful is the subversion of a PC. Whether they are tainted, charmed, possessed or similar, it relies on the good faith and roleplaying ability of the players. When it works, it’s fabulous.
“Fools Gold”. A long arduous quest for a mythical object. What could be more tropey than that! What if the object was never powerful, magical or valuable. Maybe it was a hoax, or a story twisted over time, or maybe the object held is a counterfeit–the original having been stolen long ago.
“Job and The Capricious God“. I’ve written a lot about Channeling/Priests. What if the God is just an asshole? He/she blocks spellcasting randomly, enacts hardships and curses of the player(s) to “test their faith”. The follower can not rely on anything and must take extreme steps to please his diety. How will the rest of the group react when they realize they are joined to a cursed player–who could drag the group into one disaster after another!
“Dopplegangers”. What if the player or players had someone pretending to be them? This foe was causing harm, hurting their relationships or reputation or taking credit for their triumphs. What would the PCs do if they were framed and pursued by the law? That could be fun?
So those are just a few ideas. I’m curious and interested if other GM’s have tried to subvert their own adventure narratives. What are your ideas?
My face to face group is finally coming around to using Fantasy Grounds. I have played in Fantasy Grounds games in the past, but was not massively impressed, I find the roleplay element became stilted and the maps and tokens took a lot of peoples attention. In many ways it started to resemble a table top wargame or board game, and not an RPG.
Our group is not going to get together any time soon. Fanasy Gounds is going to get another outing.
If anyone is running games on the platform, I could do with some assistance. As I say, I can join other people’s games but I cannot get the Port Forwarding to work to be able to be able to host a game.
I have a sneaking suspicion that it is because I am using wifi extenders, and I need to configure the port forwarding on these as well as the main router.
I am beginning to hate wifi networks, or is that wifi notworks?
For the first time in what seems like months, we get two blog posts out in the same week!
I also published the Fanzine [Issue 43] last Friday and it is a double adventure issue.
I returned to the Undead this time. It seemed fitting seeing as the US was going Hallowe’en crazy, as normal. Things that will not just lay down and die seem quite fitting right now.
In Brian’s post, he talked about the fine details of RMu’s rules. I am hoping to receive a review copy before, or as, it hits the shelves. If I do, it is my intention to do a complete read-through, similar to the one I did for Zweihander a couple of months ago. A chapter by chapter analysis of what is in there and how it all works now.
To me, it feels like everything is waiting on the release of RMu now. It has been a very long wait and we deserve nice things.
This is meant to be an intentionally vague and open question! A few thoughts from me.
The Rolemasterblog has dropped a bit in internet RPG blog rankings from a few years ago. Now #59. https://blog.feedspot.com/rpg_blogs/ Is this as simple as we are writing less blog posts? Has the initial enthusiasm for the RMBlog or RMU or even RM dropping a bit? So maybe neither good nor bad.
COVID. Here in Maine, we are experiencing another surge in the pandemic. This could lead to another “shelter in place” or business shut down. I haven’t been able to visit my father in Florida for over a year and my family can only meet up via zoom. Heading to bad.
RMU. Things seem to be progressing, but I’ve lost track of the small minutia around the rules. There still seems to be enthusiasm, so that’s good!
Shadow World. Over at the discord server there seems to be a concerted group effort to write a SW module. This has been tried before, but they appear to be making progress. That’s good.
50 in 50. Things have really slowed down, BUT, the quality of our work has improved I think. Peter is putting out solid small adventures rather than the basic adventure hooks we focused on in version 1.
My SW stuff. Obviously, I don’t have support of an editor, help with artwork and don’t have the time or skills to do so myself. I find the lack of feedback, positive or negative, to be disconcerting! I try to skew as close to Terry’s tone and style as I can, base it on Canon, (but filling in between the lines whenever possible). Is this material helpful? Useful? Used by other people? I don’t know! I would really like a few more collaborators to help push the SW “secondary market” further.
Roleplaying. I look on with some envy on the popularity of “critical role” and other D&D based pop culture phenoms. Personally I cannot stand the tropes of Humans, Dwarf, Halfing, Elf vs Orc, Goblin, Troll; fighting dragons or Gygaxian settings. I don’t want to fight skeletons, large rats or live in the hollywood version of Middle Earth. That’s just me. However, I certainly love the fact that RPG’s are reaping the rewards of a life of gaming, fantasy, creativity and literature. Yay.
I am having one of those crazy weeks where many things come together to clamour for my time and attention.
In the midst of this, it totally slipped my mind that the Rolemaster fanzine is due on the 6th.
For want of anything truly exciting in the editorial front, I am creating more adventures.
As always I am only using creatures from C&T 1 and Creatures & Monsters. The logic being that we know that these will be the monsters featured in Creature Law. All the adventures I have created for the past 3 years are forward compatible with RMu, when it lands.
It is a long time since I did anything with intelligent weapons, with agendas of their own. You can expect one of them. I am also determined to keep on creating adventures that I would call ‘urban adventures’. There is one of those as well.
Depending on how the creative muses treat me, this will be either a double or triple adventure issue.
I got a bit more of Pilot written this weekend. In many ways it is slow going, in others it skips forward pleasantly.
So far what we have is the 10 stats that you would expect. Stat bonuses use the ‘Hurin’s Rule’ of (Stat-50)/3. Temps are all 100 and and the absolute maximum value for a playable race is 101.
The rules are being evolved from Old School Essentials. The first change is that anything even vaguely D&D-like gives non-humans infravision, typically to 60′.
I didn’t want that. We [Terefang and I] are building the talents and flaws that are used to construct the ancestries (I don’t want to use the word race, so these are ancestries in the fantasy rules, species in the sci-fi game, others remain to be seen). Our Elves and Dwarves have grayscale darkvision which reduces penalties for seeing in low light.
That was the first explicitly RM style change.
We are working in a sort of tag team style at the moment. I write, I find something missing from the toolkit and Terefang makes it for me, as if by magic.
Right now, you can roll your stats, and choose an ancestry. The goal for this week will be to allow you to pick a culture. This will give you your final stats, some special bonuses from your talents and flaws and some starting skills.
I do not think the cultures will be particularly difficult. They should be largely the same as the Navigator RPG cultures, all baring the starfaring culture. We already have the rules in place for creating new cultures. It should be realively easy to translate them over.
The next part will be the first template professions. These will combine the two elements of the profession setting your skill costs and them coming with a predefined set of skills. In essence when you pick your profession, you get a Training Package at the same time.
This model makes character creation fast, there is no agonising over which skills are important for a starting character, that has been done for you. It is wonderfully easy to customise for a GM, you can have unique fighters from any tradition by finessing the skills.
The last stage will be that each player gets 20DP to spend on additional skills. This is a chance to customise your character, knowing that all your basic bases have been covered.
The skill list should be pretty much the same as the Navigator RPG list, but swapping in some low tech skills in place of the Piloting, Science and Engineering.
It is this part, the skills list that I think will eat up my development time for the rest of the month. It is also the cool bit for the character creation process.
If I can hit all my waypoints, in November I get to play with Terefang’s new magic system, cantrips, spells and rituals. That, I am looking forward to.
