So, this is my 3rd blog of the day! Since I have some renovations this weekend and I’m feeling like writing, I thought I would post up a few posts now and not worry if I can’t post this weekend!
This one is short, but worth the review. A few years ago, a discussion was stared on the RM Forums about blogging–specifically about Rolemaster. I happened to read it again and found it interesting to see Peter’s first thoughts and ideas, and now, a few years later how the actual RM Blog has developed in terms of those early thoughts and actual performance.
Read that original blog linked above and share your thoughts. Inez…where did you go? I’m going to blog about your blog in the next few days or weeks. Come to the light and blog here occasionally! Peter, what are your thoughts, reflections or feedback on your blog?
I’m still around, but just don’t seem to have the time to blog these days. On the plus I am actually running a game (albeit irregularly) at the moment – total game deprivation was part of what got me blogging, just to give that part of me some stimulation. I’m in a D&D vein at the moment, but it’s inevitable that at some point I will return to Rolemaster. I suspect when I do though I will be playing a heavily hacked version which only uses Arms Law & Spell Law but discards most of Character Law
Lloyd–I think we are the same page (and I posted such on your blog post some time ago). While I rewrote Spell Law it was mostly to update the spells, fill in blanks and increase useful spells. My real tinkering focuses on Character Law. I find I can use any version of Arms Law, but prefer RMU beta2 for the reduced armor types, charts and size rules. Despite arguments for game balance I could use the original RM2 charts and not have a noticeable difference in combat flow, results or balancing opponents to the party size/level.
And one more thought. Not to encourage you to abandon your blog but I would really like to see us get 5-8 guest bloggers with a post/month to spread the work load around, bring in differing viewpoints and create a more diverse blogger community. So, when you do feel like blogging again, maybe post up here as well?
When I first leaped two footedly into blogging I didn’t really have a realistic grasp of how hard it is to produce playable material for all varieties of RM.
It was my original intention to post playable content as that was the perceived need. The forums give us a community base but the blog offers the space to really expand on an idea, the rich media to offer GMs maps, player handouts and all that. From that point of view the blog is a bit of a failure.
I also intended to bring more people into RM, to reach a wider audience. I do know that we have readers here that are not RM players. Most of them are other bloggers that share a love of RPGs and ultimately a lot of GM to GM discussion is applicable to any and every ruleset and genre of game. I hope that some of those bloggers will look kindly on RMU when it is released who may otherwise have ignored it.
The blog is an excellent soapbox from which to expound upon your own pet subjects. I am a minimalist. I don’t like my game rules to get in the way of the unfolding story. I always felt that RM was build by engineers for engineers and that is why it has a habit of over complicating everything. Not all players and GMs are engineers or want that level of complication.
I would really like to see more writers on here that have the opposite opinion to me. Someone who revels in that striving for perfect modelling. Someone who could sway my opinions and make me try it. Brian certainly has some similar opinions to me and because of that we get recurring themes.
Looking forward I am going personally want to look more into HARP and in particular HARP SCi Fi. RMU is still not with us and any version of SpaceMaster Unified is going to be a very long way off. I bought myself HARP as a Christmas gift two years ago, both Fantasy and Sci Fi core books and I bought Folkways last month. I am having a hankering to play something Sci Fi so it looks like HARP will get an outing. It is possible that my adventures into HARP may bring some new voices to the blog. I am told that HARP is a lot more like D&D 3.5. That is a game that I have never looked at or played so I cannot comment.
I am glad that we now cover more Shadow World. This is something that I was never qualified to write about. I have played in Shadow World but my GM has asked me not to buy any of the books for spoilers sake. One of my criticisms of RM is that on one hand it claims to be generic but on the other it has a tendency to show its MERP heritage. Once you start to pull at one thread then slowly the generic clothes start to fall apart and an implied underlying setting can poke through. Shadow World appears to be the setting for RM but even that is an imperfect fit as Brian has illustrated. I am sure there is lots more Shadow World lore to come.
I have just reread the original forum thread and I noticed the timestamps on the forum posts.
It took 6hrs 39 minutes to go from domain registration to the first real piece of RM content on the blog.
Another thought. In the past 12 months the blog has has 23,769 page views if you exclude me completely from all the statistics. That is an average of 65 views per day from other people.