RMU House Rule #0

OK, so I thought I would take a break from my HARP series today and write about RMU for a change.

This is inspired by the comment made by Aspire2Hope on the post RMU to Infinity and Beyond.

So as you all know my RMC house rules do not use levels or professions. I also use point buy for stats and fixed concussion hits. Basically my entire character creation is dice free so I am perfectly happy to allow players to create their characters away from the gaming table. As long as we have discussed character background and motivations and that is all acceptable then the GM is no longer needed.

What I would like to start is another occasional series of posts where I/we:

  1. take what we know of the state of RMU
  2. for each aspect I state my intended goal
  3. We marry the two together to get a coherent house rule

So for example stat bonuses are neither linear nor exactly bell curve. I would like stat bonuses that don’t need a table to work out so I would throw out there (Stat-50)/3 gives a range of 0 to +/-17. That is slightly more generous than RMU as written with the rate of bonuses increasing and at the top end bonus, +15 vs +17 but it also does away with a table.

I don’t really want my house rules to break the compatibility with RMU too much. I would still like to be able to use off the shelf ICE products but at the same time I would like to promote my ideas of simplicity and speed of play at the gaming table.

Things that I think will cause the most debate will be what to keep in and what to throw out. So we could have a set of simplified house rules and a set of optional house rules that plug in things that I don’t feel the need to use but others do. Allegedly, I am not always right and if that is the case then having alternatives would be good.

This is also an opportunity to build things that are missing like dedicated two handed weapons tables and fix their lack of stopping power.

The big one will be magic. I have never been really happy with Spell Law but it was always too big a challenge to fix but committing myself to doing publically may force me to get the job done.

So that is my intentions. The first and foremost task will be to completely rebuild character creation.

Anyone up for a challenge?

16 Replies to “RMU House Rule #0”

    1. My only reticence was the maximum bonus of +17 felt ‘wrong’ and from a compatibility stand point it would be obviously non-compatible. Small price to pay though.

      1. Making it (Stat -50)/3 and round down would get you down to a +16 maximum, though with the downside of there being no difference between a 98 and a 00.

        Personally, we just roll for stat bonuses directly, and don’t use stats at all. That makes point buys a lot easier. if you do 3d10 -15, you get a range of stat bonuses from +15 to -12, though with a bell curve that ensures the extreme results are rare.

          1. just worrying about the bonus sounds easier – As the percentile is really just a measure against the race population and we don’t use it in the game mechanics an awful lot.

        1. Just add an extra point for every “0” you roll. That might give you the desired effect. It blurs a the bell distribution a little bit, but it might be a thing to consider.

  1. I like random stats and levels/professions, so I won’t be of any use there.

    Where I do think RMU needs serious work is the combat system and its compatibility with genres other than fantasy. I also have taken on the skill system, structuring it to allow players to assign costs in most areas like they do currently with weapon skills.

    1. The stats was just one ‘for instance’, but I do want to tackle most areas of character creation. The input of ideas is always welcome.

      1. I am awaiting your post #1 on that issue, where you state your goals of the character creation process. I would appriciate if you lead us through the creation process. I think a little bit of structure would help me to keep the big picture and focus my ideas/input.

    2. I’m with you on that but I don’t think it will make much difference to the following stages of character creation. For me, it is the making the best of what you were born with part of the character that helps with development. of the personality and drive of the character.

  2. Hmm – have you ever thought about determining the bonus and calculating the stat from it?
    During character creation you can say the stat is calculated as bonus * 3 + 50 and it might be easier.

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