A comment(s) over at the discord server caught my attention. In the RMU thread, “Thrud” questioned the need for the skill “Maneuvering in Armor”. If you’ve read this blog or downloaded my SW Combat Companion you’ll know that we dropped that skill long ago. I’ve made quite a few arguments here and on the forums about my reasons, but the topic raised a broader issue I wanted to touch upon: the ingrained trend of progression fantasy in Rolemaster and TTRPG’s in general.
As a skill driven system, Rolemaster was more similar to Runequest than D&D, but there is still an undeniable level progression that is baked into the rules. There seems to be 3 basic systems that use character level in Rolemaster: RR’s, HPs and PPs. While those are completely level dependent, the skill system itself is built with restriction that make it mostly level driven as well. This is generally done by limiting skill progression to 2 ranks per level. Sure, the player has to expend development points and make a conscious choice to develop a particular skill, but it’s still bound by level driven resources (DPs). It creates an illusion of development choice, but ultimately PC’s increase in power in an incremental process.
So it’s really quite curious to me to read arguments against accelerated skill development or “level-less” mechanics as unbalancing in the same thread that people combine chargen, talents, traits and other rules to generate low level characters with extreme skill bonuses! So basically a min/max strategy to get the end result they want. These are just work arounds and “rules for rules”. They make a more complex process and path to achieve the same result. In this case you could simply remove rank progression limitations to allow characters to be focused on a single or few skills at the expense of a broader skill set.
We’ve been playing level-less and no profession Rolemaster for over 25 years so I feel comfortable with long term game testing (in Shadow World). However, it’s only been in the last 5 years that I finally decoupled Resistance Roles, Hit Points and Power Points from levels entirely. While I’m still playing around with several competing solutions, I haven’t seen any game breaking symptoms. Of course a gaming group of 4-5 players is a small data set, and RM needs to be built with a wide customer base.
To be clear, I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything or argue for this rule or that rule. I’m just trying to look at game mechanics in a deconstructive way. When I do, I see too game mechanics that actually replicate D&D tropes but camouflage it with a veneer of different rules. That’s not a judgement, I’m just calling balls and strikes as I see it.