I am having a frustrating week this week. I had so many plans, my wife is away at the Edinburgh Fringe so I could really dedicate loads of time to just writing (and horse riding whenever I get stuck). As it happens I have spent the week mostly in the car going from one place to another and have achieved very little and I have the same in store all weekend! This was supposed to be the week I tackled my Rolemaster for young players project (GameMaster Kids). For a bit of light relief I was going to put some more meat on the bones of my HARP/FATE hybrid under the working title of FART. I am way behind with my 50 in 50 adventures and that just about sums up my week.
This weeks questions for #RPGaDAY 2017 could be answered in just two words. I am not a hoarder of games and books and nor do I buy stuff I have no intention of using. When you see the questions you will understand…
15th Which RPG do you enjoy adpating the most?
Well Duh, that would be Rolemaster.
16th Which RPG do you enjoy using as is?
That would be Rolemaster and more specificaly RMC.
17th Which RPG have you owned for the longest but not played?
This would be HARP that I bought last Christmas and is still as yet unplayed.
18th Which RPG have you played the most in your life?
Anyone for Rolemaster?
So the answers were either Rolemaster or HARP. I think RMC specifically works well as is and without any house rules if you want a pretty generic fantasy RPG. I have dropped wholesale into the Forgotten Realms without modification and as D&D was equally generic it just works. I could just have as easily dropped it into Greyhawk and had the same results.
My adaptation of RMC into my own game is a result of wanting to make the rules invisible during normal play. If I had may way there would be no need to pick up a rulebook from the start from the session to the end. I haven’t achieved that because of Arms Law or which ever flavour of combat system you prefer. About 50% of the effort went into adapting the rules to what I wanted and the other 50% went into adapting my prep time. The better organised I am the less time is lost at the gaming table. That is true of every GM but as you all probably know I go so far as to copy and paste sections of the rule books from the PDFs into my game notes so that if someone were to be at risk of drowning then the rule for that is the next paragraph in my notes, if you may fall off a cliff the next page in my notes is the Fall/Crush table from Arms Law and so on. I have merged rules and adventure notes so I need no other documents beyond characters sheets, my notes and the combat tables (and even those I have as individual sheets that I sort so that I only have the weapons/attacks I need for that session to minimise the number of pages. The less pages then the less page flipping to find the right table!)
So there you have it. I fairly uninspiring set of answers this week. Next week is more about publishers and different games so the answers will not all be RM & HARP.
It would be hard to answer question 17. In the late 80s/early 90s I bought a lot of games (I had income and few expenses) that I have still never played, usually only owning at most a handful of supplements. Of the top of my head I can remember stuff like TORG, Aliens, Star Trek and Doctor Who.
About 15 years ago I moved house and somewhere in the process I lost nearly all my RPG books. After that I never got back into buying games for curiosity sake.
After finding the OBS sites, I have started doing it again. It’s a lot easier, and generally cheaper, than physical books. Plus harder to lose. Fortunately, I haven’t lost much in any of my moves (I think I may have lost a few oddments, but I found one of those recently inside another module).
I do buy things for research purposes but frequently I have no intention of playing them.
I have 6 games that I know of. RM, HARP, D&D 5e (the free rules and the SRD), 3Deep (which I wrote and use for one off game sessions), I have just bought an older version of GURPs and Car Wars which isn’t strictly an RPG but we played it that way. I have no intention of playing D&D or GURPS. I do play RM, 3Deep and IO will play Car Wars in November. That leaves HARP as the odd man out.
Actually I have the FATE core rules in PDF format as well so that makes 7 but that is on my research purposes only list.
I also get stuff for research. Sometimes I can even class it as a business expense. I’m not really sure what I’ve got without a proper look; I’ve picked up so many different things that were free or on offer.
At a guess, the free Cepheus Engine, Labyrinth Lord core, Mutant Future, Swords & Wizardry, Hulks & Horrors, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Atmoic Highway. Plus Dresden Files and ICONS for FATE. Mutants & Masterminds (not actually sure what that is). Shadow of the Demon Lord. White Star. 5E free. Pathfinder. SteamCraft. Probably more stuff as well, and all my older games.
Oddly, I have a lot of GURPS books but no actual game. I like the GURPS supplements themselves.
I got GURP on eBay with a handful of supplements. It was the supplements I wanted not the actual game but it is useful for understanding their implementations.