#RPGaDAY2017 22nd, 23rd, 24th, 25th.

Not sure I said this last time but I think I am missing the point somewhat by doing #RPGaDAY in bi-weekly chunks. Having said that I will freely confess that the point for me was to get rolemasterblog mentioned on the twitter feed for #RPGaDAY. Anything that raises Rolemaster’s awareness has to be a good thing.

So to the questions…

22nd Which RPGs are the easiest for you to run?

This seems like it is going to be which ever RPG the GM is most familiar with. Given the writers and audience here any answer that is not RM would be a little weird. On the other hand Rolemaster is not a ‘thing’ it is many things or even a whole library of things. Anything that requires me to dive into book after book to try and find the right ruling for this or that situation is not really my thing. I think that drives my style of GM prep where I insert the rules for each situation/hazard into the game notes and my desire for an ever more minimalist ruleset. I want to reach the Lagrange point between a full RM experience and no rules. I was once told that the car brand JEEP was an old army acronym for Just Enough Essential Parts. That is what I am looking for in a game and the ones that I find the easiest to run, for me at least.

23rd What RPG has the most jaw dropping layout?

I have the advantage of seeing other people answers to this question and there are some brilliant page layouts around now. By contrast Rolemaster, every edition from the originals to the newest core rulebooks for RMC are boring! The most attractive book  in the RM stable I have seen is the Shadow World Players Guide. I don’t know if all of Terry’s Shadow World books look the same but I suspect they do not. Somehow I think RM’s design is stuck in the 80s.

I personally hate the FATE rules. They are just not my idea of fun but look at this page. There is no art, which is often sighted as one of the real barriers to having great looking books. Art is a real expense I admit. We have discussed that many times and at length.

First and foremost the most striking this is that they have rejected the ‘norm’ of the two column layout that just about every RPG rule book I have ever seen has used. The box outs are  striking and add both to the clarity of the rules and the visual impact of the page. The useful navigation in the margins is an excellent addition making it easy to find related sections.

I am certainly going to adopt many if not all of these features into my future publications. I have always been a bit of a revisionist. I create things that are probably a bit crap but then I go back and improve and improve. I am no designer but I can recognise good design when I see it and I am not above borrowing other peoples great ideas and using them to improve my own work.

So on the basis that FATE has made me change the way I am going to create everything else I think FATE has to get my nomination.

24th Share a PWYW publisher who should be charging more.

My answer to this is Nemo Works. I think the effort they put into their products is superb. I simply cannot draw so anything that allows me to create layouts and floor plans is an absolute god send to me. Their core product is just $8 but they have a number of PWYW addons that you can use to expend the core product into many different genres.

Pay What You Want serves a couple of different purposes. For many of the bigger games such as FATE and Shadowrun it is a loss leader. They are prepared to give away some products to get you hooked. For smaller and independent publishers they are not really in it for the money and may not even know how much to charge. I put out my house rules using PWYW so I could say I was not charging for a RM product. I see any payments as donations and entirely voluntary. I typically get between $1 and $2 per download and that is fine. I wanted to share the rules not make my fortune. If I wanted to make money I would be selling to the D&D audience not Rolemaster.

25th What is the best way to think your GM?

I think leave your lawyers hat by the door on the way in. I am certainly not perfect and I do not remember every rule, word perfect every time. We all make mistakes and we are all human. Most of the time I am super prepared and as I said above I actually include the pertinent rules in my game notes. The most likely  cause of needing an on the spot decision or adjudication is going to be a player trying to bend the situation, spell or skill in a way which was not how it was intended. I don’t have a problem with this. This is the beauty of table top RPGs and what a computer RPG can never match. You can do anything you can imagine in that situation to survive or succeed. Sometimes that is going to stretch the rules. I like to think of myself when GMing as being on the players side. We are all their to have fun, the game was created to help them have fun. What I don’t like is when the game breaks down because a rules lawyer decides to argue with the GM. I don’t care if I am a player having to stop playing while the argument takes place or if I am the GM having someone disrupt my game and the other players. So the best way to thank the GM is enjoy the game and don’t go out of your way to break it!

Three Wheels On My Wagon

I am intrigued by ITDs critical tables. I have never seen them but it came up recently in a discussion on on armour by the piece that there are different critical tables by location and only three locations; limbs, head and body.

For me the only piece of RM that has to be retained is the critical; everything else has to earn its place at the table. If it is more effort that it adds to the game I am inclined to cut or replace it.

Despite my slash and burn approach to rules I am mostly still following the roll your dice, find the right table, look up the roll and roll your critical procedure.

In all the companions and discussions I have never seen a superior system. I don’t care about the #hits, the rounds of stun, the bleeding or whatever. It is the wit and dark humour I like and the graphic descriptions of wounds. You will never get that with 1d8 damage. Decades ago rolling a 20 and getting double damage used to excite me but “Your bolt goes right through his temple and stands there quivering. Astonishingly enough, he’s still standing. But any attempt to remove it will kill him instantly. +25 hits, stunned no parry 2 rnds and bleeding 12 hits/rnd.” is a level above.

I have a half formed diceless RM combat system and I have an outline for HARP/FATE bastardised system. That uses the HARP critical tables and FATE dice and has a working title of FART.

FART is really good fun and fast to play. It just needs some time spent on it writing it up and putting it out there to the FATE community. The mission objective would be to hook FATE players into trying RMU once it is released. It is my understanding that FATE is one of the most successful games of recent years but despite that you will never get to put your crossbow bolt into someone’s head.

So we have ripped just about everything apart recently on here. What, in your perfect combat system, are the absolutely non-negotiable elements?

Fate Points

Rolemaster Logo

I have ever used Fate Points in a game before. I have mooted them to the players and generally the reception was not particularly possitive. As a consequence I had never really sat down and read the rules around them. They are not part of the core RM2 or RMC rules but I was familiar enough with the concept and the role they fulfilled.

There are times when you just do not want to fail that moving maneuver roll.

Last night I read the High Adventure Roleplaying (HARP) rules on Fate Points and I do think they are a good thing. It appears they are designed to help shove the story along where it would otherwise have stalled. Take for example the idea the the party have to resuce the princess from some deep underground orc fortress. The party come to a fissure in the tunnel floor and decide to jump it but the princess has swooned into the fighters arms some time ago and has not yet revived. The fighter takes a firm grip on her and leaps the fissure, and fumbles his roll. Dp you let the character and the princess fall to their doom?

In my game, yes I would. I would let him make a couple of other rolls to try and catchhol of some outcrop of rock and if he failed all of them I would have the pair of them crash into some ledge and take the appropriate damage. With Fate Points the player could choose to burn a couple of points and boost that leaping roll until he makes it. The player only starts with 3 points so you will not have the players skewing rolls all over the place but the onus is then on them to save their characters and not on me or you as GM to get them out of their predicament.

If they are on the ledge 100′ below the passageway with their escape just discovered by the orcs the party had better come up with a decent rescue plan pretty quickly. If they don’t then as a GM you could find yourself having to invent a new passageway along which they fighter and princess can escape. It could all unravel fairly fast if they are just having one of those bad dice rolling days. With Fate Points, the jump was made and the party escape, the princess was rescued and disaster averted and the universe did not have to be bent to save anyone.

I like the idea that the players have a distinctly limited supply and that although when they level up they can replenish them they can never have more than 5 in total.

I think in my face to face game this is pretty much happening already. There seems to me to be a fair amount of rolling the dice and then deciding which one is tens after the event. A practice highlighted a couple of years ago when one of the players accidentally picked up a D8 and a D10. He designated the D8 as the ‘tens’ and then managed to roll several open ended rolls during the session. Fate was truly on his side that day.

I generally do not live in fear of killing characters. I do not go out of the way to do it but I do normally give the players some sort of access to Life Keeping and Life Giving magic through either single use items, access to an NPC or herbs. There is a double punishment in there with the dead characters player now being on Tea Duty and there being some loss of assets to the party.

I was going to ask how people felt about Fate Points but I guess that those that like them will be using them and those that like me didn’t like the idea don’t use them and very few will have wavered between to two camps. I am defintely going to try them in the next game I run that is for sure.