Prepping for Atmosphere

I have one player who loves maps and mapping any and all dungeons and buildings the party enter. There is nothing inherently wrong with the party mapping. In fact the character has bought copper plates and a stylus exactly for mapping their route.

My issue is that mapping the parties progress kills the atmosphere in  the game. It can become almost mechanical, the party enters an area, everything stops while the player updates the map, play continues, rinse and repeat.

I am considering using preprinted map sheets with a black card overlay. The card will have a circular hole cut out to represent the light shed by a torch or lantern. It  the player then wants to sketch what  he sees then that is fine. I may need a couple of extra bits of paper to mask off bits that the top  page may reveal that the players don’t know but it all seems extremely easy to do. Part of the problem is, in my opinion that it is too  easy to fall into the trap  of describing interiors in a location by location way. It seems natural to describe somewhere right up to the closed door, knowing that the door will stop the parties progress and line of sight. Once they  have opened the door then they can see what lays beyond and react to it.

If on the other hand one started to treat both sides of the barrier as a single location what happens when the party approaches the door can be scripted in to  the adventure notes.

The same thing happenso of course if the GM knows the entire map and every location off by heart but I cannot retain that amount of information.

So what I  am starting to do is insert additional locations into the adventure modules with this overlap information incorporated into it. The first time I did this it occurred to me that my style of describing the location was different to TSR’s. So to make the thing more consistent I then rewrote all the location descriptions.

Now if you are writing descriptive text you may as well pour on the atmospherics at the same time. I have nearly finished updating  every location in  the next module the party are going to tackle and I seriously think it is much darker and atmospheric than the original which considering they are going to be investigating a tomb is just about right.

What struck me is that the original texts had very little mention of smell and sound. They would tell you how a room looked but little else unless it had a direct impact on the plot. No mention of dripping water, creaking timbers or the sounds of rats scurrying overhead. Likewise the frequent bodies found in rooms have obviously been recently given the once over with a monster sized bottle of fabreeze.

So this week I am  going  to have to set about redrawing all the maps to  a larger scale to  use at the gaming table.

Different GM-ing Styles

I am a bit of a minimalist in almost everything I do. Below is a picture of my gaming table.

The RolemasterBlog gaming table
The RolemasterBlog gaming table

At this end of  the table you can see the adventure, one set of dice, a notepad, tablet PC for the PDF rules and shades. What else does the modern GM need? Tea, but you can see liberal cups of tea around the table so that is sorted as well. (Actually through the tea is in Brian’s honour as that is what he thinks British roleplayers only drink!)

(The creatures & treasures on the table is not mine, the cleric is into summoning beasties to fight for him.)

You can also see the post-it notes on the players character sheets that I wrote about recently. I really do not like having to rummage through rule books, companions and supplements while I am playing because if I am doing that then I am not playing. The game has to stop while I try and find the answer the players  asked for.

I am not the only GM in our group and bearing in mind that both of us had to ship our games half way across the UK to get to the hosts home this is what GM#2 brought as a minimum….

The Sorcerous GM's game notes.
The Sorcerous GM’s game notes.

The most amusing thing here are the ring binders on the left. They are the RMC PDF rules! The blue clipboards are our character sheets and everything in between is either companions or plot notes.

The only way I can get away with my ultra light gaming is in the pregame preparation. It doesn’t really take that long to make sure that each character has their spell lists printed out with their character sheet. I also try and preempt and rule questions. I look up the rules and the copy and paste the actual wording into a Word document. I then have a single compendium of the rules at hand with the book and page numbers in case we want to look further. In this game there was a risk of characterskills falling, drowning and being poisoned so I had all those rules to hand.

I also maintain a pdf of the charts and tables I use the most. This takes the place of the GM’s screen. I have found that there is one chart that I had not added to it that we have used twice recently so I have updated my PDF to include it.

None of these things take very long. I am pretty sure every GM reads through their game notes before a session and at that time to just check any rules that you cannot remember takes but a moment. What it saves though is at least an hour of lost game time when you add it all up over three days of gaming.

Another plus point is that combat runs really quickly now. In a RM game I played in for 15 years or so each combat round used to take up to 45minutes and we were not a massive party. In one day my players had seven combats and fought 18 creatures ranging from a couple of osquips through half a dozen  skeletons and an 8th level Hook Horror.

A hook horror
A hook horror

I know my game is combat heavy, it is a consequence of playing so infrequently, but there is no way we could have done so much in a single day running from the crate of dead tree.

But then that is just how I am happiest doing things.

The NPCs of Daggerdale

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My players have been working their way through the Doom of Daggerdale module. This was one of the things I have converted over to Rolemaster. Not only did I have to convert Hook Horrors and the Nightshade/Wood Wose creatures but there are three significant NPCs in Daggerdale. These are Randle Morn, Caldoran The Razor and Tren Hoemfor.

The first that the Players meet is Randle Morn the displaced Constable of Daggerfalls, the traditional ruler of the town and Dagerdale. According to the module Randle is a 7th level fighters/6th level thief. In my conversion I have made him a 10th level Rogue. This gives him the strength in combat as well as the breadth of skills. You can use the standard generic NPCs for him and just give him +5 Chain mail (AT14), +10 full shield (+35/+25), a +5 long sword and a +10 long bow. In my world these are all superior quality non-magical weapons. I chose to give him the leadership and public speaking skills required to inspire a band of 200 men to continue to fight a partisan war against the Black Network.

Tren Hoemfor is a D&D 7th level fighter. This translates into a Rolemaster 10th level fighter with Chain (AT13), a +10 broad sword and two interesting magic items.

The first is a Cloak of Displacement. I have made this a Daily Item that casts Displacement I once per day (5th level Guises, Illusionist Base). I made this decision because I did not want to introduce a magical item into the game that I would regret if it fell into the players hands!

The second item is a Ring of the Ram. This ring in D&D does 1, 2 or 3d6 damage in the form of a ramming attack depending on how many charges are used. My version is again a daily item embedded with Vacuum I (3rd level Gas Destruction, Sorcerer Base) three times a day this  delivers a single impact critical severity B. I thnk the damage it delivers is slightly less than the D&D version but it does not have a limited number of charges so on balance I think it is on a par.

The third and final NPC is Caldoran the Razor. I am not going to give you his complete stats but a general outline. In D&D he is a 6th level Mage. I have made him a 10th level human Archmage. The interesting thing about archmages is that they can pick their ten base lists from any profession and any realm. I this case I chose the Alchemist list Liquid Gas Skills that enables him to create potions. The eaty of this list is that it allows him to create potions. I have then given him a substantial stock of potions from his own spells (1st to 3rd level and those of his allies. What I have aimed for is to massively extend his pool of powerpoints and therefore how dangerous a foe he is without having to resort to giving him powerful magic items. Potions are inherently single use and in someways force players into making choices. If they use the potion now then it is gone or save it until they really need it. As it is they have no way of telling what any of these potions do without testing them the most basic way of holding your nose and swallowing it down.

I am a big fan of low level spells. I think there are some really cool powers in there that often get over looked by bigger and more powerful spells. Another option is of course you can give potions to somebody else and there is no skill involved in use it. In Rolemaster you need a certain skill to invoke a rune or scroll. Potions are just glug it down and hope for the best!

As it is Calderan is still alive and kicking and a danger to the PCs so I cannot go into much more detail. Once he is done for I will share what his stock of potions was and how he used them.

It is Game Recovery Week!

I am back from my weekend of gaming and these long weekends take their toll on this poor old GM. I feel this is game recovery week when I try and get over the effects of too little sleep and the diet of a 18 year old student. Gone are the days when I could game until 3am night after night!

The game went well, the evil magician escaped but following the antics of the players he is going to have to do some serious remodeling at home! The party are all spell casters and when faced by their third locked door resorted to using a pair of lump hammers and entering rooms like some kind of police raid. What was interesting was how often some of the situations turned on a single lucky dice roll.

The first instance of this was a situation where the party were bottled up in a small chamber, arrowslits and murder holes pointed into the room and before them were some heavy stone doors. Out side the room firing in were skeletal warriors under the control of our villain.

The priest tries casting repulsions and on a roll of 97 (base spells roll) destroys every single skeleton at the first invocation of his gods name (Torm, if you are famiiar with the Forgotten Realms panthion). That gave the lump hammer wielding front row the break they needed to get at the doors. I had expected that killing zone to pose a real problem for the players. Their first attempt was them getting as close as they could and then casting Sleep and waiting for the sounds of falling bodies. Two spell casters wasted sleep spells before they spotted the archers were undead.

The second dice roll was a perception roll. The bad guy was on the run and trying to make his escape with his more precious posessions. In the romm next door the party were searching for any sign of him, believing they had killed everything in this part of the underground chambers. At the first attempt one of the players made an open-ended perception roll of over 320! So much for the quiet get away.

It was not the slickest ‘dungeon’ clear out I have ever seen but I am beginning to see the start of the party gelling together. Several times they failed to communicate and we had people either casting completely contradictory spells. The Warrior Mage cast sleep on one foe just as the Sorceress cast Vacuum on the same target. In the next fight the same two clashed again by both preparing can casting Sleep VII and a Sleep VI on the same target. These at least started the conversation about working together.

It also highlighted the weakness in that the party have no real healer, the cleric doesn’t have any serious healing spells, just concussion ways, and the seer who has been playing the role of healer only has first aid and some herb lore. The party also lack a scout or thief. This time they got away with using lump hammers and they had left locked doors alone until they had probably killed all the other minions. Their approach is not so good if you are worried about maybe trying stealth for once!

The only creature left alive as far as the players know was a huge worm type creature trapped at the bottom of a pit. It looked somewhat like this…

A Giant Bloodworm

The party managed to gather up all the evil magician’s healing herbs, that comprised most of the ‘treasure’ in the adventure, and throw it down the pit. They knew the magician was performing dark rituals to create animated wooden effigies to do his dirty work. When they found his ritual chamber they gathered everything including the herbs, threw it in the cauldron and tossed the lot down the pit.

I suspect the party could do with a better herbalist as well!

It is Game Day! (The Post-It Revolution)

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I have packed up all my game notes and rules and I will soon be on the train to Faerün (so to speak).

The biggest difference in the game this time will be that I have adopted some advice I was given last week. For each major NPC I have given them a post-it note with a mini-flowchart of their tactics and or favoured spells. The idea is that as soon as I pick up a character sheet I can see at a glance what they are most likely to do in the first combat round without having to delve any deeper into the paperwork to look at skills or spell lists.

All it needs is what and the applicable skill total eg “Adr.Spd +70, Sp.Sudden Light” tells me that the NPC will attempt to prepare Adrenal Move Speed and their total skill is +70 whilst also casting the spell Sudden Light. (That is a spell that can stun everyone within its radius if they are not prepared). It is a 5th level spell and in this casters case can be cast in a single round without preparation.

The NPCs objective is obviously to try and create some confusion amongst their opponents whilst also giving themselves options (the adrenal move speed is a like Haste) for the following round.

The next section is split into two, being fight or flight. So having cast that spell I hav enow noted down two options depending on whether the NPC is going to fight on or try and get away. SO in this case it is either “Sp.Invis, Stalk+30” (cast invisibility and then creap silently away) or “Sp.Blur, att.Shuriken +35” (cast a spell that make them harder to hit and then attack with a thrown shuriken with a total attack bonus of +35). So there are two definite different strategies here. I have only sketched out two rounds because if the fight lasts longer than that then any pre-made plan will probably fall to pieces and any NPC that does not react to what the players are doing probably will not live very long.

At the bottom of the post-it is a note of the most significant items then NPC has such as weapons, wands, staves and potions etc.

The point is that from the moment the two parties meet I can tell at a glance what is likely to happen immediately. If the NPC is  a criminal mastermind then chances are he or she will know what their best tactics are. By spending a new minutes before the game session to look at what their best options are then you will do them more justice in the game as well as make the opening sequence fast paced and exciting.

There are additional benefits to this I have noticed. If I am under pressure to decided the NPCs attack I am more inclined to reach for the lightning bolt. Given more time I find that there are some much more interesting and varied spells to use on the same lists. This makes the NPCs power points go further if you are casting a 5th level spell instead of a 12th level spell and they are tossing it off in a single round.

I ran a fight not long ago and after the fight was over I discovered that the, now dead, villain was carrying couple of powerful healing potions. He didn’t use them and it would have changed the nature of the fight if he had and to make it worse he did have an opportunity to do so. In the actual fight he tried to flee but was brought down by the PCs. I removed the potions from the inventory but if I had known immediately that he had them then the nature of the fight would have changed as would the rewards.

So now with the NPCs covered in green personality post-its and orange fight or flight post-its it is time to get my train. I will let you know how it goes.

If anyone can think of a good (roleplaying) use for my blue post-its then please let me know!

Five Days until next Game Session plus traps and puzzles

Next weekend I will be running my next face to face game session. I have read over the game notes and the adventure module. I have just decided that the main trap/puzzle that the players have to solve I don’t like.

Lots of these old D&D modules have magical traps and puzzles in them which seemed fine when I was 14years old but now when I look at them I just don’t like them. Dare I say they are a bit silly? So I need to come up with my own replacement puzzle (in this case it performs as a lock to get deeper into a magicians tomb) that I feel comfortable with and gives a more serious tone to the adventure.

For this I think I want to construct something based around an astrolabe. I thought I was on a winner and being original until I did a Google images search and the top results were all for the Game of Thrones astrolabe. I read the books a few years ago and the idea must have stuck. What I did discover was that an astrolabe was not actually what I was looking for. What I was imagining was actually an Orrery.

An Orrery

Now, an Orrery is a great basis for a puzzle and seeing as the dead dude in the story was actually an alchemist the creation of a magical orrery is entirely consistant with the story and the world.

I am intentionally not giving my players any permenant magical items at the moment just scrolls, potions and single use items. One reason being that in a previous campaign I played in the game became completely overshadowed by the magic items the characters carried. To some extent it became that we were playing the equipment list not the characters. The other reason is that single use items force the characters to make choices. The item is used now or later but it cannot be used both ways. The only items that have are healing, the most powerful of which is a scroll of life giving, a single use bring a dead character back option. I like that one because it gives me the option of killing a character and knowing that it wil not be final.

Anyway back to the Alchemist’s tomb. I cannot tell you the actually trap/puzzle I intend to use as I am sure my players read the blog. What I have said here is not a spoiler for them as they have already know to expect something and its size and positioning will tell them exctly what it is when they see it.

Going right back to the beginning I have noticed now that in every D&D module I have converted over to Rolemaster I have removed either traps I think are immature or monsters that I simply cannot believe could have evolved or anyone would have created. The very first of which was the Gelatinous Cube. In the first game I ran for my players when they came upon a trap their first reaction was that “Oh this is a D&D adventure it wil be filled with silly traps.” It also brought out anecdotes about dungeons that had been ‘abandoned for centuries’ with corridors filled with locked doors behind which were two hobgoblins. How did they get there? Who fed them for the past 200 years? What were they waiting for? Needless to say I very quickly scanned through the adventure for any such room or other silly traps and I didn’t find any, thankfully.

Assuming we all started roleplaying with D&D back in the 70s and 80s we must have been much more accepting then or is it that I am now much more intolerant?

Get into Character

In Brian’s post [Shadow World Deux ex machina: Gods or Loremasters?] he mentions ‘time-strapped GMs have to rely even more on prepared materials and modules’. It is not only us poor GMs that  don’t have the time that we used to. As you all probably know I am one of those GMs that only gets to game a few times a year when the gang all gets back together. It is hard for my players to get into character at the drop of a hat if they haven’t played the character for four months or more.

To that end I have been asking around (mainly on twitter) about ideas to make this quicker and easier. My ‘plan A’ is the “First impression post-it” before I explain I will give you a little background.

I used to play in a MERP game (playing the same character for about 20 years and reaching 33rd level), that GM and the GM of a game that I am going to start playing in next week both use a three page questionnaire about your characters strengths, weaknesses, what they would sell their soul for and their deepest desires. A sort of PC SWOT analysis. I always hated them and still do. When I first create the character I don’t really know these things about him or her (normally him as I never play female characters having never been female and before you ask I don’t play elves either!). When I did have to fill one out for a newish character I wanted to change some of the answers after a few months of play and the GM said I couldn’t as he had used the answers in weaving the plot. I think 10 out of 10 for integrating the character into the game world but a big fat zero for character development.

Anyway, I don’t like these SWOT analysis forms because for new characters they either seem to end up very similar or very shallow or worst of all not reflecting the character that the player is actually playing. I suspect (and know in my case) that they are written and forgotten by the players.

I have been using first impression post-it notes for NPCs for a while. The idea is to create a sentence or two (no more than can fit on a post-it note) to describe the first impression that a character creates. Is he calm? flustered? charming? Do they speak with a booming school masters voice or a soft rural brogue? These help me get into the NPCs role quickly and keeps the NPC consistent across meetings. Bear in mind that in the players first adventure it took two human years for them to complete a small cave complex adventure.

If there are three gate guards, an old hand and two green recruits then a single note with the three names and maybe a two word description may be enough (Cyril:Sargent-major strict, Oswald:Cocky/swaggering, Bjorn:Scatter brained and untidy). Every time you exit via that gate you get one or more of the same guards and the players may even plan their escapades for then Bjorn is on duty because he suits their needs, but at least every time they meet they will be consistent.

Below is the post-it from one of my NPCs (I apologise for my handwriting, this is low tech roleplaying!). You could I hope take that post-it and character sheet and run with it.

20160411_145647

The nice thing about post-it notes of course is that they are note a three page questionnaire, you are not giving away the deepest secrets of your characters background, should you happen to leave it at the game table while you go an get a beer and another player reads it.

I am only recording that first impression not a full psychological profile.

I am going to get my players to do these for their characters before the start of the next session. That way every time they open their mouths whilst ‘in character’ if what they say or how they say it should be in alignment with what is written on they post-it.

They can of course screw it up, toss it in the recycling and write out a new one. I had a character that was extremely happy go lucky until he was the sole survivor of a near total party wipeout. For him the adventure was no longer fun it became a grim reality pretty damn quick. That would be a new post-it moment!

How this works with real live players I don’t know yet but I will let you know. What is happening increasingly at the moment is that my players are playing themselves for most of the weekend which is not really the point of the game or where is the escapism in that?

Where Next in 2016?

The problem I have is this. I want to write about Rolemaster in general, the games I am running (Rolemaster Classic), the new Rolemaster (Rolemaster Unified), the Forgotten Realms, the new world of Aioskoru and I want to produce more actually playable adventures. I try and publish two posts a week and right now I am even failing to write that much. There is such a thing as being stead too thin and that is me right now.

I have recently bought both HARP Fantasy and HARP SF and I would like to get into those as well. I also have a face to face game weekend come up.

I think I am going to slow down a little and commit to producing one post a week but try and make it more substantial. The RMU side of things should go quiet for the time being as they are producing the final draft. That alone make all the current discussions in the Beta forums irrelevant as they are now discussing rules that will not exist.

The game I am running (Rolemaster Classic) and the Forgotten Realms side of things are pretty much one and the same for me and Aioskoru is game independent as it is purely a setting.

The single most useful thing I can do is produce the playable content. All memebers of the Rolemaster community can use that and there is very little of it out their on the web. If I make it fit in nicely with the Aoiskoru region I am working on I can tick more than one box at once with that.

I think you can also expect a bit more of a nautical theme going on as I am quite interested in seabourne adventures. So that is it. 2016 is going to bring more adventures. Next time (I am already working on this) I will share a ship with deck plans that will become the basis for a series of adventures. So until then have fun!

All of my Aioskoru content is made available under the Open Gaming License.

How do you like them odds?

The party in my table top game, you probably know, are a cleric, sorceress, warrior mage, elemental warrior and a mystic. In game terms the best fighters are actually semi spell users plus we have two hybrids and a pure spell user. The cleric and mystic are at present fulfilling the role of healer because they have no dedicated healer as such. The cleric can do magical healing and the mystic is the best herbalist.

In the last weekend the party had the option of taking the safe way around the woods or the dangerous way though the woods. No the party would not be real adventurers if they took the safe route would they?

Only a day in to the forest they came across the burnt remains of a wagon caravan and a little way off their slaughtered horses. They also managed to alert a couple of scouts looking for fresh victims. The party killed one but another escaped.

The banditry this time was being done by kobolds. I rather wanted to see how the party would fair against superior numbers. As characters they have not had much time to gell together and work out decent tactics and they had not really done much fighting yet either.

So half a dozen kobolds started to match pace with the party to the left of the road and another six to the right of the road. Seconds later two kobolds mounted on wolves broke cover ahead of the party and faced them down the road. The kobolds at this point had every intention to negotiate. Pitched battles were not their thing and being paid off to not fight suited them down to the ground.

Negotiation was not on the parties agenda. The lead kobold did not even get a chance to give his ultimatum. The warrior mage fired a sleep spell up the road. The cleric summoned a large crocodile and dropped it in amongst the kobold file on the left and the sorceress case vacuum amongst the kobolds to the right.

So at the start of the battle the five characters are facing 14 kobolds plus two wolves. Three to one odds in Rolemaster are not good odds to have against you.

I had told the players the wolf riders were about 100′ up the road and Surion the warrior mage announced he was going to cast sleep. (range 100′). I decided the range would be 90+2d10 feet and luckily for him they fell just inside the range. Not so luckily they made their resistance rolls.

The vacuum spell was more effective. It stunned three of the kobolds on one flank. It didn’t take any of them out but the kobolds were armed with light crossbows and it comletely disrupted their volley of bolts turning it into some sporadic fire.

On the other side of the track the crocodile landed amongst the kobolds and that drew most of their fire and certainly upset them.

Now we had the gods turn against the party. The warrior mage and the elemental warrior are actually doing OK. Another sleep spell goes off and takes out a the wolf riders. The elemental warroir is crashing through the undergrowth to engage the kobolds axe in one hand and sword in the other. The sorceress fumbles her spell casting roll but fortuneately only fails to cast the spell but keeps her power points. The cleric doesn’t bother trying to control the crocodile, just lets it do its thing now the kobolds are fighting it and decided to try and summon a second one to fight along side them. Bolts fly into the camp and one buries itself deeply into the clerics chest ad he is gushing blood.

The warriors try and chase down kobolds who are not really up for a fight against heavily armed and armoured warriors. Some of the previously stunned kobolds start to recover and loose off their crossbow bolts. The mystic decides to do her Florence Nightingale act and needs to get that bold out of the cleric so they can stop the bleeding. The cleric had just summoned a second large crocodile directly in front of himself which is now uncontrolled maybe it was the scent of blood or maybe it was a random dice roll but whatever the reason the croc turns on its summoner and starts snapping at the poor old cleric. the sorceress fails to cast another vacuum spell. Fast casting while low level is proving to be a challenge. The next crossbow bolt flying into camp and takes out the mystic transfixing her arm and pinning it to her chest.

The cleric is now losing blood in gushes, he is desperately trying to get control of his crocodile. The sorceress fails to case a third vacuum spell! The croc in the woods is doing terribly as well but it is at least keeping the enemy on that side pinned down. Another sleep spell does off and more kobolds fall and the warriors are fully in melee now. This is where the kobolds lack of armour and physical hardiness tell against them. Finally the sorceress gets a vacuum spell to fire and she stuns and wounds a couple of kobolds.

So the fight went on. The mystic shook off the stun from the hit on her and she managed to get some healing sove on to the clerics wound just before he colapsed. The sorceress gave up trying to kill kobolds, I think due to a lack of power points, and joined the cleric and the mystic. The mystic was bleeding heavily and so everyone was trying to first aid everyone else and the few herbs that were easily appliable were used up. It took four rounds I think for the cleric to finally get full control of the crocodile and at that point the kobolds were pretty much broken. Their tactic of striking from three sides with wave after wave of bolts obviously was not working and fighting what appeared to be heavily armed wizards (from the kobolds point of view) was not in the plan.

At the end of the fight I think only four kobolds got away alive. It cost the party dear in herbs and they were largely drained of magic to boot. It doesn’t hurt to hit the party hard, even in a casual encounter eespecially this early in their careers. It will I hope make them gell better as a team and it helps them figure out their limits. For me as GM the kobolds were on a par OB and DB-wise with the weakest members of the party and well below the ability of the warriors. The kobolds were two levels lower than the party members which should have given the party the edge in terms of resistance rolls. It also set the precident of fighting many foes from many directions which is something I like to do.

All in all I think it was a good fight and a good test of their abilities. The encounter was also converted over from a Forgotten Realms encounter and for once I did not tone down the numbers of creatures.

That was just a causual encounter next time we meet they should be gettng stuck in to their first real adventure!

I cannot help but be impressed by the RMU Dev Team

Rolemaster Unified Character Law Cover

Firstly I do not envy the dev team on bit. If you have a hard core player community that have ben playing the same game pretty much for 30 years or more and then you wan tto come along and ‘improve’ it then you are on a hiding to nothing in my opinion.

Now I think I am a pretty reasonable guy, I know and love RM2 (which is obviously and clearly the best version of Rolemaster every written and I am not in the slightest bit biased at all) but I have bought and embraced RMC and I can see it is an improvement. I have bought HARP and I can see good things in that as well. Rolemaster Unified on the other handis a pretty big departure from what has gone before.

The public beta testing is mostly been carried out by that hardcore community which I am not sure is a good thing. We are all too opinionated if you aks me. If you follow the discussions they are 1% reported issue and 99% suggested fixes with two or more arm chair designers expounding on their own vision of how the game should be played.

What has impressed me though is the number of, and the speed with which it seems to happen, changes the dev team are prepared to make.  One would have thought that even prior to play test the devs would have had a fairly well developed concept of what the game should lok and play like. To accept the level of change they have speaks very highly of them I think. I know damn well they will not please all of the members of the community ut that was never going to be possible and I am pretty sure they knew that. There were two bits of RMU I didn’t like and one has been changed and the other is pretty minor and I will either learn to live with it or ignore it.

The best thing from my personal point of view is that without RMU I would never have discovered HARP. I knew it existed of course but I would never have bought into the rules. I want to buy myself HARP SF next but that is another story.