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Once Upon A Bard

The game I am a player in at the moment has a Bard in the party. There are three important facts about this party/game that you should know. The first is that we are still what the GM calls low level, the party is 4th to 7th level. The GM is using accelerated leveling so we seem to be jumping a level or two for every about 10hrs of play. The second thing is that this is a very high magic world. Even peasants in the fields can cast cantrips and almost every family has a caster that knows at least one list and the first level spell. Finally, there seems to be a lot of role confusion in the party.

I will deal with the role confusion firstly.

The party is made up of a Magician who dresses like a barbarian, kilt and claymore, the whole chebang. That is how we met him and at first level our OB/DB combinations were so low that he could easily have been a real warrior/barbarian. The player is one of those that bought a rank in his claymore at 0th or maybe 1st level and has not touched the skill since. The player is one of those that has to grab every possible magic item for themselves. Much to other party members displeasure, he is hoarding a magical ring and sword that give a total OB bonus of +50. His total OB is probably +60 now. I think he is 5th level and has ~30PP.

We have a Noble Warrior. Also about 5th level, chainmail hauberk, sword and shield or a big old two-handed mace. He really, really wanted that sword and ring! I haven’t seen much magic from this character beyond the occasional Shield spell.

Me, my character is a 7th level lay healer. I am learning plate armour (AT17), I wield a spear, with shield most of the time. I have an OB of +48 (two-handed) or +28 one-handed. I am capable at Adrenal moves strength and speed with total bonuses of about +50 in each. I have more powerpoints than you can shake a stick at from background options and a multiplier.

The Bard. Our bard is wearing chain 13, uses a sword and is growing into his magic. I believe he has only just hit 4th level. He is lagging behind because he missed a couple of game sessions and was NPCd by the GM and picked up less exp during those sessions.

The role confusion comes from the magician looking like a barbarian, having the highest OB and only magical weapon in the party but being fight shy. The character talks the talk but when it comes to the action he wants to be as far away from the nasty monsters as possible. In our last fight against a particularly nasty and bigger than normal wyvern we wall charged in to save the innocent bystander but at the last minute the magician used Leaping to jump out of the combat and back out of danger.

The bard in this battle tried Calm Song but without success. He then spent a couple of rounds after the battle had started to get behind the Wyvern during which time he had both Shield and Blur) Attack Avoidance and either Cloaking or Brilliance lists. He then entered melee using position and magic to aid him.

Our bard seems to have just enough DPs to be able to pick up both some of his base lists and a couple of Open Mentalism lists. What he is lacking is anything overtly offensive. As a character, he was fully engaged in the combat.

Out of combat, he does have a lot of options and is one of the most useful characters. We are on a long ol’ quest and city hopping with long journeys in between. The noble warrior just seems to see the cities as R&R locations. The mage is turning into a pretty one-dimensional artillery piece. It is in these city sessions that the bard shines as our major source of information and of reputation.

From the players point of view his main complaint about the profession is that he feels inactive a lot of the time as he has to keep playing/concentrating to maintain his spell effects. He described it as prep, prep fail, prep, prep succeed, do nothing. It doesn’t help that he is the lowest level party member. I already have some spells I can snap off in a single round as I am now 7th level. I also get subconscious spells so even when stunned I am still doing stuff. I can un-stun myself, I can clot wounds and I can heal.

The player is mitigating this by buying up more non-bard lists to give himself more options. The Bardic lists that he has don’t get particularly useful until 5th level, when the effects start to last after the song ends. I would have said that all of the bardic lists ramp up from this point onwards. The open mentalism lists, in contrast, are giving him utility, more instant cast spells and a least a few subconscious spells. I can see why he may be seeing them as more immediately useful.

I think this is a shame. The character is from a supposedly affluent background, attended the best musical colleges so the backstreet thief style bard does not really suit. Combat boosts are not particularly fitting either.

If I was going to give the character a boost I would possibly consider something along the lines of reading people and body language. An Anticipations List based upon being able to see the person you are trying to anticipate the actions of. This could have combat and social uses. It would fit in with the social element of the bard and also with their mentalism realm. A first-level spell that gave a small boost to either OB or DB because you could anticipate your opponent’s action would not be overpowered or out of character with the profession. These could ramp up and be used in more situations as the list progressed. I would also see these as instant spells so the bard’s magic would be useful to them right from 1st level.

This just needs the GMs approval, a DP investment and time for the character to do the research. That is what I would do.

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Three Tales of Ranger Magic.

Several days ago, Peter blogged about the Ranger and then Hurin responded with his own blog post and thoughts on the Ranger. Since they both weighed in, how I could resist not adding my own ideas on the Ranger! Since there have been two previous posts, why not “Three Tales of the Ranger”? ( a subtle reference to the writings of Elor Once Dark and the three tales of Tor’lan p. 26)?

Peter. First let me tackle a few items from their posts. Peter, while you titled it regarding RMU, you also needed to drag in a 20 year old spell list from RM Companion to flesh out the Ranger. Fair enough, but that allows me to utilize other non-RMU spell lists for my own Ranger build! Yes?

Hurin. Welcome to the club! While you fully didn’t embrace “no-profession” in your post, you clearly embraced the spirit of flexible chargen. Your story about your Thief character that had convincingly played as a “Scout”, “Ranger” and even a “Paladin” is great anecdotal evidence that skills define the character and not an arbitrary profession designation! If your Thief was spending DP’s on spells, transcend armor and other non-core skills is he really a Thief? I also appreciate your eagerness to adopt Mentalism or Essence realms to build your ideal character. With some type of no-profession philosophy you can build whatever type of PC you want; and call him whatever you want. You didn’t transcend armor, you transcended class tropes! Congrats!

While I don’t use standard professions and build off a profession DP template, it’s easy to build a “Ranger” in my ruleset. Not only build a “Ranger”, but virtually any type of Ranger or subclass concept the player wants. However, I’m not going to dive into skill minutia, but instead define a Ranger via spell lists as Peter and Hurin have done. Luckily, I have a whole slew of non-ICE spells to choose from, that were designed for exactly this type of flexibility: BASiL Channeling! And guess what–they are non system, general d100 spells that could be PUBLISHED shortly for any d100 system.

But wait, doesn’t that conflict with some game company IP? NO.

RMU RANGER LISTS.

First, I wanted to address my personal issues with RMU Spell Law/Ranger lists. These are my opinions, not mean to be criticism since RMU was meant to be the gentle arbiter of all RM and ICE conflict.

Beastly Ways. Generally I think this is a great list and improvement from RM Spell Law. First, I’m not sure it’s “Ranger” spell list as I conceptualize the profession. Druid? Sure. Beastmaster? Absolutely. Shaman. Of course. I think it needs some tinkering and I would use SW specific names (rather than Terran animals). Definitely could be treated as a Mentalism or Essence list as well.

Inner Walls. Another improved list and a good generalist list for any spell caster. I think there are some small logic errors and OOP spells: Sterilization which affects other than the caster, and Martial Wall should have some logical mechanism for it’s implementation.

Moving Ways. Great spell list and probably what I would consider the “Core” list of the Ranger concept: it has to do with travel, movement and traversal. I would tinker with it and the 50th lvl spell “Submarine Ways” is a horrible 50th level spell. (allows a 50th lvl caster to swim 50 miles w/o fatigue!!!! WOW!!!!). That should be a 10th lvl or under spell. The 35th lvl spell Distance Running should be a 5th lvl spell–especially with groups that don’t focus on fatigue mechanisms.

Nature’s Guises. Good conceptually, but really just a grab bag of ideas. Not sure what 3rd lvl “Freeze” is doing in this list (should be in a “Nature’s Manipulation” list, and “Animal Thought” is a bit of an oddity as well-That should be in “Natures Communing”). Pruned and tightened up a bit and it’s a great spell list that would work for a Ranger, Shaman, Druid or Animist–if you even think there is a needed mechanistic difference between those classes!

Pathmastery. This is another list that seems tailor made for a type of Ranger. Again, there are some outlier spells that don’t fit thematically in the list: Nature’s Tongue comes to mind. I’m also not a fan of bonus to skill spells. It just feels lazy and it undermines the value of the underlying skill itself. At third level a +50 bonus to Tracking? Why would the player even bother with taking more than a handful of tracking skill ranks at lower levels?

Survival’s Way. This is a solid spell list with some problems. Again, bonus to skill spells like the 3rd lvl Wound Tending I find problematic. How does that work? Does it bestow knowledge to the caster? Better coordination? A steady hand? Divine intervention? Also the 35th lvl Adaption should be moved to the “Inner Walls” spell list.

To be clear, these RMU Beta lists seem like a solid improvement over past Spell Law iterations. If there is a requirement for 6 base lists it will suffice. However I feel that a this archetype needs around 2-3 lists: some type of Moving Ways, Pathmaster and Survial Ways. All three RMU lists above need tweeking but certainly act as a foundation for the character trope. Looking at the remaining lists, I would combine some of the spells in Survival’s Way into Pathmastery and Inner Walls, move the Change spells into Natures Guises and Beastly Ways and maybe make a new list Natures Commune for plant/animal speech, thoughts, control and mastery.

BASiL “Ranger” Lists.

So writing this blog to the “Ranger Series” of blog posts, I hadn’t reviewed my BASiL channeling in several years (working on Mentalism final revisions). Luckily, these changes were prior to RMU Beta spell lists. I’m going back to review and revise, but this was a great opportunity to analyze them after several years!

While I purposefully didn’t organize BASiL to track with Open, Closed or Base–it’s fairly evident that it can easily follow along with this process. So for a “Ranger”, “Druid”, “Animist”, “Beastmaster”, “Pathfinder”, “Scout”, “Warden”, “Hunt Master”, “Shaman”, “Witch”, “Forest Wizard”, “Path Blazer”, “Elf”, “Liberal”, “Eco-Terrorist” or any similar ridiculous class or profession name, these are the following BASiL core spells:

Natures Guises. This is a cleaned up version we discussed above. Discarded nonconforming spells, adjusted powers to level and attempted to increase utility of ALL spells in the list (rather than meaningless placeholders.) All these spells are about concealment, disguise, misdirection etc.

Natures-GuisesDownload

Natures Lore. This spell list consolidates “Divination” style spells for the Ranger or similar class. Spells are entirely informational or predictive.

Natures-LoreDownload

Natures Defenses. This spell is purely self-reliant, with all spells about personal survival and protection vs. disease, poison, tainted food and water or extremes of temperature or elements.

Natures-DefensesDownload

I think these are CORE spells for any “Nature” style character. However, if I wanted to add some more specific powers that seem Ranger specific:

Natures Movements. This is a cleaned up and focused “movement list” for a Ranger. It covers different terrains: water, ground, air (not just a forest ranger from Tolkien!)

Nature-MovementsDownload

Locating Ways. This is meant to be the core locating power of a Ranger, Bounty Hunter (fantasy Mandalorian!), Beastmaster, Detective etc. There is a light overlap with Nature’s Lore, but far less than the overlap and redundancy of RM spell lists. None of these spells devalue, replace or simply add a bonus to RM skills.

Locating-WaysDownload

Finally: though not really “Ranger”. Weather Mastery. This is more a Druid/Animist or Nature Cleric style spell, but depending on the campaign or setting could be used by a Ranger type for some weather and elemental control.

Weather-MasteryDownload

So this is just a classic Ranger build. If you want more Tolkien I would add a lesser healing spell list, lower level weapon rune spell list or even a lesser fire law list! (all can be found on BASiL spell lists btw). If you want a more martial Ranger, I would replace a few lists with some Mentalism lists for Warriors, Monks, Disciplars, Weapon Masters, Erudites etc :

Self-ControlDownload
Self-HealingDownload
Self-ChangeDownload
Self-EnhancementDownload

So, lots of options, cleaned up spell lists, flexibility to build YOUR idea of a Ranger AND a real functional Ranger. Whatever that means to you! That is my Third Tale of the Ranger for the Rolemasterblog.com!

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Ranger Magic

Carrying on from Brian’s post on the RMu ranger it seemed fairly accepted that the way to make the Ranger stand out was through magic. I firmly agree with this. I played in a game a few years back where I had a thief character with a pretty hefty In stat bonus. I tossed 12DP into an open channeling spell list and just let it ride each level until I managed to get the list with just the one rank. The GM let us add stat bonuses to the spell gain roll so it was almost inevitable that eventually, I would get the list. Once I did get the list I put 12DP into a second list. During our adventures I had picked up a x2 Channeling multiplier which no one else could use. Being limited to 1st – 5th level spells plus quite good natural PPs/level (2 I think it was) and x2 from the item it didn’t take long for me to have so many power points that I effectively never ran out. Being a thief by profession my main emphasis was not a spell caster but being able to heal concussion hits was useful as was light’s ways.

The GM did individual experience and the more active you were in the session the more EXP you got. This lead to the mage and I being two levels higher than the rest of the party when they reached 10th and I was 23rd level before the fighter reached 20th. By that time I had 5 spell lists.

Almost everyone in the party thought I was a ranger. I played the character as a scout rather than an actual thief and that made me quite outdoorsy and then with magic on top the natural conclusion was that I was a ranger.

In my last four or five levels I actually learned transcend armour and plate AT17 and started masquerading as a Paladin using much the same technique. Platemail fighter type that lays on hands, a bit of an Aura spell here and there, but that is another story.

The point is that the thing that made the character stand out amongst his peers, and made people think he was a Ranger was the magic.

Image via Wizards of the Coast Magic: The Gathering

It was suggested that the Ranger could be an Essence semi, or a Mentalism semi profession. Part of the problem is that we each have very different ideas of what a Ranger actually is. Is it Aragorn, Robin Hood or Lawrence of Arabia? Primarily an archer or are they a commando built for stealth and up close hand to hand fighting?

If we start to make wood/forest/tree type spells for the profession do we cripple it for desert or nautical settings?

Does swapping the realm take away as much as it solves?

I was flicking through Companion One looking for some inspiration and I lighted upon the Arcane lists. Just using the small selection of arcane lists in RoCoI they would make a great ranger. The only one that is potentially borderline is Mana Fires but even then I can see a ranger being the one that instinctively saves people by using fire to drive away wild beasts.

Could the fact that the Ranger seems to be a natural fit for every realm not point to the solution that they are naturally every realm?

I would be very inclined to allow a Ranger to swap out one or even two of the RAW Ranger base lists with one or two of the RoCoI Arcane lists and treat them as if they were Channeling lists for casting restrictions. The enforced choice also means that we would get some very different Ranger builds.

Take a look and see what you think of an Arcane-ish Ranger. Would you want to play it?

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RMU: Rehabilitating the Ranger

I confess I’ve never really liked the Ranger in Rolemaster. It’s not that I dislike the archetype: who wouldn’t want to be Robin Hood, Legolas, or Drizzt? The problem lies in the implementation.

The RM2 Ranger had a great set of utility spells (to help with Stalking and Hiding, Movement, survival in the wilderness, etc.), but very little that buffed him in combat; indeed, a fighter was better than a Ranger with a bow. Shouldn’t Robin Hood be better with a bow than Lancelot? Also, many of the Ranger’s spells were also duplicated, in stronger or weaker versions, on the Open and Closed Channeling lists, so there wasn’t very much that was unique. Nor is Rolemaster alone in having an underwhelming Ranger: D&D has missed the mark sometimes too. While the 4e version of the Ranger was strong, the 5e version has been one of the most severely criticized aspects of 5e, and Wizards has tried several times to use supplemental material to fix the class. Opinion on it is still quite mixed.

So how can we revive the Ranger? I would say the key is adding and modifying the Ranger Base spells. These are easier to distinguish than other aspects of a class, because in Rolemaster, other classes can buy the same weapon skills and wilderness skills and even Ambush too. The spells, though, are unique.

I am happy to report that RMu has added a new spell list for Rangers (Beastly Ways) that is quite good, especially in its higher level spells. The Ranger uses these spells to mimic creatures: Rabbit Reflexes give a bonus to initiative, while Boar Strength gives a big strength buff, for example.

The new RMu Ranger list is both useful and flavorful, but one thing is still lacking: a list to buff his bow. Happily, supplements and later editions to Rolemaster do point the way to our Holy Grail. I direct your attention first and foremost to the list Wyrd Bow, published in the Guild Companion in 2000. This list is based on the Druid’s own Druidstaff (RMCompanion I), but adapted to fit the Ranger: http://www.guildcompanion.com/scrolls/2000/jun/wyrdbow.html . This list provides a number of strong buffs: it gives a bonus to the bow, turns it into a spell adder, and enables trick shots, quick loading, and extended ranges. Now there’s a Ranger I could get behind – and definitely would not want to get in front of!

Given that the Wyrd Bow list is based on a Druid list that some consider overly powerful, I would recommend toning down some of the spells on the list, especially the first level spell, ‘Minor Bow’. This turns the bow into a +10 magical bow, but if it is ever destroyed, the caster is at -35 for 1-4 weeks. Ouch. That’s too strong for my tastes, and the downside is also too punishing, so I would recommend toning down both the benefit and the malus. How about we make it just a +5 magical bow, and substitute the destroyed clause for just saying the caster can only have one Wyrd Bow attuned?

The Channeling Companion also offers some Priest lists that would help beef up the Ranger. Hunting Mastery gives the all-important low level combat buff (Aiming), while The Hunter gives the RM Ranger a D&D-style favored enemy, against which his attacks hit harder. Either or both would be welcome additions to the Ranger’s quiver.

So what do you think? Does the Rolemaster Ranger do it for you? What changes would you make to the class?

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My Angel is Bigger Than Your Angel

Some artwork © Grim Press, used with permission. All rights reserved.

In December I wrote an encounter. The gist of it was that the characters come across an angel trying to deliver a message to some shepherds but the angel gets attacked by some big tough demons. The characters get to make the choice to intervene or not, if the angel is defeated it will try to pass on its message for the characters to deliver, and so on.

D&D has celestials as a type of monster, big tough angels. Rolemaster doesn’t have them or if it does I had an absolute failure in my research skill roll when looking for them.

In place of the missing celestial stats I used the stats for an Oriental Dragon and just changed the physical form factor to that of an Angel and tweaked the odd ability here or there. I was pretty pleased with the result.

The oriental dragon version of the angel was not my first choice. I started out by making a Hira’razhir cleric but their default level is only 3rd and that was not the sort of thing I was looking for in this encounter. I could have leveled up the Hira’razhir cleric but that was too much effort (I am extremely lazy).

All through this my thinking is very much RM2/RMC. I am 100% sure that the same effects could be achieved with RMSS/FRP and even more so with RMu with its archetypes and seven million talents. What I wanted could just as easily be botched, jury-rigged or finely crafted. Whether the end results would be any different depending on the route you took is open to debate.

The positive thing is that both options are available. The GMs that like to handcraft every encounter can be satisfied by taking a Hira’razhir and giving it a profession, all the racial stat modifiers are in C&T to roll up your NPC with the full profession and spell lists and everything that goes with it.

Equally, I could tweak a stat here, an ability there and change the physical description and the encounter was good to go.

Could I have done the same thing in D&D? I am not sure both options are available. The botch and make it up is definitely an option. Creating a monster strictly adhering to the monster design rules, I am not sure if they exist. My D&D experience ends with AD&D and Basic/Expert so I am drawing on a distant and outdated set of knowledge.

A few years ago I was involved in editing a version of the 5e SRD and at that time I honestly do not remember seeing monster creation rules in the book. That could just mean that they are not part of the SRD.

So I know I can easily botch, jury-rig and craft a monster in RM. What about competing systems?

RuneQuest

RuneQuest uses the concept that every creature can be a player character and as such, they are all customizable. Creating unique monsters is catered for in the rules. In addition, RuneQuest uses a skill shorthand, such as a single figure to use for all skill tests, Ogres get 20% in all skills except the few that really define their orgrishness. Having these rules of thumb or shorthand techniques makes botching something up quickly a viable option.

Zweihander

Zwei has two approaches. The first is treating all similar creatures as one. A Man Eater could be a lion, tiger, wolf or whatever. The basic stats do not change, just the visual appearance to the characters. You can have half a dozen basic templates and cover the entire natural animal kingdom. The same approach is taken with monstrous things. They are split into broad categories and from them you can dress them up as you like. Zwei also has a full cast of truly unique creatures, the same as any system but the general approach is that the role play trumps the need for unique stats for everything.

The second approach is found in the companion Main Gauche. In this book, you get a blank template and all the rules necessary to make any monster. These are the same rules used to create the stats for the core rules.

Zwei leads with botch it but backs that up with fully customizable monsters using a rules-driven process. A unique monster takes about 20-40 minutes if you have to read as you go.

Chivalry & Sorcery

One of the cornerstones of C&S is that Monsters are people too. What that means in practice is that they are just as customizable as player characters. Think of them as NPCs.

It may just be my lack of experience with the rules but I found this the slowest game to create a unique monster in. It may get quicker over time but or it may just have been me. I fact is that the rules for customization are there.

vsDarkmaster

It is so long since I have read these rules that I could not fairly compare them. I also read an early beta rather than the finalised rules. What I am expecting though is no more trouble than RM presented. They share the same DNA and when I have compared monsters across systems before there was barely any difference, a few points of DB here and a few points of DB there.

Conclusions?

What I was hoping to find was that RM was more flexible than most. RM has always prided itself on its modular design and how everything is tweakable. It turns out that all the d100 systems I looked at offer the same flexibility. Some wanted you to go down the rules driven route while others were happy to promote the botch it and see method. Which is ‘best’ is a personal GMing style question.

Is this a function of the d100 system? If everything is operating on the same general scale does it lend itself to tweaking the figures?

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An Interesting Start

Is it the butterfly effect where some small event begins a chain of events with significantly bigger but unforeseen consequences?

I cannot even remember the conversation that started it but I ended up emailing back and forth with Ken Wickham, from the ICE forums and trying out his super light ABS12 game system. Ken got me talking about 3Deep, my vanity project d6 system and I sent him a very rough first draft of the rules. Prior to that, it ran entirely from my memory as it was written by me for me.

One thing lead to another and I published 3Deep as PDF and Print on Demand, I then, at Ken’s suggestion, bundled up some blog posts and started selling them. The idea of selling collected blog posts turned into the fanzine and today I have released the 33rd monthly issue.

Enter Brian Hanson and Egcdld on to the scene and we started doing the 50 in 50 adventures. From there I started adventure and supplement writing as a serious hobby. All the while I kept up this blog. Sometimes it settles back to an easy once a week, sometimes it ramps up to a more exciting a blog a day for a special event.

Finding things to write about, week in week out for years is sometimes a challenge. I saw a really nice series of blog posts by Jeremy Friesen called Let’s read “Stars Without Number”. Rather than a book review Jeremy dedicated a blog post per chapter and did a really detailed look at the rulebook. This appealed to me. I don’t like reviewing things I haven’t played as a single blog post. It hardly seems fair to take years of someone’s work and reduce it down to 500 words, spout an opinion on it, having never actually used it in the way it was written to be used, i.e. playing the game. The Let’s Read idea solved that problem. Yes, I may not have played a game but I am not glossing over most of it in just 500 words, here are 6,000 words over two months showing I have really read your work. It also serves the purpose of I know what I am going to write about for the next two months when I take on one of these extended Let’s Read projects.

Let’s Read lead to a read-through of Zweihander. That, in turn, lead to me starting to write supplements and adventures for that system. This was at the beginning of 2019. In the same way that I can be rather prolific on this blog, I can also be rather prolific on Discord and I am an active member on the Zwei (or Grim & Perilous) discord server.

I have always loved collaborating with people, think back to the 50 in 50 adventures, and in the Zwei dicord I put together collaborative projects know as the Grim & Perilous Book of … Where the last word was one of Chases, Murder or Monster. The basic idea was to get people teetering on the brink of becoming publishers to take the first step. Rather than take on an entire project or adventure module on their own, they could submit a single scene, monster or encounter to the collaborative project. It was an easy point of entry to publishing and I paid everyone on a royalty basis managed by DriveThruRPG.

I believe the three books I pushed forward are all silver best sellers or on the cusp of gaining their silver badge. My best selling supplement for Zwei is an Electrum best seller today but not far off of a Gold best-seller medal.

Zwei became my testbed for Rolemaster projects. They have so much in common, gritty d100, skill based and simulationist with an emphasis on actual wounds over hit points of damage. They use an AP based combat round and there are dozens of other points of similarity. This is not unusual. If you want to write a gritty simulationist d100 fantasy RPG you are starting at the same point and using the same tools. At the end of the process, you are never going to be that far from the same destination.

My interest in publishing continues to grow. I have published 3Deep as PDF and Print on Demand (POD), Devil’s Staircase was successfully crowdfunded and published both as PDF and POD. Navigator RPG is in playtest (and looking good) with a new version of the playtest document nearly ready to upload and finally a new game The Things That Grown Ups Cannot See [Things!] is being proofed and edited prior to its playtest release.

Things! is another collaborative project with the writers drawn from the Zweihander creator community.

On Friday the creator of Zweihander and I had a Skype call and he offered me the chance of becoming Art Director of Grim & Perilous Studios, responsible for the POD products for the Grim & Perilous Studios Community Content Program, known as the Grim & Perilous Library.

This puts me in a funny old position. I have always ‘goaded’ ICE with the point that as a private individual I could do X, Y and Z. I wanted to see more access for 3rd party ‘indie’ publishers, ideally a community content program. I have repeatedly tried to purchase an official license to write for RM but with no success. The attempts on the forums to create an adventure path have faltered and appear to have died, but in the fanzine I have written one to the best of my ability. The Guild Companion has faltered and gone the way of the Norwegian Blue, but this blog is still going strong and puts out more free content than the Companion has managed for several years now. The Guild Adventurer managed 4 issues in about 7 years. The fanzine has run to 33 issues so far.

I have produced two adventures, The Jungle Collection is a standalone adventure module, and Plague, Famine & War is a four-part mini-campaign. If ICE had a Community Content Program they would have earned money of every single sale.

I cannot help but think, if this is one person, what could two, three or ten people do?

Now, I will be helping people to achieve everything I have always wanted to achieve but for a game system that could be the death knell for Rolemaster as a viable game system.

None of us are ever going to stop playing it. I am not suggesting that. I mean we are all getting older, players will inevitably drift away, groups break up, old GMs and players die off. There must be countless players who would want to play RM but the only game in town is 5e. Without new blood where do new customers come from? Without customers, where is the community? Who is going to drive RM forward into the 2020s and 2030s?

Zweihander has that community, it has that following. As more games go to PDF and POD only, Zwei has gone the other way and you can buy it in bookstores all over the place. Every month that goes by does not put RMu in a stronger position. It is odd to be enjoying the success and dynamism of Zwei but deep down knowing that this is what RM should be doing.

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Happy New Year!

I hope 2020 pans out to be a good year for everyone.

I have to say that I am a little disappointed that we didn’t see RMu released in 2019. I am not that surprised but I am disappointed. If the game was close to release I would have expected to see a ramping up of marketing and promotion activities. There are so many places to get exposure these days. I am basically a nobody in the gaming world and even I get multiple offers to be interviewed or join discussion panels for podcasts and discord live chats every month. Prior to the release of RMu, I would expect to see Nicholas everywhere!

I also expect to see a review copy as or before RMu hits the (virtual) shelves. It would be ironic if it ends up that I have done 10 part read through reviews of HARP (which is old) and Zweihander (which is a direct competitor as a gritty d100 setting neutral RPG) but don’t get to review RMu which is the lifeblood of the blog going forward from 2020 onwards.

If you have been reading the blog fanzine in 2019 you will know I have been writing an RMu adventure path. That went from the first encounter to a climactic finale in 2019. In 2020 I am building that outwards, adding side quests and more setting information. The intention is to make it less railroady and give GMs more options. The January issue looks at Halfling culture in my south Asian setting and adds in halfling related side quests.

2020 also looks like it is being targetted by a resurgent RuneQuest. They are pushing their creator resources and kickstarting (figuratively) their Community Content Programme. Chaosium has also run discounts on Call of Cthulhu core rules. If there is a resurgence in interest in the 1980s brands, this could be a good thing for Rolemaster. The difficulty is that it could also mean that between Zwei and RuneQuest, how many d100 systems does a gamer need and if RQ is first to market will that have scratched the retro itch before RMu gets a chance?

It also calls into question the multi-core book model. RuneQuest is offered as a single volume complete system for under $30 and Zwei does the same for under $40. The RQ free quickstart has even won and ENNIE award for the best free product. I do worry that the price of entry into the RM world could be too high. I look forward to seeing Nicholas’s plans for the launch of RMu.

It feels like my Rolemaster life is all on hold waiting for RMu. My game and my playing aren’t scheduled until February, and January can seem like a long, dark month. I think we should all send positive thoughts to Nicholas’s way and hope that the editing passes all go smoothly. I don’t want to be writing a whistful post about the imminent arrival of RMu this time next year.

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Thank God it is them and not you!

That is one of the lyrics from the Band Aid/Live Aid song “Do they Know Its Christmas?”

Even first level characters wield more power than your typical villager and the party even more so. The typical party is an independent group with a broad skillset and more often than not magical support.

There are a whole class of adventures that start with the characters trying to assist with some kind of humanitarian disaster, fire, flood, disease, and so on.

Frequently, the adventure then progresses to the party finding the root cause, normally a villains nefarious plan, and defeating it. Adventure solved.

Some of these adventures can dispense with the dastardly villain. If you have an evolving or degenerating situation, a town or city wide fire is a great example, the disaster itself can up the drama and risks and challenges.

As a GM, we can plot a timeline of probable events. If the disaster was a fire you could plot in the start of an organised bucket chain as the towns folk try to fight the fire, a stampede down narrow streets from animals that had spooked and are fleeing the fire. The collapse of the main temple roof sending burning debris high into the air and starting food fires all over town. The burning and collapse of a bridge cutting off the escape of half the town. You can have set plays you can apply anywhere or any time to action flags, a child cut off in an upstairs room, an person pinned down by a burning roof beam, nuns or priestesses trapped in a burning church.

You can build an entire dramatic adventure around this sort of scene. There are many challenges, opportunities for skill checks and magic use but no need for combat, you still get to inflict burn criticals and fall crush attacks (with secondary burn criticals if you want to be mean) so you can have an existential threat to your characters but no need to have an actual fight.

We could now set this entire disaster in a town during a winter religious festival, which is why so many people are crammed into the town, no room at the inn…

You can end the adventure with the characters being praised as being real heroes, assuming they deserve it. You can top it off with the surviving townsfolk giving the characters gifts as a thank you for their efforts. Maybe Tiny Tim, the child rescued from the burning house, has carved a little wooden action figure of his benefactor and wants to give it to him or her as a thank you.

Who would have thought you could make the medieval version of Towering Inferno into a nice little ‘feel good’ Christmas adventure session?

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RMu Steampunk?

I have a desire to do something Steampunky and I was thinking about how would one do this?

I was looking at the image above and thought how would I run that in the session. I came up with two approaches.

Many Monsters

This approach gives the GM the greatest amount of variety. let me take that giant scorpion machine and build it this way. Take a Gemsting from Creature Law (or any version from C&T or C&M) apply the heaviest armour (AT10 for RMu and 20 for Arms Law) and apply two size level increases. For an RMC Gemsting, it would add 20 hits and double the total and add 40 to its OB, and it can ignore two levels of criticals.

Few Monsters

This approach uses only a few creature stats. We take a Golem or other construct and then add, in this case, a poison stinger and scale the thing up.

From the GM’s point of view most machines would fall into the same basic stats as there are only a limited number of constructs. For the player characters, they would still see a myriad number of different threats and creations.

Which to Choose?

Both options have strengths and drawbacks. I play with a lot of systems and see a lot of different ways of doing things. Stars Without Number, for example only has about 8 different ‘creatures’. They are defined by ecological roles or niches such as small grazers and large predators. The actual physical characteristics are either rolled or picked from a set of tables on a body part by body part basis.

It means that if you have a vision for how you want your alien threat to look you can simply pick the body parts from a list and then apply the most suitable archetype.

If you don’t know what sort of alien threat you want to can just roll on each table and build a ‘monster’.

Classic Traveller had a very similar approach. It gave you the basic game mechanics and it was up to you clothe them in a physical form to describe to your characters.

You have a limited number of possible archetypes but a near-infinite number of possible bodies.

ZWeihander has a different approach. There are a few different challenge levels, a handful of different body templates that define the monster’s stats and the challenge level tells you how many talents you may add to that creature. From then on you can pick from a menu of about 40 talents, each on adds abilities and or modifies stats. That gives you the stats and basic nature of the beast and it is then just up to you to clothe it in a suitable appearance.

D&D and all its variations and derivatives have used a great plethora of different beasts and the stats that define them are largely arbitrary. If you want a 10 hit dice hamster then there is nothing to stop you.

From the player’s side of the GM’s screen, the stats that make up a monster should not matter, but often they will. We will all have played with someone who has strategized almost every monster so they know exactly how to best hurt every creature. Which attack with which weapon or what spells in what order.

With that sort of player, the few monsters approach means that they will soon learn how to defeat all the monsters. For argument sake, if none of them can bleed or be stunned then that is going to change the choices you make for weapons and offensive spells.

The greatest threat you are ever going to meet will always be the NPC villains. They have the same options as you and are probably a higher level. NPCs do bleed and they can be stunned, at least once you get them out of their machines, in the contest. So maybe a steampunk setting would just put more emphasis on the NPCs? Machines are just machines, they have stats so we can kill them.

The more I reflect on this the more it seems that RMu and in particular Creature Law will end up being the perfect accompaniment to a steampunk setting. We have a wide range of base creatures from which to start but we also have archetypes we can use as a base. Regardless of which method we use we can apply talents that give us the abilities we want. If the thing needs wings to fly or a poison sting then we just apply the right talents.

I was hoping, originally, that this steampunk thing was going to be a Christmas one-shot. I would only need two or three threats. I could strip out all the magic (pure, semi and hybrid) professions and have the PCs are just fighters/rogues. As RMu will not be released in time I think this project may be pushed back into the new year. The sad thing is that the part I need the most is Creature Law and that has always been the least well developed of all the books we have seen to date.

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College of Calculations

This post may be a bit jumbled, I was reading, writing and the calaculations all at the same time, bouncing between HARP, Spell Law, College of Magics and my own notes.

HARP College of Magics.

This is a little bit of a weird book for HARP. It absolutely must have been intended to be part of the core rules. In the core book magicians have an upper limit for the number of spells they can learn that is greater than the number of spells in the core rules. Either it was intended that this book be compulsory or it just didn’t make the release deadline.

What is contains that excites me is a formal set of rules for spell creation and in HARP parlance, scaling.

I am not going to reproduce the rules in detail as they are clearly ICE intellectual property. I am going to work through a few examples of spell creation.

First up is Light. In Rolemaster this would be a set of spells Light I, Light II and so on.

Using Channeling as my base we get this progression.

2nd Light I
4th Light II
8th Light III
9th Utterlight I
13th Light V
15th Light X
17th Utterlight V
18th Mass Light
50th Mass Utterlight

2. Light I – Lights a 10’R area about the point touched; if the point is on a mobile object or being, it will move with the object/being. If this spell is cast onto a target, they get a RR. If the RR succeeds, the light is centered on the point where they are standing, but will not move with them. If the target fails the RR the light remains centered on the target and will follow with them until it is dispelled, or the duration ends.

Under HARP rules these are one spell with different scaling options. Here is the Light spell.

Light

PP Cost: 6
Range: Touch
Duration: 10 rounds/rank
Spell Type: Utility
RR: — Spheres: Universal
Description: Creates a small globe of light centered upon the point touched. This globe will be as bright as a torch and illuminate up to a 20’ radius area. If the point touched is mobile then the spell will move when the point is moved. The caster may vary the illumination from the maximum size down to a small point with a round of concentration.
Scaling Options:
Increase Duration (1 minute/rank) +5 PP
Increase Duration (10 minutes/rank) +6 PP
Increase Radius (up to 50’) +3 PP
Increase Radius (up to 100’) +8 PP
Utterlight (no magical darkness may exist in radius) +6 PP
Artificial Daylight (works on certain undead as sunlight) +6 PP

The most obvious difference at first glance is that:

HARP Light costs 6PP and RM Light is 2PP,

HARP Utterlight I is 18PP while RM Utterlight is 9PP

At first glance I cannot see a direct correlation between HARP PP costs and RM levels.

If we were a Magician the levels would have been slightly different.

3rd Light I
7th Light V
17th Utterlight

In this case Light I would cost 6PP and light V would be 9PP and Utterlight 18PP.

One thing to remember is that in HARP you can learn up to 3 ranks per level including 0th level. So a 6PP spell is capable of being cast at 1st level if you put 6DPs into it per level.

I had a further look at all the available spells and everything that you would consider a 1st level spell in RM cost 3PP or 4PP in HARP, with 4 being by far the more common. I think there is a built-in assumption that pure casters will be buying two ranks per level in their core spells. If we half the cost of the HARP spells (to reflect 2 ranks per level) Light becomes 2nd level (6/2 = 3 being 0th, 1st, 2nd). Utterlight would then be 18PP /2 = 9 or 8th level. This is much more in line with the Channeling list.

So what about magicians? I would have said that if you are developing spells as individual spells then a magician is much more likely to put more ranks into Lightning bolt than into Light. A progression of 1 rank per level would mean that Utterlight for a magician would come in at 17th level which is exactly what you find in RM.

Fire Bolt

I have to ask myself if I have massaged the numbers to make them fit or have I identified the underlying philosophy.

This time I am going to build an RM fire bolt using HARP rules and assume that the magician is going to spend 2 ranks per level on it. It is much more important than something like Light but not as important as Fireball or Lightning bolt.

Spells are defined by an aspect, in this case Element (Fire); a type, in this case Attack; and Attributes such as casting time, range and duration. Fire Bolt has a range of 100’. Each of these has a cost which you add up and then divide in a rather simple formula. The basic spell comes out at a cost of just 3PP but it is tiny in size. There is now an option to scale up the critical size. Fire bolts are a regular E critical type spell so I need to scale the damage up. Once I have taken all of these factors into account you end up at a 13PP spell. Using my 2 ranks per level we have a 6th level Fire Bolt. In RM it is also 6th level.

Fire Bolt III is the same as Fire Bolt I but with a 300’ range and is 11th level.

Let me scale up the HARP fire bolt and see what happens. Each additional 50’ of range adds 1PP to the spell (or half a level by my reckoning). A 300’ Fire Bolt would be 2 levels higher, or 8th level.

I think I can see the logic and the connections now.

If you had to pour 4DP into Fire Bolt to get a working spell for seven levels I think that is a major investment. On the other hand, would you continue to do the same once you have the working spell? If we assume 1 rank per level after you have a functioning spell then the levels fall back into line. In this case 10th for HARP and 11th for the RM version.

So my outline rules appear to be. Calculate level by 2DP per level for core functionality spells and one DP per level for scaled up versions of the same spell.

What that gives us is spells that will fall within a level of their RM equivalents.

What you also get is more options that you ever had before. Sure there are plenty of versions of spells there is fire bolt with a range of 100’, 300’ 500’, there is triad of flame and corner fires but the HARP rules allow you to mix and match every effect from every possible spell. What you end up with a base cost that you can then extrapolate into a level.

The rules seem pretty simple to use and easy to read.

What would be perfect is if ICE were to create a RMu version of these rules. It may be possible as they are already talking about creating a HARP to RM handbook. It would be amazing if these rules ended up in that handbook.