Category: Rolemaster

For some time now I’ve been rambling on about my modern game stuff (to the great annoyance of many, I’m sure…). Well, I thought it might be time to give people a sneak peak at some of its bits. Not much, mind. Part of an attack table, a bit of background, and one Profession with skill costs. They’re working drafts, so the formatting is a bit ‘off’ in spots and they aren’t pretty by any means. But it will give you an idea of where this is going.

Attack!

Below is a link to the AT1 column of the Pistol Attack Table for my system. Note that it’s got two lines of division: overall weapon Mark and specific calibers. Since my system allows you to determine maximum damage based on actual numbers (bullet weight and muzzle energy), some calibers are capped at that point. This does two things: shows why it’s popular to “move up” in caliber and why small caliber weapons do maximum damage more frequently. With a lower max damage, recoil penalties (modifiers to hit) don’t hurt as much.

Attack Table

Knowledge!

The next bit is a sample piece of one of the elements of my character generation system. This bit represents a generic college eduction OR four years of work experience. This is the third part of four in my character generation cycle when it comes to skills. The first two (Culture, Background – which is optional) come before this and the last piece (Entry Training) comes after. The end result is a first level character who’s MUCH more capable than normal for RM. The numbers here are skill ranks, not DPs or anything else.

Education

Jobs!

Or more to the point – how much skills cost. This is the skill cost matrix for one Profession in my espionage genre system (which is the core product). You’ll see the biggest change is assignable skill costs. Any Category that has more than three sub-skills is broken up like Combat Training. Players may assign the lowest cost to whatever skill they wish, then the next cost, and so on. The last cost goes to any remaining skills in the Category. GMs may also set some of these costs, creating an agency that prioritizes (say) Rifle training for their Direct Action operatives. That puts the lowest skill cost in Rifle. It’s a flexible, yet standardized system.

Profession

So?

Why put this out there? I’m doing it to show how the Rolemaster engine can be used in different genres. It’s also helpful to illustrate some of the things I run on about here and on the RM message board, especially when it comes to character generation and skill costs as they relate to Categories. I firmly believe you can retain elements of individual skill costs this way, and it keeps every character from looking more or less the same. Some of the reductions are small, but at lower levels that’s a big deal.

First, I did set a goal to not delve too deep into rule making for RMU or RM in the coming year. However, I do read the RM Forums and there is a ongoing discussion about additional Talents (and Flaws, though “surprisingly” those are obviously less discussed). And yes, for the purpose of this post “background options” are an interchangeable term with “talents/flaws”–to be referred as “T/F”.

There is something very proprietary about T/F–it’s a cumbersome bolt on to what I consider a pre-companion streamlined rule set. Many are one-off rules that reek of AD&D Class Abilities while others are just bonuses to reinforce a VERY specific idea of a profession/class. So what is the point of T/F’s? A few ideas:

1. T/F’s add unique abilities to characters without the GM having to muster up the energy to do it themselves.
2. T/F’s are meant to reinforce Professional Tropes.
3. T/F’s are meant to power up Level 1 characters a bit.
4. T/F’s are a bypass to increase ability outside of the normal skill acquisition/skill bonus/stat bonus/profession bonus system already established.
5. T/F’s are used to bypass skill cost restrictions to give players abilities they could not otherwise afford in skill buy.
6. T/F’s are used to min/max characters by bypassing Professional skill cost and balance issues.

Happy for anyone to add to that list, but as it stands it’s not pretty. Basically Talents are “cheat codes” pretending to be balanced with Flaws to give everyone the illusion of proper game design.

Am I too old school? Perhaps my origins in the original RM has biased me, but I’m reading forum posts and it sounds like many suggestions for Talents are just special Profession abilities similar to AD&D. Can someone adequately explain the need or justification for Talents using the same validations you use for other rule arguments?

*For purposes of disclosure, this blog is a side affect of Weller Special Reserve Bourbon.

This is obviously another Zweihänder post. I am trying to rattle through them a bit faster than I did the HARP read through for two reasons. Firstly, if you enjoy them then making you wait is not a good thing. If you don’t enjoy them then keeping them coming back for months is equally not a good thing. Personally I like to get projects over and done with, so I am keen to crack on as well.

I am going to split this post into two. The first part is the read through of chapters 5 & 6 as advertised.

The second part is more about ‘that which is Zweihänder , rather than Zweihänder itself’. By that I mean there are so many points of potential similarity between the Zwei that exists and the RMU I/we wish for that I believe that lessons can be learned. I have a cousin who is very wealthy and his money is entirely sel made (in an enterprising way not home printing sort of way, if you understand what I mean). He once said to me “If you want to earn a million pounds, don’t ask the unemployed bloke in the pub how to do it.” So learning from the example of the fastest selling game of the past three years now (if you include 2019) is probably a good analogy.

So Skills…

Below is a sample of the core skills in Zwei…

So in Zwei we have a base of 36 skills. Each of these have a number of focuses, which I thought would be Foci but I am often wrong. In RM2 many of the focuses would be individual skills in their own right. I am happy with the Zwei way as you all know that I simply do not use all those optional skills from RoCo2. Above I am looking at Athletics and I can see Climb, Row and Swim which were all definitely individual skills in our world.

If each character is getting 10 skills then you do need a party to cover most of these bases.

Where the Zwei system has less detail than the RM world is in levels of ability. A Zwei total skill bonus is made up of the governing stat or attribute on a scale of 28-55 plus your rank bonus. For a starting character that is +10 in your ten professional skills. So typically +52 in our parlance. A +10 is the Apprentice level. At journeyman level you get a further +10 and as a master you a final +10 for a total skill bonus of +30 on top of your attribute.

We are used to big skill bonuses added to small stat bonuses, this is the flip of that methodology.

The focuses can be bought as individual specialisms in addition to the base skill. If you have the particular focus you are using then you can ignore additional penalties when using the skill for that specific use.

So even if you had two characters with the same skills they can still differentiate themselves within their profession. Shockingly Focuses are not rolled randomly and assigned to you, to do get to choose them.

This is the skill listing for Perception. I have pulled this one out for the simple reason that we all know what a perception roll looks like. Just remember that a typical character has a roll under 52 (42 average Attribute and+10 for one rank in the skill) to succeed.

AWARENESS (Perception)
Awareness represents the ability to visually notice minute details and sounds, scents within the air, watch for ambushes, find hidden objects and spot contrivances designed to trap or kill. You’ll use Awareness not only to visually see, also to sense using smell, taste and touch. You may also use Awareness to estimate numbers and distances.

This Skill doesn’t allow you to see through lies, sense motives or innuendo – refer to the Scrutinize Skill in those cases. If you wish to listen in on a conversation or distinctly make something out you heard, refer to the Eavesdrop Skill instead.

SAMPLE DIFFICULTY RATINGS

• (Trivial +30%): Listen for sounds through a thin door
• (Easy +20%): Smell a distinct spice in a dish
• (Routine +10%): Spot an obvious snare
• (Standard +/-0%): Standing watch at a campfire on a clear night
• (Challenging -10%): Find someone obscured by mist or darkness
• (Hard -20%): Count a mound of treasure in under a minute
• (Arduous -30%): Spot a trap melded almost perfectly into the flagstones

Every skill is laid out the same, description and then clear examples of what falls into each difficulty rating. What I do like is that not one of the skills has a hidden game mechanic built into the skill description. They are all uniform in format and implementation.

Talents

The core book provides 72 talents. Each talent seems to produce one effect and those effects fall into two categories. The first is to give a +20 bonus to a specific skill used in a specific situation and the other is to allow the character to ignore a specific penalty in a specific situation. So ambidextrous means you ignore penalties for using the off hand, Eagle Eyes means you do not suffer range penalties at medium and long range. Housebreaker in the other hand gives a +20 to lockpicking.

Every profession comes with 3 talents and the rules imply that you can buy more but I have yet to read the section where the rules for that are presented. I guess they will be in the Reward Points rules later in the book, or I misinterpreted the part where it implied you could by more talents of course.

There isn’t much more to say about the talents, there are some that relate to magic that at this point are quite intriguing. This one I particularly like…

BLOOD MAGICK
With great practice, you have learned to bend the powers of disorder to your whim. However, every dark gift requires a sacrifice in return.

Effect: After you have made the appropriate sacrifice of an innocent creature (a beloved animal like a kitten or puppy for Petty Magick, a farm animal such as a cow or sheep for Lesser Magick or a living person like an Elf or Dwarf for Greater Magick), you can cause any one foe to automatically fail to Resist one cast Magick spell within the next 24 hours. You can only make a sacrifice like this once per day.

I knew there was a good reason for having elves in the party!

Part II

What inspired this two part blog post idea was an announcement on Zwei’s discord server this evening, and I quote:

Daniel D. Fox – Lead Designer Today at 20:15

Hey gang,

You’re probably noticing a lot of changes on our Facebook and YouTube, formerly named Zweihänder Grim & Perilous RPG. This is being done on purpose across social media, YouTube, Discord and other channels.

For 2019, we are consolidating our brands, while changing ZWEIHÄNDER-only assets to reflect a shift in the company. With MAIN GAUCHE on the horizon, development of TETSŪBO, Queen of Embers and a few other unannounced products, we’re moving towards our new company line:

Grim & Perilous Studios, makers of tabletop games “Powered By ZWEIHÄNDER”.

So what does this mean for you? You’re going to see a D100 ‘free’ engine released later this year, taking the place of the SRD. You’re also going to get a look at some of the new products coming down the line for 2019 and 2020. You’re going to see our books up on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Simon & Schuster, IndieBound, in your local brick-and-mortar and a whole lot more. We aren’t leaving DriveThruRPG, but our ‘big books’ will be as we reach commercial scale for true distribution across the US, CA and Europe. Plus, we’ll be announcing some new video content initiatives in the coming weeks (as an example, did you know Encounter Roleplay is running ZWEIHÄNDER every Friday on Twitch for the next 18 weeks).

Finally, we’ll be introducing you to some new people from our team. We’re growing, and can’t wait for you to meet all the fine folx who help make Grim & Perilous Studios successful.

So, join us for the ride in 2019 for a truly #GrimAndPerilous year for #ZweihanderRPG!

All the best,

Daniel D. Fox

So what has got me so stirred up?

I have been pushing for an open standard for D100 for a couple of years now including my own open100 and I am also happy to support vsDarkmaster’s OPEN00. I am not necessarily a fan of competing open standards but hey, too much freedom of expression is less of a problem than too little.

I have been trying to push for the “Powered by…” concept for RMu, in fact Intothatdarkness’s post this very week was all about the RMu game engine vs the game itself. That is a spin off of my push for the Powered by tag from that “So…” forum thread.

The other thing I find exciting is the bit about the hardcopy publications. I have been dabbling with this myself. I was using Createspace and Amazon’s KDP before they merged. DTRPG is the ‘safe place’ that is where everyone is and that is where all the experienced GMs buy their games. It is not the rest of the world though. If you want to reach completely new people than you need to be out in the real world. I called Zweihänder a cannibal last time. I take that back. They really are trying to build the industry.

This is something I have also been trying to do, I just haven’t talked about it on this blog but Egdcltd has read about my efforts. By comparison I have been pissing around with small fry but the principle is the same. I don’t really think that my ideas would work nearly so well with Zwei as they would with my wild west game. Different genre, different style, different target audience.

The more I hang around the Zwei world the more stark are the differences between the openness and dynamic nature of G&P Studios and the sullen silence of ICE.

And finally…

This is one of the examples from the beginning of the rules.

Nick’s Character Grover Caldwell has an Order Alignment of Mystery and the Chaos Alignment of Exclusion. During the game session, the GM reveals a dangerous bit of information to Nick in secret. Grover now has the choice to reveal an important plot point to the other PCs or hold onto it. Unfortunately, knowledge of this information could prove potentially
dangerous, putting Grover in a place of mistrust with his comrades. He decides it may be best to hold onto this information, alienating himself from the others while shutting them out from the mysteries that only
he understands. As the story led to this moment, not revealing the information taps into his Chaos Alignment of Exclusion – placing his closest friends’ life in danger. The GM, while satisfied that Nick was doing the right thing for his Character, bestows 1 Corruption.

Is it just me or is seeing Nick and Caldwell in such close proximity in a competitors RPG rules just too much of a coincidence?

Now that we are winding down the 50 Adventures in 50 Weeks challenge and heading into 2019 it’s time to start the new adventure production. So we are proud to announce the next iteration: The Serial Adventure.

These OSR inspired adventures will feature pre-generated PCs and 25 individual chapters that can be played in sequence. Each chapter will have updated character sheets so the players won’t need to level up, update skills or handle bookkeeping between game sessions. The players will start at 1st level and ultimately attain 10-15th level at the end of the series.

Every few weeks we will publish a new chapter of the series which can be played in a single 4-6 hour session. Stats will be d100 style and can easily be adapted to a variety of systems and Magic-User and Cleric spells will utilize the BASiL spell lists.

The goal is to create truly “turn-key” adventure sessions that are connected by a singular plot line, but can be played individually if desired. Plots, creatures and other design elements will draw from popular fantasy tropes and should be usable in most any fantasy settings–these won’t be Shadow World specific.

A recent discussion on the RM boards regarding splitting up Creature Law got me thinking about something that could be the elephant in the room: are we talking about RMU the engine or RMU the fantasy game/setting? By engine I mean RMU’s basic mechanics (character creation, skill system, and combat mechanics/format: basically ChL&AL without the races and professions) and by game I mean the fantasy RMU we’re looking at now (spells, races, fantastic monsters, and even professions). The engine is something that can be used in any setting or genre, while the game is tied to fantasy and a particular setting.

From a game engine perspective, it might be nice or advisable to have a number of fairly generic monster supplements out there. Things GMs could take and plug into their own settings confident they’d work with the RMU engine. But from a fantasy setting perspective, RMU the fantasy game needs a self-contained book of creatures designed for the official setting. Nothing else needs to be included if it doesn’t fit into the setting.

So What?

This discussion matters because RMU is really two things at once: the engine and the game. Things that make sense for the engine might not work for the game, and the reverse is also true. Clear thinking is needed when it comes to the initial game release. It should have everything required for the GAME to work in the official setting, but not necessarily those bits the ENGINE requires to be flexible and adaptable. It’s those engine bits that can (and possibly should) appear as supplements or add-ons: core GAME materials should not.

Since RM started life as a series of game engine plug-ins for AD&D, this may be something of a shift for people conditioned to think of RM as an almost-endless series of supplements and additions. But if the engine in its new form is going to have a chance the game (for once) needs to come first. What does that mean in practice? Tie the game officially to a setting. Ensure the core has the races, spells, treasures, and creatures to function with that setting and don’t worry about anything else. It’s the game (engine-setting-tools) that matters now.

It’s all about the Game

Once the game takes off, it’s possible to look at a series of “powered by RM” products focusing on the engine itself. But that comes AFTER the game is out. If a race being contemplated doesn’t fit into the setting, don’t develop it now. Spells that don’t fit? Hold them for something else. Same for creatures and monsters. Everything in the core is based on the engine, but HAS to support the game (engine plus setting). If it doesn’t support the game, leave it out. The CORE GAME should have everything a GM needs to start running adventures in the setting NOW, rather than wait for another book or two.

Right now it seems to be split between a discussion of the game and the engine, often without an awareness of the difference between the two. My sense is the engine is more or less done, at least in core terms (character creation, combat, skills) as I define engine. Maybe the time has come to draw a line around what’s considered the game (setting, professions, races) and just finish that. Monsters and races not part of the core setting can wait for future supplements. If the engine’s solid it can drive any number of game types. But it needs a game to get out of the garage and on the road.

Welcome to 2019! Peter and I usually do a look-back and a look-forward at year’s end so I thought I would start the process. First off, I spent some time looking over the past year; due to my work on opening a new business, my blog output dropped off considerably; I think I only posted about 50 times or 1x week on average.

It’s interesting to read back through the last year. While 12 months seems like a short time, I barely remembered what i blogged! Between work related writing, game material and blogging I’m sitting at a computer quite a bit. It blurs together. I definitely have a “fire & forget” process when it comes to blogging; I write quickly when something comes to the forefront or I’m stimulated by someone else’s post or thought and then it’s out of my mind.

3 Blog post(s) that I wrote that I wanted to revisit:

1. The Messengers of the Iron Wind. I had fun with this and it forced me to finalize the specific spells lists for the six orders. I had most of them up to 10th lvl and used them for the Priests, but my overview made me rethink and now have the Messengers themselves with the order specific list. These are some of my favorite villains in Jaiman.
2. Early ICE advertising in Dragon Magazines. This brought back a lot of old memories! I had a long running subscription to Dragon starting at around issue 75 and this gave me the chance to read the older Dragons from Issue #1 to #60 cover to cover. It was a D&D and Rolemaster flashback.
3. Reviews of the Loremaster Series. (Iron Wind, Vog Mur, Cloudlords & Shade). Similar to the advertising review, I spend time really reading these modules again cover to cover; every word and try to reconcile them with my understanding of early I.C.E. and the evolution into Shadow World.

Rolemasterblog Adventures. 2018 wasn’t just blogging. Peter & Adrian really stepped up their game and published our 50 Adventures in 50 Weeks Challenge. We did it!…well mostly….I still have 3 left of my 25 still to be published. However, it was fantastic to go from concept to execution, see supplements reach metal status, generate hundreds of dollars and realize proof of concept in small publishing. To revisit the genesis of the project go HERE.

New faces and new ideas. 2018 brought us new writers and contributors to the blog. First in January, Brad posted a great article about the Magician; Spectre discussed “Absolute Success” thresholds in March and equipment combos in July, a tribute blog in August and an opinion piece on RMU this past December; Adrian (EGDCLTD) found time outside of publishing RMBlog adventures to write about RPG’s and complexity; starting in March we had a burst of great activity and new perspectives from Ovarwa who posted HERE, HERE, and an article on the “cost of charts” that generated a good bit of comments. Ovarwa, where did you go? In May we had another new poster, Bjorn, who started diving into HARP., returned in October to analyze falling in HARP.

Rolemasterblog hits puberty? To me, 2018 displayed a lot of maturing for the blog. A weekly adventure publication, monthly fanzine, new bloggers, new topics and coverage of other games. We are steadily approaching an inflection point where we will publish material with agnostic d100 stats compatible with Rolemaster and other systems. While the wait for RMU continues along, I wonder what RMBlog will bring to 2019?

What are your thoughts on 2018?

This is the first in a short series of articles on Zweihänder. If you missed the introductory post you can find it here. 

NOTE: I find that when I start out on these sorts of read throughs I can quite negative. I have preconceptions of how I think things should be and then when I don’t find it it is discomforting. Then as I get through the book and I see how things all hang together and I am more familiar I get more comfortable and consequently more positive. Just bear that in mind if this comes off as a bit negative.

So, a little background… When I was at school the role players in my year fell into two distinct camps. I was in the DnD camp and we played a wide range of games from DnD to Boothill to Bushido, Runequest and Call of Cthulhu, Champions to Rolemaster and in pretty much that order. The other group played Warhammer. I have no idea what happened to them as there was virtually no crossover between the social circles. I don’t know why.

Today I want to look at the Introduction and How to Play chapters. The books proper starts with a monologue from a character called Danziger Eckhardt, who tries to set the scene and this does a fair job of holding up the Grim and Perilous motif.

I have intentionally referred to Zweihänder as Rules Dense rather than rules heavy. The reason for my distinction comes from my first impression of the game. The Table of Contents is five pages long. That isn’t actually true, it is six pages long if you include the abridged version. In the contents you will find two, three and sometimes four entries for every page. The entries are vertiably packed in.

ZWEIHÄNDER is built with modularity baked into the
rules and able to be modified without upsetting the inherent
balance of the system.

as Rules Dense rather than rules heavy. The reason for my distinction comes from my first impression of the game. The Table of Contents is five pages long. That isn’t actually true, it is six pages long if you include the abridged version. In the contents you will find two, three and sometimes four entries for every page. The entries are vertiably packed in.

Now the book really starts. There is a personal bugbear of mine that crops up at the start of many RPG manuals. I have strong opinions on this and it just so happens that Zweihänder is the first game I have written about since I have been looking at since I have tried to address the issue myself. The bugbear is How to Roleplay.

Some games are not intended to be beginner games. If you are not a beginner game then you don’t really need a primer on how to role play and what an RPG is. If on the other hand you are pitching your game at entirely new role players then you do need a decent tutorial section to help people get into and fall in love with our hobby.

I am just going to refer to Zweihänder as Z from now on as I am going to use the games name so often that typing that umlaut on the a is just a pain in the arse.

Z does the usual thing of a couple of paragraphs on what is a GM, what is a Player and what is an RPG. What this tells me is that Z is a cannibal game. It is not really committed to bringing in new players into the hobby but is going to get its audience from existing gamers, most probably the existing Warhammer world.

This is not a criticism of Z specifically, I recently realised this about so many games and how it can be addressed and how incredibly hard work it is to do right. You cannot blame people for not seeing something you have seen.

The opening texts are topped off with some GM advice about keeping play moving and about creating house rules. This is the exact text that completes the section on house rules.

ZWEIHÄNDER is built with modularity baked into the rules and able to be modified without upsetting the inherent balance of the system.

This is of note, as one of the common refrains from the RM community is that RM is modular and one can swap in any of the hundreds of optional rules or alternative methods and the game doesn’t break. I read this as another shot across Rolemaster’s bows.

The real conclusion of this opening chapter is about setting or lack thereof. In my circles the lack of an official setting is seen as a weakness but Z dodges that bullet. The thing is that Z is a retroclone of Warhammer FRP and as such all the previous settings are perfectly in tune. The germanic flavour of Zweihänder is obvious in its very name but look at the names of previous warhammer settings Stromdorf, from The Gathering Storm; Reikland; Marienburg and Middenheim. Z appears to have perfectly aligned itself with the previous Warhammer settings. It will be interesting to see later if the bestiary reflects the denizens of these previous settings. If they do then Z is not without a setting at all, it just doesn’t own the rights to its setting.

Chapter 2 is much more interesting.

How to play Zweihänder

Chapter two is a compact eight pages, less if you strip out the art, that cover how skills tests are made, difficulty factors, types of skill test (unopposed, opposed, secret) and fate points (good and bad). It comes at you thick and fast. At first glance it looks like Z is a d100 roll under system until you get to the opposed tests when suddenly it becomes obvious that it is a blackjack system.

So most of the time you have to roll under your skill on a D100. Skill values seem to be around the 50 to 70 mark so a Z character seems to be about the competency of a 4th to 7th level RM character. If you just added the skill to the d100 then you can use Z characters in RM easily enough or roll under your RM skills to use your favourite RM character in a Z adventure. I will return to this later in a different post to see if I can refine these rules.

So at this point it looks like a basic roll under system. With opposed tests we get a mechanic called Degrees of Success and Degrees of Failure.

You calculate Degrees Of Success by adding together the tens die (a result between 1 to 10) and the relevant Primary Attribute Bonus the Skill is derived from. For example, if your Character has a Primary Attribute of 45%, your Primary Attribute Bonus is ‘4’. Whoever succeeds at their Skill Test and has the highest Degrees Of Success automatically wins the Opposed Test.

So basically you want to roll as high as possible but still under your skill total, with the exception of rolling a 01-09 as the 0 on the tens die counts as 10 not zero. So now we have a blackjack system. The net effect is that being highly but rolling badly is still better than being unskilled but rolling like a demon, most of the time.

I think the degrees of success mechanic shows how Z has evolved from house rules. I could be wrong, maybe there is a continuing theme of blackjack style rolls and checks but in this how to play chapter it sticks out like an oddity.

Fate points or to use the Z parlance pool of fortune are an intrinsic part of Z. This is no reflection on Z but I don’t like having a central physical ‘thing’ that the players have to handle. In Z you put one token into a bowl for ever player and one additional token. When players want to play a fate point then they take a token out of the bowl. In RM of course Fate points are personal to the character and are rare and precious and it seems mainly used to keep them alive when a fatal critical comes up. In Z you refresh the bowl every start of session.

Every fortune point played then goes into the GMs pool to be used to make the characters lives miserable. I am a fan of fate points as I would rather have structured and above board cheating than under the counter cheating. Even as GM I think having fate points or fortune points is better than fudging dice rolls.

Grimly Funny

On the surface Z tries to portray itself as a challenging and gritty rpg. The name suggests, at least to me, a high fatality rate amongst PCs. The opening story is bleak an uninspiring but then the actual examples of skill use are at odds with the feel of the rest of what has gone before. The general feel of them is more positive from seducing ladies in waiting to letting the player make multiple attempts to pick a magistrates pocket.

Maybe ‘funny’ is too strong a word, but still the examples are much more positive than the surrounding narrative texts. I will be interesting to see how the feel of the game proceeds.

Next time I am going to create a character using the random method described in the rules. I have already taken a bit of a sneak peek and the stat generation certainly raised an eyebrow!

First off, Happy New Year to the “staff” and readers of RolemasterBlog.com! I’ve been working on a few different blog topics and I have to keep re-adjusting whenever a new post or comment is put up.

I had a few thoughts on the starting adventures, caravan guards and Peter’s prison he just blogged about. I’m generally driven by up-ending common tropes to surprise my players and keep things fresh for people that have been gaming for decades. So a few random streams of consciousness:

Starting Level. I’ve always liked the early levels of RM; the players have to face real challenges both in terms of resources and abilities, and the grittiness of the system lends itself to low fantasy style gaming. However, we have been having a blast with our high level adventure series–my players get to use high level spells and we can ignore most of the low level book-keeping around food, money or equipment. It feels more like a Super Hero adventure within Shadow World. At this point we’ve walked away from a long term SW campaign and the group has fully embraced the a la carte adventure experience I’m providing: test Priest King adventures, play a high level tourney series, do a quick all cleric adventure etc. While we lose a fulfilling plot continuity and investment into a PC, the players get to enjoy a wider range of setting material, a more diverse experience with character types and offer better feedback once disassociated from any emotional investment in their PC.

Caravans. The whole starting adventure to Priest-King (page 79-81) was predicated on the players being caravan guards. As a plot intro to a regional setting the caravan device worked quite well. First, I’m not a fan of the Gygaxian/adventurer as a profession world. Players need an occupation and the Forgotten Realms concept of chartered adventure groups is a little to “on the nose” for me. (however, I need utilize the concept of salvage/adventure charters later in Priest-King). Having the players become guards is a plausible use of low level characters to expose them to challenges and pay their way in the world. Second, a caravan gives the group a bubble of security–the GM can use NPC’s to aid, direct and protect the PC’s while they are learning their way. Thirdly, the traverse itself provides an opportunity for world-building through NPC exposition and the geographical travelogue. In PK, the first adventure requires the players to travel over 800 miles with numerous encounters and intra party politics. It takes about one month orhan (50 days) and was a great primer for the group. I think it took 9 game sessions and by the time they reached the city of Shade they had leveled up, learned quite a bit about the area cultures and were also quite unprepared for what the saw at the end of the journey!

Prison. The second to last adventure in our 50 in 50 is the Lair of Ozymandius. I blogged about it a year or two ago and now it will be published on RPGNow as part of the RMBlog series. It’s quite a bit more involved than the 1 page adventure seeds we’ve been putting out over the last year. I also like the idea of starting low level players in unfamiliar or uncontrollable environments: prisons, on the run, slaves etc. In Lair of Ozy, not only do they start as prisoners, but they also have no memory of who they are or what their skills are!

In summary, while I tend to avoid overt fantasy tropes, there is an opportunity to put a unique spin on these set-ups. If you are not intending to run a campaign from the outset, these might be the best adventure frames for starting adventures and as an introduction to RMU or the RM ruleset as a whole. Especially with pre-gen characters designed to meet the specific challenges of the adventure.

Plan for a campaign, but design like a tourney module!