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Pirate Adventures!

I wanted to write something a bit different as we have had a lot on house rules and a load of HARP but they are both rather niche and possibly divisive.

Next weekend I was supposed to be running my RMC game. This was going to be a major session with the conclusion of a chapter, the start of the next chapter and a big reveal to show a glimpse of what is really going on in the background for the characters.

One of the key players, one of the players that always turns up and remains engaged for every session has for the first time in 12 years had to miss the session. I don’t want to run this pivotal session with out him as he is likely to be one of only two that will grasp the significance of what happens.

Without the player there is also meant to be a point where that character should put two and two together and be able to tall the party something of great importance. If I have to NPC that character for that session then it will come across as me having to spoon feed the party and lead them by the nose.

So what to do?

The best option is to run a one shot game for the weekend with the players that are there.

As it happens I was given three of Gramel’s mini setting booklets that go along with Adventurers!, a micro RPG.

Adventurers! bills itself as an RPG in two pages. In fact the entire rules is 10 pages but the players guide is 2 pages, the GM guide is 2 pages, the gear list is two pages and then you have the bestiary, 3 pages and character sheets that make up the rest of the game. Having the character creation rules and the bestiary means that you have everything you need to do an Adventurers! to Rolemaster conversion. I will come back to this later.

In addition to the Adventurers! rules Gramel also gave me three adventure ‘mini settings’ an alternative version of the Caribbean with pirates and voodoo, ghosts, zombies and mermaids. Pretty much then entire cast of Pirates of the Caribbean. The second is a modern Supers setting and the third is a wacky setting if you wanted to role play Pixar’s Toy Story.

Voodoo Pirates

 Voodoo Pirates is everything you need to run a game set in an alternative world where voodoo and black magic are real. The PDF is 35 pages including covers. This is made up of:

6 pages of pure setting information to set the scene about what has happened in the recent past, Character concepts about the sorts of characters inhabiting the caribbean, naval battles, setting themes to act as a backdrop to any games and a gazetteer of the most important islands that make up the caribbean. Finally in this section are famous ‘people’ of the caribbean from real pirates to mythical entities such as Davy Jones the captain of the Flying Dutchman.

2 pages cover voodoo Powers, necromancy and voodoo sorcery. You also get some unique magical items under the heading Amazing Objects. Off of these will be familiar and only one of them I would struggle to model using Rolemaster’s ruleset, more of that later.

2 pages of unique gear with prices. This is of limited use to us as it is all aimed at being used with their own rules.

9 pages of bestiary. These broadly fall into two categories. The first are creatures, mainly undead because of the VooDoo theme that you can pick straight out of C&T. The second group are stock NPCs such as soldiers, spies and savage natives. There is also a small selection on non-fantastical creatures like sharks which again can come straight out of C&T.

4 pages of ships stats. Ships are treated as characters in Adventurers! with character sheets, stats and abilities. They conduct ship to ship combat just like a regular combat. We have more options than that and we have more ships to play with. This is an opportunity to break out either Sea Law or if you are really hardcore RM2 then you can dig out your copy of Pirates.

3 Pages of NPC. The character sheets are pretty basic but the important bit is that you get the NPCs background and equipment…

…with the information they have provided you can easily role play that NPC. As a really rough stat conversion I would use 50 + (Adventurers! Stat *12) and then round down if the result is over 100. So in this example all the physical strength and conditioning stats (St+Co) would be a straight 50. Agility and Quickness would be 74 and the mental stats would be 98. It is not a brilliant conversion but functional.

 8 pages of adventure. This makes up the largest single section and is an adventure described in scenes. It is rather linear but the writer has countered this with lots of If… conditions such as:

If they manage to defeat it,
If the party has someone with Voodoo
If the PCs want to fill the white sacks
If anyone manages to come out

…and so on. The effect is that although the adventure is rather linear there is a lot of flexibility, most of the ways that players could balls themselves up have been catered for and will not break the adventure.

Overall Impression

So the Gramel mini settings cost about $5-$6. These 2nd editions, of which this is one, are about 30-40 pages and include everything you have read here. The 1st edition ones cost $1-$2 and are about 6 pages. I have not seen or read one of those. Obviously Gramel want me to write about their new products, not their old ones.

Do I think they are good value for money, yes I do. Do I think they are easy to use with RM? That is harder. I am happy to pull stock NPCs and stock monsters on the fly and run with it. My adventures are not normally based on maps, and there are none provided, but having said that I can get a random map online in about 10 seconds and I own the Dyson Logos book of maps which I could also use. I think for some groups these will be perfect to have in your GMs toolbox to pull out when you need something. To be honest you can probably read 30 pages on the way to a game session, if you are not driving, or at least skim read it over a coffee. The hard part of coming up with an off the cuff adventure is going to be thinking up the story, not the finding the monster stats. These pdfs do all the creative bit for you, the stats we can deal with.

Rolemaster conversions

Adventurers! characters have 3 stats, Body Agility and Mind. You get 6 points to divide up between the three stats. The lowest allowed value is -1 and the highest is 6. The highest stats I have seen are +5 for Strength for a Minotaur and for an Ogre. The rule of thumb of 50 + stat x 13 would give a minotaur a 115 strength which is not good so capping it at 100 (for RMU) or 102 for RM2 makes things viable.

Endurance is Str + Agi + 3 so could in theory be -1 + -1 + 3 or a 1. For most NPCs it seems to be around the 5 to 7 area so using that for level would drive the body development that Endurance is meant to reflect but also give us a key indicator for all the other skills.

There is not one truly unique creature in this mini setting that you could not pick directly out of Creatures & Treasures. The only complication is an entire swarm of spiders, RM does not handle swarms very well in my experience. To get an idea of the writers intentions the swarm of spiders in this adventure has stats 50% higher than a Giant Spider and is treated as a single entity. I am sure you could wing something!

Something Special to think about

Voodoo Dolls

So how would you model a voodoo doll? This is the classic cursed item where sticking a pin in the doll causes the character to suffer the wound in full scale. I have gone through the companions that I have and I cannot find anything that really suits.

I would not want this to be too deadly to both stop the PCs wanting to use it against everyone or to be so dangerous that it leads to a TPK with no chance at fighting back.

So I am thinking that each pin stuck into the doll would generate a critical. The doll’s controller decides what sort of action they are taking such as sticking a pin in it or crushing it under their foot etc. They then roll a critical of the correct type, puncture, krush, heat etc., the victim makes an RR and if they fail by 1-20 it becomes and A critical, 21-40 a B and so on. If the RR is successful the character feels the pain or the sensation but no damage is delivered.

So the Doll’s controller doesn’t really know what is happening at the other end but it is not an automatic kill either. It would be very easy to role play this as you can just describe all these psychosomatic symptoms such as “It feels like your entire skin is on fire. “You take 10 hits and your clothes are actually starting to smoulder.”,”You feel a stabbing pain in the small of your back like you have been run through with a rapier, you take 3 hits.” and so on. The characters can act and react and hopefully get to the doll’s controller before something really bad happens.

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HARP Read Through – Magic & Spells

Of all the features of HARP that stand out, it is the magic system that seems to get the most admiration.

There are some similarities with Rolemaster but a lot of differences.

Most obvious is that there are no realms. There are two suggested sources of magic in the core book although more are hinted at in College of Mogics. These two are Divine and Personal.

HARP also describes spheres. There is a universal sphere which would be roughly the same as our ‘open’ lists. Then there are professional spheres. The ones in the core book are Cleric, Harper, Mage, Ranger and Warrior Mage. So Professional Spheres are basically our ‘Base’ lists, but without the list.

Ever spell is learned individually so there are no lists. If a spell takes 5 power points to cast then you need five ranks in that spell. So spells are learned just like skills and you buy ranks in your spells as you level up.

Taking that 5 powerpoint spell as an example casting it with 5 powerpoints will just get you the basic spell. As your ranks improve then you can do more with the same spell. This is similar to a list that has Light I, Light II, Light III and then Light True. They are basically the same spell but they are doing more by using more power points.

Rolemaster has lots of spell classificataions such as elemental (no resistance roll), force (resistance roll allowed), utility (cannot be cast on an unwilling target) and so on. HARP has three classifications. These are Utility, Attack and Elemental.

Utility spells encompass things like healing and what RM players would consider a utility spell. These cannot be cast on unwilling characters and it is the recipient or target of the spell that gets to decide if the spell works or not. 

Attack spells cover all attacking spells that do not fall into the Elemental category.

Elemental, these are almost identical to RM elemental spells in resolution.

Spell Casting

Basic spell casting in HARP requires the ability to move at least one hand and to be able to speak in a normal voice. If you cannot do that then you cannot cast the spell.

Scaling Spells

This is the big feature of HARP magic. Each basic spell has a menu of options. Each option on the menu has a cost in power points. So if you want to increase the range for example then you can spend more power points on casting the spell and you get the added range. As long as you have enough power points and ranks in the spell then you can mix and match options to tailor your spells.

Here is an example spell from the universal sphere.

Arcane Bolt

PP Cost: 3
Range: 50’
Duration: —
Spell Type: Attack
RR: Magic
Sphere: Universal
Description: When cast, this spell sends a bolt of blazing magical energy to strike the target. This bolt of energy does 1d10 points of damage to the foe if he fails his Resistance Roll.
Scaling Options:
Increase Damage (each 1d10 hits– 5d10 max) +3 PP
Stunning Force (per round of Stun) +4 PP
Increase Range (per +50’) +1 PP
Increase Targets (each additional target) +4 PP

This is very different to a Rolemaster spell! This reminds me of casting a D&D fireball but with rolling a handful of d10s rather than a bucket of d6s. This is really the HARP version of Shockbolt but to me at least it looks a lot more fun.

Transcending armour is also handled by increasing power point costs. The heavier your armour then the greater the cost of the spell to cast. The rational being something along the lines of the armour acting as a sink for the magic.

Counterspells

This is another excellent feature. If an enemy caster is casting a spell then you can cast an instantaneous counter spell. Here is the description of the mechanic:

Counterspells
In the Universal Sphere, there is an instantaneous spell
named Counterspell. It is used to counter and disrupt a spell
being cast by another spell user during the actual casting of
the spell.
The spell user who is casting the Counterspell makes his
casting roll and then looks up the result on the RR column
of the Maneuver Table. The spell user, whose spell is being
countered, must then roll higher than this number with his
casting roll or the spell is countered, and he loses all Power
Points that he has put into the spell.

I really like that. RM has that whole power projection skill thing and in all my years of gaming no one has ever used it. HARP’s counter spell on the other hand I can easily see being a regular feature. Of course it doesn’t mean you can stymy an enemy caster every time but it does mean you can at least do something. Counterspell costs 1PP to cast.

Casting Times

Casting times are based around 3 rounds. If you cast faster than that then you take a -20 to your spell casting roll and in applicable a +10 to your fumble. You can also take longer than necessary to cast a spell to get a bonus to your spell casting roll.

Summary

All in all you probably get 90% of what we get in Spell Law in a well laid out 32 pages. What at first glance appeared to pretty basic actually has a lot of flavour and variety. I am pretty sure that HARP players reading this will tell us that there are loads more spells and spheres in College of Magics but I don’t own that so I cannot comment but it goes without saying.

Next time I am going to cover two chapters, Herbs & Poisons and Encounters & Monsters.

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Wandering in from the cold.

the journey continues…


Greetings! It feels like it’s been some time since I’ve blogged and certainly since I’ve blogged consistently. Now that I have had a little break and refreshed my creative batteries I’m going to focus almost exclusively on adventure content and let the rules focus take a back seat. As we’ve discussed here, hopefully we can develop a bit of statblock “shorthand” that will avoid any IP issues and still be compatible with our d100 products and just let that work for our various adventure publications. For me personally, I’m going to just let the whole RMU/RM2/RMSS/RMFRP/MERP etc. rule arbitration process go away.

While parsing and developing rules is exciting,  RM seems to have less game/adventure content than other systems. That’s where I want to put my focus on for 2019. Peter, Adrian and I have a great concept for the next iteration of the 50 Adventures in 50 Weeks for basic d100 applications–hopefully we can finalize and announce those plans shortly. In the meantime I’m still 3 adventures short of my 25 total for the 50in50! I’ve submitted 1 and working on the last two. I’ve also been slow on the remaining chapters of my “Legends of Shadow World” high level adventure. My group never played more than 1 iteration of the last two chapters, but they are pretty fluid and I should have them out here on on the RM Forums this winter. Finally, I hoping that a new artistic break-through will help me finalize the Empire of the Black Dragon. Like Priest-King of Shade, this will be put out as a free download in a rough draft format. My goal now is to get things out there and then maybe, one day, ICE will decide to polish them up, add new content and officially publish them. Until that day comes I want to wrap long gestating or languishing products before I get too old, too tired or distracted by real life.

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Bloody Hell! RMU Bleeding

So assuming we stick with the 2 second house ruled round, which I would like to, we don’t want people to bleed out too fast.

I really like Hurin’s suggestion that bleeding 1-3hits/round will clot. If we can keep that I will be happy. The criteria would be that the character much be inactive for the clotting to start and the wound reopens if the move.

This will stop the a solo character from dying after the very first fight they have almost every time (assuming the GM doesn’t intervene to save them).

So…

  • 1 hit/rnd stops after 10rnds of inactivity. (10hits received)
  • 2 hits/rnd stop after 20rnds of inactivity (40hits received)
  • 3 hits/rnd stop after 30rnds of inactivity (90 hits received)

3 hits per round will most likely still be fatal in most cases so it is the 1 and 2 hits of bleeding that we are really talking about here.

Bleeding in a 2 second round environment is a lot more dangerous than a 10 second round environment, five times as dangerous at first glance.

That is not actually strictly true because that assumes endless combat. In my game I find that unless I intentionally set an encounter up to be longer then most combats are over in about 4 rounds.

With the RMU beta 2 as written then they took a lot longer but in RMC and RM2 four rounds was about the average. I will assume that once the final Arms Law is out then the weapons tables will be delivering more damage. I think it has been increased by 1.5?

So if fights are short, as in sub 10 rounds then the actual bleeding is not going to be the deciding factor most of the time. If it is heavy bleeding of 5 to 8hits per round then yes, that can finish a character or villain off but that is outside the scope of these changes anyway.

The point is that the duration of a round is moot if you are counting time in rounds.

So our upper bound is that if a character falls unconscious and is bleeding 3hits per round or more then they will probably die. So that is pretty much rules as written.

The lower bound is that a character bleeding 1 or 2 hits per round that falls unconscious may survive taking either 10 or 40 additional hits from bleeding.

It was suggested, JDale I beleive, that outside of combat bleeding be treated as hits per minute not hits per round. This allows for people to die up to an hour or more on the battle field if no help is forthcoming. I like this and would like to accommodate it.

What that does is mean that bleeding in combat is no different regardless of the round length. Bleeding when the character will get no help is not always 100% fatal. Bleeding out on a battle field may take minutes or hours.

The times provided by Aspire suggested 10 to 30 minutes for bleeding out. If you are unconscious and bleeding 4 per minute then that will kill most characters in that sort of time frame. It is much easier to die from loss of hits in RMU than previous versions of RM.

The only thing I would like to add is compression.

I personally would allow a character to half the blood flow on a round by round basis if they forego their action and apply compression to a suitable wound. Obviously you cannot apply pressure to internal bleeding. I would do this without the need for a first aid roll. If it were fire damage then a character can drop and roll without a skill roll. I would think that anyone who has trained in using a sword would most certainly have hurt themselves at some point so the most basic idea of stopping the blood coming out would be known.

So compression would work on the rounds when it was applied. It does not count as inactivity for clotting purposes unless the character is actually inactive while doing it. The minimum bleed remains at 1 hit/round.

The compression rule becomes a tactical decision. Which now makes me think of concentration and mental focus. If I am told to keep hold of something and not move and my mind wanders I am quite likely to let my hand drift. So can you keep compressing a wound if you are maintaining a spell?

Taking all of that into account does that seem fair? I feel that bleeding per 2 second round in combat and per minute out of combat is roughly equal to Aspires ‘per 10 seconds’ if you averaged it out. The clotting does only cover the lightest of possible bleeding and is touch and go at 3hits. Compression forces characters to make tactical decisions. Characters will still die from blood loss.

So over to you. Can we make this better?

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Public Playtest:Devil’s Staircase Wild West Role Playing

So this is completely off topic and probably of little interest to Rolemaster players but…

I have been mucking around with my Playing Card powered wild west game. Well, this week I have released the public play test version. What I need is constructive criticism. The more feedback the better the game should be.

I do not expect this to be of much interest to Rolemaster players. It is fast and loose and doesn’t have the RM grittiness and realism. On the other hand if you know gamers that like ‘lite’ rules then maybe you could pass on the url?

The play test version can be found here… https://www.rpgnow.com/product/256932/Public-PlaytestDevils-Staircase-Wild-West-Role-Playing

Please feel free to pass this around as much as you like!

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HARP Read Through – Combat

I am going to start with a summary, taken from the rules of the HARP combat sequence…

1 Make an attack roll. This is an open-ended percentile roll.
2 If the initial roll is within the fumble range for the weapon,
the attack stops and you roll on the fumble table. If the initial
roll is within the open-ended range (96-100), you roll
again and add the two rolls together. If the second or any
other subsequent roll is between 96-100, you roll again and
add it to the previous total.
3 Add your character’s OB (Offensive Bonus) to the final
die result.
4 Subtract your foe’s DB (Defensive Bonus) from the adjusted
die total. This is your Total Attack Roll.
5 If the Total Attack Roll is 1 or higher, then you have hit
your foe. Now that you have determined that you have hit,
adjust your Total Attack Roll by adding or subtracting the
size modifier for the weapon that your character is using.
This is your Adjusted Attack Roll.
6 Look up your Adjusted Attack Roll on the proper Critical
Table, as determined by the Attack Type for the weapon
that you are using. This is the damage that you have done
to the foe. All damage is applied immediately.

The first big difference is No Attack Table.

That is slightly disingenuous as ever group of related weapons has its own attack table which combines caps for attack size, mods to differentiate the weapons and weapon specific critical tables. There is an example of one of these below so you can see how it works.

But without an attack table how do we account for armour?

Armour

Armour is modelled using a combination of DB bonus and Maneuver penalty. So heavier armours are more protective but more restrictive. Armour can be bought as full suits or accumulated piecemeal. Armour also comes as fitted or unfitted.

When armour is fitted to the character is has a massively reduced maneuver penalty. Unfitted armour is no where as easy to wear. All unfitted armour has double the maneuver penalty of fitted armour including doubling the minimum maneuver penalty. These penalties apply to all skills that have QU or AG as a stat.

I really like that last restriction. It is really simple and clear and should more skills be added in other books it is immediately obvious whether there are penalties or not.

HARP details 12 types of armour and 9 location specific elements and/or two complete sets (either with a shirt/hauberk style or breastplate style). 

I personally find the Armour system to be incredibily easy but also detailed. The only flaw of course is that if the protective value of a suit is a flat DB bonus against all attacks then you cannot differentiate between a blade and a hammer which of course individual attack tables, that we are used to, can reflect.

The biggest flaw in the combat system is the criticals. There are only 19 specific criticals for each weapon. What this means is that the same criticals come around again and again.

Imagine you have 5 orcs using scimitars and the PCs are using a mix of broadswords and longswords. Basically every attack is going to do a critical every time. You could easily dish out 40 criticals (8 combatants over 5 rounds is not unreasonable for a common encounter). Statistically every critical would come round at least twice and two or more more than twice. (40 occurrences of 19 possible outcomes). Combat becomes very samey. The strength of Rolemaster combat is that those ‘special’ criticals are rare enough to be special.

The strength of the system is that the entire combat runs off of one page so there is no page flipping between weapons charts and critical tables so it goes quickly but a cost, in my opinion.

It always seems to me that HARP players hanker after RM combat tables the same way that RM players look at HARP magic is a certain envy. That is not an imagined thing either, there is a replacement HARP combat system under discussion on the forums if you agree to the NDA.

Combat Actions

  • The combat chapter lists 18 common combat actions over and above just hitting ot shooting your oponent. Along with each are the rules need to resolve each. This is far more extensive than any I remember seeing for Rolemaster but I could be mistaken. Either way for these to be in the standard core book is a great inclusion.
  • Blade Slap
  • Charging
  • Disarm Foe
  • Disengage from Melee
  • Dodge
  • Fencing Slash
  • Full Parry
  • Hold at Bay
  • Knockdown
  • Move & Attack
  • Multiple Parry
  • Parry
  • Press & Melee
  • Power Strike
  • Stave Jab
  • Shield Bash
  • Sudden Dodge
  • Weapon Bind

So that is a round up the the combat chapter. HARP is a lighter game than Rolemaster and I think this is one area where that lighter ruleset is most apparent. I don’t think any RM player is going to ditch Arms Law for the HARP combat system despite there being a lot of great stuff here.

Next time it is Spells and Magic!

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RMU Combat and My House Rules

So this time I am really wide open to suggestions!

What I have done in the past and certainly want to keep is the 2 second combat round. I use this in RMC and it works perfectly.

I have eliminated all notion of flurry of blows. Every attack is discrete. Short combat rounds have a few knock on effects.

Movement

Obviously in 2 seconds you can move 20% of what you could move in a 10 second round or now 40% of what you would move in an RMU round. I have never like the notion of the detailed 1AP count down in RMU but I think this is because my 2 second rounds provide almost exactly the same granularity but with out flurry of blows you don’t have to start an attack 5 seconds before you even see your target.

Shorter rounds make things naturally more tactical as it is entirely possible to get peppered by bullets/arrows/spears if you try and cross an open space without covering fire.

Spell Casting

RMC doesn’t have the fast and penalty free casting of RMU but 2 second rounds comes close to emulating that. If your mage is being charged down then because movement is 20% as fast they have more time to prep and cast. So I kept the requirement for 2 rnds prep, cast on the 3rd round despite the rounds being shorter, so 3 x 2 second rounds not 30 seconds.

This has produced some fun situations where one member of a charging party chose to accelerate faster to get to a spell caster that was prepping a spell hoping to get there before the spell was cast. The fact that the players’ plan was kind of dependent on the entire party arriving simultaneously went completely out the window. 

Spell Effects

I do not adjust the spell effects to take into account the shorter round. This does change things. Spells that last hours, minutes or seconds are potentially more powerful especially ones that have a combat usefulness.

Spells that last for rounds/level or rounds/ 5 or 10 RR failure are possibly weaker. If you wanted to blind an opposing magician while you all charge then the charge will take more rounds making Sudden Light less useful in that situation.

On the other hand shorter rounds make ranged spells more powerful as it is harder to get out of range or you need to spend more rounds in range if you are trying to close distance.

I have been playing these rules under RM2/RMC for something like 7 years and this has never been a problem, but it does have an impact of spell selection sometimes.

The impact under RMU should be half that as it was under RM2/RMC as the spells are all set up for 5 second round and not 10 seconds. I don’t think this is going to be an issue.

Bleeding

I do have a house rule that bleeding 1 hit per round will stop on its own after 50 rounds of inactivity. the reason I have this is because I spent a few years when I only had one player and multiple times they were knocked unconscious and bleeding 1hit/round. There was no chance of me being able to justify bringing in an unexpected NPC so they should have bled out. This happened just too often for my liking so once the character is unconscious, and therefore not moving, if there is no one around to save you or finish you off that 1 hit of bleeding will stop.

I mention all of that as bleeding is more dangerous with shorter rounds. I don’t want to halve the bleeding in all the criticals but there is another solution.

The first is the natural clotting I mentioned above and the second is staunching the flow.

Staunching the flow takes 1 hand to do and basically means the character is applying pressure to stem the flow of blood. No First Aid or medical skill roll is required. The character can choose on a round by round basis if they want to apply the pressure. The down side is that you cannot use that hand for anything else while staunching the flow of blood. So no shield or just shield by no attacks.

The effect of staunching the flow is to half the blood loss for that round. I tend to round down so staunching 5hits/round will result in bleeding 2/rnd.

This gives characters a way of mitigating the more dangerous effects bleeding in the 2 second rounds without having to make changes to every critical table. It also makes another tactical choice available for characters.

Action Points

I have never used an Action Point system. I am a big fan of the RMC percentage action system. I have just viewed AP as blocks of 25% activity.

If you eliminate the AP by AP tactical round then lots of the problems with the Action Point system disappear.

I know Hurin has suggested in the past adopting a D&D 5e approach to what can be done in a round but I don’t know much about what that entails now. The last time I played D&D it was in about 1993 and it was 2nd Ed. I think.

So what is the best solution to stay as compatible as possible to RMU but using a 2 second round?

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THE GREAT G+ RPG EXODUS

I doubt if many of you ever used Google+, it doesn’t seem that many people did. Having said that they did have half a billion regular users so it is a sign of the times when I can use ‘not many people’ when referring to half a billion.

Anyway, from an RPG perspective it was actually quite active with indie game developers and minority games. There were/are 18 Rolemaster related communities (groups) on Google+ of which I was a rather inactive member of about six of them.

So Google has announced the winding down of Google+ and its eventual closure in 2019.

There is another social network that has been waiting in the wings and now is welcoming the RPG community from Google+ and that is mewe.

They have a dedicated group called The Great G+ RPG Exodus and that is what the point of this post is all about. If you never bothered with G+ then it may be worth taking a look at the new mewe RPG groups. If you were a user then you should be able to hook up with your previous contacts if the exodus gains enough momentum.

MeWe is not without controversy. It is very pro free speech and as such has, in the past, welcomed some alt-right groups. On the other hand it is ultra pro-privacy. It has a promise of no ads and no tracking. It intends to make its money from offering premium services. You can read about their ethics and business model on their FAQ.

I have joined mewe and created a Rolemaster group. If you want to join the network then you can connect with me or just join the group.

mewe.com/i/peter.rudin-burgess

mewe.com/join/rolemaster

If it all works out for them then great, if it withers away and dies like so many upstart social networks then too be honest I would not lose any sleep over it.

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RMU House Rule #2 Skills

Before we start I want to set out two core concepts.

  1. These rules are based around No Profession.
  2. Characters will only be buying skills once. (Thereafter training and experience will take over.)

So I am quite happy with the RMU cultures rules and free skills ranks. I do think that GMs should tinker with the ranks both number and distribution to fit their game and play style but apart from that I am cool with cultures.

The biggest bone of contention is the category cost vs individual skills costs.

The individual skills cost for professions is rather moot if you don’t have professions. The hang over is that I can see why people would want to differentiate their characters.

I don’t want to go down the Training Packages route which of course would put a ‘skin’ or ‘build’ over the top of the No Profession.

The No Profession has the nice feature of being able to choose where to place your professional skill bonuses. That guarantees that each player can customise their character.

The best solution so far is Intothatdarknesses variable skill costs.

So there is a standard skill cost progression which I assume will not change again. So I am think that in each category each player may reduce one skill cost by two steps and one skill by one step.

I was concerned that assigning skill costs up front may mean that should a future skill be introduced that characters are then unfairly penalised. I am thinking about RM2 and when Two Weapon Combo was introduced in RoCoII.

On the other hand if the players are only adjusting two skill costs in each category they are not actually locking themselves out of any skill.

This solution also solves another potential problem. The default number of DPs had has been increased from 50 to 60 but the No Profession profession is less efficient than most others so I have been upping the number of DPs 70. Now if each player can reduce the cost of their preferred skills that will redress that balance between the inefficiency of the No Profession and the off the peg professions.

RMU Skills

I like the RMU skills and I like the way combat expertise works. On the other hand I don’t like passive skills and passive bonuses. In all versions of RM each and all skill has been optional and I cannot see any real reason why I cannot simply drop the skills I don’t like, or more the case of redefining the skills. Just dropping the passive skill bonuses solves a lot of my issues.

So I think with just those two house rules I am good with the RMU skill system.

Posted on

Against the Darkmaster

I don’t know how many of you know of this game? To cut a long story short what Against the Darkmaster (vsDarkmaster for short) is is MERP plus house rules rebranded and launched as a new game.

It is so new that we only have the public play test, quickstart adventure and pre-gen characters to play with so far. The kickstarter is not even ready yet.

What is also interesting is that vsDarkmaster also has a marque called open00 under which they are going to release an SRD, system reference document, so any indie developers can release their own material for the system.

Even more interesting is that my own attempt at free to use monsters, under the brand of Open100 appears very close to the open00 and vsDarkmaster. By very close take a look at this.

StatOpen100vsDarkmasterDifference
AT3(1-20), 2(1-10) or by armour typeRigid Leather
DB5 + shield30 inc shieldnone
Hits5560+/-5
OB67 weapon60 weapong+/-7
Level33none
CriticalMnormalnone

You can see that there is barely a gnats whisker between the two versions of the same creature. In one you get a slightly higher OB but less hits but they pretty much trade off.

vsDarkmaster vs RMU?

So right now both games are technically in public play test. The difference is that vsDarkmaster is actively looking for play testers and engaging with bloggers and reviewers. I have emailed them and got a personal reply within hours, which considering the time difference is as prompt as you could wish for. They are also building a contact list of everyone who has play tested the game, you need to register to get the free version of the game. This is good marketing sense. 

The Kickstarter will also create a bit more buzz around the game. It gives them something else to talk about and share.

I would be shocked if there are less people queuing up to back vsDarkmaster than there are firmly committed to converting to RMU right now. The real uphill struggle for RMU is the ‘U’. RM2 players are reluctant to give up the RM2 way of doing things and the RMSS crowd are reluctant to give up the RMSS way of doing things and neither really want to give up their mass of companions, supplements and house rules.

vsDarkmaster does not have that fractured community. They have a whole new bunch of gamers waiting to play this new game.

vsDarkmaster also has a release date of 2019. I hope that RMU has the same release year but I would not be overly shocked if that slipped into 2020.

vsDarkmaster also has a sense of momentum. There is a public play test edition. That play test will end and it will be followed by a kickstarter campaign, and that will end and the game will be released in 2019. There will be stretch goals published as part of the kickstarter so we will know what future publications are in the pipeline.

With RMU we live in hope of the ‘singularity’ we don’t when that will be and we don’t know how long the post singularity period will be.

*IF* vsDarkmaster hits the shelves first, and that is certainly possible then what unique selling point does RMU have? Open ended rolls? Criticals? Weapon specific combat tables? Point buy skills? Spell lists? Sorry but vsDarkness has them all.

The real killer will be open00. I can honestly see 20, 50 or 100 publications for vsDarkness for every one for RMU. You could claim that the RMU publications will be more substantial or higher quality than all the indie releases for vsDarkmaster but that misses the point. Rather than spending $20 for an RMU supplement that you may use some, none or most of you can spend $0.50 or $1 on a booklet here or a booklet there that fill a particular need at that precise moment. It is a different world and a different way of selling gaming material.

Referring to Brian’s last post there is nothing to stop either Brian releasing Priest-King of Shade or Jengada releasing Nomads for vsDarkmaster, they could even combine the two and set Priest-King in the world of Nomads. 

I am not advocating that we all give up playing Rolemaster and play vsDarkmaster instead. What is viable is to use vsDarkmaster books, adventures and all the other weird and wonderful supplements as and when they arrive with RMU as the games are close enough. Once that is established we can write and sell our own adventures as compatible with any open00 system.

I don’t want it to happen but I could see vsDarkmaster being the death of Rolemaster. The cliche is ‘not with a bang but a whimper’. I think that will be the case. We won’t move over and abandon Rolemaster but I can see vsDarkmaster swallowing up all the new players who would be interested in RMU but discover vsDarkmaster instead. Without new players and new members coming to a community it will wither and die. If vsDarkmaster and RMU have to share the market and sales for this sort of game how viable will they be? Who knows but open00 gives the publishers,  
The Fellowship & Sego | Games, a revenue stream that ICE do not have. I know how much money ICE makes each year and it is not a lot. Also most of that is likely to disappear as ICE must withdraw RMFRP and RMC from sale when RMU is released as you cannot compete against yourself and the reason for developing RMU was to get away from the IP restrictions hanging over the older games and to unify the market so they did not need to support two versions of the same game. Supporting three versions of the same game makes even less sense.

If you have a look at vsDarkmaster you will see it is no RMU. It is not intended to be. It claims to be an evolution of MERP and it is true to its word. The thing is that we know how easy it is to drop a new spell law or an arms law into a MERP game to expand it. It is easy and it doesn’t break the game.

Take a look and see what you think.