The Drow Slaves and Subjugated Races

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You have just got to love those Drow. They are the very model of political correctness and inclusivity, in fact they will make a slave of almost anyone!

Well actually that is not entirely true, they blame surface elves for almost everything (as do I) and the only good elf is a dead elf in their eyes. You see even Drow have standards!

To be more specific you should expect to find Quaggoths (more of them another time), Orcs, Half-orcs, Boogins (half Quaggoth, half Orc), goblins, bugbears, dwarves (one of the Drow Slavers all time favourites), gnomes and just about anything else that can see in the dark.

I was going to give you everything you need to know about Quaggoths and Boogins this time but two things have happened, firstly I have had a really irritating cough and cold this week which has slightly cramped my style and I have decided to throw myself into Rolemaster Unified (RMU). I am only just reading the new Character Law right now and I have just read the bit about creating your own races. Wouldn’t it be really cool to not just tell you about Quaggoths and Boogins but to actually create the race in RMU for you. Well I thought so. So the long and the short of it is that I will just give you a brief pen portrait this time but in a future post I will give all the stats and numbers.

Quaggoths surround a Drow Raiding Party

So down to business. The Quaggoth are a large hairy beasts who prefer great swords or huge clubs in battle and stand about 11′ tall as adults. They are of relatively low intelligence but most importantly they have a natural affinity to spiders of all sizes. Seeing as the Drow worship the spider goddess Lloth you can see the attraction here I hope. The Drow do like to keep Quaggoths around to train giant and huge spiders, a task they can do on long shifts as guard to stop them getting bored. You may as well kill two birds with one stone if you have the opportunity wouldn’t you say? The Quaggoth do make a ver good drow slave!

A boogin is a half Quaggoth, half Orc. One would assume the Father was the orc but I wouldn’t put money on it. Boogin are generally physically smaller but proportionally more intelligent and make better overseers of Quaggoth guards. They also retain the affinity with spiders. which makes them favoured by Drow. To be honest a Drow would never lower themselves to speak directly to a Quaggoth but a low-born Drow may value the spider services enough to speak to a Boogin or at least to an orc that knows a Boogin.

There is one more aspect of these two races that I want to keep back until I can give you the full stats and numbers but in my opinion these guys are the perfect monster to throw at a first level party and next time you will see why!

Rolemaster Unified Character Law

I decided on Friday night that is is kind of senseless to keep on plugging away at RM2 and RMC when although it is probably the second best roleplaying game every written and the best FRGP it is after all a very old system. Rolemaster Unified is the latest incarnation of Rolemaster and seeing as the guys who make Rolemaster make no money any more from RM2 but are working their socks off to make RMU as good as it could possibly be it seems churlish to ignore all their good work and stick to what I know.

Rolemaster Unified Character Law Cover
Rolemaster Unified Character Law Cover

Part of problem with releasing a new version of a popular game will always be inertia:

  • Why should I pay out money to buy a new copy of a rulebook I already own, know and love.
  • Why should I start to learn a whole lot of new rules just to carry on playing a game I already own, know and love.
  • Why bother changing rules when it will not make me a better GM or player but it will throw up a gamut or short comings in the rule books that I have already addressed in the rule system that I own, know and love…

You get the idea.

The answer of course is that there is very little new material for RM2/RMC and there will be even less in the future. House rules that you have put in place to make your game unique just makes it incompatible with other GMs games but a unified solution will solve that. If RMU succeeds then we will get a whole bunch of new players and GMs in the community and that will help us all out with ideas and new materials etc.

I am only just starting to read through Character Law now. What I have decided is that I am going to continue to write for RM2/RMC as that is what I am playing but I will also create everything in RMU as well and share it. This way I get more and more familiar with creating characters and adventures in the new system without having to learn on the job with a bunch of players chomping at the bit trying to run an adventure.

So in the future you will start to see RMU material here as well as the good old trusty RM2.