If you could revise Rolemaster?

[brehobit]

The magic and combat system, in my opinion, were fine. You need to grant people the right to make copies, but as long as each PC has their tables in front of them, no worries.

Basic animals (say house cats) were scary powerful in 1st edition, but last edition dropped that down to only somewhat crazy levels.

The skill system the the last edition was insane. Kill it. None of this "bonus to next action" thing. Crit fail, fail, success, crit success, and wacky success are fine results. Keep it limited to that.

It was too easy to make huge 1st level characters in the last edition. In the edition before that it was nearly impossible to make a playable 1st level character, especially full casters. Fix it.

Finally, character creation MUST be automated. And you all need to supply those tools. Palm-pilot programs for combat might work, but I doubt it. I don't think you can easily automate that.

Finally, the game cries out for something like action points. Some way of avoiding the crazy death blow every now and again. The deadly system is important to the feel of the game. Our game master moved all but the worst crits down to the "worst" non-fatal crit on all but the worst crits (F?). Still took you out of the game for quite a bit, but not dead.

Hey, if you know and see Chris Goebel, say hi to him for me.

Mark

 

[Khairn]

Damn ... I am really in a minority here.

Aside from streamlining the rules, eliminating <blanks> in the spell list, and maybe having an option for a 1 tier skill progression ... there isn't anything else I would change.

I've always found the tables to be very easy to use, and they do provide a uniqueness to each weapon and elemental attack that I and my players really like. Time-wise, a Rolemaster combat takes about the same amount of time as a D20.

One of RM's biggest advantages IMO is the ease of customizing and the modularity of the skills, combat and magic. But then again I'm really familiar with the system.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Having never actually played RM but having read a few books...

I always thought the spell system was awesome. I like the idea that you focused on a spell type and got better and better at it. I wish DnD had something like that rather than just a few spells having improved versions.

Keep it!

DS

 

[Staffan]

These are just things from the top of my head, not any sort of deep analysis of things:

1. Broader skills. Seriously, having "Tracking" and "Reading tracks" as separate skills is just too much. I think going as far as the skill categories in RMSS is too much, but some skills really need to be combined.

2. Fix things to most spellcasters can have an offensive spell at first level, that doesn't take multiple rounds to cast. It would be nice to, as a part of the broadening of skills above, combine all the Directed Spells skills into one, so an offensive spellcaster doesn't have to start over learning his "weapon skill" every time he gets a new offensive spell.

3. Possibly go over to making skill rolls on an open-ended d20. That's mostly because most people can add 14+8=22 a lot faster than they can add 69+44=113. I can see where many of the old-time fans might object loudly to that, though.

4. What other people have said - streamline attack tables and maneuver tables. The attack tables themselves is part of what makes Rolemaster into Rolemaster, so I wouldn't abandon them completely, but some combination of (a) fewer armor types, (b) fewer weapon tables (both these could possibly be reduced to where they are in MERP, which has 1H slash, 1h crush, 2H, and ranged vs. no armor, soft leather, rigid leather, chain, and plate), and (c) combine table results (e.g. 66-70 instead of 66, 67, 68, 69, 70).

As for things you should keep: Attack/maneuver tables in some form, crits, 1-100 stats that lead to bellcurved modifiers, and classes that buy different skills at different rates. To my mind, those are the things that define Rolemaster as its own thing instead of just a D&D knockoff.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Automate it.

Seriously. Those tables are cool, but it's too many rolls. Make it a one click laptop application, and people might use it.

Agreed.

Stop selling tables: start selling non-table rules. Put the tables into a one-click (ok with a slider bar for OB/DB).

Make all charcater generation automated as well.

If ICE is not prepared to break the model where they sell me charts - I don't see the reason to come back. That simple.

I actually still like RM2. I played RM for 20 years. But I also really like D&D 3.5. I enjoy the wealth of material for D20 and I like having Dungeon and Dragon mags to buy and discuss with others as a game system I am running. That is something that no revision to RM is going to have.

The problems with 1st edition (and 2E) of AD&D went away with 3.5. I and the rest of my Rolemaster veteran gamers in my group came back to D&D as a consequence.

We were *burnt out* on RM. And char gen in RMSS was so bloody broken that I avoided killing characters just to avoid the player's pain in making a new one.

When your char gen system is THAT time consuming that a 20 year RM vet GM avoids killing characters - you got a serious problem.

By the time D&D moves to 4th edition - I'll come on back to RM. But I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's too soon for a Rolemaster rebirth.

 

[Khairn]

With all its complexity ... I even enjoy RMSS Character Generation. Between a player and myself we get a fully fleshed out (2nd lv) character in about 15-20 mins tops.

I guess there is a system for almost every player, so I rolled a "66" and got RM.

 

[Rasyr]

Steel_Wind - I agree that the RMSS chargen is much too complicated, more than it really needs to be. However, if it is too soon for a Rolemaster rebirth, as you call it, then that would be a problem that cannot be fixed.

In a number of other threads that I started, some people just mentioned cleaning up and re-organizing the existing books. To me, that would just compound the confusion that already exists between RMSS and RMFRP, which are already the same system (with some errata fixed). And if I delve into the core books that much, I am not going to stop with a simple reorganization, I am going to want to fix the problems.

One of those problems, as I see it, is that when the old ICE did the revision to RMSS, they tried to include too much from all those RM2 Companions, many of which contained rules that had never been checked for play balance from what I have been told. Instead of stripping it down to its core, and rebuilding it properly and fixing any problems, the folks at the time, instead added in all the "neat" things that they could think of. :insert roll-eyes here:

There is currently a split in the RM fan-base between RM2, and RMSS/FRP. No revision is going to be able to please all of them. That is one of the issues that ICE faces when even thinking about considering a revision of RM.

As for tables, personally, I do not see RM as "selling tables", I see it as a highly flexible game system. However, there are those who actually like all the tables. My solution for that, would be to include combat tables similair (but NOT exactly the same) to the ones in the HARP product 'Hack & Slash' (I have put an image of one of those tables down below at the bottom of this post) into the core book, and then create a whole new "Arms Law" which would expand those tables into individual tables for each weapon, for those who want them, thus Arms Law would be an option, not a requirement for a new version of RM...

For skills, I would most likely want to go back to RM2, and use the list from Character Law as my starting point, and go from there. Rolemaster Companion II increased this base list of skills to 116 separate skills, many of which were not really needed, IMO. But, if start with that original core list, and rework that, and make sure that every skill included is something that IS going to be used and/or needed, then I think that we will have made a good start.

For spells, some folks have said that they think that the scalable spell system is the best that they have seen in a long time. I don't know about that myself, and I can think of ways that it can be improved upon, and personally, I think that the idea of spell lists may be over and past, that perhaps something new (but related!) is needed. One of the biggest problems with spell lists is that they had no underlying rules behind them, they were simply done and created by fiat of the designers. That would have to change. I am a big proponent of making sure that everything is balanced, and that, to me, requires having a solid underlying structure.

For profession, well.... A few years ago, I wrote an article for The Guild Companion called Irregular Realms. It basically gave about 26 base templates (individual realms and realm combinations), and rules for customizing them to create the profession you want. However, something like that would mean even MORE tables, and you know what? I am not going to do that. I do, however, have a few ideas on how to make professions in RM even MORE customizable, and how to do it without requiring major tables. This idea is still in a very early form (have not even written it down yet), but I think that it could be the way to go.

Well, I have rambled enough for now, and I have to go do some work for my landlord (setting up a wireless network for one of his apartment buildings), but I will be back later today..

 

[twofalls]

I'm only familiar w/ the MERP version of RM, but my overall suggestion would be to CONDENSE things whenever possible (i.e., make one table do as many things as possible, rather than having twenty different tables), and include a quick "if it don't matter, don't roll it" mechanic akin to Take 10/Take 20. My main memory around RM is the idea of somebody rolling on the "Move and Maneuver" table to cross an empty field ... WTF?

-The Gneech

I second this one. The maneuver tables are just going too far with the table concept. Initative is overly complcated as well. I happend to really like the game, but it takes so long to resolve a scene using the rules that I shelved it a decade ago and haven't revisited it. Now I have so many games that even though I fondly recall my D&D conversion to RM sessions I woudln't consider playing the game as it is again at all.

The game's strength is also it's weakness. It feels more solid and real because it's so detail oriented, however because it's exactly that it requires far too much time to navigate the system at the epxense of the story pace. I love the detail, but my games are about the story. I'm not sure you CAN keep RM the same game and make it workable for a story driven group.

 

[Rel]

My group played Rolemaster almost exclusively for 12 years. One of the guys in the group (who is also a board member here - Speaks With Stone) wrote the Castles and Ruins book for RMSS and together he and I wrote The Essence Companion for that system. With those as my credentials, I'll say the following:

We quit playing RM and switched to D&D 3.0 because we had reached the point where the system was getting in the way of the kinds of games we wanted to run. Even the simplest combats would take hours to resolve thanks to the combination of the Maneuver Charts (which had been split up into almost a chart for every skill), the Weapon Tables, the Critical Charts and the biggest culprit: The combat system.

The Snap/Normal/Deliberate phase business combined with the various maneuvers you were required to select from (Full Attack, React&Melee, etc.) the percentage actions and all the modifiers that applied had just become oppressive to us. When combined with the maneuvers that often gave bonuses to actions taken on subsequent rounds and the complexity of the magic system (which we ourselves had contributed to bloating with our own book, The Essence Companion), combat was a sluggish nightmare full of "Oh damn, I forgot to add the X modifier!" And it was all too easy for a single random crit to turn a well crafted character into a dead well crafted character.

It got to the point where our campaigns became almost entirely roleplay focused because combat was extremely deadly and also extremely slow to resolve. At first we were patting ourselves on the back at somehow having evolved beyond being "hack and slash" type players. But as time went on we understood that we actually had a lot more fun when there was a healthy dose of smiting the bad guys mixed in with our mystery solving and courtly intrigue.

I'll go off track here for a moment to say that I feel that many of these same problems are, at least to some extent, inherent in D&D at high levels where powerful magic is imposing large modifiers for long periods of time. But we generally don't play at those levels. And RM had us contending with these issues right out of the gate with 1st level characters. It was just the nature of the system.

I don't know if RM could be redesigned in such a way as to retain its fanbase and yet pare down the combat system into something a lot simpler (and therefore more quickly resolved). But I do know that it would be impossible for our group to return to anything resembling the combat system in RMSS and have fun with it. Again, I have less of a problem with the resolution of a single attack (I too like the way that armor interacts with the various weapons and the Crit charts are a Good Thing) and more of a problem with how the flow of the combat round works.

For what it's worth, we tried several innovations in an attempt to make the combat system more workable. We had a method where we wrote down our actions in silence on sheets that divided them into Snap/Normal/Deliberate and instituted cyclic initiative rather than re-rolling every round. It helped a bit but fell short of making the situation bearable in the long run. After I got D&D3.0 in the Christmas of 2001, we played it, scoffed at the idea of returning to D&D, gave it some more thought and then did exactly that. We've never really looked back and I know that several players in our group actually tossed or sold their RM stuff. I didn't but I'm a total pack rat.

I hope that some of that might be helpful to you, Tim. Despite some less than pleasant dealings with ICE in the past (before the current administration), I hold great fondness for the system and I wish you guys the best of luck.

 

[Staffan]

My solution for that, would be to include combat tables similair (but NOT exactly the same) to the ones in the HARP product 'Hack & Slash' (I have put an image of one of those tables down below at the bottom of this post) into the core book,

That looks good. I'd go with a separate roll for crits though (levels A through E), because the crits are one thing I really like about Rolemaster.
I'd probably base it on armor type rather than attack size. Or possibly expand things to have one table per attack form (crush, slash, puncture, possibly grapple and more) per size (so you'd have Tiny puncture, Small puncture, Medium puncture...). But that might be too much, in which case it's better to just use size as a modifier. I do like the way RM's attack tables make it so someone in heavy armor is gonna take a lot of hits that do a few points of concussion damage but no crits, while an unarmored guy has a much better chance of not being hit at all, but gets a lot more hurtin' if they do connect - and that kind of thing is pretty hard to do in HARP, I think (though I admit I've only read the book once or twice).