Rolemaster?

[Philotomy Jurament]

I started off with Rolemaster 1e (the black box set)...

Was that the oversized box with the picture of the winged humanoids (or something) fighting? That's what I started with (it had the blue cover Character Law, a combined Arms Law & Claw Law, Spell Law, and the World of Vog Mur. I bought it from a friend. Later I added the 2e stuff (combined Character Law/Campaign Law, et cetera) and all the companions.

I like that version of RM. At the time, I went overboard adding all sorts of options, but I think if you restrain yourself it's a great system. I like Gygax-era D&D (i.e. original or AD&D) for my D&D gaming, but for crunchier fantasy gaming, RM is hard to beat.

 

[jdrakeh]

Was that the oversized box with the picture of the winged humanoids (or something) fighting?

Yep!

I like that version of RM. At the time, I went overboard adding all sorts of options, but I think if you restrain yourself it's a great system.

Yeah, it's a lot like GURPS in this regard — it's best taken in a little bit at a time, lest you get overwhelmed.

 

[Urbannen]

I was briefly involved in a game of Rolemaster Fantasy Roleplaying about a year ago. I got all the books and everything.

As someone mentioned the organization of the books is pretty darn bad.

No one has mentioned this, but the skill system is pretty tough to play as written. I imagine most if not all DMs use some variation of their own in order to make it workable. Especially in RMSS/RMFRP, there is a skill for almost all actions. Most skill rolls, even "easy" ones, require pretty high results to be successfull; the flexibility of the d20 DC system is not present. Characters do not get enough skill points to be well-rounded even though the Rolemaster brags about its flexibility; since you need really high skill bonuses to succeed regularly, it behooves you to spend your precious skill points on skills that are easy for your class to learn. What the skills actually do is often very vague - it seems like skill effects are pretty much left up to the DM, but this is never explicitly stated. And don't ask about the opaque rules governing herb use, which in theory is a hallmark of this system.

The magic system, although it looks very cool, tends to be clunky in practice. Low-level magic users have to spend three combat rounds just to cast one spell "safely", and then the chance of the spell succeeding is almost always worse than it is in D&D. Every time a spellcaster casts a spell there is a 3% chance for it to fumble, no matter what The rules for spell acquisition are unnecessarily limiting, whichever edition you use. Beginning players have to be careful, too - for instance there are very few offensive spells for beginning essence (arcane) spellcasters. At first level there is only one: Sleep V. For example, one new player I played with tried to make a 3rd level Ice Mage but her character was bad because she ended up not having a single offensive spell yet!

There are some really cool things about the system, but you really have to readjust it and make it your own, almost like with AD&D 1st and 2nd edition.

 

[TheNovaLord]

true to apoint

play with only the PHB of either 3.5/4.0...and dnd is very limited too....add in splat books for both games....and you open up world of options...including 1st level offensive spells.

 

[Urbannen]

true to apoint

play with only the PHB of either 3.5/4.0...and dnd is very limited too....add in splat books for both games....and you open up world of options...including 1st level offensive spells.

I have to respectfully disagree. D&D 3.5 (which I know) has many options for lower-level characters in the basic books, which I use almost exclusively. Standard low-level spellcasters in 3.5 have many offensive options; they are much more powerful and easier to play than their RM equivalents. Sleep, magic missile, charm person, grease, summon monster, etc.; it's a fairly beefy list. The Ice Mage class that I mentioned was from an RM elemental supplement - all the elementalist spell-casting classes from that book were crappy at low levels.

Low-level characters in general in D&D 3.5 can regularly succeed at level-appropriate skill checks for their classes.

 

[TheNovaLord]

thinking about it, RM was released at the time of 1st ed AD&D.

your magic user had only 1 spell a day then!!

but yeah, elemental casters in RM dont start with much offence in Spell Law

I guess a first level essence user could cast vibrations, sleep v, as offence.

BUT the elementalsit in RM isnt meant to be all attack

compared to 1st level sorceror who can have the above plus question, minor pain, sprain limb, as offensive spells...and by 3rd level will have buckets full.

 

[Rel]

Our group played Rolemaster almost exclusively for 12 years. Myself and a friend even became writers for ICE back in that era. If you've got a copy of The Essence Companion or Castles & Ruins, I had a hand in both of those (especially EssComp,which I co-wrote). Rolemaster has a special place in my heart and we had a lot of good times with it.

That said, I don't plan to go back to it anytime soon.

The core mechanic is fairly simple but the fact that it relies upon charts rather than a target number adds an extra step. The power curve is pretty flat but, as has been mentioned above, the progression for spellcasters is SLOW, especially at early levels. Having to spend so much time prepping your spells is a bit of a drag in my opinion and you start out not being able to do an awful lot. I got to a point when it was a rare thing for me to play a "pure" spellcaster.

Characters are highly customizable thanks to the intricate skill system. If you are using RMSS then you get the categories that mean you can specialize in broadswords but also be good at any One Handed Edged weapon you pick up. However the system suffers from "skill bloat" in my opinion. The fact that there are separate skills for Herb Knowledge, Find Herb, Prepare Herb and Use Prepared Herb (which is not the same thing as Prepare Poison or Use Prepared Poison) is probably the most egregious.

We had long abandoned D&D (1e) because we desired a greater level of detail in our ruleset. But there came a day, right after 3e was released and we gave it a test run while on a beach trip, that we said, "Our RM games are still fun but the pace with 3e D&D is so much faster and it now has a skill system...Let's do THAT." And we've never looked back.

None of which is to say that you shouldn't try it. Like I said, we had a lot of fun with it for a lot of years and of course tastes vary. Give it a shot. It might be a game you enjoy a lot.

 

[jdrakeh]

thinking about it, RM was released at the time of 1st ed AD&D.

your magic user had only 1 spell a day then!!

Yes, certain Rolemaster 'standards' were certainly set by AD&D, the system that it was trying to improve upon.

 

[TheNovaLord]

i have come back to RM after a ten year gap.

our groups played a lot of 3.5 in last 5 years, but high level in that gets way hard work after 7th or so & i never thought my characters had enough skills they could use.
we tried 4th ed for about 3 months, but w/o getting banned from the boards or into an edition war, we found it a really is a poor system overall, in our opinion of course.

we also play a lot of savage worlds...so RM is a nice counter points to its fast & furious ness

there a re a lot of skills in RM.....but instead of saying 'do anybody have skill X or Y", weve been trying to play as "Im gonna use skill A to try in suceed in this situation'. Means being inventive on your feet and makes things more player driven.

At 5th lvl the party have good range of skills, and even though im doing individual xp for each PC, no one is out shining anyone else.

using a companion method of casting spells so you can cast them quicker at a penalty. No need to house rule anything in RM as between the 6 or 7 companions there is about 8 ways to do everything!!

as a caveat though, if i picked it up fresh tommorrow it would feel hard work & outdated to run, in this era of faster , player driven games.

 

[jdrakeh]

as a caveat though, if i picked it up fresh tommorrow it would feel hard work & outdated to run, in this era of faster , player driven games.

Hey, I just picked up Powers & Perils anew earlier this year. Imagine how that feels!