Rolemaster Unified?

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Silverlion said:
If you run across the name, let me know.
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I have this in PDF somewhere. Lemme see if I can find it. IIRC, the psionics were too copyright infringey, so spells from some D&D clone or other were used, because of the mathematical base of Rolemaster being similar or some such. Lemme look for it.
 
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David Johansen said:
That's the site, you click on forums and there's the forums but I haven't seen the announcement advertisement anywhere but here.
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Ah... I see the forum takes you to that other site. But that site that I linked is in pretty bad shape if you click on any of the product links. :sad:
 
I'm going to respond to a post from another forum where I could get banned for it.

Katastrophe Said
Sadly I believe it’s headed for failure. If it took them this long to put out the core rules, just think of how long it’ll be before you get any companions that are needed to bring about some of the classes like warrior mage, which isn’t included in the RMU core rules.

Also, though it hopes to unify the factions of RM players, it didn’t do a good job of moving the game out of its 80s concepts. It’s very much a game that goes against streamlining in a way that games have all undergone over the past 40 years. No modern games go for more complexity, minutiae and micromanagement. Needing 3-4 reference books and 100s of charts to sit down and play a game will not bring in new players. It’ll satiate a few nostalgic curiosities but that’s likely it’s limit.

Also, shadow world is the biggest draw to the system and with the passing of Terry Amthor it’s unlikely we’ll see much produced in that setting going forward. Adventure and setting books were already very slow in being written and released (years apart) and now will be even slower since ICE lacks teams of writers. I’m not even clear that ICE has the rights to SW so if that’s in flux, it’s gonna kill that development.

In contrast, Against the Darkmaster (loosely based on ICE’s MERP) is a clean simplified game that can be run using RM and MERP adventures and game materials. 3 years or so of development. Already has 3-4 official adventures and has a new campaign expansion upcoming. They also have a semi-official rules expansion book and upcoming campaign adventure book. All within the last 3 years vs ICE releasing only the upcoming core book in the past 10 years.

I wanna like what ICE is doing, but I fear it’s gonna be too little too late.

Play something else then. Rolemaster is a charts and tables game and moving away from that would be silly.
 
I just want a version of Rolemaster that's simpler than Anima: Beyond Fantasy. Why is that so hard?
 
Malckuss said:
I just want a version of Rolemaster that's simpler than Anima: Beyond Fantasy. Why is that so hard?
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Rolemaster isn't _that_ complicated. It's mostly addition and subtraction and looking up charts. The most complicated thing is character development, and even that's not complicated unless you use the options to make it so. It's just _involved_, IMO. And you can even mitigate that.
 
chuckdee said:
Ah... I see the forum takes you to that other site. But that site that I linked is in pretty bad shape if you click on any of the product links. :sad:
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And it's been in that shape for at least a year. Some time last summer I went there looking for a Shadow World book for my wife and it looked broken. Seriously, how can you leave your site where you are selling things broken for more than a year?
 
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TristramEvans said:
I hope you know, the next time I read Amber I'm going to picture them all as gnomes
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Oddly I posted on the wrong thread. Someone was talking about garden gnomes in another thread and I thought I was posting there. I guess I need to go to bed.

I just re-read the Amber books a few weeks ago. Hehe, now I wish I'd read them after this post so I could amuse myself with the same mental image of gnome Corwin, Random, Benedict etc. :smile:
 
sharps54 said:
They have been working on it for years and you could at one time download the beta documents from their forums. It is a set of huge books semi based on “Rolemaster Classic”, they lean heavily into the crunchy parts of the system last time I looked.

I would have much prefer something along the lines of RoleMaster Express personally.
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Funnily, the website still claims you can still sign up for the beta and access the files. If I still had my old, dead pc I could read them!

I loved RMX.
StonesThree said:
I was pretty pissed when this current version of ICE took over and killed Rolemaster Express. 2007 that came out. My mind boggles at how much time has passed since they junked everything the previous owners were doing with the line and began their Neverending Playtest. We could have had a streamlined and faster Not-MERP version with an OGL 15 years ago. I mean, it wouldn't have made a dent to the sales of the last 2 editions of DnD, but it could have found a fanbase had it been allowed to grow.
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I would love to get my hands on a PDF of RMX and all the associated goodies.
StonesThree said:
Its nice to see I wasn't alone in my admiration of RMX.

Take the RMX book and fold in a lot of the extra classes, races and other bits from the RMX Express Additions PDFs, add a few more monsters and you would have had a decent core rulebook.

Oh well. The road not travelled and all that.
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And now, due to the C&D, you cannot find them. Why didn't they simply change the tables? That seems very odd.
David Johansen said:
That's the site, you click on forums and there's the forums but I haven't seen the announcement advertisement anywhere but here.
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I only found info on Twitter.
Mankcam said:
Back in the late 1980s my group loved MERP and the Second Age Middle Earth setting, lots of books we had for that.

We also loved the RM 2E era, and played heaps of RM 2E sessions set in Shadow World; that was our Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms.

Sometime in the 1990s we moved to RMSS, then onto a new setting with the HARP rules in the early 2000s.

Played heaps of other systems since, but we still like occasionally returning to HARP for those colourful ICE Critical Tables (and HARP is slightly more streamlined than RM).

As far as ICE's settings go, I liked the exploration feel of HARP's Cyradon, a continent set after a magical devastation. In some ways it was a bit Jack Vance or Numenera.
However for me it still didn't match the richness of RM's classic high fantasy setting of Shadow World (RIP Terry Amthor).

Now that we have Against The Darkmaster (VsD), I can’t see us getting hyped for RMU.

VsD runs great, it has a version of the classic ICE mechanics, minus the bloat, and it keeps the great crit tables which are a trademark feature of ICE rpgs.
The additional narrative mechanics update the original ICE system in a good way, helping flesh out how to portray the characters.

It’s just been too long waiting for RMU.
My group won’t be getting too excited about it, especially when VsD ticks the boxes we like in regards to ICE system rpgs.
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I'm in this boat, too. Got in on RM2 after a buddy started running MERPs for us and I could only find RM2.

What I'm reading has me nostalgic, but also missing HARP and Anima: Beyond Fantasy.
David Johansen said:
I'm going to respond to a post from another forum where I could get banned for it.

Katastrophe Said
Sadly I believe it’s headed for failure. If it took them this long to put out the core rules, just think of how long it’ll be before you get any companions that are needed to bring about some of the classes like warrior mage, which isn’t included in the RMU core rules.

Also, though it hopes to unify the factions of RM players, it didn’t do a good job of moving the game out of its 80s concepts. It’s very much a game that goes against streamlining in a way that games have all undergone over the past 40 years. No modern games go for more complexity, minutiae and micromanagement. Needing 3-4 reference books and 100s of charts to sit down and play a game will not bring in new players. It’ll satiate a few nostalgic curiosities but that’s likely it’s limit.

Also, shadow world is the biggest draw to the system and with the passing of Terry Amthor it’s unlikely we’ll see much produced in that setting going forward. Adventure and setting books were already very slow in being written and released (years apart) and now will be even slower since ICE lacks teams of writers. I’m not even clear that ICE has the rights to SW so if that’s in flux, it’s gonna kill that development.

In contrast, Against the Darkmaster (loosely based on ICE’s MERP) is a clean simplified game that can be run using RM and MERP adventures and game materials. 3 years or so of development. Already has 3-4 official adventures and has a new campaign expansion upcoming. They also have a semi-official rules expansion book and upcoming campaign adventure book. All within the last 3 years vs ICE releasing only the upcoming core book in the past 10 years.

I wanna like what ICE is doing, but I fear it’s gonna be too little too late.

Play something else then. Rolemaster is a charts and tables game and moving away from that would be silly.
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I think I would like the version you never got to write, even though I have some similar thoughts to the other poster.

I feel like my dream version would be some unholy love child of RMX, HARP, A:BF, & Vs.Dm.
 
Well, as it happens I did write my own fantasy game (well, half a dozen different fantasy games, I have this habit but there's only one that's descended from Rolemaster), it's more like the Standard System without the Rolemaster: no professions, no attack tables, no critical tables, skill categories, training packages, and a flexible magic system that doesn't use spell lists, so I guess that's where my biases lie.

 
I was very surprised when I did my rewrite that it turned out to basically still be RMSS; mostly I just ended up stripping out a bunch of skills and folding a lot of categories into each other. The only RM2-specific feature I can recall using was the table for generating potentials.
 
I think if I wrote something up, it wouldn't be something most RM fans would want.

Edit: stupid phone. Would NOT want. I'm pretty certain I'm in the minority of RM fans.
 
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David Johansen said:
Well, as it happens I did write my own fantasy game (well, half a dozen different fantasy games, I have this habit but there's only one that's descended from Rolemaster), it's more like the Standard System without the Rolemaster: no professions, no attack tables, no critical tables, skill categories, training packages, and a flexible magic system that doesn't use spell lists, so I guess that's where my biases lie.

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I will have to give that a look; thank you for the link!
 
Were I to attempt to rewrite Rolemaster to suit my preferences it would end up in a never-ending loop of modification. Things like stat potentials would be 'in' one day and 'out' the next, only to be reinstated the day after that...
 
Sharrow said:
Were I to attempt to rewrite Rolemaster to suit my preferences it would end up in a never-ending loop of modification. Things like stat potentials would be 'in' one day and 'out' the next, only to be reinstated the day after that...
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I like stat potentials because of how the curve is on stats and how they can get up into the useful range from the bad roll area.
 
Yeah, I like potential and maximum stats but I've sure seen a lot of players react with shock and horror to the idea. For me, the idea that a Hobbit could be as strong as a troll is more shocking and horrific but what do I know, I'm just the GM.
 
chuckdee said:
I like stat potentials because of how the curve is on stats and how they can get up into the useful range from the bad roll area.
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Oh, I agree - some days. Other days I look at them and think "Oh gods, another strangeness to have to explain to players".
 
He's the strongest hobbit in the shire because he only has a -5 penalty to strength! Fear him, agents of Morgoth!
 
Sharrow said:
Were I to attempt to rewrite Rolemaster to suit my preferences it would end up in a never-ending loop of modification. Things like stat potentials would be 'in' one day and 'out' the next, only to be reinstated the day after that...
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I recognise this tendency.
 
They should have released all four books at once, they don’t even have the art for Creature Law yet and this core book doesn’t have any creatures. I wish them the best but this will end up being a debacle as it is declared incomplete and unplayable by most.
 
Looks like it's going to be a short-term success--not only is it #1 on DriveThruRPG's Best-Seller list (which is weighted towards current releases), it's already passed the Silver sales threshold.

We'll see if it's just a brief flash of nostalgia/curiosity sales, or if ICE can leverage this in a full revival. HERO Games managed the latter with HERO System 5th Edition twenty years ago, after all.
 
If they don't quickly get support out to cover the areas of the other three core books I can't imagine it will be anything but a flash in the pan. They could release free PDFs with some items from each of the other books but if they think people will happily wait three years to get monsters they might not have a firm grasp of the market. I hope I'm wrong.
 
sharps54 said:
They should have released all four books at once, they don’t even have the art for Creature Law yet and this core book doesn’t have any creatures. I wish them the best but this will end up being a debacle as it is declared incomplete and unplayable by most.
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They're following in the big boys' footsteps. Both D&D 3.X & 5th edition released one book at a time. There was 1-3 months between releases. The reasoning was it gave players time to read the material, build characters, the GM to set up and plan a campaign, then populate it with enemies.

Pathfinder has done this, too, both 1st and 2nd edition, though Paizo's cores cover a lot of ground.

The same will happen here. I'm certain people will find a way to play. It's not like GMs haven't made stuff up before.
 
Malckuss said:
They're following in the big boys' footsteps. Both D&D 3.X & 5th edition released one book at a time. There was 1-3 months between releases. The reasoning was it gave players time to read the material, build characters, the GM to set up and plan a campaign, then populate it with enemies.

Pathfinder has done this, too, both 1st and 2nd edition, though Paizo's cores cover a lot of ground.

The same will happen here. I'm certain people will find a way to play. It's not like GMs haven't made stuff up before.
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I don't follow WotC or Paizo so I didn't know that was still the industry standard. Still if they get the other books out in 3 months it will be a miracle
 
The November update on their Forums mentioned that Creature Law is the furthest behind. Treasure Law is in layout. Spell Law is supposed to be completely finished. I would have thought it would have debuted today, too.
 
I'm reading through Core Law right now. So far, it seems mechanically sound. It's certainly streamlined compared to RMSS, and maybe even compared to RM2. I like the idea of the compressed stat range a lot at first reading, because I've found compressed bonuses very nice in play with Swords & Wizardry/0e compared to say B/X D&D. I hope it is similarly effective in RMU.

The similar skills rule looks good, and I'm ok with the compressed weapon categories, since that reflects how weapons actually work. There's not much difference between a spear and a staff, and a staff can be used much like a longsword (there's even an old manual that more or less says that). A messer fighter can pick up a sabre, arming sword or stick and be nearly as effective. My students were really excited to learn a unit on stick-fighting, and after a few classes they were like "this is basically the same as messer!", which is what I said at the beginning of the unit. ;)

I'm not a huge fan of some of the art, though I like the overall colour palette.

So far, so good I guess.
 
I have heard some complaints about the art and layout. Some have said the layout was basically the same as the playtest materials (which is not bad, but also not good). I guess the master class table is missing, too. At least it's not upside down, as it is in the playtest.

The biggest issue I have heard regards all four books not being release at once as part of one package.
 
I think they wanted to get it out for Dragonmeet to try to build some momentum around it. If they can get the other books out next year then I think they will be OK. (As ok as a fantasy game that isn’t DnD can be these days.) Although from a sales perspective having all 4 drop at the same time would have been better as some customers would have swooped in and purchased all 4 at the same time. The danger with doing it this way is people might buy the core and lose interest before the rest are released, or hold back on buying any of the books until its all been released.

On the plus side they are going down the straight to POD route rather then kickstarter which I wish more companies would do.
 
It looks like I’m going to get in a play by post game with some buddies to give it a shot so we’ll see how that goes. We’ve played MERP together and Rolemaster separately in the past so it will be interesting to see what people think of the changes.
 
RMU is interesting. More streamlined than earlier editions. Picked it up to look through. Did like the idea of training packages in RMFRP and HARP, so that could return in a future supplement.
 
StonesThree said:
I think they wanted to get it out for Dragonmeet to try to build some momentum around it. If they can get the other books out next year then I think they will be OK. (As ok as a fantasy game that isn’t DnD can be these days.) Although from a sales perspective having all 4 drop at the same time would have been better as some customers would have swooped in and purchased all 4 at the same time. The danger with doing it this way is people might buy the core and lose interest before the rest are released, or hold back on buying any of the books until its all been released.

On the plus side they are going down the straight to POD route rather then kickstarter which I wish more companies would do.
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Well, the PDF has already hit Electrum level on DriveThruRPG. I don't know if it's available anywhere else, but the link they threw up on Twitter was for DriveThruRPG.
 
Malckuss said:
I have heard some complaints about the art and layout. Some have said the layout was basically the same as the playtest materials (which is not bad, but also not good). I guess the master class table is missing, too. At least it's not upside down, as it is in the playtest.

The biggest issue I have heard regards all four books not being release at once as part of one package.
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The layout doesn't really bug me. It's also using the same fonts as RMSS as far as I can tell, which I like. Some of the art is pretty cool, and some is just not up to snuff for something as revered as Rolemaster IMO. I suspect ICE just doesn't have the resources to increase their production values to the current small-press rpg industry standard. I hope Core Law gives them a nice influx of cash so that future printings and supplements can have more shelf appeal.

I really like the selection of character classes, pretty much what was in RMSS. Not a fan of all the wacky the races, but I don't have to use them, and some people will find them indispensable because there are groups where someone just has to play a bird-man or whatever. Fun that the Vard (a four-armed orc) made it in. Those who like beast-men PCs will be happy for sure, as there's a whole whack of them to choose from. You could almost run Talislanta or Arduin with RMU out of the box. :devil:

I'll read more later tonight.
 
TNMalt said:
RMU is interesting. More streamlined than earlier editions. Picked it up to look through. Did like the idea of training packages in RMFRP and HARP, so that could return in a future supplement.
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Not if the project lead has anything to say about it.
 
David Johansen said:
Not if the project lead has anything to say about it.
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Yeah. I read the bit in the collated summary of changes to RMU the line developer was bragging about; some of them were promising, like rules for creating races, professions, etc.

When I hit the number of skills (95!) and that purchasing categories instead of individual skills had been eliminated in order to simplify (?) the game, I facepalmed. How does eliminating the option to buy skills in groups to save yourself a headache streamlining the game? It actually makes it more complicated! Even with the idea of similar skill usage! This idea seems pants-on-head crazy.
 
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