Topic: How to cope with marauding psychopaths...

[Aotrs Commander]

This is not so much a frustrated rant at munchkin players so much as a slightly bemused GM's exasperation. You may shake your head at my incompetance, laugh at my plight or merely lend your slightly smirking ear at the predicament I'm now finding myself in. You mgith even be able to help. (But I doubt it...) Take the following with a good dose of humour, as that's pretty much what the game boils down to...

I'm starting to have problems challenging my PCs. They consist of, variously and not inclusively, Jedi, super-spy snipers, archmages, klingon ninjas, X-Men style mutants, people with excessive near-power armour, walking fish criminals and one crazy NPC with a chainsaw and shotgun by the name of Stan who lairs  - not lives, lairs - in the brig... (This should give you an idea about what I'm talking about with the tone of the game...)

We're playing a hidious mutant hybrid edition of RM/SM2 with bits from the later game (mostly the new equipment, activity system, attack and crit tables). (And a fair bit of homebrew fiddling around SpamCo II's psi-fire system for the Jedi and mutant powers.)  And the party are very, very hard. (Level range is 10-11 mostly). They have by freak chance, and use of RoCo IV's expanded potential rules (yes, it seemed like a harmlessly good idea all those years ago...) all have insane quickness and agility, to the point anything not equally insane tends to die before it gets to act. (Case in point, todays adventure, the Orc soldiers with their QU of 96 was barely noticable!) Several of them have Adrenal Defense and slowly more and more of them are getting shields. Half the party have innate stat abilities; often more than one! I was, up until today, using RoCo I's rules for exceeding the chart, but I didn't bother today since its a boost they no longer need! They are very well equipped, the party is bloated out to 13 characters with NPCs, sidekicks and all (of which generally about 8-9 will be in action at once with the seven players!) And their tactics range from good to superlative.

Now all this wouldn't necessarily be a problem (save that the opponets would have to get more and more insabely skilled and equipped, but I'm quite willing to live with that) but I'm starting to see a disparity between the weaker members of the party - who's stats are only really high, not insane - and the stronger ones. It wouldn't matter if they were all as insanely strong as each other, but there's a slightly widening gap appearing between the characters who've been maxmised and specialised and those who are not quite as heavily pumped. What I put in to challenge the upper end usually means the lower end are having trouble hitting (and thus getting them a bit marginalised).

To crown it all, there is one player whose luck is infuriating in any game system. If I put a BBEG/boss monster in, he will invariably roll up and attack somewhere in the mid-200-300s. Every. Single. Time. He does it in D&D too, but that's not too bad because it's harder to one-hit kill the monsters...On the rare occasions he doesn't, someone else will instead.

I have not ever had a boss slash leader-type last more than about two rounds in ANY Rolemaster game I've played in the last...*cough*eighteen years*cough* (I've been playing since I was 11, right after grduating from HeroQuest. Talk about making a big jump!) Even supported by minions as they tend to be.

I made what I think will be my last attempt at a BBEG today. Which was a 20th level Orc, with a barrier shield, Armoured Adrenal Defence, cybernetics and innate stat abilities up the wazoo and adrenal speed; dual wielding two Omega-Osiris Plasmatic Repeater Cannons (really bending and a bit beyond the rules there) and once again, he still got hit in the first round and stunned at worse, put at -50...I manged to worry the players a bit, but really, once he had that hit, the -50 put him out of the danger zone to the party. (It's a miracle they didn't kill him outright - to the point I gave him magic plot-armour nanobots that would reconstitue him if he was killed too easily at the dramatically appropriate moment...) He was supposed to come in and fight with his flunkies, but true to form, the round he made is Dramatic Entrance^TM, the PCs manage to kill off about seven foes leaving him exposed to the fire of the whole party...(Damn you, action declarations!)

It's not so much I'm annoyed with the players - large parts of this are my fault over the years, since we've been playing with this party for ohhh *cough* twelve plus years...and the rest *cough* on and off. It is without question, everyone's favourite party. So I'm not really keen to retire the party (they players'd lynch me!) and they all put up such a whine when I downgrade something if I find I've miscalucated or changed the rules slightly, I hate to imagine what would happen if I drained their stats and loot...!

I'm just shaking my head as to how to challenge them. Up until today's adventure, I recently threw a lot of robots and constructs (and occasinally Undead) at them (shields, AT X, best of all, can't be stunned) but they got a bit tired of that. And throwing high-level stuff at them is a bad thing, since the stuff that can punch through the shield et al will pulverise some of the others and also knackers the Archmage's effectiveness with RRs (so she Hastes the party instead, which tends to be worse...)

So I'm really a bit puzzled as to proceed, bar more or less throwing cannon fodder every fight and letting them mow foes down all the time...Short of pumping the stats of the lower end to equally silly levels, because then at least the playing field is evened out.

So I thought, what-the-hey, it can't hurt to see if anyone has any suggestions...or can just commiserate with a slightly baffled GM at his wit's end...

[markc]

 First I would like to quote from a film and a moment in history that migh help you. The First "Do not attack the Tiger tank instead attack the Tighers supply line.", and from Serenity "These people come at you side ways."

 Both of them say your PC's are powerful what are they not powerful in? Also as perople gain in power they can make enemies? Are they equiped to deal with goverments or people in governments taking action against them? Do they pay taxes"
 Also I would go after there NPC's with a vengence in any way shape or form. Convict them of crimes, ambush them or anything else to get them out of the picture.

 And to close a note of sympathy. Our GM on Friday night which was the close of the campaign had a god posess a dead member of our party [ a homuclus basicly] so he could cross the boundry into the world. We were in his mini-plane where yes he was a god but we had a very very small chance to kill him. We were using the WoD Mage system and the mortal-god had max stats and all arcane at 10. If the supprised player whoes PC was god-posessed had some time to think we would of had no chance at all to get him, but put on the spot worked to our favor. But it was not the damage from spells or attacks of PC's or NPC's, the constant healing and buffing of party members that brought him low. It was yes .......... the humble sleep spell cast by a player that does not know the system that well. He scored 12 sucesses on the spell and the mortal posessed by a god got only 11 sucesses. But even then the party had to work to kill him as he was still buffed up. It was an ending that the GM could not have planed on or planed for and us PC's fully expected to die as the GM said we would.
 I think our GM can simpathise with you on many levels.

MDC

[Nejira]

A: Try to talk to them about it (rephrased this so many times and still sounds like my gf sorry..). It sounds like you had a good run, and maybe its about time to start over? This time with a less cinematic campaign maybe? Nothing wrong with cinematic but it tends to get out of control

B: Cheat, and if that doesn?t work cheat some more!

C: Put them in a region with a mysterious fog which drains Exhaustion points and PP. Then hit them...hard with mobs and plenty of ?em.

D: Use Assassins. Stealth/Ambush combos are a real killer. Hard to detect even with the prober skills. Make this particular assassin clan UNdetectable against anything (spells, powers, gear) as they all sold their names/soul to the devil so they don?t exist (hence can?t be detected).

E: Rust monsters, and if you don?t know them its a monster which eats metal (even magical), that should take care of some of their gear. If gear is not metal make a varient which eats anything:P

F: Fight Scenes. Ensure that the fights takes place in an environment not in the PC?s favor. See any action movie (more or less for ideas). But doesn?t just throw in one thing, no make it count and do 3-5 things at the same time. take away their advantages (if they can fly there are strong winds making it near imposible, and so forth), and stack penalties against them (slippy fighting surface, smoke blowing in their eyes while tiny rabid squirrels attack).

I guess the important thing is to have fun, if you and your players are having fun you are doing it right

When you think about that you as the GM has the whole universe on your side, things are really stacked in your favor. Want it to rain? It rains, and so forth. The hard part is to challenge players without outright killing them all. Something I been guilty of a few times myself.

[dutch206]

Option One:  Welcome to the world of "power creep".  You have hit the highest power level, and unfortunately it is time to bid adieu to this campaign.  Start over and ratchet down the power level about ten notches.

Option Two:  Make your villains insanely unfair and attack the characters' weakest points.

Option Three:  Hire Ninjas/assassins to sneak up on them and kill them one by one.  Seriously, if they are as powerful as you say, who would face them in a full frontal attack?

[Nejira]

*mumbles* dutch stole my assassin idea...mental note: hire ninjas to go after him

On a serious note, maybe it would be best to make a new campaign. Unless you want this power level?

[Aotrs Commander]

Both of them say your PC's are powerful what are they not powerful in? Also as perople gain in power they can make enemies? Are they equiped to deal with goverments or people in governments taking action against them? Do they pay taxes"
 Also I would go after there NPC's with a vengence in any way shape or form. Convict them of crimes, ambush them or anything else to get them out of the picture.

Well, to be fair, they have got enemies in several of the major powers, at least two of the group are wanted criminals (which hilariously sets them at odds with the Jedi, who sees it as his lot in life to try and redeem at least one of them). They try and avoid all the major areas of space, actually, spending thier time flitting around trying to keep from being noticed by one of their many enemies - excluding the law-enforcement establishments - which variously include the Galactic Empire, the Orc Fearcrushy (theocracy), two alien races, a time-travelling band of super-ninja monks, a supra-high tech alien robotic race (who have much bigger fish to fry than the PCs or they really would have killed them all by now!) and the people of New Eire who want the party for rescuing one of their party members from being transformed into a hideous potato clone from crimes against the potato (don't ask. Just...Don't. Ask.) And they are known on a personal basis with the super-high level characters of two other races, one of whom is the leader of the Army Of The Red Spear (Aotrs - so now you know where my name came from). He at least finds them be be useful, as they're easily cowed/bribed into doing his bidding under the whole 'greater good and a fat pile of cash' philosophy...

Oh, and they may or may not have started an intergalactic incident with an unknown alien race a couple of quests ago; the only reason the culprits (those criminal guys again!) haven't been strung up is because the party can't quite bring themselves to turn them in to the higher powers and they're not entirely sure the aliens weren't hostile in the first place. (Though they certainly are now!)

So actually, not only have they fought ninjas, they've fought time-travelling space-ninjas who at one point trained up a select group of specialised guys specifically to take the PCs on one-on-one. And the PCs won...With about three well-placed one-hit KOs.

Though to be fair they were awesome kills...


Two of the NPCs are tech that the groups really, really need to keep their starship running (and given the starship battles I do like to throw in kind of important) - and I'm not quite cliche enough to kill off the tech who's the Jedi's fiance... And those two are not really the problem, rarely getting into combat in the first place. Stan is is left in the brig most of the time and he's too fun to get rid of. The next NPC is a PC/NPC (though it's doubtful anyone will yake a turn DMing for this group she is my favourite character - even if she is in the upper end, I have tendancy to forget *cough* to get her to do anything outside of roleplaying if I can avoid it somedays). I am slowly grooming her and the other tech up to the level that the last tech can be phased out and bugger off back to his home, but we're not quite there yet...

The last NPC, Gillman, the walking fish criminal, who makes most Chaotic Neutral people go, "hold on a sec, that's a bit mad isn't it?" I have been trying VERY HARD to kill for the Last. Three. Adventures! The party actually got rid of him once, by sending him to jail. But one of the players, getting board with his crazy Irish-poato-and-gun-obessed character, replaced him, with the character, Liam O'Hara (hated enemy of the state of New Eire) going off to rescue his partner in crime (literally - they commited armed robbery and murder one session to my mounting dismay - behind the Jedi's back of course...) And when Liam returned, Gillman came in tow. It's worth, noting by the by, that in my years of gaming I've killed very, very few PC and even NPCs so the fact I've trying my damnedest short of DM fiat says a lot for the nuisence of the character...

I have tried everything short of fudging the dice rolls. Damn it, quest before last I'd forgotten his Adrenal Defence (I was mortified to discover he had it when I levelled him this time) and failed to kill him while he was being attacked by creatures with his DB of 20 and AT 1! (Though AD did explain why he wasn't wearing armour). Seriously, +117 LBi and I STILL Couldn't kill him! Graaah!

I was sooo going to have the Orc lord perforate his fishy arse today but he got shot before he could do it. *Sob*



However, I just remembered that Liam's player did hand me a note that his other character Dov (who is an alien bounty-hunter) was looking to see how much the bounty on Liam and Gillman was worth, which is in Dov's character. Considering that they commited assault on a colony police officer and robbery again today. So, maybe there's hope in there yet... (At least of getting rid of Gillman as ironically he and Liam are in the lower power quotient and Dov with his +200 and above OB is in the higher tier (but Dov's less fun personality-wise.))

A: Try to talk to them about it (rephrased this so many times and still sounds like my gf sorry..). It sounds like you had a good run, and maybe its about time to start over? This time with a less cinematic campaign maybe? Nothing wrong with cinematic but it tends to get out of control

I kinda value my unlife, thanks. At very best the sheer wails of misery are to horrible even for a Lich to comtemplate. Seriously, they'd like, all CRY if I even suggested that. Remember that we've been playing with these characters in some cases for over half our lives! Hell, I'd rather suffer a long series of mindless massecres in preference to that.

C-through-F are at best partial and/or temporary solutions. They don't really deal with the core issues of the power disparity of the PCs (which is far more the problem throwing the monsters at them). Taking their gear only deals with the shields and some of the better weapons. It doesn't deal with the stat and skill gap (or adrenal guys vrs- nonadrenal guys). And anything I screw the top guys with screws the bottom end more.

(Plus stealth vrs scanners - especially really bad-ass scanners like they've got and the universe's canon 'cloaks don't work in atmosphere' - tends to make that difficult. Worse, they might well still win and I've already taken great pains to make sure they don't get a cloak. Dear god, the thought of what they could manage with that is...no, no I can't. It's too terrible, even for me...)

But yes, I have done that sort of thing in the past (like aliens who were mostly immune to energy and projectile weapons, forcing the party to use their melee attacks). It's possibly past time for the next such attempt...Deus ex machina ahoy!

Option One:  Welcome to the world of "power creep".  You have hit the highest power level, and unfortunately it is time to bid adieu to this campaign.  Start over and ratchet down the power level about ten notches.

Option Two:  Make your villains insanely unfair and attack the characters' weakest points.

Option Three:  Hire Ninjas/assassins to sneak up on them and kill them one by one.  Seriously, if they are as powerful as you say, who would face them in a full frontal attack?

I could have them wiped out five seconds flat if that was my intention. One decent starship attack and they'd be toast. Skill aside, their ship is no match for a mid-sized crusier, let alone a larger vessel - or more than one. The point is to challenge them without having half of them killed or all of them.

On a serious note, maybe it would be best to make a new campaign. Unless you want this power level?

It's not the power level I have problems with per se - it's the disparity within the party of same. If they were all equally(ish) nuts then I could more easily through crazy nutters right back at them.

I mean, seriously, there's like a DB disparity of TEN TIMES (+20 verses about +200(!)) that's causing me the problems...

[Nejira]

it's the disparity within the party of same. If they were all equally(ish) nuts then I could more easily through crazy nutters right back at them.

Well, boost the low end PCs then. Give them genetherapy (which doesn?t work with the others as they are already beyong max) and rise their stats, skills, whatever you need. I can see this being a problem, not only as a GM but may also be for the players who aint got the ubah PCs?

Can also try reverse psychology where you throw in mobs with no challenge value whatsoever. Should reinforce your point of view when you say "nothing is left to challenge you guys".

Forgot one thing, with these time-travelling ninjas you can give them powers to allow rerolls as part of their time mastery or just have them appear one round after they are defeated to try again. Afterall its timetravel so..

[Aotrs Commander]

Can also try reverse psychology where you throw in mobs with no challenge value whatsoever. Should reinforce your point of view when you say "nothing is left to challenge you guys".

Actually, they'd eat that up...

Forgot one thing, with these time-travelling ninjas you can give them powers to allow rerolls as part of their time mastery or just have them appear one round after they are defeated to try again. Afterall its timetravel so..

Hah. You know, that's not actually a half-bad idea...Not at all! Muahahahaha! Time to break out the Brotherhood of the Grey Lizard again, methinks...

[markc]

 IMO a +117 LiB OB is not that big in RM2. And as you said there can be some big numbers if people take the right skills and know how to game the system.
1) For AD IMO you might have to crak down on when they can use it and in what situations.
2) Also some abilities for high stats may be unbalancing so tell the PC's you are not going to use them any more.
3) Switch the skill bonus table in RM2 with the one in RMSS/FRP, the numbers are smaller.
4) Have them fight the balrog of moria from middle earth or more then one balrog.
5) Introduce rings of power or some such magic items that promote a person to another level of power. A ring might change the rank progression for skills, advacnce stats to super high levels, give whole spell lists; give hits, OB, DB or anything else you might think of.
6) Have the universe change in some dramatic way that forces a number of changes.
7) Retire the PC's
Ask the players if they mind playing a low level game for a while and then go back to the high level game. You could also make some changes to you world in the process.
9) Tell them the truth, or basicly what you have said here and why you want to make some universe changes and start a new game. 

A way to make sure you have have to start a new game.
A) If you really want to get them going have them turn in there PC's and NPC's so you can go over them. Or any other excuse you can think of, make sure they watch you put it into a colored binder. Next week burn the binder. BTW you do not have to put the real papers in it but the paper should have some writing on it incase some of the players try and did some stuff out.
 
Good luck
MDC

[RandalThor]

To me it sounds as though you are just going to have to live with it. Without the gumption to confront the Players you are left with no other choice.

[yammahoper]

Black reaver Assassin.

+30 superior barrier shield.

Twin Machine Gun Battle Axes, +30, Slaying, with +40 Blade Runes on Each Bullet and (nice) Fire Ball spell Runes or (not nice) Liquidfy Skeleton Spell Runes, triggered by impact (even 1 hit results in RR, one RR per bullet).

+30 Magic Combat Armor.


Note; creature has 1000 hits on average (go ahead, give it a 120 Co and pump those hits), ignores stun and bleed results and non magic weapons, is level 85, will have a DB of about 230 with 405 OB's (again, IF average...for a Black Reaver).

Since it is Immune to non magical attacks, go ahead and expode grenades at its feet every turn, ohh, 1d10 should do.

lynn

Roll the credits, this movie is over.

[Arioch]

8 ) Ask the players if they mind playing a low level game for a while and then go back to the high level game. You could also make some changes to you world in the process.

This seems a very good suggestion to me, you may tell them that you want to take a little break to prepare a new BIG THING 

It's not the power level I have problems with per se - it's the disparity within the party of same. If they were all equally(ish) nuts then I could more easily through crazy nutters right back at them.

I mean, seriously, there's like a DB disparity of TEN TIMES (+20 verses about +200(!)) that's causing me the problems...

Well, DB difference doesn't means power level difference: a 20th level Soreceror might have a DB of 10, but he'll probably crush any 10 level Monk with a DB of 100 that have the silly idea of messing with him...
If balance between party members is a issue and spoils fun then
a) tell the players that x and y characters are a little underpowered and explain why they need a boost up
b) make x and y character find some item/tech/blessing that makes them equal in power level to the other.

A few suggestions that may help you challenging your players in combat
- A high DB means nothing against area attacks that automatically inflict criticals: make your party face the old ninja-travelling monks, now turned in Wratihs (B Cold critical in 10' radius plus a lot of nasty abilities... and they retain all spells/skills they had in life!) by a curse and followed by a bunch of insidious cannon fodder like Corpse Candles or Phantoms.
- Make the face enemies who take Huge crits and are immune to stun and bleed.
- Give enemies access to healing abilities: throw a couple of high level healers in their party!
- The old Mirror Match trick: make a copy of each character sheet, change their names and some of their gear/appearance and you have a party of NPCs that should prove quite challenging for your PCs... 

[Nejira]

Twin Machine Gun Battle Axes, +30, Slaying, with +40 Blade Runes on Each Bullet and (nice) Fire Ball spell Runes or (not nice) Liquidfy Skeleton Spell Runes, triggered by impact (even 1 hit results in RR, one RR per bullet).

*mental note. Never mess with yammahoper*

 

[Mungo]

Black reaver Assassin.

+30 superior barrier shield.

Twin Machine Gun Battle Axes, +30, Slaying, with +40 Blade Runes on Each Bullet and (nice) Fire Ball spell Runes or (not nice) Liquidfy Skeleton Spell Runes, triggered by impact (even 1 hit results in RR, one RR per bullet).

+30 Magic Combat Armor.


Note; creature has 1000 hits on average (go ahead, give it a 120 Co and pump those hits), ignores stun and bleed results and non magic weapons, is level 85, will have a DB of about 230 with 405 OB's (again, IF average...for a Black Reaver).

Since it is Immune to non magical attacks, go ahead and expode grenades at its feet every turn, ohh, 1d10 should do.

lynn

Roll the credits, this movie is over.

Double his hits. Then give him a magic item that automatically recharges all his hits at the end of each round. And when he is dead, tell them that was his illusion, the real thing is about entering the stage.

And yes, a gamer in my group one fought against such a thing and they won (without the illusion part though). Basically I think it was with a low level spell (Dispel Essence with a 100 on the roll) that they got rid of the recharging magic and the rest was easy (they made about 1400 Hits damage per round).

BR Juergen

[yammahoper]

On hits.  When a creature has a hit multiplier, and meets another creature that also has a hit multiplier, I subtract the lowest multiplier from the highest, with the lowest now doing x0 hits and the stronger doing x?.

For example, a Troll does x2 hits meets a Titan that does x5 hits.  For this fight, the Troll delivers x0 hits and the Titan x4 hits.

Two men who do x2 hits fight.  Against each other, they do x0 (normal) hits.

Another house rule; normal sixed people only do half hits against large foes and NO hits versus huge/SL foes.  All hits from criticals are applied normally.  BTW, for the rare faries or worthless small races, I typically half the hits they deliver versus human sized foes. 

lynn

[Justin]

I was going to suggest stealing an idea from my fav MMO, City of Heroes. Their single-spawn special enemies(purples) scale all damage recieved and dealt to the level they are facing. Yes, they are facing at least 8 if not 16 characters at once, but this is a computer game. It makes an attack--the lvl 40 takes 436 damage, the lvl 25 takes 219, and the lvl 8 takes 95. It is all about the same severity from the players' points-of-view.

So for RM, maybe figure "This enemy's max atk result will be 25% of the PC's hits. If it rolls a 120, I'll bring it down to 15%." etc. Do the same thing for the PC-->NPC atks. "I want this guy to last at least 4 rounds, so each max-chart atk will do 5% his total hits."

[Arioch]

So for RM, maybe figure "This enemy's max atk result will be 25% of the PC's hits. If it rolls a 120, I'll bring it down to 15%." etc. Do the same thing for the PC-->NPC atks. "I want this guy to last at least 4 rounds, so each max-chart atk will do 5% his total hits."

I don't think that would be a good idea: as a player I would feel somewhat cheated and at the same time that would not solve the problem, as characters could still be killed by a high critical in one blow... and rather than finding a way to prevent "instant kill" criticals I would change game as IMHO they are one of RM's signatures.

[Justin]

then the people involved will just have to decide what they want most out of the game, because it really sounds to me like trying to maintain the flavor of the game and regain the challenge might be wanting to eat your cake too.

[Aotrs Commander]

IMO a +117 LiB OB is not that big in RM2. And as you said there can be some big numbers if people take the right skills and know how to game the system.

No, but it is pretty damn good against a DB of 20 at AT 1. Which wqs why I was so peeved I didn't kill The Fish. I mean, how hard is it on net +97 to do some serious damage...but noooo. Frag-dammit...



Maybe I will throw a Greater Black Reaver - or two - with laser cannons and shields - at them (though I fear the DB would have to be higher - yesterday's Orc Lord was at 251 DB...) Possibly in concert with a completely blindsiding ambush by the Brotherhood of the Grey Lizard (with DBs around 100 for the less OTT party members), backed up by a spellcaster...That might just work. Just need a way to get them all out of the spacecraft fully armed now...I think perhaps a forced landing by an irrate fleet of the Neu Swabian League - who's loosley affiliated colony the two criminals just shot two LEOs on.

Oh, and hilariously, it just occurs, whose corvette they 'attacked'. The ship was actually destroyed by Orcs before they wiped out a mining colony the PC had headed to to swipe some Lightsaber crystals. But they, seeing a dead NSL corvette boarded it and manged to arse up destroying the badly-damaged computer when they tried to find out what happened. The Orcs didn't bother boarding it, they had better things to do. The real kicker...the PC's starship is an older (and now, granted, very heavily refitted and modified) Orc vessel...

Gillman DIES  FIRST, obviously. (Did I mention his origional character was a Transhuman VIII bounter-hunter who became what he is largerly because of the name and the fact the player (who game up gaming a good few years ago) first drew a picture of him as a man with a fish head robbing a bank with the ledger "just one of his many crimes"? I mean seriously, sometimes you just can't make that sort of plot-hook hold up...)

The whole Mirror of Opposition idea crossed my mind today, too. But with the twist I make them roll for both them AND their duplicates and don't tell them which is which...That'd learn 'em, and their stupidly overblown lucky dice rolls...mutter, mutter...



It's not like I have to do these games often, after all. We do only play once or twice a year at most, mainly when I can work up the effort to slap together a Rolemaster game (by which I usually mean me coming up with a plot, but my group's sometimes double-edged easy-goingness is the subject for a rant for another day!) I'm nominally planning one - subject to a plot! - for Christmas, when one of our key players is back. (He spends most of the year taching in Russia, coming back only in summer and winter).  I dearly love Rolemaster, but D&D 3.5's bad influence does have me making a spirited attempt to generate the enemies properly (i.e. with stats and skills) and 3.5 is quicker to run - sort of. Although it does lack the blowing people's heads off¹ and general awesome critical-ness of Rolemaster. Ah, hell, let's face it, the real reason we (the group) play Rolemaster is the crits. The fact I can use it for anywhere and anywhen is a bonus...

The roleplaying, incidently, is so good it's why I'd never consider abandoning the group. We haven't played this party in, what slightly over a year (because of the utter lack of suggestions from the PCs about what they wanted to do next -this entire last adventure was based on "I want some lightsaber crystals" and "I want to shoot squishy dudes, blood hur hur" which was my net input for what I remind you is everyone's favourite party...sigh...) And yet, it's right back into the saddle every time, watching with hilarity as the party once comes within a hair's breadth of self-destuction as they try to rein in Certain Quarters...



¹Though in the case of boss monsters this can be a double-edged sword...

[markc]

 I was going to say that you have entered a whole new game with mainly a high level very powerful group. And it should be something most people should hear and try and plan for as if the players PCs live then every campaign will get there eventually.

 Aslo since you play only once or twice a year I can see the fun in it. IMO it is like a mini-convention, reunion and BBQ all rolled together with the idea of having fun at the for frount.

Have fun
MDC