Great news about Roll20!

I see 16 Rolemaster sessions (13 RMU and 3 Classic) in the GenCon catalog, 13 of which are already sold out. Looking good!

Yup, 16 of the 20 games are sold out.  One open seat for the Thursday HARP game, 1 seat open for Jonathan's Thursday 2:00 RMU game, 3 Seats available for the Friday 6:00 pm Shadow World (RMU Classic) game (although I may grab one of those seats if they are still open), and 1 seat open for my RMU (Channel Cities) game Saturday 1:00 pm game.  So if anyone is planning to be there and wants to game, grab one of the remaining tickets before the last 6 disappear.

Depending on what else is going on, I may run an "unofficial"/"unscheduled" game in the same room ( J.W. Marriott, room 106) one or two evenings (set in the Channel Cities, or maybe... alpha testing out "Twistor"/"Reko" SMU-hack, to see how it might work.

All but one of the spots in mine are sold, I'm not sure about the others. There are some HARP sessions too!

Welcome

To the one hundred-and-fifty-sixth Briefing and seventh scheduled Briefing of 2024.

Gen Con 2024

I will repeat my encouragement to contact Colin if you are running Rolemaster or HARP (or Spacemaster or any other ICE games) so that we can publicise the games before and after. Preparations are well underway for the convention. A restock of Rolemaster books has been ordered; I am impatiently waiting on the email from DriveThru that the Core Law and Spell Law books have safely printed so that Aaron can catch them in time for his journey down to Gen Con.

Rolemaster

So what about Treasure Law? I called time on the master layout and the softcover was duly sent in, making it through the DriveThru and Lightning Source checks first time. I ordered the master proof and had a very nervous wait for it to arrive with me – I came very close to having to make a large order without having seen if it had turned out fine. Fortunately it did arrive, there was a sigh of relief after checking it, and a shipment of softcover Treasure Law copies was immediately ordered to send to Aaron. It’s now a waiting game to see if they reach Aaron in time for Gen Con.

The hardcover has been less unfortunate. It has taken three rounds to get it safely past the Lightning Source checks and I have ordered a hardcover master proof. There is unfortunately no way that we will feasibly get hardcovers to Gen Con in time. For unknown reasons, there’s an issue at the US Lightning Source facility that is adding two to four working days to printing hardcovers. Given the length of time that we’ve been waiting on the restock being designated as printed, even courier shipping probably would not make it. My hope is that the hardcover is available for normal release around Gen Con.

Fingers crossed for printing and shipping successes.

Software – Roll20 for Rolemaster

Brett Nash has been slaving away on preparing RMU datasets for the Roll20 virtual tabletop software. He is incredibly close to declaring himself complete on the datasets for both RMU Core Law and RMU Spell Law. There will be various bundles deals available for those wishing to have dataset and pdf versions of the products. We will be making available a special discount code for existing purchasers of the pdfs who would like to have the Roll20 datasets. And yes, that means you do need to check your DriveThru email preferences or be extremely nice to Colin. (Although you really ought to be nice to Colin anyway!). We will let you know when the Roll20 datasets release so consider this a headsup that this will be soon.

Until next time

To everyone heading off to Gen Con, have a safe trip and do drop by the ICE stand. And for everyone, please stay safe and keep gaming.

Best wishes,
Nicholas

Combat balance isn't the only way to assess balance, I would say it's not even a very good way when it comes to PCs. A magician can't replace a lay healer, and vice versa. They have very different roles.

On the other hand if you allow the lay healer to trade in their one of their spell lists (probably prosthetics) for a magician base list, now the lay healer is seriously stepping on the magician's toes. The magician doesn't have as much unique to contribute. They become less important to the party and the story. Less fun. If you also now give the lay healer twice as many PP and a big bonus in directed spells they start to be a better magician than the magician (or just make them higher level). Now when a magician is needed, the lay healer may be the one to do the job, and the magician is extraneous.

Balance within the party is having something you excel at, something that lets you get the focus and which lets you contribute. If other party members are better than you at the thing you do best, that's when the imbalance is a real problem.

The concern here is if access to those higher level spells makes non-magical solutions irrelevant. Why pick a lock when you have a spell for that, or Undoor? Why fight when you can kill your foes with spells? Why climb when you can fly?

The same as above applies: Your encumbrance (or armor penalty) may affect the relevant skill that might add to your DB (and will then be lower), but other than that, no.