Topic: Little Details that make Rolemaster Amazing

[Elton Robb]

* Helmets
* Grapple criticals
* Skills.



Can you guys think of anything else?

[Arioch]

Trolls: RM trolls don't regenerate. They don't need to regenerate to beat you to a bloody pulp with their stony bare hands 

[Deepfire]

The way the characters die by criticals - they die with g(l)ory, not because some HPs go down to zero

[Witchking20k]

I've never had 2 characters exactly the same in 15+ years. 

[yammahoper]

The incredible flexibilty, and I mean across the board.  Character development is always fun, skill use and resolution always brings up something new.

[DangerMan]

UM100's!

We had i fighter in a group which had a skill around 20 in public speaking, who actually managed to persuade a group of club swinging barbarians to give up robbing them and join them on their quest against the evil sorcerer! That was priceless!

[RandalThor]

The fact that I can make 2 human, male fighters from the same village and they can be very different characters - ability-wise.

[machinery]

Amazing? yes, RM is amazingly complex

[yammahoper]

Amazing? yes, RM is amazingly complex

I disagree with complex and offer sophisticated instead.

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

Amazing? yes, RM is amazingly complex

Complex, no. Detailed, yes.

[PiXeL01]

One of Rolemaster's strengths is that you can shape the game as you wish. You have a small core system to which you can add and remove a huge number of options as you see fit.

[machinery]

Amazing? yes, RM is amazingly complex

Complex, no. Detailed, yes.

Complex yes, and granted, it has high level of detail, but at expense of GM sanity and doesn't add any depth of play. I suppose it's like that because of its legacy from a time where more rules was considered better

[vroomfogle]

Complex yes, and granted, it has high level of detail, but at expense of GM sanity and doesn't add any depth of play. I suppose it's like that because of its legacy from a time where more rules was considered better

At it's core RM doesn't have substantially more rules than many other games.  I'll grant you that if you start including the bevy of skills that RMSS put in it does get sort of crazy.   But don't confuse tables with rules...and stick to the core, no RM companions.  The companions definitely came from a time where more rules were better.  At it's core you have attack tables, critical tables, Resistance Rolls, the Maneuver chart for everything else, and the rules for how how to use them.

[machinery]

At it's core RM doesn't have substantially more rules than many other games.  I'll grant you that if you start including the bevy of skills that RMSS put in it does get sort of crazy.   But don't confuse tables with rules...and stick to the core, no RM companions.  The companions definitely came from a time where more rules were better.  At it's core you have attack tables, critical tables, Resistance Rolls, the Maneuver chart for everything else, and the rules for how how to use them.

Hi Vroom, you are right in saying that RMSS/RMFRP is far more complex than RM2 core, but the latter is not free of woes. Even if you only take into consideration the 3 basic books, you find the same innecessary complexity that startle most novice GM and players I've talked to.
e.g. Arms law tables are counter-intuitive in cases in which a heavier armor is worse than no armor at all (soft leather vs at1).
e.g.2 Character law & Campaing law. Try to explain a rookie the hodge-podge that is character development. "Normal" Skills, armour, spell develpment, body development and the weird attribute-less ambush skill (including its specific resolution mechanic).
e.g.3 Character law & Campaing law.  And what about skill resolution? What kind of target number is 111? Why some skills, which are developed in the same way, have a target number of 101?.
There were countless of nuisances that were neither polished nor streamlined in that ancient edition, and I'd say that not only makes it rules-heavy, but also complex.

[vroomfogle]

e.g. Arms law tables are counter-intuitive in cases in which a heavier armor is worse than no armor at all (soft leather vs at1).

Agreed, but this is different than being rules-heavy.

e.g.2 Character law & Campaing law. Try to explain a rookie the hodge-podge that is character development. "Normal" Skills, armour, spell develpment, body development and the weird attribute-less ambush skill (including its specific resolution mechanic).

I agree, no doubt RM could have benefited from streamlining, like RMSS tried only better.  However, that's still only a handful of different different mechanics for the skills, far less than most other games that have no unified central mechanic.   The vast majority of skills use the same central mechanic in RM.  Open-ended roll + skill/mods - difficulty.   In fact, many other systems use this same mechanic.

e.g.3 Character law & Campaing law.  And what about skill resolution? What kind of target number is 111? Why some skills, which are developed in the same way, have a target number of 101?.
There were countless of nuisances that were neither polished nor streamlined in that ancient edition, and I'd say that not only makes it rules-heavy, but also complex.

At it's core, RM succeeds if you get 100+.  If you want to break it down more, or the skill requires something more nuanced than a simple Success/Fail, that was the reason for the optional tables that introduced the 111 success (with 91-100 being "near" success).   But I'd still argue that the things you have mentioned, while all valid issues, are more of a problem with consistency rather than a bevy of rules.    D&D is certainly the most egregious example of a rules-heavy system, while one of my recent favorites, Castles & Crusades, is incredibly rules-light.    RM is by no means on the high end of rules-heavy systems and I don't think it's overly complex...at it's core.   But, given the plethora of skills and the cornucopia of optional rules, even presented in RMC, I can certainly see why it is perceived as such.

[markc]

At it's core RM doesn't have substantially more rules than many other games.  I'll grant you that if you start including the bevy of skills that RMSS put in it does get sort of crazy.   But don't confuse tables with rules...and stick to the core, no RM companions.  The companions definitely came from a time where more rules were better.  At it's core you have attack tables, critical tables, Resistance Rolls, the Maneuver chart for everything else, and the rules for how how to use them.

Hi Vroom, you are right in saying that RMSS/RMFRP is far more complex than RM2 core, but the latter is not free of woes. Even if you only take into consideration the 3 basic books, you find the same innecessary complexity that startle most novice GM and players I've talked to.
e.g. Arms law tables are counter-intuitive in cases in which a heavier armor is worse than no armor at all (soft leather vs at1).
e.g.2 Character law & Campaing law. Try to explain a rookie the hodge-podge that is character development. "Normal" Skills, armour, spell develpment, body development and the weird attribute-less ambush skill (including its specific resolution mechanic).
e.g.3 Character law & Campaing law.  And what about skill resolution? What kind of target number is 111? Why some skills, which are developed in the same way, have a target number of 101?.
There were countless of nuisances that were neither polished nor streamlined in that ancient edition, and I'd say that not only makes it rules-heavy, but also complex.

 Machinery;
 
IMHO I fully disagree with your observation.
  Just because people do not understand why something was done does not mean it was not thought out. Also just because the company will not explain why it was done does not say anything about them or the system.
 
 The later companions were published as mainly fan works and were not judged for balance or compatibility. IMO It would have been better to have said this instead of not.
 
 I have played so called light systems and have disliked them for quite awhile. I even have played up until this summer in one until I finally decided to stop. All of the PC's started to look the same skill wise and the rules could not handle the backgrounds that the players created.
 Another main problem with so called easy systems is the lack of ability to have numerous outcomes to a given situation. ie using a d4, d6, d10 or other just does not provide a range of numbers to represent things such as fitted weapons, unique armor, quality, etc. In most simple systems the above all modify the same thing and this does not allow them to stand out on there own merit.
 
 The answers to your above questions can be found in the achieves and if you do a search you can find them.
 
MDC
 
BTW can you list some easy game in a PM to me. I would not want to give my opinion on the boards about them as it might be against the rules of conduct.
 
Thanks
MDC

[machinery]

Machinery;
IMHO I fully disagree with your observation.
  Just because people do not understand why something was done does not mean it was not thought out. Also just because the company will not explain why it was done does not say anything about them or the system.

The opposite reasoning is valid also. It's reasonable to think that the amateur people that made the original game in the late 70's didn't just hit the jackpot.

The later companions were published as mainly fan works and were not judged for balance or compatibility. IMO It would have been better to have said this instead of not.

I didn't mentioned any companions, even though most people agree that at least RMC1 and RMC2 are desirable.

Vroomfogle made a valid point here, companion's plethora of optional rules are responsible for more than a half of the total complexity of the game and the negative perception associated to that complexity.

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

There were countless of nuisances that were neither polished nor streamlined in that ancient edition, and I'd say that not only makes it rules-heavy, but also complex.

Actually, a lot of the "perceived" complexity of RM2 came more from the odd/unusual organization of those books, and from the lack of clearly defining what was and what was not an optional rule.

Vroomfogle made a valid point here, companion's plethora of optional rules are responsible for more than a half of the total complexity of the game and the negative perception associated to that complexity.

Yes, they are. And the organization of the RM2 books were responsible for most of the rest. 

These were a couple of the reasons (but not all of the reasons) behind the current ICE revamping RM2 into Rolemaster Classic (RMC). Trying to make it better organized. During that process, the RMC team often discovered that things that they thought were part of the core rules turned out to be options.

This "perception" of complexity was also one of the reasons why ICE produced Rolemaster Express -- the core of the RMC rules (with minor adjustments to make low level characters more survivable) -- which a user can then expand into RMC as far as he likes.

As I said before - Rolemaster is detailed, not complex.
However, as you pointed out, there is also a "perception" of complexity

[Hubbaman]

For me the main reason I love RM is the character creation! So much fun with those talents, I have lost count of all the backup characters I have made.

[Elton Robb]

So far, for my RMFRP game, one person wants to play in it because of the same reason why I picked Rolemaster in the first place for my game -- the Character Generation.  For my Moonshaes campaign, I wanted to have people to have access to many roles as possible, not just the four (Defender, Leader, Controller, and Striker).

Between King Arthur Pendragon, HarnMaster, (A)D&D, and Rolemaster;  Rolemaster was the better choice.  What is interesting about character generation for Rolemaster is that the roles are blurred somewhat.  Depending on the campaign, whether it is combat oriented or not; the blurring in Rolemaster makes this possible.

Although I had people tell me that AD&D 2nd Edition would work for the campaign.  That I don't doubt.  But D&D assumes everyone playing is going to play the role of an intentional Adventurer.  What if the player wanted to try an accidental Adventurer instead?