Here?s my brutally honest bottom line (and, as always, IMVHO): we can?t have it both ways. We can?t ?keep? Rolemastern the way it is and get a much larger fan base. I just don?t think that fan base exists anymore and that leaves the existence of Rolemaster simply to serve the fans it already had. And the small number of fans we as players will be able to recruit won?t make much of a dent. Meanwhile we?re beating our chests saying the other gamers just don?t get it while they?re happily agreeing with us and rolling their d20?s.
Not just for that bit but for the whole post, have an idea point, it is excellently written and argued, and saddly true (I am one of the holdouts )
For me, if you want a game to cater for a new audiance, you need more than just a book, you need the software to make character creation, combat, magic and other maintenance easy, and so little to learn that people can jump in and play quickly.
After all, I haven't the time to learn anything new, so how can I expect others to learn my system of choice, if it will take them more than an hours reading.
One of the things I was thinking about to increase sales would be a disk with several random generators for the GM. Several come to mind quickly: a library generator (there was one on the web years ago but it had a very limited list of books,) an inn generator, a tavern generator (also done once long ago but it was sort of clunky,) a NPC generator, a general store generator (listing items available in the shop based on the era like in the old
Ten Foot Pole.) Each random generator could have input from the GM as to numbers of books or percent increase or decrease in costs, class of inn (such as a 4 star inn or tavern.)
There could be a random dungeon generator disk. This would generate a random floor plan and print out a nice looking map - all important these days is the use of nice graphics in the age of computer gaming.
There could be a random city, town, village and hamlet generator. Again making a nice graphic map but also a short description of the leader, government, law order, era (bronze, iron, etc.) shops and other points of interest. There could easily be some minor input from the GM to help define these points.
A combat assistant program would be great and speed up the combat (a major problem with my group, they are all WoW players and like to see the results immediately.) This could be as simple as a spread sheet that allows the GM to select the weapon and input the total of the roll (rolling is important - randomly generated computer rolls makes folks mad) then output the results of the hit. If a crit is there it could output the results with the input of the crit roll. (OK OK I know this would not be a simple spread sheet, it would have to access each weapon but, once it is done it would be very beneficial in shortening the combat time.)
Finally a disk with a good character generator could be introduced. My favorite was one called RCU by Edward Osrowski. It really did a good job using many of the companions options to quickly generate NPC's and more controlled PC's for that matter.