Topic: Best Rolemaster sourcebooks?

[Spellsinger]

WHich of the following are the best sourcebooks for a rolemaster beginner?

- Races & Cultures
- Fire & Ice: Elemental Companion
- Treasure Companion
- Gamemaster Law?
- Creatures&Monsters

Thanks for help

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

Depends upon what you are wanting.

Beginner GM? Then either GM Law or C&M are likely most appropriate.

[Joshua24601]

I'm with Rasyr..

GM Law if you want help telling the story, involving the PCs, generally improving your GM skills and dealing with more unusual situations.
Creature Law will give you many more things for your PC's to kill, variety is a good thing.

[David Johansen]

Creatures and Monsters or GM Law if you're an experienced gamemaster with other games, Creatures and Monsters is the more useful book without question.

[markc]

Like people said above more information would be good so as to give you the best information.

MDC

[Spellsinger]

I am an experienced GM with other RPGs.

In many systems there are some state of the art sourcebooks (and some are just for filling the gap).

E.g. ist Fire&Ice a good book?

[jolt]

I liked it even though the elemental cosmology presented doesn't really fit my world at all.  If you're considering picking it up, I would highly recommend going to the PDF section and buying the Fire & Ice compendium (all the stuff they couldn't fit in the main book); the book, IMO, isn't really complete without it.  As with any optional material work, there will probably be sections of the book that have no value to you.  I don't use Arcane magic, for example, so any reference to that in any book is useless to me.  I think the Elementalist is a nice variation on the standard blaster style magician.

jolt

[markc]

 I think the main book RMSS, Spell law, Arms Law and then Creatures and Monsters. After thoes core books I think I would get Channeling Comp, Essence Comp, Ment Comp and if you run a heavy elemental campaign Fire and Ice. As you can see I favor the RMSS books over the RMFRP books but than is me.
 There is one very hard to find book called the Martial Arts Companion which is good but as I said very hard to find and can cost you serous $. But you can use the RMC book Combat Companion instead of it with some converting. The big thing with the Combat Comp is that it has ruels to build weapon arts and martial arts. This has a big impact on your game world as well as adds flavor to a high level campaign for pure arms users.

 Hope that helps if you have any more Q's post them or PM me and I will help as I can. A note; some of the companions provide lost of info that may change your game world if you are creating one but if you are just running a series of adevntures it may not make that big a deal. In the past I have run some games just to get a feel of the system before launching into a 2 year campaign.

P.S. I like PDF's so I can print the pages I need to give to my players for there professions and weapons.

MDC

[RandalThor]

From the list:

Creatures & Monsters then,

Treasure Companion

[Arioch]

WHich of the following are the best sourcebooks for a rolemaster beginner?

- Races & Cultures
- Fire & Ice: Elemental Companion
- Treasure Companion
- Gamemaster Law?
- Creatures&Monsters

Thanks for help

I would put them in this order:
1 Creatures&Monsters
2 Gamemaster Law
3 Fire & Ice: Elemental Companion (with the Addendum)
4 Races & Cultures
5 Treasure Companion

[Fidoric]

I would follow the same order as Arioch, the first two ones being IMO the most useful whatever your game setting.

[dutch206]

With regards to Fire and Ice, the Storm Mage is my favorite profession from that book.  Like someone mentioned earlier, it's a bit of a break from the standard "Glass Cannon" stuff.

[Langthorne]

Creatures & Monsters, then Underground Races (probably my favorite source book), then GM Law (if only for the "role playing signs of the zodiac" section).

I have Fire & Ice (in hindsight I probably just bought it so I'd 'have the whole set') and would not recommend it, mainly because it represents for me the result of the RMSS magic system getting out of control with all the companions etc.

[mocking bird]

I like F&I.  However it does take a few read throughs to try to figure out what is meant since it was, imo, poorly edited.  But yes, it can tinker with the cosmology of things - although I really like the elemental champion.

TC is very similar to this - good info but it takes a while to find and figure out how it works.