Topic: What I Would Like to See in the Unified RM

[providence13]

Bah!  Enough of these soft "Law" ways!  I say Chaos! Character Chaos!  Spell Chaos! Creature Chaos! Treasure Chaos!  Then we'd have a real rpg!  One that would beat up all those wimpy Law books and take their lunch money!
 

Was this the Melnibonean method (Michael Moorcock)? Elric of Melniboné was more concerned with Law/Chaos than Good/Evil.

Mythus did a mundane creatures book. I was a bit disappointed when I bought it. I agree that RM should have them stat'd. Otherwise it will be the same old song; "Look for X book that is possibly out of print. The answer is in there. Zardoz has spoken!" Shouldn't take but a few pgs to at least have the normal critter charts. Want examples? Look in an encyclopedia. 

[Arioch]

Order and Chaos are essentially the same. Each constantly breeds the other.

Ask anyone who has studied Chaos Theory. 

Blasphemy! I demand Blood & Souls for the glory of Chaos!

And I approve Jolt suggestion! Have an laugh point Jolt ...and a random mutation that will show the world your devotion to our cause.
You can roll on this table yourself to find out what your mutation will be.

[yammahoper]

Fools.  Arioch is but a single breath of my eternity.

Chuthulu.

P.S. the office party is delayed yet again due to a meddling group of kids derailing yet another fool prof plan to rain blood and chaos on humanity.

[intothatdarkness]

Blood for the blood god!  Oh...wait...wrong game....

[jdale]

Order and Chaos are essentially the same. Each constantly breeds the other.

Ask anyone who has studied Chaos Theory. 

Blasphemy! I demand Blood & Souls for the glory of Chaos!

And I approve Jolt suggestion! Have an laugh point Jolt ...and a random mutation that will show the world your devotion to our cause.
You can roll on this table yourself to find out what your mutation will be.

I rolled, but it was a trait I already had.

[Wolfhound]

Personally I'd like to see scalability with spells as previously mentioned by others. As this would allow for more flexibility and on the fly adjustments based on the environment and unusual situations, and thus would encourage players to think and come up with out of the box ideas more often, and thus would create a more engaging system and game sessions. 

I'd also like to see better scalability with weapons.  For example, the Condensed Combat Table on page 62 of the Rolemaster Companion from RM2, was fantastic is my opinion.  This creates a situation where you can't "max out the table" and then need to decide how to deal with that situation.  Likewise someone else mentioned piecing together armor?  This type of a system works very well with that type of an armor system.  I know a lot of people say it involves too much math and calculations, but it is not that much more than what is already needed (and it is simple arithmetic, no algebra needed), and as previously stated, 99% of adults can handle the math that RM uses, and that number applies to the Condensed Combat system as well.

Also I'd like to see the ranged weapons set up with a flat modification based on range (rather than range categories or bands).  For example, instead of having a fixed range penalty for each of several range bands (the exact same penalty for 180 feet away and 239 feet away is a little screwy, while one more foot further and the penalty suddenly nearly doubles is a bit screwy in my opinion.  Instead why not say -1 per 4 feet of range for the short bow for example or -1 per 5 feet of range for the sling for example (as the combat tables are woefully inaccurate when it comes to slings anyways as slings have a longer range than any type of bow in the hands of someone who knows how to use one, but that is another issue entirely).  As someone who is truly skilled should be able to fling a sling-stone further and with accuracy than what the sling combat table allows for.  This is a common problem with all the ranged weapons, they don't allow for extraordinary shots using extraordinary skill very well.

[ironmaul]

It would be interesting to see a section on something relating to sanity/power corruption etc. And how that could be used in game play.

[Widukind]

I "book of healing" and how to handle first aid with spells or herbs.

[Usdrothek]

It would be interesting to see a section on something relating to sanity/power corruption etc. And how that could be used in game play.

A big +1 for this. It seems to be a common enough theme in many settings.

[providence13]

You could treat it like Con drain. Just use SD, perhaps..
For Cthulu type critters that drive you insane if you even look at them. It could be an RR as a magical effect or your SD vs their awesome Presence.
Hmm..
But since this is RM (!) we should probably have a chart. 

(I found a Depression crit chart, but no Insanity, yet.)

[yammahoper]

It would be interesting to see a section on something relating to sanity/power corruption etc. And how that could be used in game play.

A big +1 for this. It seems to be a common enough theme in many settings.

Menatlism Companion is what you seek. 

For all its lack of popularity, RMSS/FRP was very complete.

[stacktrace]

To be a true unifying product, RMU must contain enough options to recreate the unique play styles of both RM2 and RMSS.  I am betting that is exactly what we will see.  A core much like RM2 with a few small updates and advancements from RMSS that even RM2 players think of as improvements, and then enough options to fully recreate the RMSS feel if one chooses.  Nothing new or updated.  This is the only way to unite both camps under a single banner, and not just fracture it further.

RM is great for having tons of options, and I am sure we shall see see plenty of future non core books presenting options both familiar and new.

What I really hope for, once the core books are released, is some good adventures.  To me, there are no iconic adventures for RM, or even good official adventures that show what a typical RM game is all about, nothing to serve as good examples for new GMs.  RM needs a Keep on the Borderlands, Enemy Within, Apple Lane of its very own.  Give new players the means to jump right in and start playing, help them learn and apreciate the subtleties of the game.

As much as I love all the options, it makes it difficult to jump into the game for the first time.

[RandalThor]

Menatlism Companion is what you seek. 

For all its lack of popularity, RMSS/FRP was very complete.

Not unpopular with me. I love that book, especially the Armsmaster.

[RandalThor]

But, what I would really like to see in RMU - a professionless and levelless version.

[yammahoper]

Level-less would be great, but I doubt it.  Hell, one prof with skill cost of 2/4 for all skills wouldn't bother me.  But since I imagine RM will retain 13-20 core professions, I would like to see new professions NOT have their own skill cost, but use an existing core prof with a talent/perk set that "creates" the prof.

For example, sage could be Mage with Lore skills as Ev, or all Lore Skills at +20 and one at +30, etc.  Assign a talent cost and move on.

Mentioning talents: no PC should be able to spend more bg options or talent points than its race provides.  Flaws should never add more points, but be required to balance out purchased talents.

[GrumpyOldFart]

Levelless and professionless should be at least possible in any XP ~> point buy system. Depending on how they arrange things it could be a pain in the butt, but it should at least be possible.

And to be honest, in these days of game tweaks most commonly shared as a spreadsheet, I'd be surprised if it wasn't dead easy most of the time, once you'd reverse engineered the spreadsheet they used.

 

[RandalThor]

Levelless and professionless should be at least possible in any XP ~> point buy system. Depending on how they arrange things it could be a pain in the butt, but it should at least be possible.

And to be honest, in these days of game tweaks most commonly shared as a spreadsheet, I'd be surprised if it wasn't dead easy most of the time, once you'd reverse engineered the spreadsheet they used.

I will say that HARP is easy to do this way, but RM with its vastly different skill costs across the professions is another matter. The only way I could see doing it, would be to take the No-Profession (Layman) profession and applying that to everyone, but let them customize themselves with talents.

Mentioning talents: no PC should be able to spend more bg options or talent points than its race provides.  Flaws should never add more points, but be required to balance out purchased talents.

This reminds me of another thing I would like to see in RMU - more PC friendly rules. How about we not have everything go against them, huh? Round down if it is about your character's total bonus, but round up if it is about how much something costs for your PC, take the worst of the two skills, etc... just gets frustrating when everything is stacked against you like that.

Look at it from a marketing stand point: How many of the top selling games are really, really deadly? How many of them are more heroic rather than gritty? I have seen the trend, particularly in the "indie" game circuit, but also in the "big" game circuit for the rules to be more about heroics and big action and less about instant deadliness. Now, I like that, but I also like the level of deadliness that RM (and other games) can bring; I just think that there should be a choice on how to run it in the game.

Make the rules much more flexible between heroics and gritty-deadliness, maybe like a tiered approach. Tier 1: Low Grit/High Heroics, on up to Tier 5: High Grit & Deadliness/Low on the Heroics. This can be as easy as saying: during character creation, a gritty Tier 1 character only gets XX amount of development points to spend on attributes, talents and skills (yes, I am going with a level and classless idea here), while up on Tier 5 you get XXX amount. Therefore, on Tier 5 your character will be much more capable (some of you are bound to say: "superheroes"), higher attributes, more & more powerful talents, more skills, etc... than one at a lower tier - especially Tier 1 characters.

[yammahoper]

Umm...if you get 55 talent points, I'm saying is ALL you should get is 55 talent points.  Buying 50 points in flaws should not provide 105 talent points.  I fail to see how that is not PC friendly.  Nothing is being taken from them.

[RandalThor]

Umm...if you get 55 talent points, I'm saying is ALL you should get is 55 talent points.  Buying 50 points in flaws should not provide 105 talent points.  I fail to see how that is not PC friendly.  Nothing is being taken from them.

How about this (emphasis mine):

Flaws should never add more points, but be required to balance out purchased talents.

Which makes it sound like if you use those talent points that your race gives you, you must get flaws you wouldn't ordinarily have to get.

Anyway, getting more, cool talents was one of the ways to make your character more "powerful/capable" so the game wasn't so deadly. (And I read "deadly" to PCs as unfriendly to PCs, can't imagine it thought of in any other way.)

[yammahoper]

Well, they are not required to take talents.  Hell, I played for year without talents (though there was a talent list in Character Law, I prefered wealth and stat gains...mostly stat gains hee hee.  Those are all plus and NO negative).