Topic: RM Setting?

[Sirius]

Way back in the RM2 days there were a number of RM campaign settings, Ancient Greek, Ancient Egypt, Pirates, etc..  They did a great job of first describing the culture and assumptions of the setting, then laying out how they worked in RoleMaster terms.  There was never a problem with being limited due to the RM rules set, because they tweaked the rules where necessary in order to fit the setting (new races, new magic, etc.).

If you keep in mind Setting First, Rules Second, I think any campaign setting could be adapted to RM, that's one of the strengths of such a flexible system.

[Sirius]

Actually, I'd like to see guidelines on how to create your own races/cultures, then include a few examples, that become the only races/cultures you see in the core rulebooks.

Wasn't that in Talent Law?  I know there are rules for race creation in one of the RMSS books, don't recall exactly which one though.

I'd have to disagree with you on a small number of examples being the only races in the core rulebooks however, most people aren't going to want to create races before they play.

[Erik Sharma]

Well I didn't always like Shadow World at first but from what I have seen it's starting to grow on me and is flexible enough to fit most GM styles.

Echoes of Heaven also seem to be a good setting especially if you like action and adventure.

But as it is now Cyradon is the setting that seem to fit my taste the most so I wouldn't mind seeing it dualstatted for HARP/RM.

Have also tried some RM in Forgotten Realms and it worked without much trouble. The good thing with RM it's generic enough to be adaptable to most fantasy settings and would like it to stay that way.

At the moment I am working on my own setting named Arcania, and have started a long term project to map out the entire planet (Recently got unemployed so plenty of spare time). Trying too keep a feel of Sword and Sorcery mixed with some old school sagas (Viking sagas, Beowulf) mix (lot's of wilderness). As Shnar said think RM need a Sword and Sorcery setting for us old school peeps who like it more down to earth.

But to be realistic I think ICE should concentrate on like 3 maybe 4 settings and keep try to seperate them into High Fantasy (lot's of magic and monsters) and Average Fantasy (standard generic fantasy) and Low Fantasy (Sword & Sorcery and similar). And try to keep em seperate but generic enough to accomodate most tastes.

[vroomfogle]

RM is mostly generic.  Spell Law is a stumbling block.   The magic system needs to be more flexible and allow for the creation of realms as that is more of a setting issue.   The 3 realms fit in with Shadow World but a very poor fit for Middle-Earth.   Other low magic settings may have only 1 realm.     There was some talk in the revision discussions about this - that spell lists would be grouped by theme and then realms could be created separately (and give access to only certain themed spell lists such as "Outdoor", or "Healing", or "Elemental".   

With a system like that the first thing to do when adapting to a new setting is to lay out the realms for the setting.

[Setorn]

Vroomfogle,
I see Spell Law as a challenge when adapting another setting (any fictional setting), but what roleplaying magic system does not have that issue?  The Realms do not have to be clearly understood by the characters of the world.  It merely could be a game term.  Profession names in my games seldom are what people called spell users (They were called magicians, wizards, mages, willworkers and many more).   The Realms could be just as hidden.  Homemade worlds can be made to fit the realm system.  If themes are brought into RM, I again (as always) hope that it remains very optional.
Rolemaster has a few very iconic parts to its system:
1)   Realms and hybrid/semi/pure spell-users
2)   Critical tables
3)   Percentile dice
4)   Ten stats with derived bonuses
5)   Development points and skill costs
I am sure there are others that I am forgetting.

[vroomfogle]

Coming up with a homemade world and having it fir the existing realm system is one thing, but for an already established world the realms seem like a stretch.   I think the realms are horrible at capturing magic in Middle-Earth, as the Middle-Earth setting was bent to fit into the realm system.  It was always an odd match.

What I'm talking about isn't re-doing spell law necessarily but rather an underlying toolkit that can be used to re-create the exisitng realms, but then can also be used to generate new realms.

So what you'd do is to first go through all the realms and classify lists into thematic groupings for the open/closed lists, leave the base lists as base lists.    Then the system would be the creation/calculation of armor penalties/casting restrictions/etc, and the choosing of which thematic spells fit into the realm.   

But anyway, that's a lot of work and I can tell right now we wouldn't be able to recreate the existing realms exactly, but it would be a place to start for creating new realms to better capture the setting's magic system.

[smug]

Personally, I don't think that any interesting magic system fits Middle-Earth. However, I was more than happy to play RM, as is, in Middle Earth with the realms because I like magic in my campaigns and any campaign with a reasonable level of magic isn't authentic for Middle Earth. Good job too, I say.

[smug]

I should, however, add that I am also not a big fan of the realms system, particularly once arcane magic was introduced. I think that a realm system could make sense, but I am not sure that the RM once really does.