Quote from: bottg;351083I think that RM is a special case with new players.  If they play in a game where every combat takes 4 hours, there are hundreds of tables to look up, character creation takes 3 hours and their new character dies in the first fight, they get a bad impression of the game and this colours their view thereafter.

This of course does happen sometimes in RM, but is not representative of the vast majority of games.  RM run by a good, experienced GM is an awesome experience.

This is extremely similar to experiences with GURPS. Except that I've found the vast majority of game sessions (in both GURPS and RM) really do have that absurd and dull level of detail. I think it's because of the sort of GM attracted to them. If you're the sort who likes to keep things moving, you probably won't choose GURPS/RM. If you're the sort who likes to spend hours on details, you'll love GURPS/RM. And part of passionate love for something is being unable to comprehend that others may not love it as passionately.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;351176And part of passionate love for something is being unable to comprehend that others may not love it as passionately.

This is true!  I can get a bit irate sometimes when someone posts how incredibly complex RM is or how it is just thousands of tables.  It is not like this at all for me, and then i have to remind myself of that bit: for me

Everyone has different tastes, but i also think people should try games before they dismiss them totally.

Relevant to complexity, Greg Porter recently had this to say about GURPS.
   "Part of what I wanted to do with EABA was to not have some of the perceived problems with excellent (but aging) systems like GURPS and Hero. GURPS can do just about everything. It has had 20 years to shoehorn in special rules for just about every side case you can imagine. And you have to look each and every one of them up."
Much the same could be said of Rolemaster, unfortunately. One of the reasons I gave up on it was drowning criticals. I mean, seriously...

I prefer systems with emergent complexity, like chess - the basic rules can be written on less than a page, but there are an extraordinary number of possible game sessions that came out from those rules. From simplicity to complexity.

RM, GURPS, etc front-load the complexity. This puts off newbies and the typical lazy gamer.

The genius of D&D and similar systems is that - pre-4e, anyway - they were simple at low-level, and more complex at high-level. Thus you could learn the complex parts of the system in play, as you played on more choices opened up to you.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;351213One of the reasons I gave up on it was drowning criticals. I mean, seriously...

I've been playing for decades and never noticed drowning criticals. I guess it's buried in one of the RM2 Companions, which are ENTIRELY OPTIONAL RULES. So it's not a matter of oh gawd I have to remember to use this table if drowning ever comes up, but hey you failed your moving maneuver to cross the river? cool...I saw this table which might just add flavour and drama to the situation.

And if the GM doesn't know about the table or can't be assed to use it, that is fine too. Which is exactly how my games run...90% time we just use the elegant core, but if the player wants to run with alchemy or I have a bad guy who creates golems, there's a stack of extra rules for those things which all add fun to the game.

Yeah, that's what people say about GURPS, too, and used to say about D&D3.5 with its four zillion feats.

"Oh but it's all optional!"

Which is true, but also bollocks. Because if it's there in print, people tend to want to use it - at least if they think it'll advantage their character.

"Okay, you start drowning, you're going to die."
"Shouldn't we roll for drowning criticals? Then I might live."
"I suppose so..."

And once the rule has been looked up and used once rather than just a GM ruling, it'll be looked up and used again.

This is less so in long-established groups, where most accept a single set of rules which don't change much over the years. But in a typical game group with (relatively) frequently changing membership, you get a lot more, "hey, let's use the new 101 Magical Doorknobs, my character is all about the doorknobs!"

It's true that I had a long-established group with a good dynamic and no real rules lawyers, so that helped. But as far as the 101 Magic Doorknobs syndrome goes, it can actually be a positive. In my group generally each PC had a couple of areas of specialisation, and we would enjoy going to town using the rules in that area, for example the bard's performances or item crafting.

So perhaps it does come down to group dynamics, or lack of ass hattery. But it's the same in rules light games for different reasons. I'm glad that someone created the baroque wonders of RM, I couldn't play it exclusively but it scratches a certain itch.

And I just had an enjoyable 10 minutes searching my books for Drowning Criticals (Companion VII) so that in itself is a value I don't get from Risus.

My asperger's therapy recommences tomorrow.

Some of my group played the hell out of RM (usually combined with MERP into an hybrid abomination they called "RoleMERP") back in the day. Being a latecomer to this particular group, I wasn't around back then.

One of them wants to run RM, and I've recently sat down to create my first character.

Ugh. Felt like middle school math homework, it did.

What else can I say? Rifts is still my favorite game setting, and I've dropped it because of the clunky character creation (I'm working on a variation of theRPGPundit's fix right now). I tend to gravitate towards games like pre-3e D&D and Savage Worlds which feature really quick character creatioin. Hell, GURPS is about as crunchy as I'm usually willing to get. And I'd have never played D&D 4e if it were not for the free version of the Character Builder.

Rest assured that I'll give it a try, but character creation did rub me the wrong way...

I adore this game, after RuneQuest this was the 2nd BIG game I got into. 1st Edition.
 
Its an absolute beast to run, what with all those tables and charts, and the title of the 2nd worst set of poorly laid out rules, (behind In Nomine).
 
You have a choice to either make your own streamlined set of charts, divide the labour up, i.e. someone has the weapon charts, someone has the critical charts, or bite the bullet and do it all yourself.

Obviously I'm a big RM fan but I have to say I'm pretty much done with it.  I won't go back into my attitudes on the backflip but it's gone beyond that now and I'm done.  I'll probably finish up the article on running sporting events for the Guild Companion after Christmas but then, unless something earthshaking happens at ICE I'm finished.

Quote from: David Johansen;351266Obviously I'm a big RM fan but I have to say I'm pretty much done with it.  I won't go back into my attitudes on the backflip but it's gone beyond that now and I'm done.  I'll probably finish up the article on running sporting events for the Guild Companion after Christmas but then, unless something earthshaking happens at ICE I'm finished.

I can understand feeling pretty meh about the current ICE as well, having dealt with them during the RM Classic project. But I generally feel that Tim, Bruce and Heike have done their best over the last 8 years. Yes, they have made some decisions which in hindsight haven't worked out that well.  At this point the market has slipped away and even a souped-up new edition which reconciles RM2 and RMFRP and has great production values wouldn't sell all that much. Consequently I think ICE has pretty much given up and is on a shoestring both for money and energy.

Which is all a shame, but we have the game itself and it's not going anywhere.

No, the problem is that I'm tired of the edition war and bitter that RMSS will receive no more support.  Nor will a new tiered edition help.  The detailed tier will get bumped to a long promised supplement that never materializes.

I'm not sure ICE has the will and vision left to bring a new edition to market in any case.

If sales have slipped it's because us fans end up fighting over the edition every time it comes up.  I've said I was done before but at this point the only way I'd want to be involved is if I owned the property.

Otherwise my time and energy are better spent on my own projects.

Quote from: David Johansen;351316No, the problem is that I'm tired of the edition war and bitter that RMSS will receive no more support.  

On this score, i do have an RMSS version of the Rolemaster Rome book, and am quite happy to make conversion notes available as a free download to people who buy the main one.  This is obviously not quite as good as a full RMSS version, but the majority of the book is either cross-version or setting material.

One of my favorite Rolemaster moments had to be when Stump the Dwarf Fighter in our party saved our ass from an Unnatural 66 encounter roll.

Our GM at the time was a total ass, and didn't particularly care for the way we were going.  When we rolled a 66, it was perfect timing for him to drop some Elder Giant Demon on us.  

I was playing a Sage, and was generally considered useless in combat at the time, though that soon changed...more on that in a moment.

So this 15' tall red-horned monstrosity is sitting in our way.  Now, not one of us was over 7th level at the time.  But you know what they say about Rolemaster combat....there's always a chance.  

Was there ever!  

Stump was belligerent.  Very belligerent.  Attack first, ask questions later.  Usually, he has the chops to pull it off, but he knew that if he got close to this thing and whatever giant-ass sword and flaming whip it was holding, he was done for.

So after getting initiative, he announced he was throwing his battleaxe.  Penalties and all that, but he kissed his percentile dice and sent them a'rollin'.  He open-ended with like a 98, which meant he rolled again.

He open-ended again.

He open-ended again, barely.

He rolled a 78, which didn't open-end, but which put his total attack roll at well over 400.

Time for the critical hit roll--it was a 90-something.

Bottom line, the axe plants itself deep in the damned thing's forehead.  It dissipates, banished from the mortal plane for 100 years.  

....
.....

My second Rolemaster story has to do with my Sage.  Now, I was not much use in a fight--not a pure spell caster, crappy to hit with my crappy rapier.  I did have a shortbow, which I had diligently been putting some (oh-so-expensive) ranks into.  But whereas other people had Kill Numbers into the dozens, I had none.  And here I am at 7th level!

Well, the city our party lived in was seized by this group of vampires.  They mind-enslaved the town guards, and sent groups to attack us all at our places of residences.  My house was a scholar's retreat, full of maps, treatises, manuscripts, scrolls, and everything else you'd expect.  

They set the thing on fire.  I arrived too late from my travels to do anything but watch it burn.

8 guards and our group's resident traitor, a cavalier, slowly advanced on me.

The roof, the roof, the roof was on fire.

All my books, my manuscripts, my writings, gone.

My scholar went batshit.

In-game, I had just discovered an herb that granted haste-like abilities when ingested properly.  Addictive as hell.

I downed the stuff like candy, screamed, and took out my shortbow.

I literally could not miss that night.  I killed 4 guards in 4 rounds.  The 5th round, with the line-of-sight cleared, I took out the commanding cavalier, with a critical that sent him spinning backward 20 feet, his heart burst by a dead-on arrow.

My allies showed in time to finish off the rest.  I think, by then, there were 1 or 2 alive, maybe one more on the ground.

You don't mess with a man's library.

If we're counting MERP in the Rolemaster category then I just might agree with you. I have years of fond memories with that game and would love to get a game going again. Sadly, no one around here wants to play it.

-=Grim=-

Quote from: Akrasia;351103This sounds great!  Consider yourself having sold one copy already.  

AND IT IS HERE!!

It has taken a while, and there have been some unforseen obstacles, but it is finally released.  I refer you to the appropriate ad:

Rolemaster Rome