Been looking back at Rolemaster

estar · July 26, 2012, 03:54:26 PM

Quote from: Bill;563898My familiarity with the Harnmaster rpg is limited, but man...the Harn setting is Fantastic!

A detailed writeup on a one shot I ran.
http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2008/11/911-call-from-attic.html

P&P · July 26, 2012, 04:36:11 PM

I still run a (heavily customised and house-ruled) RM2 game most weeks. My rulebooks fell apart years ago, so I manually typed all the tables into excel.

Yes, I just said that. I manually typed all the tables into a hyperlinked excel file. The basic file without spells, magic items, creatures or graphics of any kind--so just combat tables and character generation--is 1.5mb.

Anyway, everyone who plays has their own version of the excel file and it's played with laptops open.

tellius · July 26, 2012, 06:12:30 PM

RMSS and RM2 are still my go-to games. We've been playing it on and off for the last 20 years. For some reason, for years and years it has been the main RPG for the local scene.

I never found it that difficult to keep a track of rules and stuff for some reason. But the same as One Horse Town, photocopying spell lists and crit charts was our friend

danskmacabre · July 26, 2012, 07:52:20 PM

Quote from: TristramEvans;564513It really depnds on the edition of the game. I'm relatively certain its second edition that hit the sweet spot and everything else became a crunchy rules-junkie's wet dream to rival Hackmaster. But that one edition...oh man, was it good.

I think it must of been the first edition, it was wayback in the mid to late 80s I think.
One of my friends bought Harn and shortly after that Harnmaster.
Like I said, loved the world, hated the game, seemed fiddly and inconsistent and generally a mess.

Bill · July 27, 2012, 09:54:35 AM

Quote from: estar;564879A detailed writeup on a one shot I ran.
http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2008/11/911-call-from-attic.html

Sounds like that was a great game!

Patrick · July 27, 2012, 10:19:31 AM

Question: What version (RM, RM2,RMSS, or it's own custom rules) does the original Middle Earth Role Playing and Cyberspace use? We played both of those a LOT in school, but never RoleMaster itself.

danskmacabre · July 27, 2012, 10:26:31 AM

Quote from: Patrick;565210Question: What version (RM, RM2,RMSS, or it's own custom rules) does the original Middle Earth Role Playing and Cyberspace use? We played both of those a LOT in school, but never RoleMaster itself.

The MERP background material had 2 versions of the MERP RPG, although they were very similar.
I expect much of the RM data (the scenario books had stars for RM and MERP for NPCs) is for RM1, although RM2 is pretty much the same as RM2 anyway.
And really at the end of the day if you have any version of RM stats you can happily use them with RMSS or RMFRP with very little conversion work.

vytzka · July 27, 2012, 02:24:58 PM

Quote from: Patrick;565210Question: What version (RM, RM2,RMSS, or it's own custom rules) does the original Middle Earth Role Playing and Cyberspace use? We played both of those a LOT in school, but never RoleMaster itself.

MERP was a simplified version of RM2, and Cyberspace likewise a simplified version of Spacemaster 2nd edition. They had a reduced number of stats and skills, a simplified skill development system and at least MERP only went to level 10 (don't remember about Cyberspace but I would expect the same).

You could very easily plug in any kind of material from RM2 proper into MERP, except for new professions - because of the different skill development system. Not that you really needed the eleventy billion professions that accumulated in RM2, but a few were pretty inspired (if OP).