Needless to say if you don't like RM we can live without you saying so in this thread.

For the RM fans out there, what are the classes you really like playing?

My edition of choice is RM 2 and there are a hell of a lot of additional rules which we basically ignore, but most classes are fair game as long as they aren't tied closely to new rules or what have you.

If pressed i think i'd plump for Animist which has been a favourite of mine since i first played MERP back in the day before we got into full-blown Rolemaster. Druid is another one i enjoy and Rogue is always a good one for non-spellcasting.

As a GM i like a lot of the supplementary classes in the companions which make great NPC villains. Warlock is great and seems to be based somewhat on the villain in the old Jack the Giant Killer movie.

Never played it, only ran it, but my favourite class conceptually is the 'no profession' profession. Seriously, I like it as a way of creating a character who is something weird or just isn't by design an adventuring type.

I also like the astrologer as a flavourful full caster type that most other games don't have an equivalent of, and the rogue for creating a nice swashbuckler/assassin space in the middle for thieves and fighters to be able to diverge from safely.

RMSS Warlock, channelling users determined to destroy the gods.

I fear Rolemaster and avoid it like the plague.

Dragon Shadowed Lands is cool, though.

Quote from: One Horse Town;844211Needless to say if you don't like RM we can live without you saying so in this thread.

Hmm...

Quote from: The Butcher;844248I fear Rolemaster and avoid it like the plague.

Oh...

Sorry, went back and deleted the offending message. Feel free to delete this one too. My bad.

Quote from: David Johansen;844239RMSS Warlock, channelling users determined to destroy the gods.

Blimey, they changed a lot between editions. In RM II they're basically evil eye using, change you into a monkey kind of deal.

I liked the Archmage and the Fighter.  Probably the most complex and the most simple classes in the edition I played (the one with all the companion supplements.)

Too many to choose from.

The RMSS professions were definitely better balanced, and a number of them improved on earlier versions. I quite like the RMSS Arcanist, and the Elementalist is pretty cool as well.

One day, in the distant future, I may finally get around to stripping back a lot of the RMSS rules to something more akin to RM2, but keeping the RMSS professions and a few of the other improvements they introduced.

Have you looked at the RMU revision?  I know it's moved on from where it was at when I was on the committee but I think it's worth look.  I don't think I'll ever look back at this point but I do believe a lot of issues got addressed.  I didn't always agree with how, but at least the last version of the shield use skill rules scanned.  I couldn't make heads or tails of the previous attempts.

Quote from: David Johansen;844412Have you looked at the RMU revision?

Nah, I haven't really looked at anything RM for a long, long time. I might check it out some time, though.

Well it's in the wild now and I'm free to talk about it.

The big reasons given for the revision are to unify the fan base and to move past any lingering copyright issues related to previous editions, allowing RM to at long last move forward rather than lingering in past edition wars.

I'm a bit biased but I feel they've utterly fumbled the first.  But only time will tell who's right on that one.  The changes in RMSS were unpopular with RM2 fans and too hardwired into the system to remove or ignore.  Personally that's where the real design flaw of RMSS lies, insufficient modularity in the name of standardization.  Well that and the ridiculous race and training package sliding scale discounts that got worse as time goes on.

So anyhow, stat generation is revised, the scales on things like stat and rank bonuses have been rearranged.  Standardized development points per level simplify character creation and balance it out a bit.  Races and professions are built with a consistent and standardized method that probably won't be published.  Oh well, according to the Spacemaster Datanet where they discussed semi-psychic professions the methodology for assigning skill costs was to take a list of costs and then assign them in order of importance to each profession to create a chart.  Some skills have been reassigned as talents on the basis that there's no real point in developing ranks in them.  I've got mixed feelings on that one.  From where I sit, skills are learned abilities and talents are inherited abilities and I'm not sure I like it when that line is muddied.

The revised percentage activity system is a little more intuitive and functional.  Shields can be trained as a skill but I've never been quite sure the rule was worth the additional complexity and overhead.  The attack and critical tables have been completely reworked in an attempt to make them a bit more rational and consistent.  Rasyr says that at one point the RMClassic committee got bogged down in a debate over the contents of the tables only to discover they'd been tweaked with each passing edition.

The spell lists have been gone over and revised with an eye to balance.  Rangers aren't the sad joke they used to be anymore.  Some dead levels have been filled in.

Overall it's been two years since I was involved and there's been playtests and revisions but the overall goal was a cleaner and more functional Rolemaster and I think that's largely been achieved.  Whether the fans will adapt it is doubtful.  RM2 fans are RM2 fans and RMSS fans are RMSS fans and the books are all available as pdfs so unless RMU can offer something new and indispensable I'm just not so sure there's enough there to cause the three (Harp...) fan bases to drop everything they already have for the new game that lacks and is incompatible with the material they already have.

A killer app of a  setting might do it or perhaps some great adventures.   Most of the RMSS supplements are a mixed bag where the Training Packages are usually the gold.  Lots of broken messes in the supplements.  RM2 had War Law and Sea Law, which we never got for RMSS.  I think the absence of those two alone would prevent serious RM2 GMs from changing over.

I hope I'm wrong and it is an unqualified hit for ICE.  I was pretty mad when I dropped out and burned my bridges.  But that was partly because I'd already given up on ICE and RM and was already working on Dragon Shadowed Lands when the invitation was extended to me.

My RMU would have looked a lot more like percentile GURPS with a Training Package based life path system whereby characters would level up if their discounts and total skill ranks exceeded their level parameters.

One thing the lead developer did convince me of was that there really isn't a point of having first level characters with fifth level scores when you can just create fifth level characters.

I played in a years-long campaign of RM in high school. Had several characters but the funnest by far was an Assassin towards the end. I could make a katana out of the darkness and had many ranks in Silent Kill and Disguise... good times, good times.

I remember playing a Terrorist in Spacemaster (RM space opera), decades ago in 80's or very early 90's. Che Guevara type with some C-4 and a submachine gun. My skill set and weapons were completely useless in the cerebral, no-combat adventure the GM ran, where we were space veterinarians investigating what was making some space monkeys sick. Seriously, that was the whole adventure. They were eating some bad fruit.  

I remember Cyberspace (RM cyberpunk) having awesome names for the classes: "Killer" for the fighter class, "Scum" for rouges, "Sleaze" for the social class.

I liked the Sorcerer at the time:  Channeling/Essence hybrid with an Eevil class spell list.  I had a character I imagined as a kind of sorcerer's apprentice who hadn't known what he was getting in for when he apprenticed to his master, but between being new at the hobby and the GM not being interested, I never really developed that angle.

Otherwise, for a non-spellcaster, Rogue for the flexibility.  My dream game at one time would have been Rolemaster but with fewer, more flexible classes.

Rolemaster is in kind of a weird space for me.  I still have a soft spot for it; I've seen it run fast and light in the right hands; I'd like to have gotten to play it more - but it's not getting to the top of the list of games I'd like to run.

David Johansen is right about not converting over.  I've hung on to my RMSS books even without a game going, but I'm not likely to buy or learn a whole new line.

Quote from: David Johansen;844420One thing the lead developer did convince me of was that there really isn't a point of having first level characters with fifth level scores when you can just create fifth level characters.

Yep, that's true of any class and level game IMO. That's one of the reasons i find complaints by the 'whiff brigade' meaningless. If you want to play badasses, make an x level character, don't whine about the zero to hero progression. It's largely a group problem rather than a systemic one.