Well, I've just made my first reasonably significant change other than dumping a bunch of skills and merging some categories. I just created the Medical category, and moved First Aid, Second Aid, Midwifery, Surgery (Restricted) and Herb Use there. I'm sure I can't be the first person to have done something like that, but once the idea hit me, I'm surprised I've never seen this as a house rule before.

Quote from: Trond;953656Oh, and one more thing: get rid of unmodified rolls (but keep all the rolls open ended). This way, a very skilled person will only fumble if the roll is tremendously bad.

That's an interesting idea. So, attack rolls would become low open-ended. I would think you'd want to make the fumble ranges larger, in that case, if you wanted to maintain differences between weapons, otherwise the skill and random result will completely dominate, and the chance of fumbling a dagger will be practically identical to fumbling a morning star. I like that the morning star is a little dangerous to the wielder.

Quote from: Sable Wyvern;953669That's an interesting idea. So, attack rolls would become low open-ended. I would think you'd want to make the fumble ranges larger, in that case, if you wanted to maintain differences between weapons, otherwise the skill and random result will completely dominate, and the chance of fumbling a dagger will be practically identical to fumbling a morning star. I like that the morning star is a little dangerous to the wielder.

Sure you could modify the fumble range, but I forgot to mention this: the fumble range is your lower "end" in your open ended roll. So if the weapon fumble range is 1-8 you re-roll and subtract on a roll of 8 or below.

Quote from: Trond;953694Sure you could modify the fumble range, but I forgot to mention this: the fumble range is your lower "end" in your open ended roll. So if the weapon fumble range is 1-8 you re-roll and subtract on a roll of 8 or below.

Ah, that's much simpler. Do you already have a final result in mind that would signify a fumble?


Edit: Actually, I'm thinking that instead of making it low open ended, what would be a fumble just becomes an automatic miss and a potential fumble. Then, you make an open ended roll, adding your full OB, minus any penalties for injury or other situational difficulties (but not any parry percentage, held action or other voluntary penalties), attempting to roll 101+ to negate the actual fumble.

Rolemaster is the sort of TRPG that would benefit from being turned into an app, automating all of its mechanics and book-keeping, leaving just making decisions and moving shit around on the map to human hands.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;953724Rolemaster is the sort of TRPG that would benefit from being turned into an app, automating all of its mechanics and book-keeping, leaving just making decisions and moving shit around on the map to human hands.

I noticed the Electronic RM Assistant (ERA) on drivethru while picking up some pdfs. Checking the ICE forums, it looks pretty comprehensive, and highly customisable with moderate effort.

Since the vast majority of my players prefer spreadsheet character sheets anyway, seems like it may be a solid investment if I eventually get the game up and running.

Quote from: Sable Wyvern;953736I noticed the Electronic RM Assistant (ERA) on drivethru while picking up some pdfs. Checking the ICE forums, it looks pretty comprehensive, and highly customisable with moderate effort.

Since the vast majority of my players prefer spreadsheet character sheets anyway, seems like it may be a solid investment if I eventually get the game up and running.

Before you drop coin on ERA, check out the free Rolemaster Office. It's an excellent char gen utility which handles all of the companion material.

Quote from: The_Shadow;953741Before you drop coin on ERA, check out the free Rolemaster Office. It's an excellent char gen utility which handles all of the companion material.

Is it customisable? I'd need to rip out skills, add skills to different categories, tweak profession skill costs and category bonuses to match, do some professions with variant base lists etc ...

Quote from: Sable Wyvern;953751Is it customisable? I'd need to rip out skills, add skills to different categories, tweak profession skill costs and category bonuses to match, do some professions with variant base lists etc ...

Yep it's fully customisable although you'll need to dig into some files in a text editor.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;953724Rolemaster is the sort of TRPG that would benefit from being turned into an app, automating all of its mechanics and book-keeping, leaving just making decisions and moving shit around on the map to human hands.

No, but it could use some cleaning up and streamlining.  If you need a computer to play an rpg it's probably too complex.

Not that you need to use a computer to play Rolemaster, but you do need to overcome the obsession with totalling every single bonus.  How often will you really need your "Tie Fancy Bow" skill bonus?  Total your main weapon and Body Development and maybe half a dozen skills that'll come up often and get going.

Anyhow, I'm not sure how I feel about the revision at this point.  It had reached a somewhat stable version when they put it out to public playtest and it's drifted a lot since then but they're still stuck on the 300 attack tables model which would, undoubtedly benefit from computerization.  Of course, if a certain someone could accept the need to give higher hit point totals to large monsters and stick to the x2, x3 damage progression, it wouldn't be an issue.  Oh well, the things we wasted the most time arguing about were the initiative sequence and size modifiers.  Clearly Rolemaster needs to handle different sizes better than it did in previous versions.  Sadly, that means some sacrifices have to be made somewhere.  As for initiative, they've ditched percentage activity for action points.  Horrible decision that but as I'm out and off the team I can only bitch from the sidelines.

Quote from: David Johansen;953781Anyhow, I'm not sure how I feel about the revision at this point.

Complete indifference on my part. I think for most potential players, Rolemaster is going to be mainly "that old game from the 80s and 90s" with a bit of "oh yeah there is some kind of new edition out, I think". Especially as PDF, PoD and second-hand copies of previous editions are readily available.

Quote from: The_Shadow;953784Complete indifference on my part. I think for most potential players, Rolemaster is going to be mainly "that old game from the 80s and 90s" with a bit of "oh yeah there is some kind of new edition out, I think". Especially as PDF, PoD and second-hand copies of previous editions are readily available.

As best I can tell (and, to be honest, I haven't really being paying much attention, so I might be wrong), RMU is a bunch of big RM fans each trying to make their own preferred RM.

If it's going to be done, it needs to be a bunch of professionally-minded people thinking about what would actually be best for creating wider appeal, irrespective of their own personal preferences. Which, of course, assumes that there is actually a place in the market for something RM-like that is actually going to appeal to people that aren't current fans.

That's the character of the open playtest.  The committee was more focussed.  Really, despite my own issues with it, they should have gone with what they had.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;953724Rolemaster is the sort of TRPG that would benefit from being turned into an app, automating all of its mechanics and book-keeping, leaving just making decisions and moving shit around on the map to human hands.

I often used a calculator, but that's it. Looking things up in the books (using post it notes for finding pages) was part of the charm. I did simplify many things though.

One of the missed opportunities with products like Races and Cultures is the way all the non-human races are presented as mono-cultures. Fortunately, that's a really easy fix, since creating cultures is pretty straightforward. That's what I've been busy doing recently.

Also added in some unarmed combat skills to Adolescence (Option of Boxing or Blocking/Wrestling for appropriate cultures), as well as increasing Culture/Region Lore ranks and adding in some religion (the latter could probably be covered Culture Lore for common, rudimentary knowledge, but I've decided to allocate points due to the importance of cults in my setting).

At this point, my cultures are:

* Hill Tribe
* Urban (Educated) which is the same as the standard Urban Man
* Nomad
* Rural
* Urban (Poor) which was originally going to be a goblin ghetto culture, but I realised it would cover, as the name suggests, all the urban poor, as well as common slaves.
* Cloistered, which is race-specific culture for my creepy elf variant.
* Ruling Caste, Military Caste and Religious caste, which are primarily hobgoblin cultures, but Military and Religious are potentially open to others.
* Military Slave, primarily for goblins and boggarts, but potentially also humans.

I'm thinking that since I'm not using High Men (well, I am pretty much using their stats, but they're the hobgoblins) I may also need something for a militant leadership class outside of the hobgoblin-ruled regions.

Most races will be able to select most of the cultures, assuming they have an appropriate background. While this is technically true of RMSS as written, there is an assumption that (for example) dwarves raised amongst dwarves take the dwarven culture, which is a bit boring.