As Justin noted - I remember from my MERP days as well, that the problem was not the amount of rules, but the amount of tables itself.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;514317Does a combat subsystem count?

Because Silhouette's combat system is pretty fucking awesome.  It's the best I've ever seen, period.

Why so?

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;514859I think the main reason it gets the rules heavy label is the number of rolls.

Nope. Almost every action is one or two rolls only. For example, combat is roll to hit, then roll for a crit if necessary, and you're done.

I agree that RM can be rules-heavy (though core-only RM Classic isn't) but long strings of dice rolls isn't the reason.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;514864This may be something exagerated by memory, but I seem to recall the crit charts sometimes required additional rolls on other charts pr re rolls and that nay be the reason for the whole roll master thing.

No, no. One roll to attack, and a second one for the critical, that's it. The only exception is that some powerful spells (like lightning bolt) could make two criticals (that is, two rolls). But other than that, no, no additional rolls.

Yeah, Rolemaster isn't "rules heavy", it's chart heavy.  As was mentioned, the nicknames of "Roll Master" or "Chart Master" come to mind regarding it.  Not that it was ever a hard game to learn the rules to, but that there were just too many charts to reference.  

And combat wasn't necessarily a lot of rolls, but a lot of chart flipping if the group had a wide variety of weapons/skills/options available to them.  Now I have met some GMs that love the game and after they've played the game for years and years they don't need to reference the charts much (except for maybe extremely high or low numbers), but that's not something you notice a lot.  Most people just remember the constant flipping through charts.

I'm one of those people that prefer to NOT reference a chart for die rolls in a game.  So if I can find a game that has less charts and doesn't use levels (another dislike of mine), I'm a happier GM.

Quote from: Rincewind1;514873As Justin noted - I remember from my MERP days as well, that the problem was not the amount of rules, but the amount of tables itself.

MERP wasn't so bad IMO.  

Unlike 'full' RM, MERP grouped attacks into different weapon-style categories (edged weapons, piercing weapons, crushing weapons, etc.), with modifications for specific weapons (e.g., a longsword might have a +10 to the roll, whereas a dagger would have a -15).  Most of the 'core charts' fit onto the GM's screen.

In contrast, Rolemaster used different charts for every different kind of weapon (i.e., longswords would have their own chart, as would daggers, etc.).

When I GM'ed MERP/RM back in the day, I had the players use the specific weapons charts from Arms Law (since most characters had 1-3 weapons, this was relatively easy for them), whereas as GM I used the general 'weapon categories' charts.

The charts could be a bit of a pain, but the colourful criticals (and fumbles!) more than compensated, IME.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;514879Why so?

I'll start off by discussing vehicle combat, because that's where it really shines.

The simple act of damaging a target is just so...intuitive!

Basically a target has a base armor rating.  We'll take my favorite AFV, the Abrams tank.  Abrams has a BAR of 25 - a figure that's taken by taking the square root of the average armor thickness for the entire vehicle, in mm.  Now before you freak out and start wigging about taking square roots and knowing vehicle armor thicknesses, it's just the number they started with in the example.  You don't have to calculate this in combat at all.  I mention it because it supports how well grounded the system is.

So back to that M1.  Base Armor Rating of 25.  It's in a tank duel with another main battle tank, which is equipped with (of course) it's own gun, which in Silhouette nomenclature is called a Heavy Field Gun.

HFG has a base damage multiplier of x25.

In my tank, I have a gunner with a Dexterity of 0 (that's actually average) and a skill of 2 (that's really, really good).

Once range, cover, movement and sensor modifiers are added, for our example, we'll say my target has a to-hit difficulty of 2.

Since I have a skill of 2, I roll 2d6.  I roll...boxcars!  Every six over the initial six you roll adds 1 to your total.  Now my target number was 2.  I rolled a total of 7, so that's 5 over the required target number.  Five times thirty = 150.

With a Base armor rating of 25, the Abrams has a Light Damage rating of 25, a Medium Damage rating of 50 and a Heavy Damage rating of 75.  I have exceeded that by more than three times - the M1 is utterly destroyed.

Another example, same circumstances.  My target due to range, cover, etc. is a 6.  I roll a 2 and a 3.  3 is the highest number but doesn't exceed the target, a miss.  Third example.  My target is a 3.  I roll a 3 and a 1, discard the 1.  Hit, but at zero times the multiplier, it's to no effect.  Fourth and final.  Target's a three, I roll a 4 and a 1.  I rolled a 1 over the target, x25, PRANG - light damage, with a possibility (depending on what I roll on the damage chart) of cascading into Heavy damage.

Personal combat works exactly the same.  To-hit number required is over target's defense modifiers, multiply overage by weapon base damage = damage done to target.  1x target base armor = light, 2x = medium, 3x = heavy.

Skill rolls are kinda the same, except obviously you're not trying to blow up a computer or the girl at the bar.  You have a target, you roll dice equivalent to your skill, and add the number equivalent to the correct stat, your margin of success indicates how successful you were in your attempt.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;514861It's been twenty years since I played it (and I only played it briefly), but I seem to recall that the real boggart of the rules was not the complexity of any particular table but rather the sheer number of tables. For example, using mixed groups of NPCs with different weapons I would frequently end up in the "check this table, flip flip flip, check this table, flip flip flip, check this table" sequence that would completely bog down combat.

I think that, unless you are dyslexic (and really, then, I understand the trouble, which leads me to wonder... well, how many gamers are dyslexic, do you think? Is it the source of the chart-impaired thing? I wonder), this is no problem after you played your first games. The GM learns to organize himself, has bits of paper stuck in the Combat book to find the charts easily, will not have seven billion different weapons in a party of NPC fighting the PCs, and over time, you get to know the organization of the book.

The first (and longest-running) GM of Role Master I had was a friend I introduced to RPGs myself. He picked up the game, we were 12 years old, and started running it for us at his house. He basically had some photocopies of the main weapons in the book and stickers for others that would be used in the course of the game and ran it from there. Finding a new weapon became easier and easier. There really was no noticeable "slowing down" occurring compared to say, Stormbringer, which I was running at the time.

Now I know, mileages vary and so on, but I played the game under different GMs after that, ran the game myself, and I never noticed a significant slowdown due to the charts. All it takes is a tiny bit of organization and knowledge of the books (as in, recognize the weapon types by flipping rapidly through the Combat book if you need to, which isn't so bad at all and is acquired fairly quickly, in a matter of one-two sessions really).

Charts are just better; you either get it or you don't.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;514924Charts are just better; you either get it or you don't.

I'm e-pissing on you right now.

Quote from: The_Shadow;514880I agree that RM can be rules-heavy (though core-only RM Classic isn't)

Ah there's some truth to that. If you start adding all the shit from all the Companions to your RM game, then you start having a shitload of stuff to take care off. This becomes the same type of problem with any game that suffers from rules bloat and all that shit. I wouldn't run RM with all the stuff from the Companions. It'd be like running AD&D with the whole of UA and the Survival Guides bullshit.

I have the survival guides. The dungeneer one is kind of neat, but its more inspirational than useful. The wilderness guide has a table for how your mule behaves, I don't know anything else about it, because I never looked at it again after seeing that table the first time I flipped the book open. Also, both suffer from a glut of Holloway art, IIRC.

The survival guides may be good for some inspiration at some point or another, but as rules books, as supplements, they are part of a late-AD&D picture I don't want to see at my game table. For me it's AD&D core, MM2 and FF, and cherry picked elements from UA, basically, as far as the TSR material is concerned.

Quote from: Aos;514928Also, both suffer from a glut of Holloway art, IIRC.

Ugh, yes.

Quote from: Aos;514928I have the survival guides. The dungeneer one is kind of neat, but its more inspirational than useful. The wilderness guide has a table for how your mule behaves, I don't know anything else about it, because I never looked at it again after seeing that table the first time I flipped the book open. Also, both suffer from a glut of Holloway art, IIRC.

The dungeoneers has some of the best DM advice in the AD&D books though and the best cover of any D&D book of any eddition.

just saying....

As an aside we found the tables in the DMG a problem as we were playing at shool and often got kicked out of the classroom so played on a wall or sitting on the floor. So with no physical table having to open the books gets painful so I just memorised all the tables to save time and effort.
It's a simple mathmatical progression once you get past the 20s


I would have to say that because its a mathmatical progression its not really a rule per se its just a way of presenting the rule on a table. THACO is basically the rule and the progression of THACO by level by class


just saying ....