I hear folks trash SM: Privateers for being poorly organized, though when I looked through it, it didn't seem too bad. I'm thinking as a RM2/RM Classic player, if I ever did try SpaceMaster 2, it'd probably be closer to what I like. But I guess I don't know for sure.

Quote from: Zachary The First;633948Also, I really want to run Space Master 2nd edition one of these days. I've messed around with SpaceMaster: Privateers, but I've heard SM2 was a superior game. I need to grab those pdfs from RPGNow and see what I think. It looks like the print boxed set is fairly expensive, though.

IMO SM2 was superior. Even so I bought pretty much all the Privateers books. I wanted to like it so much. But it seemed so clunky in comparison to SM2.
It didn't have the same "feel" as SM2 either, the background material that is.
I guess I just preferred the SM2 background and that's a matter of taste.

I preferred the SM2 races as well.

Also SM2 worked very well with RM, which I was also running at the time and occasionally did crossover adventures, on Ceril7, where magic worked, which I believe was actually Kulthea (the shadow World RM setting, which I used for my RM campaign).

Well, crap, I don't need another sci-fi ruleset, but I'm pretty dang close to checking out Space Master 2e.

It'll have to wait for a look-over, though; I've got my Detectives in Space game for SC3 scheduled for next weekend.

X-Plorers. Very simple and fast. Flexible. Easily house-ruled to taste.

http://www.xplorersrpg.com/

Humanspace Empires. Neat variant of OD&D and Original Empire of the Petal Throne. Trippy. Nice weird "Watching a crummy print of Bava's Planet of the Vampires on the Late Late Show at 3 AM after a few drinks" feel. Also, it's free.

http://ixians.blogspot.com/2010/12/humanspace-empires.html

Quote from: Zachary The First;633959I hear folks trash SM: Privateers for being poorly organized, though when I looked through it, it didn't seem too bad. I'm thinking as a RM2/RM Classic player, if I ever did try SpaceMaster 2, it'd probably be closer to what I like. But I guess I don't know for sure.

The problem is that it means most people judge the game based on the core book.  Which doesn't even include wrestling skill and has a very limited critical table set that requries some odd substitutions.  It looks fine until you try to find things that should be there and aren't or wonder why half of combat is in the middle of the book and half of it is at the end.  This is an issue with MERP and RMFRP but not the other editions because in the other editions the attack tables are in a separate book, not an appendix.

It also makes problems in Tech Law and Weapons Law which have four different variations on the Tech Level descriptions between them and there's around a dozen attack tables scattered through Tech Law that aren't in Weapons Law.

Like I say, the organization problems become apparant when you try to play it.  I still love it.  Can't help myself it seems.  No matter how much every iteration of ICE since the bankrupcy has shat all over RMSS and SPAM.

Yeah, they were not/are not fans of RMSS/FRP, but especially not SS. I eventually found I preferred RM2/Classic over RMFRP, but I'd play either again in a heartbeat, and probably will.

OK, it's done. Ordered the Space Master pdfs. It'll be interesting to compare with Privateers.

Quote from: David Johansen;633965The problem is that it means most people judge the game based on the core book.  Which doesn't even include wrestling skill and has a very limited critical table set that requires some odd substitutions.  It looks fine until you try to find things that should be there and aren't or wonder why half of combat is in the middle of the book and half of it is at the end.

Yeah that's the feeling I got from it.
Character gen seemed particularly painful, having to scan all over the books to find some reference to a rule.
SM2 seemed much smoother and just generally easier to use and to my mind Privateers didn't really add much.

QuoteThis is an issue with MERP and RMFRP but not the other editions because in the other editions the attack tables are in a separate book, not an appendix.

Oddly enough I quite liked the RMFRP core book. It was a great introduction to RM. You only needed that 1 book to run RM up to 10th level.
Everything else was modularised.
If you wanted the full blown combat tables, buy Arms law.
You want all the spells?  get each spell book, you could even buy each realm separately (essense, mentalism, channeling) which was really useful when you have several players all wanting to see spells.
You also had school of hard knocks, for detailed skill breakdown.
And extended races and character gen options, just get character law (or something like that).

Still, I mostly used RMSS as everything was in one place when browsing rules (as I was an RM veteran by then anyway) and by the time RMFRP came out I had moved onto Runequest based games.

The one downside to RMSS and RMFRP was it wasn't really compatible with SM2 and I really missed that.
In retrospect, I probably should have stayed with RM2 and SM2. Then dropped most of the plethora of RM2 companions and everything would have been sweet.
But all those lovely RMSS and RMFRP books were sooo tempting...  
 

QuoteIt also makes problems in Tech Law and Weapons Law which have four different variations on the Tech Level descriptions between them and there's around a dozen attack tables scattered through Tech Law that aren't in Weapons Law.

I would personally prefer a re-release of SM2 (and background) updated to be compatible with the new RM. That would be awesome.

The SM2 setting is problematic as ICE sold it off with Silent Death to the company that did Dark Age of Camelot.  And it's not worth their legal department's time to bother with it.  Though some Silent Death fans have sorted it out enough to bring Silent Death back.

I've always wanted a proper Silent Death rpg / skirmish wargame, that would be truly awesome.  Savage Worlds plugs in very well but it doesn't feel the same.  Ideally you'd be using the same attack and damage system.  I tried getting Bruce to send me the files for X-Decom which was to be a boarding action game using the old Grenadier Space Rangers figures but I'm guessing it got announced and advertised without ever actually getting designed.

Silent Death the Next Millenium becomes an issue too as it does a Traveller the New Era blow up the setting and have a post apocalyptic dark age thing.  Which of course the SM2 fans hate.

So I think the new Spacemaster will have a new setting in a couple years when it comes out.  You might want to look at HARP SF.  Nicholas Caldwell wrote it and he's the guy in charge of ICE now so it always gets some special love.  At one point we were talking about doing a miniatures skirmish game for it but then he got wrapped up in fighting for control of ICE and it just kinda dropped off.  Which is just as well, I hate HARP.

Hulks and Horrors - Damn right it's a favorite, I wrote it. I don't write what I don't love.

Classic Traveller - All those random tables make me hot. I've gotten more fun out of this game than many of my other purchases and I had to pay for those.

Cyberpunk 2020 - This is a long favorite genre of mine and I still think this is the best tabletop presentation of it, even if Shadowrun did weirdly have a more realistic computer system.  

Star Wars D6 - the only Star Wars system, as far as I'm concerned. So good.

Quote from: David Johansen;633975The SM2 setting is problematic as ICE sold it off with Silent Death to the company that did Dark Age of Camelot.

Are they doing anything with that?
I suppose it doesn't matter as it won't be anything to do with Spacemaster anyway.

QuoteSo I think the new Spacemaster will have a new setting in a couple years when it comes out.  

Ooh that'll be exciting. Has any work been done at all, or just on the agenda sometime in the future?

QuoteYou might want to look at HARP SF.  Nicholas Caldwell wrote it and he's the guy in charge of ICE now so it always gets some special love.  At one point we were talking about doing a miniatures skirmish game for it but then he got wrapped up in fighting for control of ICE and it just kinda dropped off.  Which is just as well, I hate HARP.

I really liked HARP at first. but it just turned into an expansion nightmare like RM2 did.
That and I had to houserule it a lot to make it work (IMO).  The spell system was pretty flaky. Especially healing spells. It was very easy to abuse.
I can't really bothered going back to that or HARP Scifi.

I loved some of the concepts from HARP tho.

HARP should have either been a much smaller and simpler game or the new edition of Rolemaster period.  The timing wasn't great for a new edition of RM as it had just had one but HARP introduced a third division rather than healing any rifts.  Even Rasyr (HARP's designer) feels that Rolemaster Express would have been the right product at the time.  But ICE wanted a new MERP and HARP was supposed to be it.  But MERP was brilliant and tied to a much loved setting and HARP was pretty workman-like, functional but neither innovative nor spectacular.

There hasn't been any work on a new Spacemaster to the best of my knowledge.  I left the Rolemaster revision team on less than good terms.  Feeling very much that the RMSS fans on the team had been brought in on bad faith promise of input when there was no intention of doing a damn thing to support their preferences no, not even with bloody side bar options.  Oh well, I think the revision's pretty decent even if there isn't a single idea or notion I can claim to have been responsible for.

I fear that it just be one more division but that's as much because ICE is keeping the entire catalog available.  I personally believe they just need to get behind a single edition and push it hard with good support.  So far they haven't done much more to support Rolemaster than the last bunch did.  And that is a tragic waste.

Quote from: David Johansen;633985HARP should have either been a much smaller and simpler game or the new edition of Rolemaster period.

I agree. As it stands, Dragon warriors is my fantasy game of choice. As it's really quick and works well enough.
Also because most of my roleplaying gaming is running RPGs for my kids (10 and 12) and DWs works very well, is quick and easy to pick up.

I have got a gaming group for adults going too, using Legend/MRQ2, but people are pretty unreliable so sessions are infrequent for that.

I love running games for my kids anyway, it really feels like getting back to t he roots of RPGs, if HARP didn't have the faults that it did, it could have filled this place.
I had a HARP forum on my site, it's here actually:
http://www.chaos8.com/forum/index.php?board=50.0
I had a dedicated forum for houserules.
But it's all too much work now and prefer simpler systems.

Another thing that irritated me about HARP was on the back of the book it promised official software for character gen and it never happened.
I'm amazed noone sued them because of that.

 

QuoteThe timing wasn't great for a new edition of RM as it had just had one but HARP introduced a third division rather than healing any rifts.  Even Rasyr (HARP's designer) feels that Rolemaster Express would have been the right product at the time.  But ICE wanted a new MERP and HARP was supposed to be it.

What was great about MERP wasn't so much the system to me, but that it was based in Middle Earth. I'm a big fan of Tolkien's work and have been since I was a kid. Although MERP worked well enough I guess.

QuoteBut MERP was brilliant and tied to a much loved setting and HARP was pretty workman-like, functional but neither innovative nor spectacular.

I thought HARP had some great ideas, like how you can mod spells so well and character gen was very open and offered loads of options.
I just think there was a few fatal flaws in it.  I won't go into details tho, as I detailed them in  the forum I posted earlier.

QuoteThere hasn't been any work on a new Spacemaster to the best of my knowledge.  I left the Rolemaster revision team on less than good terms.  Feeling very much that the RMSS fans on the team had been brought in on bad faith promise of input when there was no intention of doing a damn thing to support their preferences no, not even with bloody side bar options.  Oh well, I think the revision's pretty decent even if there isn't a single idea or notion I can claim to have been responsible for.

Not surprised there's no work on a new SM yet. I can imagine they just don't have the resource to do that yet.

Whilst I haven't spent loads of time on the ICE forums I did notice a lot of division there, which is sad, but inevitable I suppose given the amount of times the company has folded, been bought, sold again etc etc.

Whilst I probably will buy the new RM and SM if it ever comes out. I think it's just too fractured to rescue and the fanbase too set in their ways to accept a new RM anyway.
That and as I've said for years, there NEEDs to be software for RM, it's just too much of a hassle to run these days. Really the type of system it is, it's just made for some sort of software and I don't mean the cobbled together excel spreadsheets and so on. I mean a proper GM aid.

 

QuoteI fear that it just be one more division but that's as much because ICE is keeping the entire catalog available.  I personally believe they just need to get behind a single edition and push it hard with good support.  So far they haven't done much more to support Rolemaster than the last bunch did.  And that is a tragic waste.

It is a waste, but I think a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation.
The only suitable owner for the while ICE line IMO now is someone or people who expect to continually run it at a loss. or pour a load of money into it to give it the support it needs, which includes proper software support.

The problem is that what they need is a killer ap.  The operating system, the rules don't sell a game to most gamers, it's that setting that resonates and is supported with fantastic artwork that evokes and matches the fluff.

It's a tough market out there but people are generally willing to put up with the system to play the much loved setting.  Shadow world might do it but there'd need to be really evocative art and fluff at this point.

Yeah a decent setting IS important, but I disagree that it's more important than the system.
People have 100s of choices of RPGs these days, many free and some of those free offerings are pretty good.

As to art, for me at least that is not important, Sure I want SOME art in a book to give me a feel for the setting, But it's not something I need lots of like in Pathfinder for example.
Don't get me wrong tho, I love art, but a crap system won't get me to buy it even if it has nice art.

What I really miss in RPGs is an example scenario in the core rules book to give me a feel for the setting and how the rules work in real play. IT used to be a really common thing in RPGs

Competition on RPGs must be really fierce. In the 70s 80s and 90s it was a lot less competitive and little or no internet made it hard to see the alternatives. You relied on magazines, game shops and your peers.

Now if you come out with a crap system it'll be discussed to the nth degree on forums, you can be sure of that.
I certainly read forums a lot and check reviews, unboxings etc before I buy.

As it turned out, getting for example "Stars without number" for free in PDF format convinced me to buy the full version and I bought the hardcopy too.

I'll probably get the new RM when it comes out for old times sake and a good read, but I seriously doubt I'll get to run or play it.  I think it'll be very hard to find people willing to play it.

Star Wars D20 Revised

Stars Without Number

Robotech/RIFTS et al.

Traveller (classic and D20)

All of these in no particular order of precedence.