Well, if it was MERP or RM2 the sheep devoured the party in a single round and the dragon got spooked and flew away crying.  You may laugh but in Rolemaster combat, numbers tell.

In RMSS the party probably could hold their own against the sheep but the dragon went down to a jolts spell on the first or second round and the sheep devoured him where he lay.

Quote from: David Johansen;903606Then they put the most rabid RM2 troll they could find in charge and he and his henchman had a prewritten draft and they used the discussions to practice shooting down any arguments.

Yeah, well, this would be my key argument: "Whether or not you agree, Rolemaster is so well known for being overcomplex and rules-laden that it has a well-known mocking nickname for the same.  Therefore, any more to add more complexity and rules is BAD, and odds are that many suggestions to streamline would be good.  You want more rules?  Then frigging house rule them in, but don't weigh the system down more for every other remaining RM player out there."

Quote from: David Johansen;903606I was on the development team for the first year or so.  It was pitched to me as an honest attempt to unite the fan base.  Then they put the most rabid RM2 troll they could find in charge and he and his henchman had a prewritten draft and they used the discussions to practice shooting down any arguments.  Anyhow, I personally think the document was not a complete disaster when I stepped off in disgust but the changes made as they've put it to public playtest have completely destroyed the thing.  I don't even think the team leader would be happy with where things have gone.

In any case I went back to working on my own systems and only regretted the year I spent arguing with a brick wall who thinks personal attacks and insults are the way to run a committee.

For all that, I don't think the RMSS / RM2 is bridgeable.

And I don't think ICE is redeemable.

I'm not convinced the fanbase is split. Seems to me that the development team is the part that's split, judging from your post.

So, how complex was the document before you scedaddled?

Quote from: David Johansen;903606Then they put the most rabid RM2 troll they could find in charge
Snip
For all that, I don't think the RMSS / RM2 is bridgeable.
Snip
And I don't think ICE is redeemable.

No they didn't because they know I exist at ICE and yet I was not put in charge.

Certainly it is, we all did it in the late 90's the first time around

Now we get to the heart of the matter, sorry your feeling got hurt.

Ravenswing, understandibly I have been playing RM for over 20 years now, but your comment shows a very common misconception, Rolemaster is a very simple ruleset and is easily resolvable, most actions including combat take at most 2 die rolls, the majority take 1. What is complex are which options you choose to use, and the horrible indexing because of bad layout and the companions. The system itself is delightfully simple however.

Sounds like they hired Steve Long to save Rolemaster the same way he saved Hero with their 6th edition. More pages = better.

Quote from: RKBrumbelow;903661Certainly it is, we all did it in the late 90's the first time around

Ah yes, all those lovely years when any RM discussion on the internet would be thread crapped by bitter RM2 fans.

Anyhow, the problem is simply this.  The project lead absolutely had to have hit points not scale with size and instead use multipliers and the same tables.  The shifts got more complex than x2 per size level.  This was okay.  I did try to argue that people would prefer to have hits scale up with size and only have damage multipliers for the table.  Not that the world will be poorer for it or anything.  I just don't care enough to bother anymore. It's not like freelancing is the road to riches.

Of course, I was right about people whether the lead was right about scaling well, math's more his thing.  So the compromise is a three hundred page table with weapon classes per size.  As I've said, I think the original beta document was okay.  I've laughed pretty hard as most of the points I was fighting for keep being integrated by the beta but it keeps looking messier and messier.  One of the reasons I left is that I felt, strongly, that there had to be a direction and a vision and I was in the way of that.  Another was that I felt there was no clarity on how to proceed on Monsters and Treasures.  Just take the current text and mess around with it and go from there I was told.  And I was paired with a guy I knew I couldn't work with.  In the will trash every word I write sense.  So, when Rasyr went and shared a private rant about the process, I felt it was time for me to step down.

Really, I shouldn't have stepped up when I was asked.  It was a learning experience.  I doubt I'll ever be willing to work on a property I don't own and control outright ever again.

Quote from: Matt;903665Sounds like they hired Steve Long to save Rolemaster the same way he saved Hero with their 6th edition. More pages = better.

No but there is a very strong bias towards mathematical accuracy and scaling at all costs.

Different people want different things from their game.  I've gone on at length for years about my RMSS preference.  But had I not been asked to work on the revision I would have been done and gone for years now.  The RM2 fans can have it.  It was theirs first anyhow and they're the larger group.  It's a dead issue, and that's okay by me.  But the revision scratches a sore spot and I tend to bitch about it.

I glanced at the playtest files last week, but my Rolemaster experience was 25 years ago, and it was never extensive or rigorous play. While looking at the introduction to the new Spell Law evoked some pleasant nostalgia, it's not the kind of system I'm looking for. A large part of it is that I'm looking for lower grittiness and lethality in combat than RM typically provides. I admit that I was intrigued by HARP when it launched, and should go back and look again at those PDFs that I grabbed cheap ...

But I must admit I'm curious about something, David. When I stopped keeping up with Iron Crown, RMSS was on the brink of launching, so I never really got a sense of how RM2 and RMSS differ 'in the trenches'. Now, part of that's because once you go beyond the original box, it's very difficult to have a sense of what RM2 is with the maddening array of options. So what makes RMSS different? I've heard that skills got considerably more complex, even beyond all of the RMCII options.

RMSS is pants and anyone who likes it is a weirdo...

Sorry, David seems to expect that kind of thing. I've never encountered any of the schisms he has regarding editions. In fact, i have a mix and match of a few RM II and RMSS books that i have no problem in implementing at all.

Seems like in most things, if you want to avoid the crap don't go on the internet. I only came online in 2005 so i guess i missed all the juicy stuff, although it seems that the designers haven't

What a waste of a great game.

I'll re-write it much better than any of you.

Okay, so Arms Law didn't change much.  There's actually minor changes to the charts with every printing since the first.  The RMSS Arms Law had little symbols for hits per round, bleeding, and stuns rather than writing them out.  A second version from post bankruptcy ICE had simpler tables that didn't specify the critical type.  They also did a book with 50 more weapon tables called The Armory.  Sadly it was in the second version's format.  Yes got the pdfs and printed a combined version on parchment.

Character creation is the biggest change.  RMSS has fixed cultural skill packages.  The stat bonuses are on a different scale and you add three stats to get skill category bonuses.  Okay, even I'll admit that they needed to clean up and rationalize the skill list a bit more.  By using categories you only have a one page list of skill costs by professions and its easy to implement new skills by putting them into a category.  On the other hand, RMSS has many skill progression rates for Power Point Development (by race), Body Development (by race), Standard Skills, Skill Categories, Combined Skills, and Limited Skills (detect ambush, spell lists).  Characteristics are bought with 6d10 + 600 points with scores over 90 having an inflated cost at the square of score -90 + 90.  Maximum characteristics are essentially determined by rolling enough dice to make the score 100 if all the dice roll 10s (this was a very contentious point during revision discussions).  Development Points per level are Agility + Constitution + Memory + Reasoning + Self Discipline /5.  Profession bonuses are a fixed value rather than a per level value.  This considerably improves low level Fighters.  Training packages can be purchased which give a 3/4 discount on skill packages and stack on top of the ranks that can be developed per level.  This makes RMSS characters much better at first level.  Spell Lists are learned at one level per rank purchased rather than in 5 level blocks.  Talents can be purchased with background option points with random options and the potential of flaws reducing the cost of better talents.  There's also a GURPS style points system option.  There's many other little changes.  And some things like the training package discount getting increased to make navy seals a first level character option (a really weird decision right up there with first level high elves).  Essentially the bigger the package the greater the percentage discount.

Anyhow, I think the biggest difference in play is that first level characters can be very competent and character sheets run to four or five pages.  It's a glorious, baroque mess, and I love it to death.  However, I do think that a few tweaks would have made it better accepted.  Firstly, the set-up with race and training packages is impossible to simplify.  Skill categories needed to be more modular so those who hate them could ignore them.  Ideally you should be able to run with straight training packages instead of skills for a really simplified character sheet, or skills straight up and it shouldn't break the system.  As written everything kind of falls apart when you try to do that.  All in all, greater modularity would have been an improvement.  My understanding is that Rolemaster Companion 3 had may options that were integrated into the RMSS core.

I think the place where things really went off the tracks was the introduction of HARP by ICE 2.0.  It could have been and needed to be a unified RM. I was against it at the time but if I'd known just how impossible it was for ICE to reprint the supplements I think I'd have understood the need.

I own MERP and always thought it was interesting. I downloaded the current Rolemaster beta about 2 weeks ago to see how it compared to MERP and after about 5 minutes looking at it I was like, hell no.

Quote from: RKBrumbelow;903661Ravenswing, understandibly I have been playing RM for over 20 years now, but your comment shows a very common misconception, Rolemaster is a very simple ruleset and is easily resolvable, most actions including combat take at most 2 die rolls, the majority take 1. What is complex are which options you choose to use, and the horrible indexing because of bad layout and the companions. The system itself is delightfully simple however.

Perception is reality.  If what the design team was after was to put out something for RM veterans only, sure, great, whatever.  If they had hopes to sell so much as a single frigging copy to anyone who'd never played RM before, going for the highest page count for published RPGs was so far from the way to go they'd need a road map and a native guide.

Don't worry, it's all tables

Okay, so here's the run down.  Rolemaster is a percentile based class, skill, and level game.  The classes are called "professions" but they still serve the role of niche protection.  As each class pays a different price for different skills the fighter can learn a few spells or the wizard can use a sword but only at great cost.  (Talents in RMSS and RMC3 soften this a little but only at the front end of character creation)

Success rolls are made by rolling d100 with 01=05 open ending low and 96-00 open ending high.  The usual target number is 100 with the static maneuver table giving graduated results.  (In RMSS it's 110)

The bonus to these rolls is either the average of two or three stat bonuses (RMSS adds three together) and 5 points per rank in the skill up to rank 10, 3 from 11 - 20 and so on.  You guessed it, this is summarized on a useful and simple table.  (RMSS breaks standard skills down to 3 points per rank for skill and 2 for category.)

There are really only four core tables.  The Static Maneuver, Moving Maneuver, Weapon Table, and Critical Table.  Of these the Weapon table and Critical Table have three axis with a separate page for each attack and damage type.

In combat, at the start of each round the combatants declare their targets and the portion of their skill being used to parry.  Action declaration is vital to the function of Rolemaster's combat because if you know whether you won the initiative or not when declaring your parry you'll parry more when you lose initiative and less when you win it.  It also allows everyone to make their rolls and add their bonuses and even check their results and roll their criticals if copies of the charts are available (A pdf of Arms Law and a printer are worth their weight in gold, if you buy only one pdf get Arms Law) at the same time.  Failure to do this is the reason some people think Rolemaster combat is slow.

So you roll to hit, check your total against the target's armor on the appropriate table and that gives you a number of hits and a critical level and type.  Yes, if you roll exactly what you need to hit the first critical is a krush for most weapons, you didn't get through the armor but they still felt the blow.  I love that.  Be aware that RM combats tend to last fewer rounds than D&D or GURPS combats.  Sooner or later someone catches a bad crit or gets stunned and it's over pretty quick after that.

Okay, what about that wacky percentage activity rule?  Well, if you run across the room, that's half of your activity for the round.  Most actions have a percentage range and if you're under the percentage minimum then you can't do the action.  If you're under the maximum you take a minus one penalty per point you're under it.  Movement can be a bit scary with the paces interacting with percentage activity, but it's really not bad.  Pace just multiplies your movement rate at the cost of Exhaustion Points.  Jog 50% and you just move your normal movement rate. (This is the RMSS version, I can't recall the RM2 version well enough to explain it.  It seems to me it was multiply your skill by the percentage used for other things / 100 but even that's not bad if you keep to 25 and 50% increments)

And that's it really, yes there's spells and they're categorized and codified and very easy to use because they rarely require a quarter of a page to explain.  As for the organization, the big issue is that there is a main body of the rules and then a series of appendixes with the appropriate tables.  So half of character creation is at the front of the book and half of it is at the back of the book.  It takes some getting used to but it's actually quite functional and you'll refer to the back half way more than you do the front.

It's a really great game and it works very well once you get the hang of it.  And it's way simpler than any edition of D&D other than Basic.  It's the volume of the data that's scary, not the complexity of the process.

I played with a group up here in Seattle. The gents were fun gamers but the system was too fiddly for me (and I like GURPS) - it does have some cool ideas, mired in a cesspool of complication. The drafts are so poorly laid out and written I cannot imagine salvaging them. There are just too many old farts in this business with no idea of how to run a modern cottage-industry small publishing house. It's the free market at work folks. RIP Rolemaster, may you play long in the Summerlands of our forebears.

This is the first I heard of the beta. I downloaded it and took a look-through. When I saw the chart that showed target numbers above 100, I closed the PDF.