So the first couple books (Core Law & Spell Law) for the long awaited Rolemaster Unified (RMU) dropped a few months ago.  I was curious for reactions if anyone has them and/or has used them?  I've never played RM straight up, but we played a ton of MERP at one point and used a few Rolemaster supplements, notably Spell Law, with it.  I know character generation is a chore as is some of the bookkeeping but I don't mind all the tables.  In fact, I often bring them into other games.  So I'm thinking of grabbing these for that purpose if nothing else, but I'd love to hear thought from people who actually have them.  I checked out the previews on Drive Thru and they seem fine.  There are lots of complaints about the art online, but what I've seen is passable and I'm not buying RM for its art in any case.

Thanks!

I second this request.  Played a ton of RM in the 80's/90's, loved the charts and crits, hated the fact that making a character took longer than they survived combat.  So, is the new one better?

I own both, but haven't really had time to look at Spell Law yet. I don't and have never played Rolemaster, but have played a bit of HARP when it was first released and own a few older RMFRP books as well. The layout of the 1999 books is far superior IMO, but it sounds to me like there has been some cleanup of rules that make Unified 'better' or at least 'clearer'. The art isn't *bad* but it's also not great, and I'm sure ICE probably just doesn't have the same kind of budget for art that they used to have 25 years ago, for a variety of reasons.

I'd love to run it for my kids, but I'm honestly not sure it's something they'd be into. From my perspective RM has always been a great looking system, but I can completely understand how it turns people off. Regardless, I'm going to keep buying the Unified books as they get released just because I enjoy reading and mentally disassembling RPG systems to fully understand how they're supposed to tick and figure out where they're broken. The game clearly knows what its audience is, and aside from art & layout being worse (much like FASA's ED4 releases IMO), it isn't vastly different enough system wise to make someone that didn't like it before like Unified.

Maybe eventually I'll talk the kids into it once our C&C campaign ends and a few more Unified books (Treasure/MonsterCreature law) are out.

edit: I'm pretty sure there are electronic tools available now for CharGen if that's a sticking point though

I used to run and play MERP and the various versions of RM many years ago.
Pretty much every version of RM really.
I think my favourite was probably RMSS, but it's similar to RMFRP, which is a sort of modularised version of RMSS.
I suppose I ran the RM 2nd ed the most though with it's piles of companion books etc. a Messy, fun system.

It all worked well, as my RPG friends all understood the RM well enough too, so I wasn't just carrying the rules knowledge alone, which helped a LOT.

I have a copy of the Core rules, but not Spell law yet.
To get the negative side out of the way. Yeah the art is from bad to average.
I personally would have preferred Black and white simpler art like in the earlier editions of RM rather than the art that was provided in RMU. But sure, as some have said, the art isn't that important, but it is pretty ugly.

More importantly, the formatting is pretty poor IMO. It looks like it was made using 90s editing software or something. But still, it's readable.

That all aside, the rules are pretty good really. Although I've only skim read it all a few times.
I like the reduced Armor types and rules for handling mixed armor.

They've kept the Crit charts, as you would have to, which is pretty central to the game.
Interestingly, the Crit charts seem even more deadly than the old ones. Most natural 100s on A crits will kill. Whereas in the older RM systems, there were only a couple of Crit charts that killed on a 100 A crit.

The skill resolution has been simplified somewhat, which I think overall is a good thing.

Ability scored have been spread out more evenly and only go from 1 to 100, which I think is generally a good thing.

You can buy a separate package with a character generator, which is pretty much required IMO, so you don't end up spending hours making a character and will help bring new people to the game.

Overall, I'd be into running this, but would probably prefer to run online and use the software.
Or in person, but the players would need to be on board to learn the rules with me.

Not sure It'd be easy to get players though. RMU, even in this edition is a hard sell.
Still. If I advertised via the various Social media sites such as FB etc, I could probably get some players for it.

There is one big improvement over the Rolemaster Standard System.  In RMSS combat rounds were 10 seconds and actions were a percentage of a round.  An attack could be 60-100% of a round, preparing a spell 90%, casting 10% or 75%.  Players would declare their actions and they could be snap, normal or deliberate actions.  We rarely used this system, preferring to use a more D&D like round.

Rolemaster Unified greatly simplifies this.  Rounds are 5 seconds long and characters get 4 action points (sometimes more or less if they are hasted or slowed).  Each player gets a turn in initiative order to spend 1 action point and when they complete their multipoint action it is resolved.  For example a melee attack takes 2-4 action points.  So a normal attack would take place in the last turn of the round after 4 points are spent.  You can hurry the attack by using less action points with each point less than 4 taking a 25% penalty.

We haven't played it yet, (and I do need to do some more reading on other things), but this is one the first things I noticed that seems to be much improved.

Quote from: DocJones on September 24, 2023, 08:55:45 PM
There is one big improvement over the Rolemaster Standard System.  In RMSS combat rounds were 10 seconds and actions were a percentage of a round.  An attack could be 60-100% of a round, preparing a spell 90%, casting 10% or 75%.  Players would declare their actions and they could be snap, normal or deliberate actions.  We rarely used this system, preferring to use a more D&D like round.

Rolemaster Unified greatly simplifies this.  Rounds are 5 seconds long and characters get 4 action points (sometimes more or less if they are hasted or slowed).  Each player gets a turn in initiative order to spend 1 action point and when they complete their multipoint action it is resolved.  For example a melee attack takes 2-4 action points.  So a normal attack would take place in the last turn of the round after 4 points are spent.  You can hurry the attack by using less action points with each point less than 4 taking a 25% penalty.

We haven't played it yet, (and I do need to do some more reading on other things), but this is one the first things I noticed that seems to be much improved.

This reminds me: Rolemaster Companion VI had a completely different system for keeping track of time. It's been many years, and I don't think we ever tried it. Did anyone here?

Quote from: DocJones on September 24, 2023, 08:55:45 PM
Rolemaster Unified greatly simplifies this.  Rounds are 5 seconds long and characters get 4 action points

I've had a read over this a few times and it does seem like an improvement and simplification on the old system.
This and other streamlingings I think improves the chances of people giving RMU a go.

According to a response I received from the author/editor himself on the ICE forums, "Treasure Law" will be released very soon, with the first "Creature Law" book going into final layout and editing immediately thereafter.  So I'm getting closer to pulling the trigger and checking this out.  The delayed release time will allow me to really go through the rules and roll up some characters before actually playing.

Quote from: Persimmon on September 26, 2023, 06:22:02 PM
According to a response I received from the author/editor himself on the ICE forums, "Treasure Law" will be released very soon, with the first "Creature Law"

Oh that's pretty exciting.
I'll probably splash out and get a printed copy of Core rules, Spell Law, Treasure Law and Creature law in one big order when they're all available.
Even if I don't ever run it, it'll be fun to sit back and read them from time to time.
Still, by that point I'm pretty sure I can drag out some old RPG friends from decades ago to play it online.