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sparky22
2008-10-22, 07:23 AM
Anyone played much of this? I'm playing this for the first time tonight as a Half-elf B (mixed high man) Nightblade.

Just wondering if there was anything I should know before I start? Any tips to help me along the way?

Cheers, Mark

Eldran
2008-10-22, 07:49 AM
The game has alot of tables and alot depends on "how serious you are when it comes to adhering to the rules".
>So to speak: When playing RM it's more important (than it is in other RPGs) to handle alot of situations with free roleplaying.

I might exagerrate a bit but the RM-Group I took part in was very serious about the rules. A situation which resulted in too many books, character sheets with too many pages (you had to have the tables for your weapons and stuff with your sheet, in order to speed up things) and a fight with 6 orks in it taking 6 hours.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Make sure that you play RM in a Rules-Light way, maybe even close to the old Middle Earth Role Playing Game (Merp) which was essentially based on Rolemaster but with a greatly reduced amount of rules and tables.

If you are not too annoyed by having a charsheet with over 10 pages :smallwink: then the inclusion of relevant tables for your weapons, spells, ect. can help to keep upthe game's flow.

valadil
2008-10-22, 08:43 AM
We tried Role Master but never finished characters. Played lots of MERP though.

I really liked the combat tables at the time. Of course I was also in the 6th grade and was forever amused by "body reduced to a gelatinous pulp, try a spatula." We got to the point where we had the crit tables memorized.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-10-22, 09:27 AM
Oh lordy, the tables. There's way too many. You need to condense the attack tables into like one per weapon type (the way MERP had them), instead of one per weapon.

Combat will still take way too long and be way too annoying, because fatal/crippling blows are like a 5% chance per critical, even if they're Ds or Es. (The critical tables also don't accommodate anything except humanoids.)

And everyone knows that 60, 80, 90, 100, 110, and 120 are kills.

Hiisi
2008-10-22, 09:36 AM
It's actually 66 that kills.

The game gets alot faster when you know how the tables work. It's really simple actually. Throw a D100 + you attack bonus - their defence bonus. Check the table for your weapon. Roll a crit.

Criticals make the game go a lot faster at bigger levels. Couple o' criticals and the enemy will bleed to death if it doesn't die instantly.

And they can be scary... especially at later levels. It's funny when you behead an orc and stuff like that. But when that big Ologhai with a club lands a E-critical on your head you can start rolling up a new character.

valadil
2008-10-22, 09:45 AM
If each weapon has a different table maybe it would make sense to give each player a copy of their weapon's talbe and they'll be responsible for looking up the result and a dramatic reading.

only1doug
2008-10-22, 10:04 AM
If each weapon has a different table maybe it would make sense to give each player a copy of their weapon's talbe and they'll be responsible for looking up the result and a dramatic reading.

which is how most people do it, you end up with about 4 pages of character sheets (+ 1 page / weapon or +1 page / spell list)

I like rolemaster but it does need a lot of character creation time. unless your players are fond of spending several hours making characters its best to get a character concept and then pre-gen the characters.

Skaven
2008-10-22, 11:19 AM
You'll be done with your character sheet by next week. ;)

Tsotha-lanti
2008-10-22, 12:34 PM
It's actually 66 that kills.

The game gets alot faster when you know how the tables work. It's really simple actually. Throw a D100 + you attack bonus - their defence bonus. Check the table for your weapon. Roll a crit.

Criticals make the game go a lot faster at bigger levels. Couple o' criticals and the enemy will bleed to death if it doesn't die instantly.

This is not even remotely my experience.

Our characters worked their way up to level 10 or so, and combat takes hours every time. And dear Manwe, if they're facing large monsters and not wielding slaying/holy weapons... it'll never end.

The party has actually battered a 500+ hit point dragon into unconsciousness through sheer point damage because they couldn't get a useful crit with their 200+ OBs, and all the penalties and stuns made combat into absolutely unbearable trudging. (I ended up ruling that we no longer use stun, because it's pointless. You get stunned, your DB suddenly jumps by half your OB - that's something like 75 or more - and you're invincible but useless for several rounds.

The tables are easy to use, sure, but flipping through the book for every damned attack is interminably dull and way too time-consuming. If you take the time to make spreadsheets of all the tables you need and print those out for everyone, it no doubt helps things, though. (Unfortunately I haven't played RM since I went crazy for spreadsheets.)


Funnily enough, the character creation - using Character Law, of course - is my favorite part. My second favorite are the spell-lists.

horseboy
2008-10-22, 12:37 PM
Well, before I can give you some advice, I need to know which edition you're playing. RM Classic, RM SS (Standard System), or HARP (High Adventure Role Play). If there's not a chart for each weapon and it's not Middle Earth then that's HARP. If Night Blade is in a red-orange book called Companion II with a stupid amount of skills in it then that's Classic.
Generally my advice is to avoid semi-spell users (Rangers, Bards, Monks, Night blades, Paladins), they're a trap. ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS buy your Body Development and Perception. Perception keeps you alive. Perception keeps you from being Ambushed.
How I speed it up, I got the largest 3 ring binder I could find and copied all the charts out of Arms Law, Claw Law, Spell Law and Blaster Law (Didn't have room for Firearms Law :smalleek:) I put a chart on one page and the relevant charts immediately after. Tabs on each weapon chart for quick flipping. I hear there's a hypertext link version of Arms Law floating around the net, but have never gone looking for it.
As far as character sheets go, we'd use the Standard non-spell casting sheet from Companion I, write our gear on the back page of that, then use a skill progression chart I'm not sure where it was from, it looked kinda like graph paper, but with slightly larger blocks in the first row for costs, and a long block to write in skill name. Then there was the XP worksheet we had built to keep track of kills and spell xp.
We played Classic. To help speed up things we usually just skipped the "Orientation" phase. We also limited it to "core" plus Companion I to avoid skill bloat. Another house rule was we allowed "Pure" casters (Those with 1/* spell development) to have 4 base lists from other classes that shared it's power type. So all essence casters would grab Body Renewal from monks to help with their squishieness. We also allowed bows to load and fire in one round, since we could do it, provided that you didn't keep your quiver inside your back pack or something stupid. Hmm, I'm sure we used other House Rules, but I'm so used to them I don't remember them as house rules.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-10-22, 12:46 PM
Oh I hate Arms Law so much. Every incarnation of it.

horseboy
2008-10-22, 01:00 PM
This is not even remotely my experience.Sounds like a bad dice night, I've had those where your dice refuse to do better than a 40. Course I've also seen Kelb open end three times on his crit roll and one shot a dragon, so it evens out.



The party has actually battered a 500+ hit point dragon into unconsciousness through sheer point damage because they couldn't get a useful crit with their 200+ OBs, and all the penalties and stuns made combat into absolutely unbearable trudging. (I ended up ruling that we no longer use stun, because it's pointless. You get stunned, your DB suddenly jumps by half your OB - that's something like 75 or more - and you're invincible but useless for several rounds.:smallconfused: What edition was this? In classic you got a +20 to hit a stunned foe. Course, there's Stunned, Stunned and unable to parry, and Stunned and must parry (screaming "Not in the face!" optional). We always used must parry as a full parry -20 for being stunned.


The tables are easy to use, sure, but flipping through the book for every damned attack is interminably dull and way too time-consuming. If you take the time to make spreadsheets of all the tables you need and print those out for everyone, it no doubt helps things, though. (Unfortunately I haven't played RM since I went crazy for spreadsheets.)My old DM put paper clips and pens on the charts we used to mark where they were.

Matthew
2008-10-22, 01:55 PM
My experiences with Role Master [i.e. "Are we going to finish the combat this session?"] were what caused me to create "my own roleplaying game". The critical hit tables are awesome, though, and I would happily play in a game.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-10-22, 10:23 PM
:smallconfused: What edition was this? In classic you got a +20 to hit a stunned foe. Course, there's Stunned, Stunned and unable to parry, and Stunned and must parry (screaming "Not in the face!" optional). We always used must parry as a full parry -20 for being stunned.

This is exactly what we did. A sudden +50 to +100 DB increase when stunned is just ridiculous. "****, we stunned him, switch targets."


My old DM put paper clips and pens on the charts we used to mark where they were.

I did this too, and I only used one book. A single combat still took up to 6 hours. Seriously, the tables are maybe half the problem - the fact that killing something is maybe a 5% chance per successful high critical is the rest. It's just ridiculous, and really anticlimatic. (It's not even realistic. The game has a lot of number-crunching and around zero realism.)

And this was not a bad dice night. This was my experience playing the game on and off for around 10 years. (The characters are maybe 12-13 years old, originally from MERP, ported over to 2-3 successive editions of RM. Getting to level 10+ takes forever, srsly. I can't wait to resurrect the campaign in LOTR RPG, which is made of awesome and eau de Tolkien. Enemies that take 1, 2, or 3 normal successes to kill depending on their importance? Oh, yes please. Excellent tactical battle minigame? Oh, yes please more.)

Raum
2008-10-22, 10:31 PM
Anyone played much of this? I'm playing this for the first time tonight as a Half-elf B (mixed high man) Nightblade.

Just wondering if there was anything I should know before I start? Any tips to help me along the way?Tried it once, several years ago. It's an interesting game with a lot of flavor. I like the way characters are built and the options you have.

Then we started to play. We found out why it's often called "Chartmaster" or "Pagemaster" - you spend far too much time looking up rolls on charts. Then we had a PC die for falling 10' out of a tree...broke his leg and cut the femoral artery if I remember the critical correctly. That's when we decided to try other systems... :)

horseboy
2008-10-23, 12:32 AM
This is exactly what we did. A sudden +50 to +100 DB increase when stunned is just ridiculous. "****, we stunned him, switch targets."Weird. Guess the DM should have brought in more trolls, they're immune to stun. :smallamused:


I did this too, and I only used one book. A single combat still took up to 6 hours. Seriously, the tables are maybe half the problem - the fact that killing something is maybe a 5% chance per successful high critical is the rest. It's just ridiculous, and really anticlimatic. (It's not even realistic. The game has a lot of number-crunching and around zero realism.)

And this was not a bad dice night. This was my experience playing the game on and off for around 10 years. (The characters are maybe 12-13 years old, originally from MERP, ported over to 2-3 successive editions of RM. Getting to level 10+ takes forever, srsly. Are you sure you're talking about Role Master? The game that gives you 1XP per mile traveled, and if you haven't been there before gets a x5 multiplier? Sure, autokills usually start around 80 (not counting 66) on "E"s, it's usually more the maiming that gets you killed in that game. Shattered shield shoulder? Can't parry with your shield, your DB drops way down, you're screwed.
Course, like I said, we modified the round structure, (got rid of orientation, merged all the "Casting phases" and "archery phases" and all that crap into just one regular round. If it took more than an hour, it meant we were in serious trouble/having bad trouble with dice. Then again, most of that group is directly responsible that D&D 3.5 had to be released so soon after 3.0. I wish I still had my characters from that era, but they're at a friend's house in Dundalk right now. It would be interesting to compare sheets.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-10-23, 03:29 AM
Yes, I'm pretty sure it was Rolemaster. Says so right on the cover.

:smallconfused:

It's not as if this is only my experience. The system is infamous precisely for the fact that combat takes even longer than in GURPS, and there are way, way too many tables to flip through.

Satyr
2008-10-23, 04:07 AM
Long, wide-stretched combats with Gurps? :smallconfused:
Seems strange to me, whenever I played Gurps I had the impression that combats were decided extremely quick.
Is it possible that your gaming style tends to be a bit slower (that is not meant as an insult, but only as a question).

random11
2008-10-23, 04:08 AM
I have a nice collection of role playing games.
From all the systems I have, Role Master is the only one I feel sorry for buying it.

I wasted good money (is it possible to waste bad money?) on a system that I couldn't even use to create a few test characters.

InaVegt
2008-10-23, 04:16 AM
GURPS has quite fast combat in my experience (unless you start to get out all the optional combat rules, and even then it's about as slow as DnD 3.5)

sparky22
2008-10-23, 04:31 AM
Some interesting replies! I should probably think myself lucky that I'm playing with a GM who's been playing this for years himself and was able to keep things moving, even in combat. We've also all got our weapon tables, critical tables and spell lists to hand, so that helps.

The first session went pretty well. The Magician was in negatives at one point but the Paladin saved her. Other than that we were never in too much difficulty with a bunch of Goblins and a couple of Orcs. we're all new to it though so I'm sure it'll get harder.

managed to get a few crits but at one point my dice thought I was playing Warhammer. :smallfurious: