My Little Pony LVI:S Has Left the Playground!

[Aotrs Commander]

Oh, so you're volunteering to purchase and mail me the Rolemaster books so I can understand that game better? Oh, you're so magnanimous!

Here is where I can be really mean and say that there is a new version of Rolemaster out for beta testing, free on I.C.E's website...

Besides, RM isn't hard to understand; it's roll dice, add skill bonus and modifiers just like D&D. The only major difference is you look the result up on a table instead of against a number (and even then only if you're the DM). I'll grant you that buying skills is slightly more complicated than in D&D (but really only slightly); but actually, in terms of game mechanics, it's no different than D&D, just with numbers and dice about five times bigger.

But, deadly serious for once, the fact it's adding tens and twenty and not single/low double digits genunily scares people off. 16+15 on D20 is fine, but ask them to add 52+35 and suddenly, "it's too complicated" and they go all to pieces. No lie. Humans is strange.

(The RM round sequence is rather variable, I also say, since RM tried a large number of options, from the clunkier early versions, to the median one we use, the the ridiculousness of the second-by-second tactical system; so running RM as a DM does require a more solid grasp of the rules, but not so much as a player.)



In practise, I have as many Rolemaster books as D&D 3.x books, and while I have ALL of RM 3rd (plus a goodly chunk of some of the others), I don't have all of 3.x. What does make Rolemaster complicated is the sheer varity of optional rules (often in RM, an optional rule will come with two or three different options on using it). Unlike 3.x, which you can play blanket using everything, Rolemaster you can't because a lot of it is options that are "instead" rather than "in addition" (e.g. the several different round sequences, the alternate skill systems, the alternate combat systems...)

(I found this selective mindset to be very useful and carried through to 3.x. As a DM, I don't allow books, I allow certain content from the books - and not even core is immune to having stuff not available.)



Besides, you really wouldn't want me to explain RM, given that the system I use is a hybrid of three editions of Rolemaster and two of Spacemaster, the Likes of Which Man (And Pony) Are Not Meant To Know... ('Cos if you thought my modifications to 3.x to 3.Aotrs were extensive, remember I've been playing Rolemaster for a decade longer...!)