Rolemaster Developers' Blog

[Foen]

I've started a sort-of blog on the ICE forums, following progress on the RM ruleset, but thought you folks might be interested too. The other guys on the team are welcome to chip in, hence I put the apostrophe after the 's' :rolleyes:

All the best

Foen

[Foen]

As Vroomfogle has already mentioned, there is a project under way to implement RMC for the Fantasy Grounds platform. Vroomfogle is doing much of the leg work on tables and C&T, and I'm leading on the FG coding side of things. Stuart Miller (I'm Stuart Woodard) is heading up the project.

I thought it might be useful to start an occasional project blog: I'm not going to commit to weekly updates, but I'll post something here when there is something new to say. I thought it might also be interesting to post screen shots of the product as it develops and a Dev's point of view on progress etc.

Major health warning: This is out-of-the-tin RMC with no options. It is a heck of an endeavour to code RMC in the first place, we'll think about options once the base ruleset is published.

Foen

[Foen]

OK, a quick tour of the character sheet and I'm done for this time

The ruleset provides a decent place to store each character's info, much like a paper character sheet, but divided between different tabs. Top of the pile is the front page of the sheet, with many of the familiar RM notes:

https://www.legends-guild.co.uk/blog/charmain.jpg

Light-shaded numbers are calculated fields and can't be directly edited. The racial adjustments are made easier by being able to drag the race from the Character Law reference onto the character sheet: it then populates all the adjustment fields automatically, but also allows them to be edited for campaign-specific racial adjustments.

The combat tab has a place for regular weapons, martial arts skills and armour:

https://www.legends-guild.co.uk/blog/charcombat.jpg

The full weapon data isn't shown here (it opens in a new window, by clicking the grey square to the left of the weapon name) but I'll cover it when I run through the combat facilities. Weapons from the Arms Law reference can be dragged and dropped here, and the attack tables freely modified.

The skills tab includes detail on how the skill bonus is calculated, the rank and level bonuses etc. Home-grown skills can be added, or they can be dragged and dropped from the primary and secondary skills lists in the Character Law reference:

https://www.legends-guild.co.uk/blog/charskills.jpg

Double-clicking or dragging a skill name will roll the skill chance for you (hence the dice icon).

The spells tab keep track of spell lists known. In this screen shot the details of a particular list (Delving Ways) are also show, opened by clicking on the grey square to the left of its name:

https://www.legends-guild.co.uk/blog/charspells.jpg

Clicking on a spell name provides the full Spell Law text description, or the scroller control (bottom right, golden-coloured) can be used to scan all the spell descriptions on the list.

The inventory tab keeps track of kit carried, weight/encumbrance and BMR, and the accumulated wealth of a character:

https://www.legends-guild.co.uk/blog/charinventory.jpg

The 'Enc?' check box allows players to specify if a particular item is to be included in the current weight/encumbrance calculation or if it is to be excluded (for example if it has been dropped at the feet of the character or is stowed on a pack animal but still needs to be referenced/remembered).

The final tab allows both players and the GM to keep notes about the character:

https://www.legends-guild.co.uk/blog/charnotes.jpg

As you might expect, the GM notes are not visible to the player but allow the GM to keep track of specific conditions (curses, diseases) or other facts about the character.

Hopefully that has provided a brief look into the FG RM implementation. I'll pick another topic for next time!

Cheers

Foen

[Foen]

Skills have a full description behind them as this screen shot shows:

https://www.legends-guild.co.uk/blog/charskills2.jpg

It is also worth pointing out a few things:

The padlock icon in the top right of the skill sheet allows a skill to be locked and unlocked. It prevents accidentally deleting or changing the contents and is player-controlled.
The Group field allows skills to be displayed together on the character sheet. Compared to the previous screen shot (which had grouping switched off) the character sheet above, behind the skill sheet, shows the group titles with each skill listed under them. By default the grouping corresponds to the basic skill type (OB, MM, SM etc), but it is a freely editable field so you can group by combat vs spell use vs modern skills etc.
The armour penalty field allows a degree of automation to be applied and takes a multiplier number. For example a skill which is unaffected by armour has a zero multiplier, a skill which is normally affected has a one times multiplier, whereas a skill like swimming might have a three times multiplier.

The next screen shows the first view of a weapon sheet:

https://www.legends-guild.co.uk/blog/wpnattack.jpg

This hasn't been filled in much but shows the editable detail available for each weapon, based on its attack characteristics. The following screen shows the defensive characteristics of the same weapon:

https://www.legends-guild.co.uk/blog/wpndefense.jpg

This is important for shield/bash weapons and those such as main gauche, but is available to all weapons. Weapons and shields share much of the same features.

I hope that explains a bit better how the character sheet works.

Cheers

Foen

[Foen]

OK, a preview of the table-resolving stuff... please note these are GM screen shots: the players are not aware of the outcome of their rolls.

The first screen shows the opening view of the table resolver (for attacks and MM rolls):

https://www.legends-guild.co.uk/blog/atknormal.jpg

The main areas of the window worth examining are the roll stack in the bottom left which keeps a queue of incoming player rolls, the roll/modifier area in the top left which summarises the current roll (more of that below), and the table grid on the right. This shot shows the resolver opened on the beak/pincher table in a 'browse' mode, so no outcome is selected.

The second screen shows what happens when a roll from the stack is selected for resolving:

https://www.legends-guild.co.uk/blog/atkbind.jpg

The difference here is that the modifiers for the attack (based on the attacker and the defender) are shown as a list in the roll/modifier area and summarised at the top left, and the outcome is highlighted in the grid on the right. The AT column has been selected automatically, based on the AT of the target.

Right-clicking on the outcome shows the results of any critical/fumble by bringing up a second grid below the attack/MM grid:

https://www.legends-guild.co.uk/blog/atkresult.jpg

The roll/modifier list is editable so the GM can influence the result to reflect unique situational modifiers, including which column (AT or critical degree) is used. The outcome from each grid (such as hits from the upper grid and crits from the lower one) can be dragged to a character sheet or enemy (NPC) sheet.

Note: The tables shown in the screens are indicative and not meant to reflect actual weapons

Cheers

Foen

[Foen]

Note: This is a copy of a blog on the ICE forums, as such it assumes the reader isn't familiar with FG.

OK, this is just a quick run-through of the combat sequence.

Combat in FG centres around a window called the combat tracker:

https://www.legends-guild.co.uk/blog/ctbase.jpg

This is the GM's view and shows every combatant and a summary of their status. This tracker currently shows two centaurs (one hidden from view, which is why the eye icon above its name is obscured) and a player character, Yndia. The green spot on one centaur indicates that it has taken minor damage (in terms of hits).

The player's view contains less detail:

https://www.legends-guild.co.uk/blog/ctclient.jpg

The player cannot see the second centaur and only has limited information on the first centaur. The GM controls how much information a player can see - in this case he has generously allowed players to see the status indicator (green at the moment) as it might be reasonable for a player to know roughly how cut-up an opponent is.

Each tracker entry contains much more information than is shown on the summary line. Some of the icons in the right hand side of the tracker (sword/shield, figure and book) allow extra detail to be displayed. If the sword/shield icon is pressed or the mouse is hovered over it, a combat (attacks/defences) section becomes visible:

https://www.legends-guild.co.uk/blog/ctexpandat.jpg

Here you can see that Yndia has two attacks, a long sword and a composite bow. This section of the tracker also allows each attack to be allocated to an opponent (Yndia has both attacks allocated to the centaur), and similarly with defences (Yndia has none). You can see that attacks also have an associated Arms Law table, and that the long sowrd uses the Broadsword table (ALT-04).

To make an attack roll, the player or GM double-clicks on the attack OB (shown with ghost-images of dice behind it) and the tracker works out the various modifiers. Just taking a quick look at the centaur in more detail, you can see it has a shield giving it a 15 DB bonus:

https://www.legends-guild.co.uk/blog/ctexpandat2.jpg

After the dice are rolled on the player's screen, the attack resolver window then opens on the GM's screen:

https://www.legends-guild.co.uk/blog/ctattack.jpg

This was a lucky roll (while writing this post I rolled a natural 100, with a second roll of 26!), and the total defence bonus (10 DB plus 15 for the shield), the long sword's adjustment for AT3 and Yndia's 65 OB are included in the calculation to show 25 hits with an E-Slash critical. Right-clicking on the 25ES cell, the GM can open the critical table:

https://www.legends-guild.co.uk/blog/ctcritical.jpg

Either the player or the GM then rolls for the critical (I rolled 30 in this example) and the result is shown. Both the 25ES and the critical result are then dragged back to the poor centaur on the tracker window:

https://www.legends-guild.co.uk/blog/cteffects.jpg

The tracker now shows the effect section and adds the wound details to the centaur. These will be taken into account for future actions by the centaur and effects such as bleeding will be applied each round until they are cured or expire. The health indicator has also moved to orange.

The intent of the FG ruleset is to automate where helpful, but also to leave the GM in control: the GM can select different results from the tables (or even change which table is used) and can select or deselect the bonuses/penalties included in the calculations.

Foen

[Brenn]

Foen, I have to say this- I don't think there is a more difficult ruleset to take on than Rolemaster. It is also the RPG, I think, that would benefit most from being adapted to FG. I won't go near it anymore(and haven't for years) table top, but I just might play it on the computer.

Looks good so far.

[Malovech]

Amazing work, mind blowing!

[Sorontar]

*Does a happy dance*

Looks like it's going to be a bit spesh ;)

[araziel]

I must say this looks incredibly promising. Really can't wait for this one :)

[Oberoten]

So when and where do we start to see and try this one in action?

- Obe.

[Foen]

Hmm, too early to give a date, but it won't be on Santa's list this year.

Foen

[Sigurd]

Ya have to figure though. If you can code Rolemaster everything else will seem easy :).


Sigurd

[Ged]

Impressive. I'm eagerly waiting for this darling to be completed. Will use it for both online and offline games.

[docplutonium]

I would DEFINITELY get this.

I'll TAKE a MILLION!

I remember Role-master...sigh...
Doc

[Bigmikey]

A few friends and I are waiting for the Rolemaster Ruleset to give this Fantasy Grounds a try. Seems like it's going to be very cool for me, as I live overseas now.
So please keep up the good work :)

Cheers

[Foen]

I hope to get an official blog spot on the ICE web site, and will post more of my activity there. I have been concentrating on the Creatures & Treasures module most recently.

Foen

[Foen]

Just a quick note to say the folks at ICE have granted me a blog on their main site, so I'll be using that medium in future. I'll be restarting from the beginning, so appologies about the repetition!

Link: Fantasy Grounds Blog (https://www.ironcrown.com/index.php?page=blog&c=14)

Stuart

[Sigurd]

Ya better be talking about restarting your blog, not the ruleset.... :)

[Foen]

Just the blog, the ruleset is coming along quite nicely :D

[Quasar]

A few friends and I are waiting for the Rolemaster Ruleset to give this Fantasy Grounds a try.

Yeah. I grabbed the demo to have a look at in part because of Foens column over on the ICE website. Hopefully once this is out I'll be able to restart my old MERP/Rolemaster/HARP group with this, as scheduling/geography pretty much killed our long running group.

Best of luck Foen, its really looking good so far.

[Culdraug]

Just wondering if there are any new updates / screen shots / etc regarding the ruleset?

[Stuart]

The Thursday group will get a feel for the new graphics (as far as they stand) on the 5th; hopefully screen shots to follow.

[Culdraug]

The Thursday group will get a feel for the new graphics (as far as they stand) on the 5th; hopefully screen shots to follow.

Just wondering how this went.

[Grendal1971]

Any word on how, or if this went?

[Stuart]

A combination of real life - will test this coming Thursday.

[Cearlan]

Thank The Lord Harry!

I thought I had dropped a rick at this end. I sent either an e-mail or PM to you but ..... well at least I know it weren't me - totally ehehehehe.

Norm

[Stuart]

Tomorrow as usual ... kinda ... <cough> PM me if you have forgotten the Alias

[Grendal1971]

The actual blog hasn't been updated in 2 months and this one in 1.5.
Does anyone know if this project is still ongoing, got scrapped, or was just vaporware?

[Veldehar]

The actual blog hasn't been updated in 2 months and this one in 1.5.
Does anyone know if this project is still ongoing, got scrapped, or was just vaporware?

From the way I understand it, it is basically finished, but awaiting some graphics and additional play testing before release, with no real ETA.

I am eagerly awaiting its release, along with 6 or more other people, so that I can fire up a rolemaster campaign for the first time in 15 years. So, the sooner the better for sure! I do wish we had more info from this blog and the one on the ICE forums, but that could just be me being greedy, heh heh.

[Stuart]

The next update to the blog is overdue and is from me; a tutorial + screenshots on character creation using the ruleset. Graphics are 50% done but should not take too much longer. Pdf --> xml modules is 99.9% done (what remains is bug/error/typo hunting). Play testing the stability of all the automation has been both encouraging and frustrating; the former due to the ruleset delivering everything we wanted, the latter because of my ageing desktop PC blowing up. Foen is on a vacation, he and I have been testing the ruleset and ironing out minor bugs.