Rolemaster Ruleset In action

watters, during one of the early rounds of playtesting I walked a new group through the ruleset and the biggest complaint they had was the difficulty of the character generation, so I can understand your frustration to some degree. They were new to FG and hadn't played RM in years and automation or not making a RM character is daunting - the tables you need are all over the place, leveling and stat gain is repetitive, and there are a ton of options. Generally they got overwhelmed and that tainted their first experience.

To address this, Foen and I created the character generation walkthrough mentioned above. If you have not read it through I highly recommend you do so. Upon its completion I took the same group through another round of character creation and you know what - every one of them said it was exactly what they were hoping for, step by step guidance through a complicated process with immediate links to exactly the table they needed at the time.

To further automate character generation would be another monumental coding process. I have no idea what the plans are toward such an improvement in the future but realize it would have delayed the project considerably further had it been attempted already, if it's possible at all considering the restrictions of the code. While the walkthrough is not perfect automation, it's not far off either - everything you need is right there, and you are writing far fewer things down than you would in a real pen and paper game. Calling it a "dismal failure"... that's a pretty harsh critique, but if you can be more specific you are welcome to try and justify your case further.

The character generation summary is extremely helpful, definitely.

Could I suggest at the very top a summary of the tables used?
For the second character and on you know what you are doing and just need to reference the charts.

And the totalling of rank costs would be at the top of my list

Quote:

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Originally Posted by incarn

BTW, to the other users who have the RM ruleset.

Can your character sheets sort by skill name?
I can get it to sort by everything else, but not the name.
Nothing at all hapens when I click the skill header.

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Good spot!

Stuart

Heh thanks.. I think. :)

Can you direct me as to how to fix?
More than happy to go digging into ruleset if I have an idea of what I should be looking for.

Well, you asked...

The charsheet_skills.xml file defines the skills page of the character sheet and contains both the label for the header ("Skills") and a sortable list definition. In the former there is a piece of code which sorts by "shortname" when the label is clicked (it is in the onClickRelease event handler) and in the latter there are a <sortfield> tag and a <defaultsort> tag, both of which reference "shortname". These three references to shortname should be replaced by name instead - but save a copy of the file first, as recovering user-edited rulesets isn't how vendors want to spend their time ;)

Stuart

Quote:

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Originally Posted by incarn

One of the problems I see is, as you move the rounds on and a stun/no parry etc result expires, it removes the whole effect. As some of these may include broken limbs and such semi-permanent results with associated penatlies, it is a little frustrating.

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As I mentioned above, I'll include a preference for this in a future release, but for now you might want to use the Notes facility in the combat tracker to keep a tab on longer-term injuries. For PCs, this also links to the GM Notes section on the character sheet (which the GM can see, but not the player).

This is actually a better method than using the tracker for longer-term injuries, as the GM Notes persist between sessions/combats, whereas tracker data is lost as soon as you remove the PC from the tracker.

Stuart

Yay! My skills can now be sorted by name. :)
Only three instances of shortname in that file, so a global search and replace did the trick.
Thanks for that.

The combat tracker link to character notes... was that in the manual.. ;)

But keeping the penalties that aren't associated with stuns etc is still important for that combat, or indeed any other combats until the character gets his broken arm healed.
Rather than having to re-type the penalties.
So that would be a nice addition.

Getting happier with the ruleset as the day goes on. :)

(Hmm, I suspect I have a smilie problem. Maybe I should join smilies anon?)

Take care: shortname is a valid and necessary field, so global-find-and-replace can make other stuff stop working.

Stuart

Please note that we do update our products on a regular basis to fix bugs, support changes by SmiteWorks, and to add features. If you customize your RMC ruleset make note, as these would be wiped out with our update.

If you have something you would like added to the ruleset, please send it to Stuart (Foen) and myself so we can make note to add it during the next round of updates.

:)

I have a question about the ruleset. And also a comment.

Hear me out for a minute.

I've just gone through all the modules (C.law, A.Law and S.Law) to hotkey the major tables I would need to run a game on FGII. I can't seem to find the Base Spell Attack Table found on page 268 of the Spell Law book. Anybody know where I can find it in the librairy?

Also, I think it would be very convenient if all the various tables could be indexed just like the Optional Rules are indexed in the librairy.

Thanks