Rolemaster Ruleset In action

[Indarien]

No, I do not have a Youtube video, or any desire to make one. But here is my review of the Rolemaster ruleset after making characters and running through a pair of adventures with my normal gaming group.

I picked up a copy of the Rolemaster ruleset at GenCon. My first RPG was Rolemaster, at the time I was coming from a historical wargaming background and the rules did not seem very complex - relatively speaking. Having said that, I still remember the pen-and-paper game sessions that were nothing but character creation, or the 5-rounds of combat that took several hours to complete. In college I was introduced to AD&D and the Rolemaster books were retired to gather dust for a long time. I first read about the Rolemaster ruleset about two days before GenCon, when I checked on these forums to see if Smiteworks/Digital Adventures was going to be there. Nostalgia swept in and I decided that the Rolemaster ruleset was on my "Gencon must buy" list.

So how does the Ruleset work:

Character Creation: When you first start a character, I recommend you open "Character Law" and follow the "Character Creation Walkthrough." This is a single point of reference for almost every chart and table you will need to create a character. This speeds up the process immensely. It had been probably 15 years since I had made a character using the Rolemaster ruleset and thanks to that one section I was able to crank one out in less than 30 minutes.
Follow the instructions on the character creation guide. The one thing I have to stress the most is * take advantage of the automation.* If you type in your profession name correctly when it comes time to fill in skills, you can drag and drop them from the skill charts and it will fill in the development costs and stats for you. Better yet, just drag and drop the profession and race from the chart over to your character sheet and watch everything fill in for you.
Once stats have been generated, development points are calculated for you. Assuming you have followed the "drag and drop" advice from above, you can bring up the skill sheet and just drag and drop the skills from the sheets onto your character sheet. The only skills you will need to change at all are your weapon skills, by picking out the appropriate skill and putting in the stats as appropriate for that type. For instance, if your cheapest weapon skill is going to be "One Handed Slashing" you need to change "Weapon 1" to "One Handed Slashing" and type in the stats that it uses. One important thing here is that all the skills you "drag and drop" are locked. You cannot edit them until you unlock them by clicking on the skill name and toggling the "lock" icon in the upper right hand corner between "lock" and "unlock."

So you have made it through the stat gain, adolescent skill development, apprenticeship development, picked up your power points, hit points, and so on. Now what?

Well, this is where the nice Character Creation guide fails you somewhat.
On the "Combat" tab you can insert your armor type and it will fill in the rest of it for you, which is nice.
In "Arms Law" you can find the weapon tables, so you can drag and drop the weapons from the Arms Law charts to your character sheet. Two really important things to note here:
(1) After getting used to all the automation in the ruleset, it does not fill in your offensive bonus, so you have to do that yourself.
(2) If you are planning on using your new shiny weapon in combat you must check the "Use" button on the far right hand side.
Spells can be dragged from "Spell Law" onto your character sheet and they will fill in as appropriate, there is a convenient column for spell gain and a double click will roll the die for you.
Inventory can be filled in and you are ready to go. There is no convenient drag and drop or automation for inventory as yet.

Non-combat situations:
The ruleset works just like any other Fantasy Grounds one in this regard. I did not see any fancy bells and whistles, but everything works.

Combat:
Combat works great. There are a few tricks to get it setup, but being able to one click resolve attacks with Rolemaster is a huge benefit. If I had a pen-and-paper Rolemaster group I would probably use Fantasy Grounds and the Rolemaster ruleset to resolve combat over manual chart lookups.

When a character targets a token (monster, etc.), in the combat tracker that token becomes their new target for all their attacks. (What attacks does a character have...well, remember that statement about "Use" on the combat tab during character creation? If your character has no attacks, you probably forgot that step.)

Tricky part #1, as of right now it seems that the only way for characters to make attacks is if the GM shares out the Combat Tracker sheet. Fear not! The default is that only friendly (Green-face) characters show up on the version of the combat tracker the players see. This usually means that the players can all see each others' combat data, but they cannot see any combat data for neutral or enemy creatures.

Tricky part #2, it seems that every time the GM changes something on the combat tracker and hits the "Update Shared sheet" button, it resets all the non-friendly tokens in the area to "invisible." So if you are the GM and hit the "Update Shared Sheet" and the players all claim the monsters went invisible...this is why. You only have to update the shared sheet if a new friendly creature is added, a token changes, or some oddity occurs. Most items on the combat tracker update automatically and do not cause this problem.

Awesome part #1: So the character clicks on the appropriate attack against their selected target and the program rolls the dice. The ruleset will automatically make any adjustments for fatigue, injury, combat penalties, and whatever else and then give you a result.

Awesome part #2: On the GM screen, the attack chart will pop up, cross-reference the attack result against the target's Armor Type, and give you a nicely highlighted result showing the damage and critical, if any.

Tricky part #3: The table lookup may take a long time. I was able to drop the table lookup time from 15 seconds per roll down to 3 seconds per roll by changing the GM preference to "Yes" for the option "Resolve Clears Stack" and then using the radial menu to do a forced-lookup of the result.

Tricky part #4: I will call this a "feature." Sometimes (so far less than 10%) combat rolls will not propagate correctly on the attack chart. In this situation you sometimes have to manually look up the results in the Arms Law tables because I have not figured out a way to transfer the missing attack roll to the attack table.

Awesome part #3: You scored a critical! Great! The GM uses the Radial menu to "Resolve X crit" This will pop up the appropriate critical chart. You can then roll against it and drag and drop the results onto the chat log. The GM can fill in any penalty, bleed, must parry, stun, etc. results right into the combat tracker. Why is this important? Because at the end of the round the ruleset will automatically apply any bleed damage, reduce any durations, and will also apply any attack or other penalties to a character's (or monster's) actions.

So you have made it past the tricky parts and are really enjoying the awesome parts? Great. You will be amazed at how fast combat flows in Rolemaster with the ruleset.
I ran a session with myself as the GM and 3 players. We did the good old RPG trope of "make characters, have them all meet in a tavern, bar brawl breaks out" for our first session. The fact that we made all of our characters, went through the process of setting up the bar scene, and fought a 10 round combat between the 3 PCs and a series of random NPCs in about 2 hours should tell you how helpful and easy this ruleset makes the Rolemaster system to use.

The ruleset also comes with the complete text of Character Law, Spell Law, Arms Law, and Creature Law. Meaning that if you are interested in the ruleset but do not have the books, or you have since lost your Rolemaster books, you can still play because everything you need is a few mouse clicks away. The easy access to charts and sections of the books makes playing - in my experience - much faster than the old pen-and-paper days of Rolemaster.

I recommend it for all the Rolemaster fans or anyone interested in the system, it is nicely self-contained. The few quirks are more than offset by all the benefits. If nothing else, having the critical hit and fumble charts on hand for easy adoption into your normal system is fun. After all, scoring a "C" Crush crit with your mace tends to be much more satisfying than just rolling an extra damage die or two.

[Elvedui]

I am a huge RMC fan, but the ruleset is a dismal failure in my view. The fact that there isn't more automation makes this only a little improvement over pen and paper. One of the biggest challenges for new players is the fact that the detail of RMC is intimidating and it takes time to generate characters and engage in combat.

There are tools available in Excel and Open office that are incredibly helpful for generating characters. There is no reason the ruleset couldn't have picked up and automated character creation more to include adding a variety of options. The idea the RMC is so customizable that it would be to hard is a weak excuse because there are alot of core rules that could be automated.

Automating criticals is another area that shouldn't be so daunting. Why cant you drag a critical and have it automatically poplate stun, bleeding, damage.

I was really looking forward to this ruleset to help a new generation of players enjoy this game, but the designers seem to be stuck in the 80s. Other rulesets are far more innovative than this one. Even the ability to move portoins of characters sheets around on the screen is a function not available. Even being able to drag and drop equipment shouldn't be so daunting a task, but this isn't available either.

Simply typing the RMC rulebooks into an html file is not what I would call innovative.

I am sorry for the harsh criticism, but it wouldn't have been asking too much to automate character creation more and automate criticals more as too basic items.

[incarn]

Watters.

You can drag the critical result into the combat tracker and it will populate stuns etc on the target you dropped them on.

-but 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.
Rather than having to remember to copy this info to somewhere else, surely it could simply hold that in the combat tracker if there are penalties of this type.

I must say I am a little disappointed myself.
I had hoped for a lot more automation/cross-linking of info.

For example.
-auto-calc on temp and potential stats.
(this is especially cumbersome)
-totalling up the development points spent.
-drag and drop equipment to inventory.
-linking weapons to skills developed automatically.
-maybe auto-calc money as well? (ie drag and drop 1sp and it adds it automatically to the current total?)
There is more that I encountered while setting up characters with my group, but I cannot bring them to mind right now.


It also seems a bit unstable. I ran the DM(GM?) client on a PC and a notebook and it managed to Blue Screen every hour or so on both (V2.5.1) but I have no idea if this is FG or the ruleset as I have never run anything else on FG for extended periods prior to using RM.


BTW. does anyone know how I tell the combat tracker to do elemental attacks? It says 'no attack table', or is that not automated?


I am going to persevere for the time being, but so far it has been more negative than positive as I look at it and see so much that could have been done and was not.

[Foen]

I am a huge RMC fan, but the ruleset is a dismal failure in my view. The fact that there isn't more automation makes this only a little improvement over pen and paper.

I'm really sorry you feel this way, as I think there is a very significant element of automation in this ruleset, but perhaps it depends on your perspective: comparing this ruleset to 3.5E or other FG rulesets; or comparing Fantasy Grounds to some other software. At the end of the day, FG emulates pen and paper games, allowing you to play RPGs with remote users. Additional functionality such as the combat tracker and table look-ups, together with the bundled reference material, make FG a useful tool for face-to-face games too.

One of the biggest challenges for new players is the fact that the detail of RMC is intimidating and it takes time to generate characters and engage in combat.

There are tools available in Excel and Open office that are incredibly helpful for generating characters. There is no reason the ruleset couldn't have picked up and automated character creation more to include adding a variety of options. The idea the RMC is so customizable that it would be to hard is a weak excuse because there are alot of core rules that could be automated.

The ruleset includes a character creation walkthrough, with links to all the relevant tables from the reference books, speeding up the character generation process. That said, the ruleset is not supposed to be primarily a character generator (you can use other tools for that purpose, if you wish) but a medium for playing RMC games.

Automating criticals is another area that shouldn't be so daunting. Why cant you drag a critical and have it automatically poplate stun, bleeding, damage.

If you drag a critical from the results table onto the effects/wounds section of the combat tracker, it will populate stun, bleeding, damage, penalties and provide some narrative of the wound.

I was really looking forward to this ruleset to help a new generation of players enjoy this game, but the designers seem to be stuck in the 80s. Other rulesets are far more innovative than this one. Even the ability to move portoins of characters sheets around on the screen is a function not available.

Other than mini-sheets (which I guess you are referring to), the RMC ruleset includes significant additional functionality in comparison to many rulesets. Combat resolution is one obvious area, but in-game preferences, shareable combat tracker (with GM-selectable visibility options) and GM notes on the character sheet, are all examples of features not found in many rulesets.

Even being able to drag and drop equipment shouldn't be so daunting a task, but this isn't available either.

Very few rulesets implement this, because the variety of item types (weapons, armour, magic items, general equipment, power point adders/multipliers etc) and the potential link to other parts of the character sheet (weapon lists, spell lists, armour type/modifiers) is generally too complex to manage.

Simply typing the RMC rulebooks into an html file is not what I would call innovative.

I am sorry for the harsh criticism, but it wouldn't have been asking too much to automate character creation more and automate criticals more as too basic items.

As I said above, I am really sorry you feel that way.

Stuart

[Sigurd]

This ruleset has been highly anticipated. I feel like it deserves a more even handed review.

Watters, What did you like about the ruleset and do you have a link for the excel\Open office files?

The D20 license specifically discouraged automation, other games will have more latitude. I have always found Rolemaster a little cumbersome and any improvement would be welcome. Work arounds or concrete ways to make it better would be appreciated by all.

Perhaps you could send a more detailed response to Digital Adventures or Foen?


I'm digging up my RM books to see if I'll referee a session or two .

[Foen]

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. Rather than having to remember to copy this info to somewhere else, surely it could simply hold that in the combat tracker if there are penalties of this type.

This sounds like a good idea, perhaps as a GM-option (the same way that you can enable/disable auto-clearing of resolved table look-ups). I'll see what I can do.

Does anyone know how I tell the combat tracker to do elemental attacks? It says 'no attack table', or is that not automated?

You can create an entry in the Attacks section of the combat tracker, and then drag the elemental table to it. Alternatively, you can create a new weapon on the character sheet (for a player character), open the details sheet and drag the spell law attack table to it. So a Rod of Fire Bolts could be handled that way, for example.

Stuart

[incarn]

Thanks for that Foen.

I can now see how to force a table on the combat tracker.

I missed the 'table' entry on the weapon creation.

[Thore_Ironrock]

I am a huge RMC fan, but the ruleset is a dismal failure in my view.

Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and we welcome all so we can better understand what the FG community is looking for in a product conversion. I would like to make a few points though regarding watters' post:

1. As creators of FG material, you must remember we are limited in what we can do by the lua and xml functionality of the compiled code. There are simply some thing FG cannot do at this time. Also, if there is something we want to try to incorporate into products Smiteworks have been very helpful in this respect. Writing code in Excel is not a fair comparison to what coding elements are available in FG, considering we do not have access to the compiled code.

2. Considering the above, character creation automation is a very difficult task first, and impossible second. Anyone that has created a ruleset can tell you this, and until you walk a mile in these shoes you likely won't comprehend that some things are just not possible with FG. Calling the RMC ruleset a "dismal failure" based only on character creation is not a fair assessment of this product conversion. Also, having new players cut their teeth on character generation is one strongly traditional way for them to learn the rules of the game.

3. As for the RMC ruleset as a whole, I'm still in shock at what our dev team was able to do with this project. I think that Stuart's programming for this ruleset, and the card-drawing mechanic in the Savage Worlds ruleset (created by Joshua, kudos) are two of the most astounding accomplishments to date with FG. If someone can't appreciate that, then they clearly do not know what it takes to do something like this. The fact that you have all the text from four different products compiled into one source is something I would have never dreamed of even 10 years ago, let alone automated crit lookup. The reason I got out of RM 17 years ago was the futility with the combat.

4.

I was really looking forward to this ruleset to help a new generation of players enjoy this game, but the designers seem to be stuck in the 80s.

As someone who has been game mastering and playing RPG games for over 30 years, I can't disagree with this more. A tool like FG is what it is, and one thing it clearly is not is a program to help a new generation of players enjoy how an RPG is played. If a game master wants to get a new generation of players interested in any role playing game, then they do so by knowing the rules, properly preparing their adventures, and being able to clearly present things in a fun and exciting manner during the course of play. Granted, playing an RPG over the internet has it challenges, but I really don't see how any FG ruleset by itself is responsible for teaching gamers how to play any RPG system. If anything makes playing an RPG over the internet difficult it is a game master who does not know the rules properly, or is unfamiliar with what FG can do.

Consider this example: During my time with the RPGA Network at TSR in the early 90's one of the best judges we had, who we often assigned to young or inexperienced players, was actually blind. He used a braille Commodore 64 system, but for the most part ran games for all four days of Gen Con with little assistance. I also happen to know he loved Rolemaster, and had no problems teaching people how to play. Something to think about ...


This was our first cut at this project, which in itself too nearly two years to complete. We felt that releasing this project now was the best popular solution for getting RMC online. Like own work with Savage Worlds, we're going to be improving this product in years to come to better help the flow of the game online -- and enhance it based on user feedback. While experienced in FG and RMC, our development team can't think of everything, which is why we gladly take (positive) feedback from the FG community for improvements in the future. If it can be done within the FG code, then we'll do our best to put it there.

Digital Adventure has, and always will, respond to constructive comments from the community in how we can better create/update our products. Thanks to all that have put their comments forward to-date, and thanks to Stuart for his responses above.

[Veldehar]

My two cents is that thus far, just in play testing, that the ruleset is very well done. I am a meddler, so having the ruleset open to manipulation is flat out wonderful. RM has never been for everybody, and never will be. My personal opinion over 15 years or so of RM pen and paper, was that it was in part the effort put into character creation that made each character worth more. Too many systems are quickie simplistic and lose the oomph, so, in many ways I fully appreciate the fact that character creation still requires some effort.

Are there things I would like to see? You bet! I would love to be able to have draggable "stock" items from the rulebook, all those little things like robes and lanterns. If I had the know how and time, I would probably go ahead and do that. Inventory items with pop-up customizable descriptions would simply be a boon, and well worth my time to develop if someone ever points me in the right direction... maybe this winter I will have time to fiddle with that... if its feasible, that is. If not, I can muddle through, no doubt about that.

Personally my hat is off to the programmers. A very nice recreation of the PnP environment.

Veldehar

[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.