Back to the White Box

After making two characters using the rolemaster rules, our group balked at the magnitude of the endeavor.  We barely have time to play, let alone invest 1-2 hours per player just to generate characters.

It's sad on one hand, because I really wanted to rekindle the joy of Rolemaster for some new players who have never experienced it.  However, I decided to turn back to the direction that I've been progressing.  Heading backward in time, to go forward...

One of my other favorite things about the S&W white box rules is it is so easy to house rule.  I'll be posting up the house rules that I'm using in the next several posts. Most of them are changes to increase survivability in the first few levels.

Here is a quote from Matt Finch at the beginning of the White Box Rules to set the tone of this game:

 "SWORDS & WIZARDRY: WHITEBOX is a fantasy role-playing game. The

rules are extremely short compared to the multi-paged rule libraries required to

play most modern games. Yet, this game contains within itself the soul of

mythic fantasy and the kindling of wonder. The game is powerful because it’s

encapsulated by such a small formula—like a genie imprisoned in the small

compass of an unremarkable lamp."

Potential Variation in Rolemaster

One of my favorite things in Rolemaster Express is the lack of Potential Stats.  Making an average Rolemaster Classic character takes around 45-60 minutes and probably 15 minutes of that is rolling up stats and potential stats, cross-referencing multiple tables as you go.  The Express version saves you nearly all of that 15 minutes.

With Rolemaster express assign a set group of  5 numbers to your primary and development stats.  This is quick and allows you to customize your character.

Adding more variety:

As a house rule, I'm going to allow my players to replace the standard set of 5 numbers:

90,80,75,75,70

with:

95,85,70,60,50

This will give you the ability to get that 1 really great stat at the expense of two others if you wish and will give PC's more options.  I thought about allowing stat point trading, but I think that is almost too flexible and prone to min-maxing.  I will only allow players to swap out either their primary stats or their development stats with this method (not both).

Potential increases:

While I hated the mechanism of "potential" stats, I did like that you could increase your stats during the life of your character.  As another house rule, I'm going to allow players to mark or "star" 3 stats out of 10.  Each time they level their character, if they can roll higher than that stat, they can increase the stat score by 1 pt.  I will probably max this increase out by ~5 pts.  Maybe to allow for some variation I will allow increases of 1d3+4?  If they choose a stat this is really high, it will be hard to increase due to the small chance of rolling high enough.  I may allow PC's to spend a few development points in this case to increase their stats by only 1pt per level.

The Armored Cleric Dilemma

One of the largest struggles I had to overcome to merge Rolemaster to a D&D based gameworld like forgotten realms is why can't Clerics wear metal armor.

After mulling it over for a while I came up with a solution that changes things in an interesting way for me.   Here it is:


It has been two decades since the great disaster, it is remembered as the Time of Troubles. The gods walked amongst men. Their war in the realms nearly destroyed all of Abeir-Toril. In the years after the gods returned to the heavens, the war continued. God slew god, and the demons and devils combined forces and destroyed the new god Cyric. It is rumored that these demons have gained the spark of deity and now walk Fearun as demigods! Rumors of devil worship abound in the far reaches of the realms, some say that demons have wrested control of the entirety of Mulhorand.

A decade ago the gods war ended abruptly, in what is remembered as the Spirit Gasp. Overnight, clerics found it much harder to channel the might of their gods. They were forced to trade metal armor for leathers, and the potency of their spells was far less. Many of the minor gods seemed to fade away overnight, perhaps departing for other realms. The days of the gods meddling in the afairs of men seems like it is over! Some in Faerun cried out, some rejoyced. All could agree that things had changed.

During this retraction of gods, the goddess of magic Mystra gave her life to preserve her weave forever. She bound her weave to the planet, establishing magic power as an essence, forever connected to all living things in Toril. However, without a guiding deity to control magic, areas of wild magic and magic dead zones drift spontaneously througout all of Toril. Wizards throughout the realms have begun meeting and discussing the future of magic at each of the yearly Mage Fairs. Without a god to control things, they have taken the responsibility of preservation of magic.

Now that the Time of Troubles is over, and the overt meddling of the gods a thing of the past (for now), the future of the realms will be decided by the free races. Now is the time for bold heroes to make names for themselves by deeds of sword, and spell!

By extending the Time of Troubles, I was able to: Kill off a bunch of gods that I've never liked away.  Minimize the power of all lesser and intermediate powers - to reduce the number of deities I have to come up with Rolemaster spell lists for.  Explain a larger presence of animists/druids in Faerun.  Explain why clerics have lesser powered spells (I also am removing the life mastery spell list - no Resurrections, period!) and can only cast spells easily if they aren't wearing armor.

What do you think?

Quasi crystals

Gotta love it when Lovecraft is right.

I saw this article in wikipedia about quasicrystals and immediately thought about the Haunter in the Dark.

This is a icosahedral Ho-Mg-Zn crystal grown by chemists in a furnace which is a naturally occuring d12.

Rock on!


 

Refreshing

Yep, I've been gone a long time.  I wasn't really planning on posting here anymore.  Trends in my life have pulled me away from having enough time for blogging.  However, recent events have changed my mind - I'm going to be running Forgotten Realms again, using Rolemaster!

My long time running Greyhawk PBEM is over.  It lasted 3.5 years (pretty epic) and survived a system change, a whiny player meltdown, and several 2-3 month long episodes of lackluster posting.  I'm really glad I ran the game, and I look forward to more PBEM games in the future.

I'm still a player in Daddy G's awesome Decade of Darkness CoC PBEM game. That has really rocked over the last couple years and I'm having fun watching my character slowly spiral down into madness.

So anyway, that's my gaming history over the last year or so.  I'm looking forward to running this FR rolemaster game.  When I posted some early ideas up here, some folks were pretty interested, so I'll post up what I'm thinking and how it is working in case others would like to try converting a D&D type group toward rolemaster.

Spacey Thinking

NGC1512 - Image by Hubble Space Telescope

I've been reading a kick ass space opera lately - Leviathan Wakes by Corey.  I love how he only uses newtonian style thrusters in his ships and humans have explored the solar system but have yet to move out.  It seems totally grounded in our reality, except for some kind of "Thing" or "Alien" type monster or mutation which I haven't read far enough yet to fully understand.  There is this cool hard boiled noir feel, a detective story, and it is also gets the feel of Das Boot.

I love the submarine type battles between ships.  This is the type of Space Opera book I was looking for as I scoured Amazon and Barnes and Noble looking for some kind of cool space related book to read.  I was totally burnt out on fantasy and needed a change up.  Something that isn't "hard science" fiction but at the same time it isn't star wars badged over either.

I picked up traveller a couple of years ago in PDF format.  I liked certain aspects of the game, but others fell short for me.  In principle I love the 2d6 dice mechanic, and I recently have been mulling over using a Fudge type character build system with a 2d6 resolution system.  But honestly as much as I'd like to play in a space opera, I'd really like to be a player.  I'm looking around for PBEM space opera games that are accepting new players.  Haven't found one yet.  Most of the games I could find were based around an IP of some sort (Firefly, StarTrek, etc...) and I'm looking for something different.

On the other hand, my PBEM greyhawk game is really moving along. This august had the highest number of posts in over 1.5 years on our boards!  The players infiltrated a goblin infested keep and made it out alive only to run into a red dragon which killed their horses and burnt all their food.  They fled into the Dim Forest and now they are trying to figure out what to do. 

Also, the CoC game I've been playing in as Allessandro Mancini has also picked up again - so I'm pretty busy posting and having a really good time with both games so I might wait to find a space game to play in.  I also had a really good idea of an alternate character concept for a 1800's-1920's CoC character based around a stage magician, so I have an alt character idea now if Al gets torn apart by tentacles :)

Anyway, a lot of good games and lots of other ideas - too bad I didn't have time/energy to get a table top group together or join one.  

Move over MechWarrior, I wants me one of these!

All I need now is a real lightsaber to go along with it ;)