jj@rabbit.UUCP (10/20/83)
Last night, 7 people (all experienced in AD&D*) started out cold witht the Rolemaster* rule set. (Simple scenario, we mostly generated characters and tried them out agains a wild animal or two that invaded the town's food stores.) It took about 3.5 hours for everyone to generate a character, starting from no knowlege of the system at all. The character generation requires much more thought than AD&D*, as each character is developed individually by the player, and will be unique. <Because of stat's, different skills developed, and different player intent, even within the same character class.> The character generation rules cannot be related in D&D* terms, or even compared to them, as the system philosophy is completely different. The general consensus was that learning to generate a character required much more thought, and much more consideration of the way that the character would be played. It also allowed the players to make their characters in the style they wanted, within the limits of the character's statistics. <I'm not going to attempt to describe the system of character generation, other than say I like it, as I don't think it's of general use.> Once characters were generated, we ran a couple of short adventures in about 2.5 hours, involving three melee's, a short chase, and quite a bit of conversation between adventures. I (as the DM) found the melee and spell systems no more difficult to use than the D&D* system, even though I know most of the AD&D* tables reflexively and I had to look up the results for everything with Rolemaster*. Why? Beause the entire sustem of melee is based on ONE PERCENTILE ROLE that determines everything, hit, damage, critical hit <and severity of CH>, and possible effects on the character hit. <Fumbles work the from the same roll.> The critical hits, and the effects of critical hits, make melee (which is in 10 second, or one slice/hit, rounds) much more interesting, as the melee is described blow by blow, rather than as a net result of one minute's fighting. <Spells take from 1-3 rounds to prepare/execute.> Once a critical hit occurs (a fairly common occurance, as critical hits can mean nothing more than 1 round of stun, or one round of parry) a second percentile roll determines the effects of the critical hit. <Ditto for fumbles.> The magic system is too complex to describe here, but it is none the less easily learned and used. Its conceptual basis, while a bit odd to D&D* types, is much more reasonable after one considers its operation. The language, grammar, and general organization of the set of books are incomparibly superior to AD&D*. * AD&D, D&D and the like are trademarks of TSR Hobbies, Geneva, Wi. Rolemaster is a trademart of ICE. (Iron Crown Enterprises) The opinions in this review are strictly those of the writer, and do not represent the opinions, views, or policies of any organization, company, or other individual. -- O o From the pyrolagnic keyboard of ~ rabbit!jj -v-v- \^_^/ (pyrolagnic- from pyro<=>fire and lagnic<=>eating.)