goutal@decvax.UUCP (Kenneth G. "Kenn" Goutal) (10/04/83)
A while ago I asked you all if you knew anything about the I.C.E. Rolemaster
system. Some people posted their replies, some sent me mail.
Recently, someone sent me mail asking what I had gotten out of my private
replies. Mostly, I couldn't remember anymore what answers people had
given me, and what I had figured out for myself. Mostly, if was "pretty
neat, if you like it". Anyway, someone has recently posted an article
asking about experiences or general reviews about systems. Here's mine.
What follows is my reply to the first individual I mentioned above.
I borrowed a couple of the modules (in the I.C.E. sense) --
Arms Law, and Spell Law.
Note that I haven't actually *played* this system,
just read some of the rules!
Let's see if I can make sense off the cuff:
Dice-rolling can be much simpler than with other systems, or not.
Everything is done with percentile dice (unlike, say, Runequest,
in which most things are, but some things still use the odd dice);
however, there are things called open-ended rolls (and not all rolls
are open-ended!). In an open-ended roll, if you roll 96-100,
you roll again and add the result, and iterate until you roll <=95;
if you roll <=5, you roll again and subtract, and then if you roll >95
you roll again and subtract, and iterate till you don't.
Or something like that. See what I (and others) mean?
It sounds simple, and it is -- in the simple case!
Having rolled, things are then more or less simple but tedious.
There are *zillions* of charts in Arms Law,
essentially one for each (fairly narrow) class of weapon.
There are "adds", "plusses", or "factors" or something
to account for particular sizes or subclasses.
Ditto for various advantages, such as being hidden,
shielded, attacking from the back, etc.
All these factors are taken into account, together with the (usually
open-ended) basic roll, then you look up the result on the chart for
your particular type of weapon. What you get is a verbal description of
what happened, together with a sort of homogenized "hit" value.
The verbal description is the sort of thing the referee could read aloud
to the players, not just a terse synopsis. !!! THIS IS THE NICE PART !!!
If that's not nice enough for you, forget Rolemaster,
or at least Arms Law.
So, the simplifications are:
1. Only percentile dice are ever used;
2. Most of the experiential/literal/fantastical interpretation
of combat results is done for you -- the ref. does not have
to look at the raw hit point outcome and make up a plausible
explanation.
Disadvantages (or shortcomings) are:
1. percentile dice rolls are not always simple --
sometimes they are open ended, and it may take a while to
get it straight how these work, exactly;
2. you still have to calculate "plusses" or equivalent for a
variety of factors, and there are various charts and equations
you have to go through pretty often to do this;
3. the number of charts you have to go through at this point is,
well, voluminous. THEN...
4. you still may have rolled a fumble or critical,
and there are yet more charts for those.
Now, all of the above applies the Arms Law, and only to the mechanism
of play itself. Other points follow:
The charts themselves, as one commercial reviewer has pointed out,
pretty hard to read. They are all hand-written, in rather tiny print.
Wear magnifying glasses if at all possible.
Maybe a new edition will correct this problem.
The actual melee round is rather complex, with something like *nine*
phases! This is partly because magic is done is different phases from
other types of combat. It also includes one (or more? I can't remember)
"orientation" phases, which account for your presence of mind after
a combat phase or other potentially-disorienting activity (like jumping
off a cliff, or coming to after being knocked out). See next paragraph.
Rolemaster does seem to provide more support in the way of guidelines
and even some charts or otherwise-assigned values
for various aspects of roleplaying that are only sketchily described
in other systems. The "orientation" factor is an example.
*Of course* you might get disoriented by various things!
How do you quantify that? Rolemaster tells you how.
Actually, I can't tell you what other things Rolemaster does for you
that AD&D does not, because I don't have an AD&D DM's Guide --
the dungeon I play in (occasionally) uses AD&D (mostly),
and I'm trying to avoid spoiling it for myself.
MAGIC: I like their basic explanation of magic even better than that
of Runequest. However, you can get the basic idea as follows:
There are three types of magic:
1. ESSENCE - this is like The Force, or Ki, or Tao, or whatever
2. CHANNELING - wherein the magic user channels power provided
by some other entity, typically a god, by praying
3. MENTALISM - wherein the magic user does things by sheer force
of mental power
Okay, so different spells fall under the different categories,
and some fall under more than one in that you can reasonably achieve
the same end result different ways.
Weaknesses in Rolemaster at this point are:
1. the spell descriptions are kind of vague, to my mind,
in what they require, and in their results.
2. the spell descriptions are rather cryptic, uses a sort of short
hand notation to keep them small. This may not be a disadvantage
in the end, but kind of hard to follow in the beginning.
3. spells seem rather sparse in power distribution. That is,
for example, they might have DISCOMBOBULATE-1, DICOMBOBULATE-3,
DISCOMBOBULATE-7, and DISCOMBOBULATE-TOTALLY, with nothing in
between under and of the categories. I personally would favour
a system where you just had a DISCOMBOBULATE spell that would
be variously effective depending on how many "spell points" you
applied to it. Oh well.
4. There is a complicated (very) system for determining which spells
you can and cannot learn, and in what order you can learn them.
It seems completely nonsensical and arbitrary to me,
and rather surprising considering the attempt in other aspects of
the system to model reality (or a fantastic version of it) closely.
One good point is that they avoid the cutesy, tacky spell names as used
in T&T and even D&D. They *certainly* don't have a DISCOMBOBULATE spell --
I just made that up to be nonpartisan. :->
Remember too that Rolemaster is a rather "homogenized" system,
which supposedly can be layered on top of whatever system you are currently
using (or not, and used by itself!).
All in all I found it rather interesting,
but I don't thing I'll buy a set for myself after all...
I might or might not get a copy of the spell books,
just to have some different spell descriptions around
(one can never have too many spells!),
but mostly I think I'll just take some of the ideas into consideration
that I might otherwise have ignored.
Actually, many of the things they deal with are things I probably would
get around to in my own way, be a rather thorough fellow,
and as I say, I think their *explanation* of magic makes the most sense
I've seen yet. I might get a copy of Spell Law just to get that.
I personally am tending toward Runequest at the moment.
I dunno... I'm sorta making up my own rules as I go along
(I am building a world/campaign/scenario/system from scratch,
mostly at the behest of my six-year-old nephew.).
I'm not completely happy with *any* system I've seen so far.
Runequest's "cults" repel me. AD&D seems totally chaotic.
Swordbearer, from what I've heard, sounds kind of fluffy,
not very precise, hardly a system.
Well, I don't suppose you really wanted to hear about this last stuff --
I included it mostly so you had some idea of where I am coming from,
the better to interpret the rest of my comments.
Well, I hope you make a choice you are afterward happy with!
Enjoy! -- Kenn Goutal (decvax!goutal)