I first posted this video as a reply at https://adeptplay.com/2021/01/21/rolemaster-reminiscing/ — at Ron’s suggestion, I’m breaking it out into its own post. I talk with Jon and Noah about our Rolemaster campaign from last year, and we discuss preparation, play, mechanics and more:
4 responses to “More Rolemaster Talk”
I appreciate that you all took the time to break down your play experience. Religion was mostly backdrop when I ran Rolemaster, but having it be more relevant socially adds a layer to play. It also provides more possibility for experience, which is in short supply.
Two topics strike me in recent play. The first is magic. In the game I ran Robbie played a Mentalist. If I heard correctly, this game had a cleric and mentalist. I would like to see an essence caster at work and I would like to see higher level magic from both PC and NPC. I think that would change the character of the game with more magic happening.
Second, I still struggle with the kind of fantasy Rolemaster works best with. The discussion gave me food for thought, but I wonder if you all have any more insights on this topic?
I don’t know that I had an idea of “what kind of fantasy” so much as I had some aesthetic references and a desire to do justice to the procedures in Campaign Law. The Northern Islands were populated by golden-skinned elf-like people with (natural) mohawks wearing leotards, basically, and I was definitely thinking of ’80s comic book fantasy when I made these folks up. Things from Elfquest and Myth Adventures to DC Comics’ Warlord and (shudder) Crystar from Marvel Comics. All things that were very much in my brain at the time that Rolemaster first caught my attention, long, long ago.
I like to distinguish between having thirteen or however-many cultures vs. must travel to see each of them in play.
I think the game texts, setting fandom, and certainly the 80s trend in fantasy fiction have mis-instructed us over the years, specifically to seek appreciation for the richness by traveling to each spot one by one. Like a tourist travel guide: see the X at this location, see the Y at this other location.
The value of a rich backdrop is found, I think, in a single situation which includes effects and intimations of many parts of it. That’s a fantastic experience in play, and even more so if we play a couple or a few situations, because then the implied or promised backdrop may become a setting in practice.
Consider the power of seeing, at one location, how X is affected by Y and P, and maybe at another, seeing how Y is affected by X and B. At that point, I think the whole spread from B to Y is validated, even if M, for example, is only mentioned in passing. In this context, even as a mere term or phrase, it’s “really M” for the play-experience, rather than being an entry in a book or notebook that will be so cool to see some day, when we get there.
Good observation, and there was in fact quite a bit of this going on in this game, with at least two other cultures represented by NPCs who were in the area, and still others referenced as loathed enemies or problematic relatives. When Jon and Noah did decide to travel to a new location, it was a pretty natural extension of having met those characters and had those experiences. At that point, going straight to the meat of a new situation would have probably kept me on track to continue the game (as opposed to getting overwhelmed by the self-imposed prep tasks of new maps, new CIA Factbooks, etc. etc.).