My First Rolemaster Experience

Sam lead his friend John and I in a Rolemaster session. Honestly, before Sam brought up Rolemaster I'd never heard about it. But Sam raved about it - "It's so great. It's so realistic. After playing this you'll wish all RPGs are like this. It has literally everything!"

Well, I'll say this. It certainly is complete. The character sheet... um, I mean BINDER is, like, twenty pages long. It took me a good solid three hours to create my character. When I leveled up that was another thirty minutes or so. Perhaps a bit much for my taste, but I do feel that this system holds a great nostalgia factor for me. How can that be if I've never played it? Well, it reminds me a lot of DnD 2nd Ed. I LOVE second edition. Probably my favorite edition of DnD. No grid (unless you want it). No minis (unless you want them). IMAGINATION. Rules are less important than social interaction ("Tell me when the orc is within 100 yards and then I'll start firing). Ahh, when things were simple.

And I guess that's the feeling I walked away from my first Rolemaster experience with. Although the character   development is very complex and there are charts and tables and it goes on and on, I found it to be a lot simpler and easier than battle on the grid (a la 4th Ed. DnD). Combat flowed fruidly and naturally. We got some good old fashioned role playing in and it felt good.

As an aside, Sam crafted a pretty compelling opening story arc with hanging plot threads that should keep the party busy chasing them. John and my characters had some very interesting interactions. John is playing the city-boy paladin and I'm the rogue-ish woodsman/ranger. Cultures clash...

Looking forward to learning the system better and developing my character and the party.