My SECOND Rolemaster Experience

Sam arrives to the gaming table with a milk crated filled with role playing books. He ASSURES me that Rolemaster could be played with only two books but I don't believe him. It seems as if each book is essential in some way - to play without, say, Spell Law or Arms Law, would be to play an incomplete game. It's not like Dungeons and Dragons in which if you didn't own the Manual of the Planes your game wouldn't suffer at all. To me it seems as if there is essential information in each book Sam lugs into my house.

And that just seems to be the nature of Rolemaster. It's complex - and you're going to like it!

Marlin and Dave joined us for the first time in the second session. It was good for me to see Dave, who has played Rolemaster for years, take two hours to roll up a character.

Our second session picked up where the first one left off: Finding out where the Frogmen that destroyed the village came from and what motivated them. Along the way, the party killed a giant carnivorous slug. Some party tension formed, however, when John's character fell asleep and allowed the party to be ambushed. Seems that my character, Mr. Grimes, doesn't take too kindly to having his life endangered needlessly. Eventually the party made it to the Frogman village. Our efforts to assault the place from afar failed. Mr. Grimes wanted nothing to do with going into that Frogman village - after all, three weak green ones and one yellow leader had just about killed us. There were TWENTY of these things in the village! The other party members decided to enter the village. Foolishness? Bravery? Valor? Whatever you call it, Mr. Grimes will undoubtedly have to report how they died when he returns to the human village...

All in all, a pretty good session. Despite the complexity of the system I am learning. Tracking experience is still a chore to me and I find myself searching at length the dozens of pages of my character sheets to locate skills and other character information. Sam is putting together a good story and I enjoy hearing him vocalize for the Frogmen, "Glug glug glug glug glug!"

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.