Rolemaster Unified

Once I read that Rolemaster was being "reworked" for publication I had to find out what was going on. So I went to the Iron Crown Enterprises website, and sure enough, a revised version of Rolemaster is coming out. ICE has also undergone a change in ownership.

Now I like the Rolemaster Standard System, but from what I've read so far, this new version looks good.

They're calling it Rolemaster Unified. Two of the core books are in public playtest, and you can download the PDF's. The two PDF's available are, Spell Law, and Character Law. There's also a Excel spreadsheet to help in creating characters, but since I can't use Excel, it doesn't do me any good. Oh well.

I've skimmed both, and plan on an in depth reading later this week. As I mentioned before, I like what I'm reading. Character creation is somewhat different, and gives two options for stats. You can generate the ten stats randomly, or spend points on them. It's been done both ways in past editions, but I like the option of picking which method. In RMSS you generated your stats by assigning points.  In earlier versions I believe it was always random. I plan on creating a character later this week in both RMSS and RMU and comparing the two rule sets.

It really looks like they are streamlining things somewhat, and this could be a good thing. RMU could be more "playable" than RMSS, and this is also a good thing!

One drawback to this "new" Rolemaster is that I'm spending far too much time in the Official ICE forums...

This was kind of a quickly written post, but I will have more on what was always one of my favorite RPG's later this week.

Exploring Rolemaster

Pondering a new campaign world for Rolemaster I wondered what was available out in "cyberspace".  Well, I found the website of Iron Crown Enterprises , and I started poking around there.  Harumph,  apparantly they consider the Rolemaster Standard System a "vintage" game, and have "archived" it, and they state that for the most part they do not support the archived vintage games.  Although I notice they still sell some PDFs and some of the books of the RMSS.  Although, to be fair they did say questions would be answered about vintage games in the forums.

Heck, I wasn't even sure ICE still existed as a company.  I was a faithful follower of most of their products up through RMSS.  I'm glad to see they're still around, and may check out some of the new stuff, but I plan on sticking with RMSS.  I like it.

I was also reminded of Spacemaster.  It was kind of cool, but not something we really got into in our gaming group.  However, since I want to try out some cross-genre sessions I may need to get it again.  Predators in a fantasy setting might be cool.  A Predator versus a War Troll might be quite a fight.

If you really don't know anything about Rolemaster you can check out the Wikipedia page, it's a fairly good explanation about the system.

The current edition, Rolemaster Fantasy Role Playing is compatible with RMSS, and this article on the ICE Webring is a good overview comparing the two editions.

Browsing the official forums has shown me that RM is still popular and that people play it, and are developing software to help in running it.  All this is exciting to an old RM player like me.  Woot!