Rolemaster

This edition includes the original versions of Arms Law, Claw Law, Spell Law, Character Law and Campaign Law. These were available initially as individual books, and later as combined volumes and in boxed sets.

In 1984, an initial boxed set was issued containing both expanded and revised rules. The box included Spell Law, a combined Arms Law & Claw Law, Character Law, as well as the Vog Mur campaign module for the Loremaster setting.

Shortly after the first box, a new boxed set was released, containing all of the previous contents as well as The Cloudlords of Tanara, a detailed setting and adventure supplement. The supplement introduced ICE's original Loremaster setting, which would later develop into the more sophisticated Shadow World.

Several additional supplementary books were published individually for the second edition, including three Creatures & Treasures books, and a lot of companion books, expanding the core rules.

In 1994 the game was revamped and re-released as Rolemaster Standard System (RMSS). The biggest changes were to character generation, particularly in the number of skills available and the method for calculating bonuses for skills. Skills were now grouped into Categories of similar skills and one could buy ranks separately in the category and the actual skill. The combat sequence was revised, and some of the details of spellcasting were changed. The method for learning spell lists was completely overhauled and most of the lists were adjusted and rebalanced.

The new rules were published in the Rolemaster Standard Rules book from 1995, but as with other editions of the game, a plethora of supplementary rulebooks and accessories were subsequently published.

In 1999 the game underwent a slight restructuring when Rolemaster Fantasy Role Playing (RMFRP) was released, but this was mostly a rearranging of material with very few changes to the rules themselves.

The older single-volume Spell Law was divided into three separate books, Of Essence, Of Channelling and Of Mentalism, each of which expands that realm of power with additional professions and spell lists.

Rolemaster Unified is a new edition based on a number of revisions from RMSS/RMFRP editions.

It consists of Rolemaster: Core Law (containing Character Law, Arms Law, and Gamesmaster Law), Spell Law, Treasure Law and Creature Law (in 2 volumes). At this time only Core Law and Spell Law are available.

Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) went defunct in 2000, and in 2001, they sold the intellectual rights to Rolemaster to the London-based company Aurigas Aldebaron, while the ICE brand name was licensed to a U.S.-based company named Mjolnir LLC.[1] In 2016, the licensing went to Guild Companion Publications, with whom Aurigas Aldebaron merged. From 2017, the merger changed its name to Iron Crown Enterprises, effectively returning to its original, well-known publisher name.[2]

Throughout the various ownership and publisher name changes, Rolemaster remained sufficiently popular that the original books eventually sold out and went out of print. This led to several reprints by the new owners and publishers, resulting in three variants of the original Rolemaster game system.

In 1995, the boxed set Rolemaster: The Basics was issued as a simplified version of the Rolemaster Standard System. The box contains rulebooks with all rules necessary for playing this simplified variant of the game.[3]

In 2007, the second edition (RM2) rules system was revitalized and issued under the name Rolemaster Classic, or RMC for short. The revitalization was published by Guild Companion Publications and included new versions of all the old core rulebooks of Arms Law, Spell Law, Character Law, and Creatures and Treasures, but also an updated Rolemaster Companion and a new Combat Companion from 2008.[4][5]

Also in 2007, Rolemaster Express, or RMX for short, was issued by Guild Companion Publications. It is a simplified version of the Rolemaster Classic System, with all necessary rules combined into a single book.[6][7]

For combat each character has an Offensive Bonus (OB), which takes into account one's natural physical adeptness, weapon skill, and other factors, and a Defensive Bonus (DB), which takes into account natural agility, the use of shields and "Adrenal Defense", the ability of martial artists to avoid blows seemingly without effort. In addition various modifiers for position, wounds, and other factors are present.

An attacking combatant rolls percentile dice, adds their OB to the total, adds modifiers, and subtracts the defender's DB. The total is then applied to a table for the attacker's weapon. The attack total is cross-indexed with the type of armor (if any) worn by the defender and the result will be a number of concussion hits dealt, which are then subtracted from the defender's running total. If sufficient hits are dealt, the defender may go unconscious, but death seldom results purely from concussion hit damage.

In addition to concussion hits, however, a critical hit can be dealt by the result on the weapon table. These are described by type (slash, crush, puncture, etc.) and by severity (generally A through E, with E being the most severe). Critical Hits (or simply "crits"), can inflict additional concussion hits, bleeding (subtracted from concussion hits at the start of each new round), broken bones, loss of limbs or extremities, internal organ damage and outright death. If a crit is inflicted, a second roll is made on the appropriate critical table.

Thus, unlike, for example, Dungeons & Dragons, Rolemaster describes wounds not only in the number of points of damage dealt (which are then subtracted from an abstract pool of 'Hit Points'), but with specific details of the injury inflicted. Death occurs, for both player characters and Gamemaster-controlled adversaries, primarily through this critical damage, and not through loss of hit points. In addition, specific injuries carry with them injury penalties, which inhibit further actions on the part of the wounded part, and loss of concussion hits (which represent overall health), can bring about similar penalties.

Almost all die rolls in Rolemaster are 'open-ended', meaning that if a result is high enough (or low enough), one rolls again and add (or subtract) the new roll to the original result - and this can happen multiple times, so in theory, there is no upper limit to how well (or poorly) one can roll. This means that a halfling does have a chance, albeit slight, to put down a troll with one well-placed (and lucky) dagger strike.

However, the fact that one's opponents also fight using these same rules can make Rolemaster a very deadly game for both PCs and NPCs; a lucky shot may let an inexperienced fighter slay a war-hardened veteran.

Fans of the system maintain that this adds a great deal of realism not present in many other fantasy games, and reflects the true deadliness of a well-placed strike from a weapon, even a small one such as a dagger. Death from natural weapons (such as a fist or an animal's teeth and claws) can happen but is very rare against armored combatants. Unarmored characters may very well suffer serious wounds when mauled by animals, but again this allows for more credible confrontations than in other fantasy games, where the threat posed by an "unfantastic" beast such as a wolf, grizzly bear, or tiger is considered minimal.

Because Rolemaster's approach to combat favors a warrior that is properly armed and armored, a character that is poorly equipped (as is typically the case with newly generated characters) is decidedly vulnerable. Such characters can have a tough time prevailing against even fairly mundane opponents. This can prove frustrating for new players, and has given rise to hyperbolic tales of housecats cutting down promising young heroes in their prime.

Rolemaster is sometimes derisively called 'Chartmaster' or 'Rulemonster' for depending upon numerous tables and charts for character generation and resolving game actions, and for its perceived vast array of rules covering every possible situation. Supporters of the game argue that many of these rules and charts are entirely optional.

Rolemaster is a skill-based system in which very few absolute restrictions on skill selection are employed. All character abilities (fighting, stealth, spell use, etc.) are ultimately handled through the skill system. A character's profession represents not a rigid set of abilities available to the character, but rather a set of natural proficiencies in numerous areas. These proficiencies are reflected in the cost to purchase the skills themselves.

Rolemaster characters have ten attributes, called "stats", which represent their natural abilities in such areas as physical strength, memory, self-discipline, agility. Both random and points-based methods for determining stat totals exist, but the final result will be a number on a percentile scale (1-100), which is then used to determine the character's skill bonus at actions which employ that stat. A self-governing system is in place also such that each skill closer to 100 is more costly than the last. Moving a skill from 50 to 51 is almost trivial; from 98 to 99 nigh impossible.

In character creation, and as characters advance in levels, Development Points are assigned, and can be used to purchase skills. In RMSS and RFRP, they can also be spent on Training Packages, which represent a specific bundle of skills, equipment and contacts gained through training. These are optional, and can be ignored if the player prefers to design their character entirely from the ground up.

Skills are purchased in Ranks; the more ranks a character has in a skill, the more able they are at actions covered by that skill. The number of ranks is multiplied by a set number dependent on the total number of ranks the character has, then added to the bonus for the relevant stats. The final number is the character's skill bonus, which is the number actually added to the dice when actions are attempted.

Several publications and magazines with supplementary game material has been issued under the ICE brand over the years.

For the Rolemaster Standard System, Rolemaster Annual 1996 and Rolemaster Annual 1997 included new additional rules for that game system, including new professions, races, spelllists, and errata.

For the Rolemaster Fantasy Role Playing system, Guild Companion Publications (GCP) issued Rolemaster Quarterly from April 2006 to August 2007. The magazine was dedicated to presenting optional rules and play material, and a total of seven magazines were published.[9]

Several Electronic Roleplaying Assistants (ERAs) have been issued for use with the RMC, RMSS and RMFRP systems since 2005. They are computer applications, developed for use with Windows, Mac OSX and Linux, helping players and game masters running the game digitally, including character creation and management.[10]