This is the system of choice for this setting, and has been since the early 1980's, as it offers substantially more flexibility and customization than any of the d20 based games or any other RPG system that I've had experience with over the last 45+ years of gaming. While it is not as popular as the d20 systems, at one point it was the second largest competitor (in popularity and sales) world-wide due to the combined sales of
Rolemaster and the famous
Middle Earth Role Playing system being a simplified version of Rolemaster that was used for the hundreds of products available through
Iron Crown Enterpises Middle Earth license.
However, if you desire to use one of the many other RPG systems out there, I have included conversion guidance at the bottom of this page for the various editions of the
d20 System and clones, the totally free
FUDGE and its commerical rip-off FATE, and of course the interesting and free
Dominion Rules d12 system.
by Iron Crown Enterprises and Angus McBride
It uses a skill-based d100 system. So no bags-full of dice are needed to play the game, just a single d100, or a pair of d10's (or my preference a pair of d20's that have 0-9 twice) with one die being the "tens" and other being the "ones". This allows for a much wider range of results with a much more granular and wider-ranging scale.
by Iron Crown Enterprises
Many people have referred to it as "
Chart Master", but anyone who has enough experience running
Rolemaster doesn't need the numerous charts as they are only meant as guidance for what is possible, because the higher the result (die roll + skill bonus) the better the result. Unlike in the
d20 systems, where it is a
"succeed" or "fail" system with a "critical success" system later added to try to compete with
Rolemaster that had already integrated a very detailed "
critical" system that actually has tactical results instead of the simple "
double damage" result that is supposed to indicate a "
critical" (which usually only results when a "nautral 20" is rolled, thus 5% of the time).
Whereas in
Rolemaster, the tactically varying "criticals" are very common results and have a wide range of details as explained below. But before getting into that, let me first explain that in Rolemaster you don't have the cookie-cutter "classes" that can each only perform certain things. In Rolemaster, any character can try absolutely anything. With wizard types possibly weilding two-handed swords, like
Gandalf in the
Hobbit or
Lord of the Rings stories of
J.R.R. Tolkien. Or big and burly fighter types being able to climb walls and pick locks, just like
Conan in the
Robert Howard stories. Or a thief types being able to cast spells. Or a viking shield-maiden type being able to "see the future being woven by the
Norns through the sight of
Freyja", from Norse legends. Because in
Rolemaster, anyone can try to do anything. There are no limits. No cookie-cutter "classes" here, like the d20 systems, where each character fits into a specific role and can-not do anything outside of that role.
Instead you have "Professions" (22 to choose from in the base
Core Law rule book) that tend to be "good" at learning certain things, but there are no limits to what any profession can learn. Warriors can learn spells, if they are willing to put enough effort into learning them. Spell-casters can learn to use any weapon, if they are willing to put the effort into learing them.
by Iron Crown Enterprises
The newest version of
Rolemaster (known as
Rolemaster Unified) has taken the concepts of the previous two versions (unlike the 900 pound gorilla that is on its 5th edition in less than 50 years, this is essentially only the third version of Rolemaster in its 43 year history) and combined the best aspects of both. The biggest differences was that
RMSS/
RMFRP (second version) increased skill development flexibility but simplified spell-casting a little. Whereas the new version has simplified the skill system back towards that of the original version (
RM/
RM2/
RMC), but with still offering some of the added flexibility of the second version in a much simpler way.
by Image By freepik
And of course, any fantasy RPG would not be complete without a magic system. With Rolemaster there is a
LOT more flexibility and customization possible. While the d20 systems have a certain number of spells/slots of specific levels that can be cast each day as the base of their system; Rolemaster uses a "Power Point System" as detailed in the
Spell Law book. With this system you can cast any spell that you know as many times as you want until your "Power Points" are expended (so you can cast the same spell 12 times in a day if you so desire). And instead of a couple hundred total spells available to choose a select few from,
Rolemaster has thousands (yes, more than an entire order of magnitude increase) of spells available.
The magical energies that drive/power spells come in a handful of "
Realms":
Channeling,
Essence,
Mentalism and
Arcane. The "
Channeling" Realm is channeled through the followers of various deities or spirits and thus is used by those of a spiritual or religious nature. the "
Essence" Realm is powered by drawing
Æssence from the flows of power that makes up the fabric of the universe. The "
Mentalism" Realm is powered by the spell caster's own mental and personal power (power of the mind, can be thought of being somewhat similar to Psionics in the d20 systems, but yet is more readily available and harnesable). While "
Arcane" magic is very obscure, some saying that it is the ancient mixture of the three realms previously mentioned, while others claim that it is more ancient, chaotic and primordial; making it more dangerous and difficult to control (the newest version of Rolemaster has not yet released details or
Professions covering the
Arcane realm of magic, but the two older versions do have details published in "Companion" books). There are also a few spell-casting professions that have the ability to mix two of the three base realms, as can be seen below in the list of
Professions.
In
Rolemaster, spells are learned as "Lists", that each have a central theme. There are scores of different themed "Lists" within each of the Realms. There are several spell casting professions (see below), that each also have their own 6 "Base Lists" that are a protected and secretive part of that Profession. Thus to learn them if you are not part of that profession, you need to find someone who will teach you those secrets, possibly at risk to both your life and theirs. But there are scores of spell lists that are available to anyone within that "
Realm" (or school) of magic who is willing to track down a teacher or tome that explains the concepts behind the manipulation of those magical energies to create the themed effects of each of those lists. Each list includes more than a score (25 to be exact for most of them) of themed spells of gradually increasing power (designed by the "spell level" on the list, which also inidcates the 'normal'
Power Point cost for casting that particular spell. Note that 'normal' can sometimes vary, as there are a variety of magic items, locations, situations, times/dates, as well as the possibility of learning "
Rituals" that can modify this 'normal' (level) cost for casting of spells.
The newest version of Rolemaster is also designed so that all creatures are created in the same way, with the same mechanics as characters. This not only offers a much more balanced level system, but also results in any type of creature potentially being playable as a
Player Character (PC). Although the
Core Law book, includes details on the following 22 Professions and 33 Races
as a starting point for creating a character:
Rolemaster Professions available in Core Law:
Rolemaster Races available in Core Law:
Non-Spellcaster Professions:
Semi Spellcaster Professions:
Pure Spellcaster Professions:
Hybrid Spellcaster Professions:
Non-Spellcaster Professions:
As can be seen,
Rolemaster offers a much wider range of Professions and Races for players to choose from during their character selection process. It should also be noted that the
Core Law book details how to create your own custom professions, while the upcoming
Creature Law II book, that details will be provided on how to create a character from absolutely any species of creature. So, the possibilities are truly endless using
Rolemaster.
Return to
Channel Cities or
World of Ærnth articles/pages.
Conversion notes for various systems:
d20 system (D&D) and its many d20 based clones:
For
Stats divide the RolemasterStat
Bonus (which appears in parentheses in the Rolemaster Stats "Secret" section for each NPC, not the value as Rolemaster uses a much wider and more grainular (and detailed) stat system) by 3 and round to nearest integer, 0.5 rounds up) to get the d20 stat bonus, then assign the d20 stat the appropraite stat value that will coinside with that bonus. Note that the d20 system only has 6 stats vs. Rolemaster's 10 stats, so some averaging will be needed
(although this does not work with a fair number of characters and NPC's simply due to the lack of depth present in the d20 systems). Rolemaster has a separate stat for
Agility and
Quickness, whereas d20 uses only
Dexterity, so these will need to be averaged and the d20 system will not be able to accurately represent a character that has a high value in one and a low value in another due to this lack of granularity.
Strength and
Contitution will both convert directly over (although
Self Discipline in
Rolemaster also overlaps to a small degree with the d20
Constitution attribute, so should be taken into account). Rolemaster also uses
Reasoning (ability to logic to puzzle out solutions to prolems or understand complex concepts),
Memory (self explanatory) and
Empathy (not really represented in d20, but since the portion of d20 spells that use
Intelligence utilize
Empathy within the
Rolemaster system, it needs to be somehow converted into Intelligence) at maybe half of its value???), which should all three be averaged to determine the value for
Intelligence in any of the d20 systems (as d20 does not break these appart and can not accurately represent someone who has great reasoning ability but lousy memory). Likewise in place of the d20
Charisma, you will want to average
Empathy and
Presence (and since
Charisma is also supposed to include "appearance",
which should not be represented as a score at all, as different people have different options on what an "attractive" or "unattractive" appearance (this can vary by both culture and personal "taste", so should not be "measured" as it is in the d20 systems). For d20
Wisdom, you should probably average
Inutition,
Reasoning and
Empathy with Intuition counting in a 2:1 ratio over the other two stats
(due to the d20 systems being too simplistic in its attribute system to accurately represent character concepts the way Rolemaster can).
For
skills subtract 25 then divide by 5 then round to nearest integer, 0.5 rounds up), although the d20 systems usually don't allow the skill flexibility that the other systems do (each profession is limited as to what skills are possible, so this lack of flexibility will need to be considered and will make many of these NPC's not possible within the d20 based rule systems due to this lack of flexibility).
However, while in Rolemaster you can try anything, including skills that you do not have trained (although at a -25 penalty), the d20 systems do not allow you to even try skills that you do not "have" (that are not part of your "class", thus creating a
LOT more limitations to the already "cookie cutter" player characters in the d20 systems). As such, if you choose to use one of the many d20 systems with this setting, I highly recommend that you do allow such skills and simply treat any skill that is not "trained" as having a -2 or -3 and also note that Rolemaster also utilizes "Difficulty" levels for things based on the environment/situation so the needed adjusted rolled value should be modified for each situation based on such things, as there are a lot of variables that the d20 systems do not account for or mimic very well.
You are also not going to have the level of detail in any of the mechanics with the d20 system that you do in Rolemaster (or HARP, also by Iron Crown), as in the d20 systems the roll simply indicates success or failure, whereas in Rolemaster the higher the roll, the better the result (be it increased damage, which the d20 system can not at all represent due to its poorly designed but at the same overly complex and convoluted combat system), which als results in the wide ranging tactical options available in Rolemaster also adding depth and detail as such things are not even present in the d20 system. Using the d20 system, even a "critical" (which you only have a flat 5% chance of getting in most cases) often times resulting in lower damage than a attack results that was just barely high enough to actually hit the target where the "damage roll" may result in much better results. As an example, if you need a 14 to hit, and you roll a 14, your damage will be the same as if you rolled a 19 due to the way the system works.
The d20 system also has many cases where doing something dangerous can often times be guranteed to be survivable. It was this exact type of incident that caused Rolemater to be developed. In the late 1970's a group of friends at the University of Virginia were playing D&D and they encountered a Dire Bear that they knew they could not defeat, so they tried to get away, but when they came up on a 100' high cliff, the Fighter (his player without thinking saw that he had 63 HP, so knew he was guaranteed to survive) jumped off the cliff while all the other characters died. Afterwards they were talking about how if in a game a character is guranteed to survive something like that which should be extremely dangerous, there was a serious flaw with the system. So they started to develop something better. In Rolemaster, even if your character is 50th level (which is not even possible in the d20 system), there is still a chance that your character could die from falling off a stool in a tavern and an even greater chance of dying if they were to jump off a 100 foot cliff. And while they were at it, made a lot of other design choices that created a game that is substantially more detailed, flexible and robust than the d20 systems (with 3rd Ed. adopting some of those ideas due to the creative team's leader being a former Iron Crown employee). Thus the saying "Get Real! Get Rolemaster!"
For
Talents/Flaws, adjust as appropriate if non stat/skill related, and only if the modification is possible within the rules (many will not be possible due to the lack of detail available in the d20 rules systems).
For stats divide Stat Bonus by 4 and round to nearest integer 0.5 rounds up)
For skills subtract 20 and then divide by 30 then round to nearest integer 0.5 rounds up)
For Talents/Flaws, adjust as appropriate if non stat/skill related.
For stats use the
Rolemaster bonus (avaerage then when more than one RM attribute applies) as the
Dominion Rules Attribute (
Domion Rules uses 6 attributes instead of 10 in
Rolemaster).
For skills divide bonus by 20 then round to nearest integer 0.5 rounds up)
For Talents/Flaws, adjust as appropriate if non stat/skill related.
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