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Rolemaster Moments for Oct 2003- page 1
This happened a long time ago in a wilderness. We had a party of 5-7 (I can't recall exactly how many) low level adventurers and we were tracking down a bunch of bandits. My ranger was the tracker/point man and rest of the party followed behind when we got ambushed. My ranger was so preoccupied on the tracks that he totally missed his perception roll and got hit by a crossbow bolt. The rest of the party came to rescue while my ranger began to bandage his bleeding leg (1 hit/round, IIRC). Although the wound was not life threatening (after the first aid) I decided to lay low for the rest of the combat but then we began to get more casualties.
One by one the other party members fell to blades of the bandits until only our powerhouse warrior mage was standing wielding his lethal battleaxe. I think there were only him and chief bandit left in the battlefield when the bandit scored a high roll and so our warrior mage fell. At this time my ranger was well hidden and could have easily escaped but when it became evident that the cursed bandit was going to slit the throats of the ranger's friends I thought "F*ck it, let's do it!" and I opened up with my short bow.
Miraculously I scored a solid hit giving the bandit a bleeding wound. I had time for one more shot before the charging (and bleeding) bandit came close enough for melee. I discarded the bow and took my broadsword and shield and prepared to die with the rest of the party. Of course the melee combat opened the bandaged wound and here we were, the bandit and ranger bleeding and hurt. We managed to get only small hits to each other and so the combat became a matter of lucky hit or when one of the combatants run out of hits. After the long battle the bandit chief fell to the feets of the ranger who was too tired to even laugh for his victory. With great effort he bandaged his leg again and proceeded to wake up the healer of the party.
After all the years of gaming I think this was the closest we came to the party being wiped out without crossing the line.
This is a campaign long played in the Middle Earth of the ICE modules time using Rolemaster. I am playing a mentalist (6th level at that time) who has been hunted by a powerful witch from Angmar for the past few years. We were supposed to go over the Misty Mountains, when I did the stupid thing. In a series of battles I called upon my powers to assist my friends and thus marked our whereabouts to this evil witch.
So after a heated discussions our group decided to go over the High Pass trying to cross fast through the upper pass before the orcs could mobilize. Alas, our enemy, the witch, was faster than us and had commanded the orcs of Misty Mountains to capture me.
One night after destroying their scouting parties, we knew that a huge group of orcs was ahead of us - and another probably behind us. Luckily a beorning in our group noticed a small cavern that was almost hidden from view (anyone remember Bilbo? - We didn't...). So we hid our tracks and decided to stay overnight there and try past the orcs the next day.
Unfortunately our luck was not to hold. We woke up to the sounds of more than a hundred orcs that camped outside and attacked us. We were also attacked from the inside, luckily for us they did not know of each other at first, so their efforts were not concentrated. After a series of bloody battles we had managed to stay alive and the orcs decided to wait until they had an opportune moment to attack from both sides at once.
Morning comes and my character takes a black robe, we stage noise of fighting and then he casts darkness and true aura around him and goes out. He marches to the leader of the orcs and tells him using command spell that these people are not those you were to capture. They are at this very moment escaping our grasp going back west. Take your troops and capture them! To make the thing look even better he emphasized the command using Morbeth, the black speech of Angmar's high servants.
The spell barely overcame the resistance of that mighty orc and the orcs headed west. We waited in the cave until they were far enough, and were just exiting from the cave, when the reinforcements from inside came along with some mountain trolls. Luckily it was day time and we had just gotten outside.
Of course the orcs came after us to the woods where beorns live and it resulted with a bloody war were thousands have been killed already. But that is a different tale for a different day.
This is a campaign long played in the Middle-earth of the ICE modules time using Rolemaster. Actually, the campaign is the same as described in the moment of The Black Robe by Mikko Särelä, October 2003. This moment is from an earlier time (few years in real time). I am playing a beorning trader, who was about 3rd-4th level at that time.
The moment, which spans many gaming sessions, starts from Tharbad. The situation in Tharbad was quite dire. Wars were battled between different guilds and there was a rumor of orcs coming to conquer Tharbad. Our group was resting in an inn.
GM - "Everyone, throw a perception roll." dice rolls "Ok, you smell smoke. " Players - "From where does the smoke seem to be coming?" GM - "Actually, you smell a lot of smoke. The ground floor of the inn seems to be on fire!"
We climbed to the roof of the inn, were shot by ambushers from the roof of a nearby house but managed to reach safety without serious wounds. Due to the rumors of incoming orcs, we boarded a ship heading to the sea and tried to do the boarding in secrecy.
On the way to the sea, the ship stopped in a small town. We went to an inn for the night.
GM - "Everyone, throw a perception roll." dice rolls "Ok, you smell smoke. " Players - "From where does the smoke seem to be coming?" GM - "Actually, you smell a lot of smoke. The ground floor of the inn seems to be on fire!"
We scrambled out from the inn in a hurry. We were puzzled. How can someone know where we are? The voyage continued towards the sea.
On the next stop in a town, we went to an inn for the night. Because we were not feeling ourselves safe, we climbed out from one window of the inn after night had fallen and went to another inn for the night. Night was silent. On the morning, we heard that the inn into which we had first gone in had burned down! We were happy from our brilliant idea of switching inns, but now we were scared. Who is on our tail?
We traveled a lot of ground during next gaming sessions and there were certain happenings that have influenced the campaign up to today (I am still, after a total of 7 years of real time, playing the same beorning.). After all, the next night in an inn took a while to happen. We traveled into a port city in an island named Tolfalas and booked an inn. We were absolutely sure nobody would burn this inn as nobody had been chasing us for a while and the travel time from previous inns was many months.
GM - "Everyone, throw a perception roll." dice rolls "Ok, you smell smoke. " Players - "What! Come on, this inn can not be on fire!" GM - "As you investigate the inn, it does not seem to be on fire. Throw a perception roll." dice rolls "Ok, you smell a lot of smoke." Players - "What! Hey, what is going on here?" GM - "The port side of the city seems to be on fire. The fires are spreading towards this inn." Players - "<silence>"
I have never seen such dumbfound players in my time. This time the GM had surprised us well enough and congratulations for him from doing that. The characters have smelled smoke in many different situations from that day on and usually the smoke is not without fire. Of these occasions, tales have been sung and you might hear them from a local bard someday.
This moment was one of the best moments of heroism and luck my party has ever known. At that time, very early on the beginning of the campaign the party, which included, a noble elvin warrior-mage, a forest elf female archer, a silent and very short tempered dwarf and a highlander barbarian, were near a temple to the god of death. They needed to obtain a very ugly statue from the high priest of the temple in order to return it to a tribe of angry orcs which were on the verge of going into a slaughter march to "kill every stinking human who stole their god".
For their first approach the party choose the most common tactic in the book – brute frontal charge – and was met with a horde of skeletons that rose from the ground at the temple surrounding. No need to say that after a few bloody rounds retreat was inevitable. After this defeat the group decided to stop and think for a while on a better plan – and after 30 minutes of planning they found the perfect tactic – brute frontal charge!!! (Can you believe it?).
So the second charge went on, only this time they have succeeded in breaking into the temple, now facing the high priest who was very ready for them throwing a few protective spells on him including a fire shield. I, knowing the power of the high priest and the number of skeletons, thought to myself, "well here goes another party…", but reality as only Rolemaster can create turned differently. In an amazing move, remembered up until today, the barbarian charged at the high priest – passing two skeletons that missed him completely, resisting a dark stunning spell, resisting the contact with the fire shield and scoring a very high open ended attack with his battle axe that killed the high priest in one blow! I was speechless. Only in Rolemaster something like this could have happened (and I have tried a lot of game systems).
Well, after that the party found the statue and went off to try and stop the advancing orcs - only to lose the statue on the way when the elvin archer decided to throw it to a river with no apparent logical reason (women – go figure!) and so the war have started but this is another story…
Most of my players have been pretty consistent in they way they roll up characters. Every player that I have run across seems to like playing a particular ‘style’ of alternate persona. Let me tell you of an experience I had with one particular character – we will call him PlayerX – who liked to, how shall we say, over-indulge in bending the rule system.
I was running a low level campaign in the streets of one of the cities that I had created. All of the players had either 1st or 2nd level characters and unfortunately PlayerX had one of his characters die in the last melee. I had just purchased the I.C.E. book ‘Talents and Flaws’ and was reviewing all of the content. I made the fatal Game Master mistake of allowing the players to use the book without first combing over it with a fine toothed comb.
Our next game session began with the usual niceties of party equipment gathering and herb finding so they would be ready for the next adventure.
PlayerX arrives.
He strolls into the crowded living room, past the plethora of Rolemaster companion books, rule books, dice and pizza. With a sneer and rather contemptuous glare asks if I was ‘braced’ to see his character. Well as a GM I always liked to know what each player was playing and I usually requested player information but I never had a player as me if I was ‘braced’ to see their character.
He handed me his sheet. As I looked over it he began to recite his ‘talents’ to the crowd of expectant players. The first thing I spotted on his sheet was that he was a dwarf. An 18’ tall dwarf. Gigantism Greater – means he takes Super Large Criticals and delivers 4x the damage in combat. I also noticed that he could take 150% of his hit points before passing out. He could also strike with his massive OB twice (He had developed two-weapon combo) and on every hit he could apply ‘Ambush’. He also had regeneration greater – that’s 4 hits per round. Lastly, yes there’s more. He chose, of all things, ‘Fly’. This was purely a rules abomination and he enjoyed it being such a monstrosity!
So now for the flaws. I cleared my throat expecting something very nasty. I mean after all we wouldn’t want to upset the balance of the game or anything, especially at the expense of the other players, right? First flaw – Albino. I gasped. Second flaw – Eunuch. WHAT?! Third flaw – color blind. Fourth flaw – inept with magic (go figure). Fifth flaw - shall I go on?
So, unlike some other GM’s that would discard this thing the moment the paper hit the table… I, mistakenly enough, allow it. After all, ‘Flaw Law’ as it became known, was now in print so it should have been run though game balance testing…so I had hoped. Needless to say, after endless arguments on why every monster hunter in the galaxy was after this ‘one and only’ creature, and after he demolished building after building and wreaked campaign after campaign, and after the party got sick of them escaping death by a mere thread and him just walking casually onward, this entity finally met its demise.
I remember it well. I was ready for a great day of gaming, I was feeling a bit spiteful and lo and behold PlayerX shows up with ‘The Dwarf’ as he was called. PlayerX didn’t have a real name for it. He didn’t get into the game that much. He just liked to see how far he could press the rules…you all know the type. Anyway, out comes ‘The Dwarf’. Well we were doing a really cool campaign that involved a dark shrine, powerful undead and a crypt. Well I was inspired by a stroke of genus that faithful day; I started using ‘real’ rules – I will explain. As the PC’s worked their way into the deadly shrine, you can think of it as a barrow down, they all came to the main open room, well…all but the 18’ tall dwarf, you know the ones that state that an 18’ tall hulking dwarf cannot fit into spaces made for 6’ tall elves. He finally worked out with another player to ‘evaporate’ part of the earth under the large stone obelisks that held up the place. They did this and the dwarf squeezed underneath the door and entered the room. After a few moments a trap triggered and well you guess it, the room started caving in. Guess who got stuck and died literally with the weight of the world on his shoulders? Yup. ‘The Dwarf’. Messy – carry on soldier! =P
Unfortunately this player didn’t have an opportunity to create the 1’ tall bard hobbit with anti-magic spells and magic immunity that was going to hang by a safety cage around ‘The Dwarf’s’ neck!
I did learn one thing from the whole experience for my future GM’ing. Rules are a great basis for game play but should not upset game balance, a players imagination does bring spice to the game but some ideas are too absurd or inappropriate for the world system and sometimes game cohesion and consistency should be chosen above all else!
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