Off the Shelf: Rolemaster Unified

Rolemaster is a classic, possibly one of the greatest pen-and-paper games of all time. The original game was a "reaction game" to AD&D, written as the "X Law" rules expansions or as a complete game alternative to AD&D systems, so it existed alongside the game but also as a better system in parallel.

The unified system is a streamlined version of the game, possibly the best ever written, and it only has a few flaws - the art and a few strange monster stats. Neither flaw is a game-breaker, and that's why we are here: the art in our minds, not the books. Monster stats can be quickly adjusted by 10 points here and there, as needed. No monster should be the same as the other, and as long as you are in the ballpark, who cares? We will be getting "monster design" rules in Creature Law II, so the tools to create new beasts are coming, and the only downside for playing this game is the slower release schedule.

That said, we do have a complete game with the four books we have: Core, Creature I, Treasure, and Spell Law. Creature II and a pair of other character-focused books are in the works. We have enough for a full. stand-alone adventure game with the books we have.

So, why pull Rolemaster out of storage?

First up, just the four books are coming out, none of the previous versions. If I am looking for a "forever game" to support, I will leave the past behind and focus on what we have and the company's efforts going forward. The best way we can ensure Rolemater is played for a long time is to support the new stuff, and the new stuff is pretty good. It is solid, works well, is cleanly presented, and streamlines much of the game.

Post-house-disaster, I am focusing on the "best of the best" of my library that I will keep. I know the games I want, GURPS being the biggest, but there are a few other key games I am rebuilding around. Why is Rolemaster in this group?

So many played Middle-Earth Role-Playing in the 1990s with a variant of this system that it became imbued with Tolkien's legacy. The builds, skills, success system, crit charts, spells, and so much more became part of the legacy of "true fantasy," and the system feels like home. If you want to play serious, literate, meaningful, deadly, story-based tales of adventure and heroism, then this system should be your go-to game.

If you played MERP in the 1990s, gave up on AD&D 2nd Edition, and threw your dice in with the legacy of the Lord of the Rings, then Rolemaster feels like home. HARP is the "best close" version of MERP these days, and still a worthy game, but nothing sings like "full Rolemaster" for having it all. HARP is more Rolemaster Lite, and Rolemaster is the deeper, more hardcore, grittier game. HARP is still a worthy choice if you do not want all the depth and just want a more pulp-adventure game with a lighter level of detail.

Rolemaster is the full experience. Narratively, this game rules.

Every attack coming at your character could be their last, and also could possibly stay with them the rest of their life with a crippling injury. This is the deepest "story consequences" in roleplaying, where a sword to the gut leaves your character injured for a long time, and scarred for life. This is not the trippy fantasy land of D&D 5E, where you can sleep off a shotgun blast to the face and be fine the next day. Every blow that lands in Rolemaster is serious business.

And every blow you land has the potential to turn into pure awesome.

The d100 rolls explode, coming in or going out, so even a minor attack from a lowly goblin can end your character's story. Think before you jump into battle, and pick your fights carefully.

GURPS comes close, but it does not equal this in terms of narrative, detailed, engaging combat. GURPS is more "hex tactical meets character builder" and a few steps less narrative-focused than Rolemaster. GURPS does have the better "in character" disadvantage system with self-control rolls, but if you want detailed battles where weapons work and hit differently, Rolemaster is your game.

Every weapon blow and spell attack in Rolemaster tells a part of the story. Other games do not give me this. Rules-light games fall flat. 5E just fails to deliver engaging combat. The legacy of video games and cozy influences in modern games means character protection is a non-negotiable part of the design, and players are near-guaranteed "death never happens," and "terrible things that could trigger me" are not even considered.

My cute fox-person will never get shot in the spleen by an arrow and bleed out, then have an Orc crush their skull as they lie there incapacitated and dying. This brutal Dark Souls-like permadeath experience never happens in these new games.

Games these days have gotten too safe. They are far too cozy and soft. They are too afraid of causing mental health issues in their audience. If you are too tied to your cute, idealistic, self-insert anthropomorphic animal hero, do not play Rolemaster. Walk away. D&D 5E will be a happier place for you. Do not expose yourself to this game. You will end up upset, hurt, and angry.

Some people can't handle Rolemaster.

If you want more, play Rolemaster. Some crave this deadly, detailed, gritty, and impactful experience. They want their dice rolls to matter, and for each roll to have insane potential or tragic heartbreak. They want their sword to slice through flesh and slay in clinical, realistic, gory detail. They accept fate, in that their perfect character could fall to a thief's dagger in an alley, a poisoned blowgun from an assassin, or a lucky blow of a goblin's rusty axe. That perfect character's story could end in tragedy at any moment, and the ideal ending, or even the one that makes the most sense, could stop at any time in the most unsatisfying way.

But you will feel alive at every moment along the way.

And in the end, if you make it there, it will be far, far, far more satisfying than anything a modern game could ever imagine delivering.

Gaming is Dead

Really, when you look across computer gaming, tabletop, and board games, gaming is dead.

AAA titles come out and are instant flops; the new version of D&D landed with a thud; crowdfunding campaigns are way down; and conventions are being cancelled. Yeah, gaming is dead.

For roleplaying, it doesn't really matter, since the hobby is shifting back into niche gaming, like it has been for most of its history. D&D was always a niche, fringe, strange hobby for most of its history, and it is only when performative play, like Critical Role, took over that we saw the gold rush and eventual collapse. For most of D&D's history, it's been in an undead, the hobby is dead, mode. The late 1980s, when Gygax was kicked out? It was dying. The 1990s, when TSR went bankrupt? It was still dead. The end of 3.5E when 4E failed? Yep, dead again.

Here we are at the end of 5E. Yep, here we go again.

5E wasn't really 5E; it was Critical Role, fueled by Stranger Things. They co-opted the hobby, and that style of play became a fad, just like the Atari 2600 before it. The whole thing crashed when YouTube started demonetizing D&D creators and telling them to switch subjects. D&D was never really about D&D; it is always about riding a fad up, living at the peak, and pretending D&D was the reason it was popular, and then watching it all come crashing down when D&D could never "keep the audience."

Wizards never invested in their authors and campaign worlds; there was nothing to keep people there in the first place. At least in the 1990s, they had the novels. These days, kids are graduating high school not knowing how to read, so what does anyone expect?

The hobby is doomed to grow old and die with its fans since the education system collapsed and failed. Good luck competing with mobile games, which won the war 10 years ago, and tabletop gaming is still living in denial. How will anybody play books with over a thousand pages of required reading if no new players can read?

Niche gaming? The OSR? Indie games? Small publishers? They will be just fine, surviving on the fringe market like the hobby was started on. Shadowdark is far better positioned to survive a downturn than companies with huge structural organizations.

Cons? Games that are published on a massive scale? Industry giants? Huge library games? Dead like the AAA games they pretend to be. D&D is so large, and nobody can define what it is, so it will survive on the mass of 2014 books still floating out there. D&D 6E better be so different that people throw out their 2014 books, or Wizards will find they can't compete with themselves.

It is 2026, publish from your basement or perish.

D&D is dead, but it will be fine. YouTubers decrying the death of the hobby will be clickbaiting, as usual; nothing changes. Doom and gloom get doom-clicks, hate-clicks, and the-world-is-ending-clicks.

Who cares? Just play.

Enjoy your books.

Get the money out of them that you paid for.

Ignore the doom and gloom, because it too shall pass.

Drawing Back, the End of D&D

We are clearly in the end-game phase of 5E, but the game itself is so massive that I don't think anyone will notice it. I think 5E could die, continue for 5 years, be replaced by 6E, and nobody (in the general public or outside of third-party publishers) would even know there was a market crash and downturn.

Is D&D dead?

It doesn't matter.

Besides, Wizards should be thanking the OSR crowd for keeping the original spirit of the hobby alive, and keeping the game's relevance and aura as a "hardcore dungeon game." These days, 5E by itself isn't a hardcore dungeon game; it is more of a fantasy lifestyle simulator with a specific set of classes and builds that borrow heavily from pop culture, movies, anime, and other sources. D&D is not an original game, and it relies (too heavily) on pop culture for relevance, when the game itself should be the source of that relevance it pretends to have.

The OSR will keep "D&D alive" by default. D&D will show up every five years with a new edition, expect a seat at the table, and get it because they are the rich kid who plays, and we all put up with them, even though they are a dork.

"The cool kids are all playing this other game!"

That is something that never changes about D&D, either. Yes, there is always D&D, but there's always the cool game everyone is playing instead, be it GURPS, Rifts, Vampire, Champions, Rolemaster, or any number of other "cool kid" games that have come and gone over the years. Today it's Daggerheart, Draw Steel, Warhammer (again), or any number of other fantasy alternative hangers-on.

I feel the current look-and-feel of D&D, Pathfinder, and most modern fantasy games is already dated. The modern people in fantasy cosplay, Supercuts hairstyles, AI-generated, and purple-hair pastiche are very early-2020s, and the culture is moving on from "Disney and Pixar tropes." People are tired of "real people trying to pretend they are anime characters," and all the hair dye, piercings, tattoos, and smug, smirking faces have gotten tiring.

These days, give me authentic medieval art, something cool, something different, something not made by AI, and that has a measure of skill and actual artistic knowledge involved. In an age of 100% AI, those who will stand out are those who can still "do it by hand."

AI is not the future; it is the death of the middle market. You will either have the skills to be noticed, or you will be replaced by a machine. If you want to be an artist, writer, or other creative, you'd better have something to say, or the low-skilled masses beneath you will swallow you in a mountain of slop.

And the irony is, those at the top will still use AI, but be smart enough to make the darn thing work instead of being a slop generator. It will be the same for D&D, all those middling adventure and module writers, even some game writers, you will all be replaced unless you have something to say and the high level of skill to actually say it. Forget the notion that AI makes up for skill; the only way it works is if you already have a high enough level of skill and commitment to make it work the way they advertise it to.

You need more skill to make AI work at a level where you will be successful with it. Learn a real creative skill, then use AI.

AI cannot compete with the self-made auteur, master of their craft. It is not happening.

But, D&D, in its current pop-culture, AI-generated form?

Dead, and it does not matter.

PaizoCon Cancelled

https://paizo.com/blog/paizocon-online-is-canceled-for-2026

Times are hard, and the hobby is in a massive downturn. PaizoCon is canceled this year.

I do not have much more to say than I hope people can bounce back after this, and the layoffs aren't on the horizon, not just for Paizo, but for every company in the hobby space. Given that Pathfinder was the #2 game at GenCon this year, I am a bit surprised, but not shocked.

I wish everyone involved all the best.

How Much Game Do You Need?

Recently, I had to flee my home and stay in a hotel for a few days after a minor disaster. So, I had to take a game on the road. I grabbed the first game I could see, one sitting on a shelf the contractors threw there when they had to move my hall shelves. This one was completely a random "grab it off the shelf" moment, since everything was all over the place, and I needed to head out fast.

That game was Sword of Cepheus, Second Edition. This fits in my iPad Mini travel bag. I grabbed a handful of d6 dice and was all set and good to go. This was a whim, and in part, the workers in the house made it for me. They left it face-up, alone, on a shelf shoved in my bedroom; they had to move there to get it out of the way.

So, it is fate that decided this for me, just like the roll of a die. I accepted the result and grabbed the book. This was my choice, one of possibly many, but in a way, the book called to me and said, "Grab the sword and accept the quest which first presents itself."

Whoever put that book there for me made a karmic choice for my future, and since it sounded fun, I went with it. Life is about adventure, and there are moments when you do not understand why something happens or how it happened, but you go with it, take that path, and see where it leads.

My small tote bag doesn't even fit an average 10-inch tablet; it is made for smaller devices and holds a digest-sized book (like Shadowdark) nicely. I could have grabbed Shadowdark, but I like the d6 games better for travel, since who wants to carry around a ton of special dice? Six-siders work; they are easy to replace at any supermarket or pharmacy, and they are the universal die.

As I was sitting in the hotel, the thought occurred to me, if my house burned down and I lost all my games, would I be happy with just this? And then I knew, I would. If I lost it all, this game would be good enough for me, and that is a freedom I never knew I could come to terms with. A liberation from the massive libraries and shelves full of books this hobby foists upon you, constantly screaming, "more is more!" and "you need hundreds of pounds of books to enjoy a game!"

It is all lies.

It is all consumerist garbage.

And it is all designed to part you from as much money as these exploitative gaming companies can manage. In a way, your average pen-and-paper roleplaying game company is no different than a mobile game company, though the model is designed to be a little slower and a lot heavier. If they are selling you a library, they are selling you a lie.

These small, indie, community-focused games? They are closer to the true spirit of the hobby: throw-a-book-in-a-bag games that offer the same "depth" and "expressive options" as a game a hundred times its size and weight. Traveller has sort of lost its way with that massive, three-shelf library, and the digest-sized Cepheus games remain closer to that spirit of freedom and portability.

Why do I need to tie my life down with thousands of pounds of books? I am just burying my decades of roleplaying under a mountain of paper and lies. Giant gaming libraries are the dirt we throw on the coffin of our hobby, and they do nothing for me other than to appease some "collector's bug" I have inside my brain.

Collecting is not playing.

Owning more is not enjoying more; it is often the inverse.

Owning more means being more unhappy and playing less.

If I were to add one more game to this, it would likely be the OGL-free FTL Nomad for science fiction (and anything modern) gaming. I would need a slightly larger bag for this, but it would fit into my mobile life much better. I could do fantasy gaming with FTL Nomad, but SoC2 has so many wonderful tables and a Conan-like feel that I cannot pass it up.

FTL Nomad covers the rest, and while it doesn't do the 2d6 attributes, if I ever wanted a more traditional 2d6 science fiction game, Cepehus Light (my Car Wars RPG) fits in the bag, too, and is digest-sized. FTL Nomad does more genres and has a nice collection of thin expansion books, so I am getting far more with less.

I have a slightly deeper tote on order, with a 5" depth rather than my current bag's 2.5". While I like the slim bag, I will try the deeper one to see if it is a bit more comfortable for gaming on the go, plus my little notebooks, pencils, erasers, dice, and other gaming bits and bobs. The idea of finally freeing myself from a few thousand pounds of worthless gaming fat and overload is extremely appealing to me.

A few dice that give me a touch of randomness, but not so much that I am deciding which die to use. The polyhedral dice are distractions, and very few of them are statistically different enough to matter. The only difference between a d4, d6, d8, d10, and d12 is a one-point average shift between each die, and nothing a one-point modifier could simulate. Maximums and minimums are nothing compared to the average result you expect over a thousand rolls.

I don't need the polyhedral dice, nor the games that use them.

This is an extra requirement, and another chain tying me to an already worthless and bloated library.

There is a certain magic to carrying every world, game, and universe in a small bag and taking it wherever you go. I have the freedom to point to a destination, attraction, or event and say, "Let's go," and take it all with me. Every world, character, campaign, and idea is in a tiny bag that I can toss over my shoulder and travel with.

All I need are a few six-sided dice.

And my imagination.

And I am finally free of a pile of paper that only serves as a weight to bury my dreams and experiences under. Digital is not the answer. PDFs are not the future.

A simple book that works without an Internet connection or electricity.

The basic die that I can find anywhere.

And freedom.

Off the Shelf: Dungeon Crawl Classics

This is my fourth "off the shelf" article for Dungeon Crawl Classics. I write one of these articles every time a game returns to my "gaming shrine" and most-played shelves. I had DCC in the garage twice over the last four years, grew disillusioned with the game for a while, put it away, and then realized the games I felt would replace it failed me and never were as fun as this one.

One reason is that some on the OSR YouTube channels don't like DCC much, and they are entitled to their opinions. Sorry, DCC is worthy as Shadowdark is. And even Goodman Games says, "DCC does not equal OSR," and that break is good for everyone. This is a beloved game, a throwback tribute rock band to the 1970s and 1980s era of role-playing, when the game cared more about fun, and everyone could play.

The OSR and DCC are different things.

The OSR is the actual game we played in the 1970s and 80s, and there is an open question of whether today's players can understand how it was played back then, amid the mess of other games and sources we brought in. They are a faithful recreation of the rules, often without the context of the time they were played in. People who never played in the era will wonder what the fuss is all about and return to 5E.

A big problem in the OSR is being excellent while replicating rules, but terrible at providing context.

DCC captures the feeling of those times, and how a modern set of rules (3.5E-derived) could recreate that moment and feeling. DCC is more of an "early-age role-playing simulator" that pulls in external influences into the experience, like listening to Asia and Styx at Shakey's Pizza Parlor while Pac-Man and Defender arcade cabinets buzz in the background. Then someone has a story about their game, and something insane and cool happens (that, by the rules, could never happen since it is clearly not in the rules), and you are all in awe of the coolness that is this game.

A player in 1980 at that pizza parlor is saying, "Your character turned into a demon?! Wow!"

A player in 2026 is flipping through the original rules, "Nowhere in the rules does it say that this could happen. Were they even playing the OSR correctly?"

While DCC is not the OSR, DCC is the context of the OSR.

Castles & Crusades is similar; while it is not AD&D 2E, it is an AD&D 1E/2E simulator in a modern rules framework. It captures the feeling while not being the thing it is inspired by, opting for a modern play experience. Call them throwback games, but they capture the experience rather than replicating the rules. If all you want is "how it plays" without "all the confusing tables and junk," then DCC will sing for you.

DCC is worthy, fun, imaginative, and it displays on my selves incredibly well.

This is the time I grew up with in gaming; if not the original game, it captures the feeling well enough.

Take me back to that pizza parlor and let me live in that moment again.

BackerKit: Castles & Crusades Adventurers Spellbook Reforged

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/troll-lord-games/castles-crusades-adventurers-spellbook-reforged

Troll Lord Games launched the reforged, OGL-free Adventurers Spellbook today. This is another winner, and I look forward to it. Check it out if C&C is your thing!