Off the Shelf: HARP

If you like Rolemaster, but you do not want the complexity, there is always HARP. With the HARP implementation of Martial Law, you get a good 75-85% of the Rolemaster experience with the crit tables, and you can always make up results similar to have more variety. But the rules are far easier to understand and manage than those of Rolemaster, especially for character creation.

What does playing Rolemaster gain you? You get the full crit tables, all the spells in Spell Law, and the original game experience. The characters are more flexible, and the system is far more robust and classic. Most players, I would say 90%, do not have the time to put into Rolemaster and enjoy the complexity and depth. Most players, especially those coming from OSR games and B/X, will enjoy HARP far more than Rolemaster. If you picked up Rolemaster, bounced off character creation hard, and gave up, give HARP a try. If you do not have the time for Rolemaster, honestly, play HARP.

Rolemaster does the best job of simulating the effects of specific weapons versus specific armors, whereas in HARP, this is all abstracted. If you crave that "weapon X versus armor Y" style of combat,  and having the effect or crits change depending on that interaction, play Rolemaster. There are optional rules that add this depth in HARP Martial Law, but they slow down combat somewhat and force adjustments to the numbers depending on target armor.

If all you want is to grab a sword and wander the hills to battle orcs and collect their loot, where story means more than simulation, play HARP. You will see the benefits of a more engaging simulation game than a B/X, and have the best parts of Rolemaster without the complexity. HARP is a good middle ground between B/X and Rolemaster, and perfectly captures that Tolkien-style adventure and storytelling, far better than 5E, which has lost its way and become a planar superhero game.

If you want the OG, mace versus chainmail, hard realism game of simulation combat, play Rolemaster United. If you don't want the complexity and just want a close-enough experience, play HARP. Both have a place, given your interest levels and time.

And HARP is a complete game, ten books (plus an adventure), and you have a nice-sized library. The secret to enjoying HARP is just starting with the core book, which has everything: monsters, treasure, magic, and more, and ignoring the rest of the library. The crit charts in the core HARP book may get repetitive, so pull in the expanded tables from Martial Law if you want a little more variety and complexity; otherwise, they are not needed, and you can just make up similar results.

The criticism of the original HARP book's crit tables stems from the fact that it lists 19 results per attack type. It sounds like a lot, but in large combats, the same critical results can happen twice. For example, a result of 51-60 on a crush attack gives us, "You broke his collarbone. Foe takes 15 Hits, is stunned 1 round, and is at -10." Keep rolling that versus orcs, and you have a lot of broken orc collarbones, and you start to break immersion. But we can avoid breaking immersion by simply choosing to break other things.

HARP, Hit Location optional rule, page 99.

Now, if we use the optional hit location rules, you have 10 locations to factor in on top of that. We could simply change that "collarbone" to "whatever we hit and break that." It does not matter too much; just reinterpret the result and perhaps force a roll to keep hold of a weapon or shield if a hand or arm is hit, or to avoid falling down on leg or foot strikes. Now, we have possibly 190 results per attack type, and the problem is far less than we imagined.

You could even add a d10 qualifier to the word "broke" to allow for a variety of interpretations, such as grazed, bruised, crushed, broken, broken open, or completely smashed. How bad is it really? Roll a d10; let 1 be the most forgiving, with 10 the least. Now modify the result by ±50 %, and you have 1,900 results per attack type, and you are starting to eclipse Rolemaster (and you are inserting your imagination into the tables). Perhaps the bruise is 8 extra hits, no stun, and a -5. Perhaps the smashed result is 23 extra hits, 2 stun turns, and a -15.

With 1,900 results per attack type, I would say that is an insane amount of damage results. Mind you, I am only talking about using the base book. I do not need Martial Law to do this. I am not adding in any of the expansion books, and the combats are already this good.

Perhaps the result of a 1 is that the blow is deflected and no damage occurs at all, or it hits an enemy next to the player, sending that insta-killing head blow meant for you into the nearest orc. Perhaps that 10 result is not even damage at all, but the blow sends the magic shield the fighter is holding flying off a cliff and is lost forever. Maybe the attack sails into the party's light source and smashes the lantern, spilling flammable oil all over the holder (or a nearby ally). "The worst possible thing" on a result of 10 can be interpreted in many ways, just as the "best result of 1" can be as well.

That d10 qualifier roll is a tool to introduce environmental, situational, material, physiological, story-based, or even psychological factors into the damage equation.

Just by adding a few drops of our imagination, and only using the basic game's "supposedly limiting" tables, we are beating Rolemaster in both variety and outcomes in combat crits, adding in environmental and situational dependent elements, while keeping HARP's simplicity. HARP was designed to be flexible like this, and it did not take me much tweaking to craft critical results that excite me to play this game.

Let Rolemaster be the wargame-like, X versus Y, medieval simulation game.

Let HARP flow with the story, and leave much of the interpretive work to you.

ERA for Rolemaster

The ERA character creation system for Rolemaster works. It is a strange system, a batch file that pops up a webpage where you can create your characters, but I give them credit for making this cross-compatible and even including a Linux launcher. I tested the Linux version, and it works.

With Windows dying on the vine, seeing more indie devs embrace Linux and character-creation tools that run natively on it is encouraging. Not a day goes by that Windows isn't trying to steal and hide my files from me, and it sucks. I hate this new world, and I can see Microsoft banning local file storage one day.

There will be a day when I walk away from Windows, and that day is coming.

You can't "go back" once your character sheet is finalized, and you get a template sheet that you can "level up" and allocate skill levels. This is how Rolemaster works: you do a lot of work in character generation, "setting up a sheet" where the costs of different choices will be predetermined, and when you level, you will be spending CP to fill out those choices as you gain them.

Unlike GURPS, where the cost for skills in different categories is the same for everyone, in Rolemaster, your class and culture determine the costs you pay for different skills. You can go outside your build, but it will just cost you more points, so your fighter can learn magic. In that sense, Rolemaster is very similar to GURPS, but character creation sets up the cost for every skill in the game based on choices made. GURPS assumes every character is a blank sheet of paper, and a medieval fighter can go on to be an astrophysicist - you just have to spend the points. 

In Rolemaster, the cost for those science skills will be prohibitively high, and that fighter will struggle since that is not "who they started as in life," but they can do it, just not as easily as someone trained from a young age to do that task. The "class system" in Rolemaster defines what is easier for you in terms of future progress, but it does not completely control it.

GURPS is more in line with modern educational thinking, where anyone can retrain for anything at any age, whereas Rolemaster emphasizes the importance of early childhood education. In my opinion, your early schooling will determine much of your life, and it only gets harder the later you go in life when you try to retrain and do something new. Rolemaster understands the basic human condition and uses class and background to model a character's "early years" quite effectively.

This is why we can't shortchange education, nor allow it to be used as a trust fund for the greedy among us to raid and live off of. If you are not creating doctors and engineers at an early age, decades down the line, everyone will suffer, including those who stole from the system for short-term gains. You steal from education today, and there goes that doctor you will need 20 years from now.

Philosophically, I am more in line with Rolemaster's view of education, the traditional method of younger minds learn easier, and setting up those neurological pathways where a young mind can be trained to think in ways that make their career and later progress in their life in the areas their minds have been well-experienced in.

Rolemaster models early education as the character's "class choices," and those are the areas you are deciding: "I want to be great at these things later." The "Role" in Rolemaster is not for role-playing; it is more for the characters' "Role" in the world and life. The "Role" you set yourself up in for the story, and the "Role" you will take in a life on the stage built by your choices.

The ERA software does a good job building your character sheet and then letting you level up your character. You can create printable sheets with this software, and that helps a lot. Rolemaster is a d100 game with many skills, but it's simple to play; creating characters is a major hurdle.

The ERA software also serves as a "training tool" for character design, walking you through the steps and explaining what happens next. It helped me get a handle on the character creation method much more easily than reading the books.

Click on a spell list, and it tells you the known spells in that list. The HTML files it creates are nice for a basic reference sheet, but the "view character sheet" function feels more complete and useful during play. I like the spell lists in the character sheet view for my casters. Like GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, Rolemaster's spell lists start off in the "magical tricks" realm, and they gradually move into the more fearsome magics. GURPS does this through prerequisites, while Rolemaster does leveled spell lists.

They have modules for RMU, RM Classic, RM FRP, and Spacemaster Privateers. Some of the games are better supported with the books than others, and each book is a separate purchase.

This is a must-have for Rolemaster players, and it walks you through character creation slowly and lets you understand each step along the way. There is even a helpful system that explains what is happening on each screen. A strong recommend for Rolemaster players, and it gives you that confidence in character creation to start imagining characters in the game, and in your worlds.

Off the Shelf: Adventures Dark & Deep

While Castles & Crusades is the fantasy game for me, nothing can touch the king, which would be the heavily modified and improved 1E clone, Adventures Dark & Deep. This is the premium edition of 1E, starting off as a "what if" game: "What if Gary Gygax had never been forced out of TSR, and 2nd Edition was a logical continuation of AD&D 1E?" Joseph Bloch did his best to answer that question, and a revised edition later emerged, becoming its own game while retaining those strong theoretical roots. Nevermind Castles & Crusades was the last game Gary Gygax was associated with, so the two games share that bond.

And nothing touches this game.

Do you want to play the best version of 1E, with all the fiddly 1E bits, like weapon speed and attack tables? This is your game. I like descending AC and the tables! There is a cryptic, runic, old-school feeling about writing your attack matrix down and cross-referencing it during play. This was the way we did it; this is the way you should be doing it. I don't care about "the same math" or "streamlining," and sometimes those take away from the experience.

What is your chance to hit AC 6?

14.

Ooooh!

There is a magic and feeling of mystery here that, once you know the math behind it, something is lost. If your "attack modifier" is +3, and the referee gives you a further +1, it is now +4, so what? If the AC is 18, you still need to roll a 14 or higher, but the magic feels somehow diminished.

With that 14, if the referee ever gives you a positive modifier for an attack, it feels more special. Even if the math is the same, a bulk "plus to attack" feels less special than "looking it up on a table" and "getting a further bonus." Why are we ruining the magic of the dice by factoring everything down to the lowest common denominator?

It sounds silly and stupid, but there is something to this. Back when we were kids, we didn't factor this in. We trusted the "kind wizard Gygax" and his "magic dice rocks." We trusted the methods by which his game could unlock worlds of adventure. Get the math majors and mobile game producers out of the hobby, and get the superstition and mysticism back into it.

And the monster book is amazing, the best-of-the-best 1E foes and creatures, all laid out in exacting detail and glory. Since this is a 1E game, you have complete OSRIC, Swords & Wizardry, and many other bestiaries to choose from. There are almost too many monsters to count in 1E books, and that is a wonderful thing. You get the best monsters here, and many you will recognize immediately from any edition of the game.

If I am supporting one edition of the game going forward, with the best books you can buy, this is the version to get. Sure, C&C and OSE are easier and more streamlined, but if I am playing 1E, I want all the fiddly bits and strange table references. I want weapon speed to matter. I want the RoF and all the modifiers in the weapon charts. I want the ability score modifiers, the level limits, and all the strange race-and-class combinations allowed.

Is it fair to allow a drow to be a paladin? Yes. Is it allowed? No, there isn't that hierarchy or tradition in the drow culture. Could they? Sure, as a special case, but that should be left for the referee to decide and the player to ask for.

Why are game designers making the "special case" the "every case"? Again, here we go with streamlining, optimization, changes to fairness, and the blandification of the game's "inbuilt" culture and assumptions: "everyone can be everything and all math is optimized." You are taking what should be the game's strangeness and mystery and allowing "all to be all," and now nothing really matters. Gnome barbarians? Orc bards? Dwarf wizards? Lawful good assassins? Any race and class combo to any level? Sure, why not? The absurd becomes the everyday.

The designers just took away all my "special player requests" and "allowed everything."

Gee, thanks.

I used to be able to do favors for players with really great ideas, but the designers took all that away to please imaginary people. In short, this is the number one problem in gaming right now. Trying to please everyone, yet pleasing nobody.

We also have a quick-start set of rules that covers about 70% of the game. Lite is an amazing value and worth having as a one-book reference guide to all the best options and lower-level powers, spells, and monsters in the game. You can start a campaign with this and run it through until the end, and never know you were playing with the lite rules until a few special cases come up, if they ever do.

The Lite rules are a near-complete game focusing on the lower levels (and the iconic choices), most of which many groups will never venture past. The only major missing piece is the optional skill system, which is easily ported in from the main book and not really needed for most play.

And the books go on and on with this game, not needing many, but each one is a winner. We have a Cthulhu mythos book, an expansion (Book of Fell Wisdom) on the way, an answer to Oriental Adventures, and a few more that are all amazing. These are all fully compatible with OSRIC and AD&D 1E (and 2E), so you get the best game ever created, with more.

If I want a rules-light AD&D-style game with modern improvements, I will play Castles & Crusades. If I want the best version of 1E ever imagined, Adventures Dark and Deep is a behemoth. For realistic fantasy gaming, Rolemaster is still my go-to game, but if the 1E "stuff" is what I want, then ADAD is the game to play.

If you are a mega-fan of 1E, this is the mega-game for 1E.

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 of storage, and 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.