Mail Room: HARP Hardcovers

 

My set of hardcovers for HARP came yesterday and I am looking forward to diving into this one. I can see the market for this game, those who like Rolemaster's detail, but those of us who don't have the time for its endless complexity and multiple layers of detail.

I feel the critical tables in Martial Law go a long way to restoring some of the detail loss when moving from Rolemaster to HARP, and there seems to be a lot of fans of the magic system here over Rolemaster as well, so I need to check that out.

The books normal quality, not professionally bound but they seem sturdy enough and the paper quality is a bit on the thin side for my taste. I would like a heavier stock, and maybe some of the nicer bindings are spoiling me. They are hardcovers as well, which is a huge plus since it saves me clear Contact paper to cover them. I have softcover books covered in clear Contact paper that have lasted 40 years, so if you want to keep your soft-covers nice, look into this and learn how to cover them nicely.

The Books

I have the base rules, plus the four expansion books: Folkways, College of Magics, Loot, and Martial Law. Martial Law seems the most important, followed by the magic book. Folkways seems more relevant for campaign support, which loot feels the least needed out of the three, and both of these last two books feel optional to me.

The main rule book is, of course, everything you need to play, but without those expanded crit charts I feel combat could get slightly repetitive unless GM leeway is used to avoid duplicate crit results. Then again, GM leeway could be needed even with the expanded charts if the same result happens twice in the same fight. I would modify a result like that, either bump it up or down one, or make up a similar result.

Monsters?

And if I have a request...a cleaned up Monsters book is sorely needed! If some work can be done with the layout of that one, or even an entirely new one created off the existing Rolemaster monster guides, that would go a long way to making this game complete. Either that or I will start creating a conversion system from Rolemaster to HARP for monsters and do this myself. And it would be great if some of the OGR standard monsters could be added to the mix, just to show people this game can do dungeoning well too.

I can play a monster-light game where the focus is just on kingdoms, factions, and people - but a big draw of the fantasy RPG genre is the fantastical beasts and diabolical villains. I don't like it when Rolemaster Classic feels like the more complete game, and I want this game to be able to stand on its own merits and be fully supported.

GM Book?

While I am at it, I would like to see a version of the Gamemaster Law book for HARP. I know, the RMFRP version of this book is pretty generic, but until we have a POD version for this, both, or the Rolemaster series games in general I feel this needs to be said.

Rolemaster Light

Overall? I am happy with these. If I end up putting Rolemaster Classic aside I will always have this system to fill that niche and give me those play experiences. At the end of the day, having played and experiencing the game is more important than the complexity level of the rules you learn. Yes, I am still going for learning and playing Rolemaster Classic, but having this as an option will keep me busy until then.

SpaceMaster 2nd Edition

 

Spacemaster was my introduction to Rolemaster - I did not play Rolemaster at all and picked up Spacemaster 2nd Edition first. My book was the 1992 large floppy all-in-one version, which I still have in a box around here. The book itself is covered in clear plastic Contact paper, like some textbook, but that has kept the book in neat perfect shape for nearly 30 years - and that is saying something for a soft-cover floppy book.

I recently got the PDFs as I sort through dozens of boxes of rulebooks looking for my copy, and I still love this game. But why?

Many Better Choices Today

GURPS Space is cool and it does a lot. Cepheus Engine is another great sci-fi game, and it is OGL as well so it shall live forever. You can even find copies of Space Opera and Star Frontiers out there, and those are classics. Traveller too, in all its interpretations. Star Wars - for our group - shined with the old d6 System books. And many generic games do sci-fi just as well, from FATE to Savage Worlds to many, many others. HARP even has a HARP-SF book as a sci-fi role playing option while keeping you in the Rolemaster style rules continuity.

So why Space Master?

Specifically, the 2nd Edition of the game and not the later "SpaceMaster Privateer" version? For starters, the Privateer version was based off of RMFRP, so I get this feeling the skill bloat that makes me cautious of that game will get weighed down in those two-form skill sheets for 300+ skills. SpaceMaster 2nd already has a lot of skills, and if at all possible I want to keep them simple.

SpaceMaster 2nd also is closest mechanically to RoleMaster Classic, so all my experience with one will mirror itself nicely with the other. The two are compatible, so I can re-use my RMC monster books and put latex masks and some foam-rubber carapace on them should I need some creepy-crawly monsters for planets and asteroid caves with minimal conversion effort.

If I am currently interested in Rolemaster Classic, SpaceMaster 2nd Edition seems like a nice fit.

But the Other Games?

SpaceMaster to our group has always been sort of "the messed up version of Star Trek." Back when Trek was still idealistic and innocent of the modern tendency to smear the smelly brown goo of 2020 relevance all over our fiction and entertainment, SpaceMaster was the messy, corrupt, violent, dark, and twisted version of the Federation and the better society that failed and never was.

Corrupt politicians had private armies, ran prison ships, and started wars just because they wanted to profit or take out petty revenge on planetary dictators. Criminal syndicates ran wild and black markets for illegal goods were everywhere. If you were a star miner, you didn't file a claim, you just flew somewhere, setup shop, and mined whatever you found and prayed no one would jump you on the way back. If there were others mining the area, join in or blow them all up, your choice, there are no rules of conduct in this galaxy.

The way we ran it, it was really a mix of the worst of the cocaine-wars, Iran-Contra style deals, drug and gun running, wars as politics, media as gatekeeper, evil mega-corporation, and corruption filled 1980's and 1990's version of Star Trek as we could dream up. It was fun and the campaign lasted a long time.

The Crits were a Part of It

The number of violent and clinically specific ways you could die were a huge part of this game. You could be a corporate executive selling drugs on the side to your mining colonies, encounter a bunch of space thugs, and get blown to smithereens by laser fire in spectacular fashion. In a way the original Robocop movie influenced a lot of the gunplay and action, brutally specific and violent like a horror movie - but since many of the characters were horrible people there was a puritanical sense of just desserts to everyone's fate in this game.

Horrible space people died in horrible ways trying to do horrible things to each other.

The game was played PvP with factions, and when one got wiped out, we would create another and have the players who needed new characters work together there to attack the survivors of the first round. That would continue with backstabbing and all sorts of plots and intertwined fates, with the PvP aspects of how bad you could foil the others and mess with their plots taking center stage.

Some groups went off on their own for sections, to do mining or specific missions, but everyone was tied into an area of space that seemed like Miami during the cartel drug wars of the 1980's, so characters got stepped on and pulled into plots with alarming frequency. Often players found reasons just out of spite, but it was all in good fun and it gave players a reason to PvP so we loved it.

But again, the mechanics of the game supported our game world, and the brutal nature of the game helped create the world and conflicts. We could not get that with a d6 System Star Wars or GURPS version that easily, so SpaceMaster provided a great fit of brutal realism while serving as the sandbox for violent space mayhem.

More soon on this, and it is fun to read these again and reminisce.

RM FRP and Skill Complexity

So out of curiosity, I picked up the Rolemaster: Fantasy Role Playing (RMFRP) base book's PDF (offer a POD please!!!). Mainly because it is hot here and digging through boxes to find my hard copy would take me at least 2 days of work.

Yeah, remember me saying a week ago, "...a year from now when I am playing RMFRP and changed my mind?"

Wow. I had forgotten how incredibly well laid out and summarized this game was. It makes Rolemaster Classic look like a confused pile of cords behind an entertainment center. This game? This game is like having a professional come in and do masterful cable management with colored zip ties and an artful placement of the cable bundles for maximum aesthetics. Check out just a part of the one-page summary of character creation on page 11:

The entire character creation process is boiled down into a one-page summary, with NOTES, table numbers, and PAGE NUMBERS. I dare say this game is better organized than HARP (way more complicated though). It is better organized and cross referenced than possibly even some versions of D&D and Pathfinder I have played. Anywhere I flip in this book, there is a easily found summary of the procedure I am looking for, and often with a short example. Take melee attacks on pages 216-217:

Part 1, a summary, and note all of the page and table numbers throughout:

Followed by 2 pages of rules for all the options, and ending with these two summary sections, defensive:

And offensive, again, if you need a table reference it is right here with a page number:

I have everything I need right here. I don't really need to write articles deciphering how to play this game. Now, RMFRP's skill bloat in legendary, there are so many tables it makes my tax forms look simple, and the character sheet is 4 pages long...but this game is so darn well organized it may just be easier to find things and play than Rolemaster Classic. There is a lot more bloat, but the game looks like it was rebuilt from the ground up by people who knew the system incredibly well and had a goal of making the experience clear and straightforward to follow.

RMFRP vs. HARP

Compared to this, HARP feels like an introductory game with some of the complexity we missed from  the earlier editions later patched in via add-on books. HARP is faster to create characters and play, and there are way less tables to manage and reference.

The needing to bolt-on expansion books in HARP to replace lost complexity bugs me. The crit charts from HARP's martial book are now a must-have. I am probably missing several other pieces in the other books I have that I did not read yet.

But is HARP too simplified? I admit, when I look for a Rolemaster style game I am coming in desiring the complexity of the classics. One must ask themselves the question, does the complexity do anything for me? It is like having a CRPG where you can adjust all sorts of builds, numbers, tweaks, and factors about your characters and party and you feel great about your well-oiled killing machine - and you later realize you miss a simpler game where the action and story was the highlight of the experience.

I look at these games and I wonder if there isn't some secret set of requirements I am expecting and a second set of what I really wanted that I really care about in a game like this. This is one of those things where I am going to have to read a lot more and ask myself some deeper questions about what is important to me in a solo fantasy RPG. I am going to need to make a list of my expectations and requirements for a game like this to make a final choice.

One of the questions will be, does the complexity add to the experience or take away from it? And...what do I expect?

RMFRP vs. Rolemaster Classic

This is where it gets tricky. RMFRP is dozens of levels better organized than Rolemaster Classic. It is like a word processing Gandalf came down from his tower, banged his staff on the ground, and cross referenced all of the kingdom's spell books with page numbers, table numbers, and summaries of how things work. RMFRP is so well organized it cleared up some things I have been wondering about in Rolemaster Classic.

But the bloat in skills and characters makes me hesitate. I like the more focused feeling of Rolemaster Classic, the sort of stripped down dungeon adventure focus of that game compared to "the god RPG of life itself" that is RMFRP.

The problem is, even with all the character design bloat in RMFRP, Rolemaster Classic feels like a game that is more difficult to play and learn - just due to organization and all the little gotchas I have been running into when looking for what X or Y means. Until...

The Big Downside of RMFRP

Is the skill system. I feel it is way too complex. In fact, this may be the thing which makes me play Rolemaster Classic instead of RMFRP. Reading more into this, when you create a character, you need to fill out TWO sheets for skills, a category record sheet to create a category skill bonus (note the +43 in Weapon 1H Edged):

...and a skill record sheet (see how the +43 for 1H Edged slots into this sheet for the Broadsword skill):

There are some very strange issues with a skill level contributing its level TWICE to a final skill total, one value for the category (first sheet) and a second number for the rank bonus (second sheet with the specific skills). For example, this character's Weapon 1H Edged skill of "6" contributes a +12 to the rank bonus on the first sheet, while contributing a +18 when it is used for Broadsword on the second sheet - and that +12 (now inside the +43 bonus) and +18 are eventually added together in the final +76 total, and it comes from this chart:

Note the two columns for standard bonuses, and the other special skill types denoted by the asterisk, cross, and double-cross symbols - those are used for the first skill category record sheet to determine category bonuses (along with the first gray column for standards).

Somewhere in my mind, the words "communicative property of mathematics" comes from the past from the words of a long-lost math professor of mine. Please make this one chart, one column, on one sheet, and make this a normal +30 for skill rank 6 like it is in RMC and HARP. Why split the number and add it twice, and create an entirely new chart with two columns for essentially the same modifier, split in two?

Rolemaster Classic Skills

It is at this point I run screaming back to Rolemaster Classic's skill system and suffer the insanity point loss for even trying to understand this. Rolemaster Classic has a simple, skill level X is percentage Y chart like so (and notice what skill rank 6 is):

...and a character sheet where you take that number and add it to your ability score mod like that:

My Perception skill is rank 2, that is a +10% skill rank bonus! My stat bonus for the perception skill is the average of my intuition (+10) and reasoning (+0) ability modifiers, or a ...+5%! That makes my bonus for using this skill a ...+15%! We are done. The math is simple.

This system feels a lot more straightforward, it is easier to level-up with, and you are not filling out two sheets and referencing multiple charts just to determine a character's bonus for a skill roll. I can see why they did the RMFRP system, when you have all sorts of selections from training, classes, and special bonuses applying to a skills "base category bonus" it can get confusing (first sheet). Then after that, characters can have item and other special bonuses that apply on top of that (second sheet).

But with over 300 skills...the system feels like a huge lead weight of percentage charts and complexity for every character I create. It makes me miss HARP. RMC is simple by comparison.

Worse yet, RMFRP feels like I need a computer program to manage my character designs (and to have any hope of doing the math correctly), and in these days of continuously losing access to these with every new rules addition or operating system incompatibilities - needing a computer program to create characters is one area I feel is a non-starter for me these days. If I don't understand character creation, how can I understand builds and the rules which these work with?

Also, note that for a level one character in RMC you are dealing with skill bonuses in the 10-30% range for a level 1 character, which feels like a low and manageable range. In RMFRP, the example skill sheet above for Varak, his broadsword skill for a level one character is +76%. That is a huge difference in the numbers you are adding and dealing with, and I find myself preferring the lower numbers in RMC and HARP than the up to +100% percentages built off of two sheets in RMFRP.

A RMC Organized like RMFRP?

What I would love is a Rolemaster Classic organized like RMFRP, but with the simplicity of RMC preserved. I am getting the feeling I am sticking with RMC for the time being, and using RMFRP for reference (and noting the huge differences). There are also some great ideas in RMFRP like training packages I would like to see in RMC, but more on those later.

I do love RMFRP's organization. It is FAQ-like, looks like the old Squad Leader game's rulebooks, and everything is presented cleanly and in one place. Nothing beats this style of organization, given the game's complexity. This was an odd article today, loving the game at first glance and then the "oh yeah..." kicked in and I felt happier with something a little more simple. There is a sweet spot with complexity I feel and RMC hits it more on target than RMFRP, even with RMC's obscurity at times.

For now, it is fun to have the version of Rolemaster I started with (RMFRP), and be able to compare it with the version I have yet to play and discover (HARP and RMC). More soon!