ROMERP
All right, the situation is this: I have started a major work with a friend of
mine to renew the whole concept of role playing. The working title of this new
project (game to be) is NGRG (Next Generation
Role-playing Game). NGRG is so much more complicated
(realistic/entertaining/challenging/fun) that it requires a computer program
in its aid. However, as this program makes life much easier for the game
master, the game can be played without all those nagging restrainers that
sometimes make the game a bit boring.
Before the NGRG project I had already modified the original MERP and
Rolemaster into something quite different. The results of my previous work can
be found here with some things (eternally?) under construction.
Thank you for visiting these pages. Remember that if you have anything to ask
me about anything in here, I am just an email away.
Introduction
Far back in the golden days of our youth, while still in the Senior
Secondary School, we bought a new role playing game "MERP" or
Middle-earth Role Playing by Iron
Crown Enterprises, Inc. (ICE). Most of us were
J. R. R. Tolkien
fans and some of us had been playing simple games such as Dungeons &
Dragons. When a role playing game situated in Tolkien's world came
available we just had to get it. We bought it and played it... we
played a lot of it. I was chosen to be the gamemaster (GM) or god or
Eru as we called this position.
We played MERP for a couple of years and then I had to leave my friends as
I went to Texas as an exchange student. By then I had already made a
more functional character sheet than the one in the MERP rule
book. When I came back I returned to my omnipotent role but only for a
short while as we were soon dispersed around the country to do our
military service and to begin our university studies.
Years later we noticed that many of us had ended up being in
Turku and therefore
decided to return to Middle-earth. In the mean while some of us had
played Rolemaster by ICE and some other games as well. And being university
students we were more demanding than before. Some changes to the actual
rules were made by others and I completely recreated the whole game engine. I
also made more improvements to various sheets the players had and a friend
of mine made an MS Excel workbook to aid the GM in his colossal task
of running a world. The workbook has now been revised and there are
about twenty different sheets the GM has to keep players and the whole world
in order. More renovations are constantly on the way.
The New Game Engine
I inherited two important features of the new game engine (game engine
being the rules if you didn't guess that already) from a friend who
used the more complex rules of Rolemaster strictly in the environment of
MERP and added another series of stats. The new stats were soul stats that
controlled the development of skills.
My first objective in changing the MERP was to make it more realistic
and the second was to make it easier to play for the players and
easier to lead for the GM. I am satisfied with the outcome what comes
to the first objective. However, the game is far from being easier -
it is different, but not easier. As I reduced the time and effort
needed to do one task I added new features so that the overall time
consumption remained the same. Well, you can't get everything -
especially if you are a perfectionist.
All right, here are some improvements I made to the game
engine. Starting from character creation, as I got bored with running
a game for a bunch of first level adventurers who were slain by a single
demented orc, I made a system of creating a background and
professional career for the character. See a separate abridged page
for Character creation. Note that there
are NO PROFESSIONS in the new system. Everyone is a sum of their
skills (just as in real life). As I got rid of professions I started
to question the meaning of levels and changed the system a little
bit. The LEVELS still REMAIN but instead of the tedious task of
collecting experience points and using them to raise one's level (a
totally non-realistic idea) the new system starts from getting
experience as one does something with a skill and thus raising the
skill level AND when the total sum of one's skill levels reaches
certain numbers the character's level rises.
Magic being as incomprehensible for most ordinary earthlings as it is,
I added an eleventh stat "Magic" that affects magical skills - sometimes
together with other stats. Using magic is somewhat different from
standard MERP or Rolemaster. I abolished the untouchable division
between realms so that everyone still has a realm of their own but is,
nevertheless, able to learn spells from other realms as well. It is
just a bit harder. Casting spells is not just as complicated either as
it was before.
Battles are another thing that obviously needed revisioning. As you
can easily waste two hours of real time on playing a two-minute
battle I tried to make the process faster. First I just changed the
attack tables into easy-to-use graphs but soon noticed the advances in
making the computer to do the work for me. I created a whole new
computerized (or Excelized to be accurate) battle system that is based
on determining the actual striked area (on opponent's body OR
elsewhere) relative to the targeted area and the strength of the
strike. This requires two rolls to be made in the beginning, both of
them determine the clockwise angle of the strike relative to upward
direction from targeted area. The first roll determines the distance
from targeted area into the direction determined by the abovementioned
angle. The second roll determines the strength of the strike. With
this system you are able to hit other opponents (or friends) if you
miss the actual target or you may miss the target but strike so hard
that your weapon gets 20 centimetres (sorry, Americans) stuck into a
wooden beam above the opponents head (just imagine how awkward the
situation is when you are almost hanging by your battleaxe in front of
an enormous uruk-hai with evil smile rising to its lips as it realizes
that it has the next move...).
The rules of combat are changing but I can already comment that the
above-mentioned uruk-hai does not have the 'next move' any more. Operations
during a round are simultaneous from now on.
The Character and Other Sheets
The original character sheet in MERP is supposed to contain all there
is to know about the character. In addition there are sheets to mark
down experience and lost hits etc. Well, with general experience gone
and new features introduced it is clear that the old sheets have to be
replaced. The main character sheet includes the general information
of who the person is and what he looks like. There are both body and
soul stats and their normalizations. There is a part for the
character's defences, money on person, and extra abilities and
disabilities. About half of the sheet is reserved for the most
important skills. See an example of one of my NPC's character sheet:
Erwil Curadhel.
Of course there has to be an additional sheet for more skills as there
are hundreds to choose from and a restless player may end up being in
several lines of education or employment during his character
creation. It is a blank sheet where the player can fill in new skills
as he learns them (I used to have all the skills listed in three
additional sheets but that makes it a bit too confusing when trying to
locate the skill a player is about to use). See an example of Erwil's
extra skill sheet.
Then there are the sheets for keeping track of one's possessions. As
it is important to know exactly where an item is and when a person,
his horse, or an transport item can not carry any more, I made the
sheets to visualize the location of every item with the weight of item
listed as well. Here is an example of Erwil's items on person, her backbag, and her horse.
The MS Excel Workbook
A Canadian astronomer I used to work with once said that Excel is just
about the best computer program there is. After I learned how to use
it I must agree that it is the most useful program I have ever
seen. Not to mention all the other immensely useful workbooks and work
sheets I have constructed with it I concentrate on telling about the
one that revolutionized gamemastering in ROMERP.
First of all every character is included as a work sheet in my
workbook. Excel calculates the normalizations of stats, inserts the
correct race bonuses (according to the name of a race in the race
cell), and calculates the sum of the two to produce the stat
total. Then Excel uses these totals to calculate the average Body and
Soul Totals for skills (average of the specific stats that affect each
skill). These values are then used together with user-inserted values for
Skill Level, Item [bonus], and Special [bonus] to get the Total skill
value to be used in the game (cf. Erwil's
skills). Excel Character Sheets also calculate the characters'
levels (based on the sum of all skill levels), hits (based on
Constitution Body and Soul Totals and Body Development skill),
Development Points, Basic Defensive Bonus, DB with armour
and with shield, and various other values that Excel needs but the
player doesn't as a rule.
Game Master's main sheet displays the
most important of characters' numerical values at all times and any
skill total required. ...
Addenda
Lists of items to purchase
All 404 skills
Created by Rami T. F. Rekola