Looking back at the early years of my role-playing and general gaming, there were a number of games that I wanted to play and never got a chance to. Amongst those games were such titles as Rolemaster, RuneQuest, Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Car Wars and BattleTech.

At this stage of my life, I have found myself able to dabble in a few of these older systems – and more than dabble in some cases. My friends understand just how much I’ve been enjoying BattleTech, and I’ve been slowly putting together a pretty good collection of maps, miniatures and sourcebooks for the game – both print and pdf versions of the books. However, BattleTech is pretty much the exception – most of these games I won’t really play that much.

The recent travelling of Nathaniel to Thailand (Canada) has given me the chance to run some Call of Cthulhu while he’s away. Not because he wouldn’t want to play it (I’m pretty sure he would), but because the D&D 4E campaigns I’ve been running have been on-hold as a result. I don’t believe that I want to run Call of Cthulhu for a full year, but a few sessions here and there? Definitely. It’s a nice break from the familiar surrounds of D&D.

(Josh has also taken advantage of Nathaniel’s trip to run some D&D 4E Dark Sun and, based on his first session, he’s going to do an awesome job).

After my horrible experiences with the Serenity RPG system (Cortex) during the early part of the year – the campaign was great, but the system was dreadful and mostly ignored – I’ll be breaking out Mongoose Traveller as the main system when the game resumes. Exactly how well it will run is a mystery to me at this stage, but I understand and like the resolution system a lot better. So, we’ll see how that goes.

As for Car Wars… hmm. The trouble Car Wars has is that it occupies the same space as BattleTech does in my game experiences, and that it isn’t currently supported. (Catalyst Game Labs seem to be dragging themselves out of the hole they dug for themselves). Then too, it was very much a game of its time, and I don’t think it ever really managed to progress much. I know Martin likes Car Wars greatly, and so I may get to play it again sometime, but it’s a game where it helps if you have a core of people who know the rules and enjoy playing it. I’ve managed to gather (or create) such a group for BattleTech, but the effort spent doing that has been rather exhausting: well worth it, but I don’t think I could expend it again for a lesser game, which is what Car Wars is to me at this point.

I actually own an edition of RuneQuest, that being the third edition in its Deluxe format. That edition has never worked for me. My introduction to RuneQuest came through a very short campaign run at school using the RuneQuest II edition (as opposed to the current RQ2 from Mongoose). I really enjoyed that game, and if I ever could get my hands on a RQII book, I might consider running it, but that seems quite unlikely at this stage… how rare is that old book? I don’t know, but it can’t be that common!

So, finally, Rolemaster. This is a game I’ve owned (in its first incarnation!) and never really played. A very, very little of its offspring, Middle-Earth Role Playing (MERP), but certainly no real game or campaign using the full system. Rolemaster is a system that attempted much, and in a highly idiosyncratic style. Character generation used a hybrid of a class system and a point system, allowing a lot of flexibility in design whilst retaining the framework of classes (which I find very useful for keeping characters identifiable and somewhat balanced).

It was the resolution system that really made Rolemaster stand out. Roll d%, add bonuses and subtract penalties, and look up the result on a table. Most hits would do concussion hits plus the dreaded CRITICALS… of which the descriptions were often very amusing.

A few years ago, ICE (at least the current incarnation of the company, which probably doesn’t have that much to do with the original Iron Crown Enterprises), released a slimmed down version of the classic game entitled Rolemaster Express. (Hooray! At last we come to the title I gave this thread). I’ve picked up a PDF copy of this edition, and – yes – it’s definitely a basic version of Rolemaster. Four races, four classes, and a very slimmed down combat system: the tables are by category of weapon (1H concussion, 1H edged, etc.) rather than by individual type (longsword, shortsword, mace). There are critical tables, and a small selection of spell tables – 15 Channelling and 15 Essence tables.

The great weakness of the system can be seen in those spell tables. If I were to play a 1st level mage in D&D – any edition – I would expect that I’d have at least one spell that I could cast to have a significant effect during combat. It might only be a solitary sleep spell in AD&D 1st edition, but it would decide the combat. In 4E, my spells might not be as powerful, but at least I can use them all the time. In Rolemaster Express, there is no first level attack spell for magicians. The mind boggles.

Instead, the first level magician can boil water, or – as possibly their most dramatic spell – shrink to half their weight and (possibly) height.

Truly, such design really says, “Play a magician!” Or it doesn’t.

The particularly interesting thing about Rolemaster Express is how you can buy extremely cheap PDF supplements to the game that add in more and more of the full game’s rules. Or you could just crack and buy the actual game books (though, admittedly, Express Additions do add new things not found in the regular rulebooks).

However, given that Rolemaster occupies the same piece of gaming real-estate that D&D does, it seems very unlikely that I’ll be running a Rolemaster campaign in the near future.

Mind you, there’s nothing stopping me from running a single session in the near future… or perhaps two or three. There’s an example adventure in the Rolemaster Express PDF, so I may bring it out on some Friday evening soon… although I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if no-one plays a magician.