Rolemaster

The Game with all the Charts
According to gamer legend, back in 1974 Pete Fenlon was playing a new game with friends at the University of Virginia. I am told that in those days White Box came in a wood-grain box with a white sticker on the front describing the "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures". Maybe taking his cue from the implied setting of the new rules, my understanding is that Mr. Fenlon ran a campaign set in his version of Tolkien's Middle Earth. Like many early gamers, Mr. Fenlon seemed to have a strong background with paper map wargames (he was an officer in the University Simulations Club according to Wikipedia) and having considerable talent as a map maker, he produced some very nice Middle Earth maps that stand up well to this day.
Being a bit younger, I was a mere high school student in 1974, I had no knowledge yet of White Box. I had discovered wargames, however. Having started my hobby with the boxed map wargames of the Avalon Hill Co. and Simulations Publications Incorporated (SPI) a few years earlier. I met several like-minded hobbyists thanks to the efforts of a local hobby shop owner who took pains to connect us (and thereby increase his sales, no doubt) and in addition to paper map wargames, we played historical wargames with miniature figures, WWII micro-armor, Mini-Figs Napoleonics and Panzerschiffe warships. It would not be until after I entered college that I would discover White Box.
Mr. Fenlon, together with some of his gaming friends at the University of Virginia, decided to form a company and publish some of the "house-rules" that had developed from their play sessions. In 1980 Pete Fenlon, S. Coleman Charlton, Kurt Fischer and maybe a few others, formed Iron Crown Enterprises, better known as I.C.E., and published Arms Law, the first of their alternative systems that could conceivably be used with games like White Box. It was at this point that I had my introduction to I.C.E. and Arms Law by a fellow college student and gamer who was from Maryland. He brought the new zip-lock packet of charts back to school with him and we gave it a try. I had some experience using an alternative combat system, Steve Jackson's Microgame Melee published by Metagaming. While Melee had seemed a simplification in many ways, Arms Law seemed rather more complicated than white box as I recall. Looking at the product today I am not sure why as it is fairly straightforward.
I.C.E. continued to release products including those Middle Earth maps that Mr. Fenlon drew which were published starting in 1982 when I.C.E. acquired a license to produce game materials with the Middle Earth label. The company also published Rolemaster that year which was a boxed system combining Arms Law, Claw Law, Spell Law and Character Law. A somewhat simplified version of the Rolemaster system was released with the Middle Earth label and called Middle Earth Role Playing or M.E.R.P. for short.
Having graduated from college, joining the "real world" (reluctantly, I might add) and looking for more "realism" in my role-playing, I recall giving both Rolemaster and M.E.R.P. a go. Of the two I prefer Rolemaster as it is a bit more detailed and complete in my view. Game system choice is a group endeavor if one is part of a regular gaming group and our group eventually settled on RuneQuest as our preferred more "realistic" system. I continued to lobby for White Box and throughout the years the group has agreed I could run my occasional White Box games. Compromise is an important aspect of group dynamics as well.
The Rolemaster system created by Pete Fenlon, S. Coleman Charlton and friends grew to be one of the major rule systems in the hobby, has arguably influenced later systems such as 3rd Edition, and remains relevant as I still draw upon my Rolemaster and M.E.R.P. materials to this day. Rolemaster, like many games, has gone through several editions and is still available in electronic form, although the original I.C.E. fell victim to bankruptcy about the time the Lord of the Rings film franchise took off. I.C.E. published a number of Companions and other supplements for Rolemaster during the peak years and the system acquired a reputation for complexity.
As with many games, my favorite version of Rolemaster is the 1st edition originally released in 1982 (pictured above). There are a number of reasons for this, nostalgia no doubt being one of them. The components, charts and booklets, in the original boxed set are high quality and not yet combined into single volumes as was done in later editions. Arms Law and Claw Law are on several separate charts, all printed on good quality parchment card stock. Spell Law consists of more such charts and three individual parchment spell books, one each for Channeling, Mentalism and Essence. Character Law is a more conventional staple bound book. The 1st edition system itself seems straight-forward and easy to understand. There is a lot of detail, supplying the illusion of "realism" many of us desired in the '80s, but it is mostly a logical and intuitive rules system with (to my knowledge) the first universal maneuver mechanic (a maneuver chart, of course). I have always found Rolemaster in this edition to be quite manageable. The proliferation of skills and subsystems would come later during the era of the Companions. Like many gamers, I bought the newer editions as they came out and in the spirit of White Box, I added what I liked to "my version", but really for me the later editions seem to lack some of the appeal of the original.

World Building, Exploration & Discovery

A Cooperative Game of Imagining
White Box is a game of world building, exploration and discovery. In Vol.1, Men & Magic, under the heading Preparation For The Campaign: Mr. Gygax and Mr. Arneson write that the referee must prepare a number of maps of the levels of the "underworld" and populate them with monsters and treasure. World creation! The dungeon is in reality (can I use that word in this context?) a small self contained world. Vol. 3, The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures explains further how the referee should go about constructing the dungeon and the wilderness or unexplored land, cities and castles.
The dungeon is a unique setting or "world" with very tight constraints. The dungeon tunnels and walls restrict PC movement and therefore make the referee's job easier by placing limits on the exploration area. As the party of adventurers travel through the dungeon they discover the various denizens, traps and mysteries placed there by the referee, hopefully defeating challenges and acquiring treasure as their reward. Wandering monsters (randomly determined from a table prepared by the referee) offer some element of surprise even for the referee. Of course the players will do their best to surprise the referee as well by adopting a course of action completely unanticipated.
Once the game spills out of the dungeon, the real challenge of creating an entire world or setting for exploration begins. How extensive the design work is and whether it is entirely the creation of the referee alone or a shared endeavor, the process of creating the game world can vary greatly depending on referee preference. I have developed a setting I call Dreadmoor, which is the name I use for the city, the setting and the set of ideas I have regarding my preferred milieu. Dreadmoor is a concept, heavily based on Sword & Sorcery reading and has evolved through decades of play with input from my players. Dreadmoor is never complete and always evolving. Parts of it have started as vague generalities and grown to become quite specific and well defined. Parts have been borrowed from published play aids, while other parts are original fancy or contain bits of borrowed ideas from various sources. Parts where no one has ventured to date remain rumor and speculation. I imagine many game worlds are similarly created.
Vol. 3 of the LBBs suggests "off-hand" adventures of the wilderness type be refereed using the boardgame Outdoor Survival (published by Avalon Hill). For wilderness exploration a map is recommended, whether using Outdoor Survival's map, one borrowed from another publication, or one expressly created for the campaign by the referee. Many referees enjoy making maps, designing imaginary worlds with fantastic cultures, pantheons, and so forth. According to gamer legend, Mr. Gygax is supposed to have originally thought every referee would want to design their personal world themselves and was therefore somewhat surprised when folks like Judges Guild were able to sell ready-made cities and world maps. Obviously the market exists and today the referee can choose from a multitude of well designed, ready made published worlds all packaged for easy use.
The LBBs assume that at some point the players will want to leave a more permanent mark on the imaginary game world by building their own castle, temple or stronghold. At that point, if not before, the job of world building becomes a shared endeavor as players work with the referee to accomplish this task. Land upon which to build must be secured, which can involve adventure, expenditure of accumulated wealth, homage to a liege or a combination of those achievements. Vol. 3 gives construction costs and rules for staffing the PC's new "home". With roots in wargaming there is an emphasis on raising troops and entering the local political arena as a military power.
At its core this hobby is one for people with active minds. Imagination is a necessity for both the referee and player parts of the game. The sharing of what is imagined makes the game much richer and more enjoyable than daydreaming alone. Discovering an imaginary world together can be great fun. At the end of Vol. 3, under the heading Afterword:, the authors write, "...decide how you would like it to be, and then make it just that way!"

Home Base

Gateway to Adventure
Down to a handful of hit points remaining, most of the memorized spells having been cast, low on food, torches and other expendable equipment, the party decides to quit the dungeon for now and head back to town for some well needed rest and resupply. Exiting the dark dungeon, eyes adjusting to the bright light as lungs draw in the clean air, the party breathes a collective sigh of relief and heads off towards home base.
Home base, or where the party of PCs spends time when not adventuring, may start off as nothing more than a roadside inn where they meet a mysterious stranger who sells them a map, or offers to hire them to retrieve a lost item, or rescue someone who disappeared down the tunnels. There may be a few items useful to adventurers for sale, if the party is lucky that is. Eventually a group of PCs will require healing and request more of the referee than is available at a roadside inn and the village or town is born. Here hard won coin can be spent on entertainment and hobbies and maybe even to buy influence with the local magistrates, clergymen, etc. Eventually some PCs may desire to build a stronghold as described in White Box, thus entering the realm of land-holder and local politics.
The fleshed out town or city home base can become the site of even more adventure as the urban setting provides a number of opportunities for PCs, some legal and some rather shady. The thief character class as introduced in Supplement I Greyhawk seems particularly well suited for urban adventure, but there is plenty of mischief available for the other classes in the city as well. NPCs rather than monsters become the major adversaries and opportunities to make alliances and business deals abound. In fact, many PCs may find life in the city to be just as rewarding, and sometimes more dangerous, than delving in dungeons for a living.
Social standing, membership in various organizations and factions all add an additional level of challenge and potential achievement for PCs. White Box only hints at such milieu details, but the enterprising referee can easily find information to inspire their own "house rules" for such. Many systems that follow closely on White Box recognize the natural progression of the campaign into the urban environment and include such rules. Play aids for White Box and other systems include cities and towns among the earliest published offerings. What starts out as a "safe" place to rest up, heal and resupply can quickly become its own source of danger, intrigue and opportunity.
When I was first learning White Box and attending a small liberal arts college in the late '70s I saw an anti-war poster on campus that said something like "Travel to exotic places, meet new people, and kill them." Sure White Box can be a game about killing monsters and taking their stuff, but it can also be so much more than that. Why limit the fun to dungeon crawling? So you are tired, hurt and out-of-supply, "Welcome home, where the adventure is just beginning!"

Backstory

Take Inspiration from Players
I like to insist that players give some thought to character backstory, especially if they reach 2nd level (or the equivalent in non-level systems). By that time the character has been played enough that even though the PC may have been created randomly, with no "concept" in mind, the player has enough experience with the PC to start to get a feel for "who they are". PC death is a very real part of most of the games I referee, so getting attached to a PC or spending too much time on developing an elaborate backstory can be a delicate balancing act. The potential benefits outweigh the risks, however.
One of the main reasons I like to hear about PC backstory from players is that as referee I draw inspiration from the backstories. I like to improvise and build as I go, so anything the players give me that catches my fancy or prompts a thought, I like to jot down and make use of during play. It makes coming up with ideas more of a shared task and I think also makes for a better game where all involved have more ownership. I have occasionally met some resistance from players who prefer everything be thought out ahead of time by the referee and for them I may be a poor referee. Many players respond positively, however, when they discover I am looking to them for ideas we can use to further our collective adventure in role-playing.
Another reason I like to hear about their PC's backstory is that it tells me what the players may want to see and do in game play. It gives me ways to draw them into the story and make it more personal to their characters.  I like to play in games that as a player I have some input and naturally like to referee in a manner that does the same. There are narrative systems and indie games that have system mechanics devoted to backstory and player involvement in shaping world and story, but I have found something very similar can be accomplished with conversation and attention to those aspects during play. Much of what goes on during a role-playing game has little to do with the actual rules.

Horror, Humor & Other Moods

Managing the Game Feel
Feeling in a game can refer to a number of fuzzy concepts. Emotion players experience at the game table is the topic of this post. Fear is an innate emotion, as is humor. Smiling and laughter are outward expressions of one finding something humorous. Outward expressions of fear may vary from becoming wide-eyed and pale, to sweating and shaking. While one frequently observes laughter at the game table, it is less common to observe anyone pale with fear or visibly shaking (thankfully). Some emotions are easily produced in a "safe" setting like the gaming table and others are not.
Part of the goal of the referee is to set a mood during a segment of the game session.  Awe and wonder, surprise, puzzlement, suspense, frustration, indignity and even anger are not too difficult to achieve and may be appropriate emotional states during immersive roleplay. The idea of any good fiction is to suspend disbelief. When we read or watch film, we are aware of being seated in a comfortable, safe environment, even though in our mind we may be far away, being tossed about on the stormy ocean, or dreadfully thirsty in a hot desert. We may be witnessing the tenderness of love or than violence and anger of war. We may chuckle when the deserving fellow takes a pie to the eye, or feel slightly afraid for a well-liked character who is in immediate danger of death. All this is possible within the context of roleplaying as well.
Like an author or director, the referee may desire to "set the mood" for a particular encounter during the game in order for everyone to enjoy it to the fullest. Some of the same tools that are used by authors and directors are also at the referee's command. Choice of vocabulary and pace of action, in other words, the power of words and language to "create" is available to the referee. Like the director, lighting, music, visuals and sound can be somewhat controlled by the referee depending on available resources. Even temperature and odor can be manipulated by an enterprising referee, giving the referee tools that neither the author nor director of film usually has available.
Some emotions are generally thought of as enjoyable or positive such as humor, suspense and wonder. We like to laugh and be introduced to new pleasures. Surprise can accompany fright or wonder and can therefore go either way towards being enjoyable or not. Fear and anger are tricky to manage and often accompany one another. Frustration is only acceptable in a game if it is very mild and short-lived. "Coming back to reality" should bring the players out of any temporary emotional state they experience through their characters. Fortunately this is usually easily done. In fact, generally it is harder to keep interruptions from spoiling a mood at the table.
Humor is an enjoyable emotion and forms a part of many entertainments. It is fairly easy to set-up a humorous situation during a game. Also, humor is often the by-product of friends joking and may occur whether planned or not. It's one of the nice benefits of socializing. Humor and horror are often mixed in film and other media as many people find the tension of horror and relief of humor to compliment each other nicely. In-game fear and horror are somewhat difficult to achieve and easily dismissed by any distraction or break in the mood. It would be inappropriate for a game or any other pass-time to place anyone in any real danger, so the only tool available for the referee is to place some fear for the fate of a fictional character into the player's mind who feels some attachment to said character and is therefore invested in the fiction of the character's predicament.
Managing one's audience, much like any live entertainer, is one of the referee's essential skills. Building suspense, interjecting humor (while avoiding silliness), and affording players a sense of being immersed in a story is both exciting and rewarding work. It is also a skill that develops over time for most of us. Practice seems to be the best way to mastery of these referee skills, but they do transfer across genre and system and even outside roleplaying altogether. A good referee is probably a good teacher and entertainer as well. Someone who can hold an audience's attention and paint a mental picture with words can use this talent in many ways.

Making Modules Your Own

The Art of Distillation
As a referee running White Box, or any other system, I prefer to run my own material, my own adventures. I feel more comfortable with material I have created, because I know what I was going for when I created it. I know how I want to present it to get the proper feel and mood, and I know how it all fits into the milieu. The monsters I like to use are there and any novel creatures are familiar to me because I created them. When the players ask a question that I had not thought through, it is easier for me to improvise because I know the scene well and where it is leading and how it fits into the bigger picture, at least in general terms. I suppose it is the same for every referee.
The ability to handle session material spontaneously and put things into my own words rather than reading to my players seems to enhance their experience as well as mine. When I design a scenario, location, point of interest or encounter it is bare-bones - notes and stat blocks. One of the reasons I like White Box is the short list of monster stats. A longer sequence of events I write down in outline form. Rarely do I write anything out completely, just enough to jog my memory and allow for the at-table action to proceed without reference to the rule books. Sketch maps, outlines, notes and stat blocks, with that material in hand I feel comfortable running anything that's my creation.
I get ideas from many places and often a piece of art will suggest a story to me from which I can create an adventure, at least an encounter. Short stories, novels, comics, movies and TV episodes can be converted into material for any genre by applying a little imagination. I also read a lot of game - specific material (often not ODD) and borrow heavily from the printed works of others. Mining, in other words. Taking "nuggets" from one or more sources, mixing them with ideas of my own and thereby bringing them into my milieu. I seldom referee anything published "as written". There are exceptions. Occasionally I will run across something I think is so awesome, that fits so well with everything else in my game, that I desire to run it basically as written (or I am learning a new system and am using a published module to take it for a test run or have volunteered to run mod at a convention). In those instances, I find reverse engineering is a good model for me to imitate.
By reading and re-reading the module, I first familiarize myself with it, taking notes along the way. Those notes and the general understanding and impressions I have, forms the basis for re-creating the module in my own words. Printed maps and stat blocks for monsters and NPCs can be used "as is" (perhaps with annotations), but descriptions and conversations with NPCs I will paraphrase by referring to my notes rather than reading directly from the printed material. If the margins allow, I may write these notes next to the printed text. Any background material and the plot or intended flow of the module gets condensed into an outline, usually on a separate sheet where I can glance at that to make sure I have not left out anything important.
Reducing most of the module into an outline and notes, using my own words, facilitates the improvisational style of refereeing that I am most comfortable with. My familiarity and comfort with the material and enthusiasm for sharing it with my players, I believe, makes for a more enjoyable game session. Regardless of what an author originally has in mind, the real story in gaming is the one that happens at the table during play. Many are the times that something I conceived as referee has been played out very differently and often to my amusement. Players will frequently take things in unexpected directions and that can be one of the great joys of the hobby. I would hope that should an author ever witness my running of their module they will not be offended by my "making it my own". After-all, I am only using their work because I think it is really good and deserves to be played. The changes I make are not necessarily improvements, but just represent how I like to do things.   

Don't Just Roll Dice

Going Beyond the Dice Roll
Dice are fun. Any gamer will tell you that rolling the dice is an important part of the game. Some gamers feel lucky, some unlucky. The polyhedral shapes have become symbols of the hobby itself, so closely associated with the game have they become. Venders turn the dice shapes into jewelry and make dice from precious stones. We gamers buy special boxes and nice bags in which to store and transport our dice. A favorite die can take on almost "magical" significance and many gamers are somewhat superstitious in regard to dice and dice rolling. An etiquette has formed around dice and their use. Touching another players dice is generally frowned upon. There is little question that dice, whether the traditional shapes shown above, plain six-siders, percentiles or the so called "Zocchi dice", are a big part of the game.
Dice are used to "roll-up" a player's character to be used in the game. White Box and many later editions and systems use 3d6 rolls to create the six attributes which together with hit points (also rolled), class, race, alignment and a name make up the PC. For some, the name given is the only real feature of "personality" the PC may have. White Box gives no instruction on how much or how little the players should flesh out their PCs and so this is left to interpretation. I find it entertaining to speculate on personal features of the PC based on the die scores. Looking at relative scores in strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma can, with a little imagination, form a mental construct of the PCs strengths and weaknesses to guide role-playing the PC as an imaginary someone distinct from the player. Drawing again from imagination or events in actual play, add a few quirks and a backstory and a fully fleshed out fictional "character" can be created.
White Box uses die rolls to determine the outcome of many in-game situations. Combat plays a large part in the mechanics of White Box and both the Chainmail and alternative systems rely on die rolls to determine who is hit and how badly. Rather than simply calling for a die roll and stating "hit" or "miss", the game can greatly benefit from voicing the at-table action in more descriptive terms. "I swing my axe at him." followed by, "He steps aside, avoiding your wild swing." or, "Your axe connects, biting through armor and drawing blood." Let the dice be your guide to improvise a more narrative description of the action and game mechanic becomes story.
Saving throws and any other die rolls the referee calls for can be handled in a similar narrative manner. The dice may provide the numbers, but verisimilitude is greatly enhanced by a verbal description of what the dice roll implies. The art of converting numbers into verbal description on-the-fly is going beyond the rules as written for most games, but I find it adds immensely to the enjoyment. As a result of role-playing games, I tend to take this mental approach into other tabletop games such as board games and my friends and I will frequently entertain ourselves with improvised, detailed descriptions of whatever the dice or cards may suggest during a game, thereby creating "story" amidst play.
Gamers can enjoy the hobby in many different ways and I see that as a great strength of White Box and other systems that they can be played for a variety of effects depending on style of play. If die rolls are what you want, the game can be played just that way. I have found letting the die roll be just the beginning of a mental process involving imagination and improvisational story telling is something I enjoy even more. Why just beat the dragon and take its stuff when you can "Stabbing the dragon in its weak spot, you inflict a mortal wound. The beast writhes in its death throws, showering all with coins and jewels from its hoard. At last it lies still and you gaze upon the mound of treasure, wondering how you can get all this back to town?"

Adventures in Fantasy

By Dave Arneson & Richard Snider
I believe Richard Snider may have been one of Dave Arneson's players in the original Blackmoor fantasy campaign. Mr. Snider went on to author Powers & Perils published by Avalon Hill in 1984. Back in the late '70s Mr. Snider and Mr. Arneson collaborated on Adventures in Fantasy (AF) and I think I see the design connections between Supplement II Blackmoor, AF and Powers & Perils (P&P). Looking at each in the context of the other gives me a greater appreciation for each and the sum is a significant contribution to the hobby.
Supplement II offers up an alternate combat mechanic that uses weapon length, creature height and a  hit location system that includes several tables based on target body type, humanoid, snake, fish, reptile, avian and insectoid. Damage is figured differently depending on body type and the system is quite detailed and potentially deadly as a hit to a vital area can result in instant death even though damage dealt is only a fraction of overall hit points. My friends and I made brief use of this system and I recall it being great fun to "kill" a dragon with a single blow to it's head whereas under the "old" system it would have taken many hits to drain the dragon of hit points. I believe we lost interest in the hit location system when it was also applied to us PCs.
AF came along a few years after and its combat system uses a hit matrix comparing body type of attacker to body type of defender to determine hit percentage and damage varies with body type as well. AF is a percentile based system throughout as a sort of universal mechanic and in that respect is somewhat more "modern" than White Box and its use of a different mechanic for almost every subsystem. Percentile based systems have the advantage of being intuitive and granular and AF takes advantage of both. It is not uncommon for conditions to raise or lower the percentage chance of success in AF by as little as 1%.
Two character classes and a number of social levels differentiate PCs in AF. Players can choose to be a magic user or a warrior and the default character race is human, although there is provision for dwarf, elf, changeling (half-elf left in exchange for a human baby) and troll characters. A roll determines starting social rank and that can change as the PCs advances in levels. Experience is figured differently for warriors and magic users, the latter gaining exp. for casting spells and defeating magic users, encouraging magic confrontations or duels. PC age matters in AF as it factors into the education equation which determines your PC vocational skills and training, which is necessary to make full use of some abilities such as strength. AF uses six abilities which are mostly the familiar ones with the addition of Health and with Stamina replacing constitution. There is a formula for using Charisma to influence others that can be used for leadership or as a social conflict system.
AF includes two types of magic, the "spells" kind familiar to gamers and practiced by human magic users in AF and the magic of Faerry, which includes "songs" and "runes" as practiced mostly by Faerry folk. The basic "human" magic system is a spell point system with spells grouped according to the three alignments, Law, Chaos and Neutrality. What AF calls Faerry magic reminds me of the kind of magic one encounters in fairy tales, Wagnerian operas and myth. Dwarfs, who are Faerry folk, and some elfs, can inscribe runes which have magical effects and can be made permanent. Elf magic is song magic and there are a number of songs that are tied to level. Troll Lords and Faerries (small, winged humanoids) also use Faerry magic.
AF includes some very clear advice on how to set up a game and referee a campaign in a manor we now refer to as a "sandbox". The example setting of Bleakwood is one of the best small campaign areas I have encountered in any product. In the bestiary, including the Jinn races, and descriptions of Faerry, Faerry magic, elfs and dwarfs one can see the beginnings of the world as conceived and described more fully in P&P. As the AF box cover illustrates (troll lord on horseback), AF and P&P are not typical Tolkienesque milieux. In many ways they remind me of a pre-Tolkien concept of elves and fairyland, drawing on myth and legend from northern Europe, and from the literary work of Lord Dunsany (King of Elfland's Daughter) and Poul Anderson (The Broken Sword).
Dave Arneson's Blackmoor may have started it all. Mr. In AF, Mr. Arneson and Richard Snider take the White Box and go in a new direction in many ways, possibly building on early ideas about combat, magic, milieu and Faerry. In P&P, Mr. Snider seems to build on those ideas and adds more original material. I have found it helpful to look at them all as part of an evolution of ideas about system and setting and through this process come to appreciate each more. Sometimes this hobby feels like detective work and I seem to be working backwards to reconstruct a series of related events that are not well documented...of course these thoughts of mine may be just a personal mental adventure into fantasy.