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Rolemaster Moments for May 2002 - page 3
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It was our first Rolemaster campaign sometime around 1997 and we were ready to play our new first level characters. Being that we had never played the game and received no joy from our GM (who did go on to run the game for almost 7 years) we were not expecting to be the toughest band of adventurers. A few minutes into the game we realized our ranger forgot to buy body development, which on reflection he should have done so since that was one thing our GM did cover... The rest of the party a pure spellcaster, another ranger, a fighter and my warrior monk all sported less character design flaws.
So there our party was, camping out in the wilderness on our way to an assignment to go to the walled island city of Tanis. We set watch and were soon beset by a pack of wolves. Several fumbles later the party was dead or unconscious as our climbing skills were as swift as our melee combat skills. My character being the only one who was alive, was allowed to make a deity check to see if I could beg for mercy. I made a solid open ended roll and was allowed to beg for my life and that of my friends.
While I suspect the GM was just being nice and didn't want us to fail player morale while he was getting used to running the game... he was not entirely kind. My character wound up marked with a tattoo on his forehead, his skin tinted blue and would eventually pay his debts.
After the GM got the hang of the game we came to the city of Tanis, which happened to be under siege by the evil Eastern Empire. We were politely told by the soldiers at the bridge leading to the island the city sat on that nobody could pass and that we should leave. Of course being cunning "adventurers" we decided that we could swim across about a 1/4 mile of water to the edge. Of the five characters in the game, two of us took the swimming skill. Several hours later in game time we ferried the characters across.
So we got a little experience as time went along and of course we got waylaid again by an overzealous GM who vastly underestimated our skills. I wound up making yet another deity check. I open ended my roll again and had to retire the character as he went onto his deity's realm. The rest of the party survived...but none lasted the length of the campaign. My next character lasted the duration after some hard lessons learned.
I am a Rolemaster GM of many years and I've had plenty of hunorous moments in my time. This is one recent time in particular that comes to mind:
The party was in the wilderness avoiding any possible encounters with either of two warring armies. They were also on edge because of possible intrusion from a cult of a supposedly long-dead god. The party consisted of a monk, a priest, a magician, a rogue and a thief. Please note that there was a storm moving into the area and the wind had been picking up a bit.
The characters found a place to camp at dark. After figuring out their watch rotations the characters prepared their bedding. I rolled an encounter roll and I achieved a result of a rabbit. I made a few alertness rolls, everyone passed with a partial success except for the monk who failed miserably (to see the bunny they had to make at least a success).
I described the situation to him like this: "As your scanning the area you notice something move in the bushes off to your left about 15ft away from the camp, it seems to be almost human sized". He focuses his concentration and I make another roll of which barely missed being a partial success...lol. I relate this to him as he doesn't see the "intruder" anymore. He at first tries to alert the other party members but since he is "mute" he can't say anything. So after doing this silly "psst" look over here without being to obvious dance, he finally gets some attention.
He then decides to "stalk" this would be intruder. He fails his stalking roll, again horribly, and ends up tripping over another bush almost falling flat on his face. The rabbit at this time decides to freeze in place hoping his cover will protect him. I had the other characters make appropiate awareness rolls, they all achieved below a partial success so they didn't see anything. When the monk got within 5ft I gave him another chance and made another alertness roll, "at this time you can see the intruder, it is crouched down in an attack position ready to pounce at any moment, but it apparently does not see you" he yet again failed miserably. The monk decides to make his attack of a leaping punch of which lands squarely into the bulk of the root of the bush thereby snapping the bush in two, everyone else ready for the attack sees a little furry bunny run extremely frightened from the bushes. It took a couple sessions before the jokes stopped...lol.
It just shows how much a GM can make a seemingly boring and uneventful night into a "tale told for many years" scenario just because of a few horribly failed die rolls.
About ten years ago a friend joined an ongoing Rolemaster campaign that survived through our four years in college. Though quite bright, our friend has always been somewhat lacking in common sense. (This resulted in his characters automatically suffering from the same flaw; it's one of the reasons he went through half a dozen characters in as many sessions at one point). Here follow four excerpts from the story of his first Rolemaster character, a magician.
Act 1 - Scene 1
Vik (can't remember the character's name) is working in the castle
in Northgate, for the baron. He has been placed in charge of several
of the castle guards and told to make sure nothing is haunting
the lower underground levels of the castle. (Though rumored haunted
for a long time, it wasn't until just before this that my character,
on his quest for immortality, had awoken a vampire who used to
rule Northgate.) He leads his rather green guards down the staircase;
everyone is nervous. He notices one of the guards has disappeared!
Whew, the guards just went off to relieve himself. As they continue
it is decided the element of surprise could be useful, so Vik
turns Harold, a guard, invisible. Harold freaks out, but is soon
calmed. Then Harold starts whistling. "Maintain radio silence!"
shouts Vik. They continue downwards. Vik notices Harold is gone;
"Harold? Harold? We've lost Harold!" "I'm right
here, sir. You told me to be quiet." As they continue everyone
becomes more nervous, and the guards start disappearing one at
a time off the back of the line.
Act I - Scene II
Alone, Vik runs across the vampire. Threats follow. The vampire
laughs them off, knocks Vik unconscious, and throws him into a
dungeon cell. Vik wakes up. He fries the cell lock with some shock
bolts. As he leaves the cell he realizes he's out of power points,
so he sits down outside the cell door to take a nap. He wakes
up as the vampire picks him up and throws him into the next cell.
Act I - Scene III
Eventually Vik breaks free of the cells and heads back upstairs
to his chambers. As he enters his rooms he notices feet sticking
out from under the curtains. Turns out all his guards are cowering
behind the curtain, under the bed, etc.
Act II - Scene I
Vik needs to scout the vicinity in the daytime, so he send his
bat familiar to take a look. "What do I see?" "Nothing,"
replies the GM. "What? !?!" "Vik, you chose a bat
as a familiar." "Whoops, could I take a raven instead?"
"OK, I'll let you change it." Now Vik sends his raven
out to scout.
Act II - Scene II
A week later Vik is in a fight outside a church. His hand gets
chopped off, but he manages to stop the bleeding. After the fight
the GM asks "What do you do with your severed hand?"
"Do I need it for spellcasting?" "No." "I
leave it." Then an emaciated raven swoops down, grabs the
hand, and flies off with his meal. Now we realize Vik forgot about
his familiar after he sent it scouting a week ago.
Act III - Scene I
After bungling a number of things, including insulting my new
character (The previous one failed to become immortal.) who has
been sent as an ambassador to Northgate, the baron has words with
Vik. Vik is not happy, so he shockbolts me in the baron's presence.
He's sent to the dungeons.
Act III - Scene II
Vik escapes down into the sewers. He wades through the sewage
to find a way out. Some guards hear him. When they look at his
filth-covered body they mistake him for some sort of monster.
Vik spends the next week as the Sewage Monster, haunting the castle
and being hunted by the guards. (There' s plenty of funny stuff
here, but it's a little too disgusting.)
Act IV - Scene I
Vik finally found a way out of the sewers after avoiding numerous
crossbow bolts from the guards. Somehow he gets caught up with
a group hunting some demon and heads north with them. Meanwhile
the baron asks me to bring him back to pay for all the trouble
he's caused.
Act IV - Scene II
I catch up to Vik just after his group has found the demon. I
see Vik run over to the demon and bow before it. "Great one,
I will do anything you say. Teach me." The demon looks down
at Vik, laughs, and chops his head off with one clean sword-stroke.
After the ensuing fight I walk over, grab his remains, strap them
to my horse, and return to Northgate. Thus ends the life of Vik's
first Rolemaster character.
I've played Rolemaster since before I could walk, or at least it seems that way sometimes. The following story is from about five years ago. I had a pretty good RM gaming group which consisted of a noble fighter, a small time thief, a free gladiator (a fighter) and one magician. The player playing the magician, I have to note, was not the brightest of players, but he pulled it off with some help.
The party was chasing an evil magician for a while, and they finally caught up with him in the tunnels leading outside the city walls. This evil magician (he wasn't evil exactly, just on the other side of the political situation) apparently had put a few of his own traps into the tunnels. "As he runs ahead of you," I said, "he stops to pull a lever on the wall. The floor of the tunnel, between you and him, opens up sideways and below it appears a long pool of water filled with dozens of alligators."
I'm a fair GM, so I gave my players a roll to see if they stop in time or plunge into the pool. They all made it, except my magician who decided not to roll. "I'm not stopping!" he said. "I want to keep on running and jump from one alligator's back to the other until I reach the other end-- Indiana Jones style."
I stared at him. "Ok," I said, "roll them dice." I figured there was no need to abuse him without a fair shot—he can always get a lucky open ended. He rolled, and got 80 something as I recall. "Cool!" he says, "Did I make it?" "Do you have any special skills to help you perform such a feat?" I asked. "Well, no." he said. "How high are your agility and quickness bonuses?" "I don't have any bonuses in those" he answered, his smile vanishing. "Well, take a guess at what happens." I said. "Can I roll to see if I can get out of the pool?"
"Don't bother," I told him, "some pieces of you are bound to get thrown out."
In the old days our party used an initiative system which I already explained in a Moment in January, but for those who have not read it yet or do not remember that unfortunate system, I will give a brief explanation. The round started with the player sitting left from the Gamemaster. Then the round would continue clockwise. This meant that the one sitting to the right of the GM would always act last, but would be able to build his actions based on action of the other players. (In my earlier example we had the thief that opened the door and the rest of the party that rushed into the room looting.)
Well in one of these situations the party entered a room in the cellars of a secret society member who was in league with the Orcs. In one of these rooms there was one door to enter the room, a chest and a cupboard inside it. So the first in line, the thief, opened the door and the rest rushed past him into the room towards the treasure containers.
As you can guess it ended up with the two players sitting next to the thief looking in the cupboard and the chest and one bored player. This player who played a magician called Feanor (characters with this name seem to be BOUND to cause trouble) still had time to act this round, sitting last in the queue. At this point the GM told him there was nothing else to explore and asked him what he would like to do. Feanor said that he would shout for help!!
We all were quite perplexed, but being asked by the GM, whether he REALLY wanted to do that, he said yes. You can guess the quarrel between the party members as the rest of us tried to be as quiet as possible to not attract any enemies and our magician just shouting for help because he was bored!
Luckily, nobody heard him.
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