Rolemaster Revised Edition

Iron Crown Enterprises has been a warhorse of the RPG field, managing to eke out a living while most RPG companies wither and fade...while I might personally prefer R. Talsorian's design aesthetic to ICE's in-house ROLEMASTER system, it's hard to argue with the persistence of vision this company has had. Long derided for being the "rollmaster" game (because of the number of charts and dice needed) ICE has decided to give their ROLEMASTER line a complete facelift. The results are interesting, but not necessarily compelling.

This hardcover volume certainly excels in readability--compared with past ICE products, this is a quantum leap ahead. Gone are unreadable typefaces, impossible indexing and art that serves no purpose--the core ROLEMASTER book is readable, cleanly laid out and a bit plain. Folks who have been weaned on White Wolf production values will find it rather dull, but the improvement in clarity and brevity is noticeable.

Yes, brevity: a word not often used with ICE products. ROLEMASTER touts itself as being complete in one volume, but expandable for unparalleled depth of rule system with their ARMS LAW, SPELL LAW, CREATURES AND MONSTERS and other expansion books. The basic book does a great job of capturing this huge library of material in one book, so that the game really is playable without selling your house--a great improvement over their last edition.

ICE owns the licenses for the Tolkein RPGs, and ROLEMASTER shows this influence. Unfortunately, ROLEMASTER is a generic game, and so the Tolkein becomes very watered down--you can see where their Middle Earth game ideas used to be, and the voids that have been left by their removal. Not much in the way of detail is provided, which runs counter to current gaming trends where a huge amount of background material informs the game system. Instead these are blank canvases--which might help a new GM design their own world, but shows the weaknesses in the inflexible and unexplained game rules.

The game rules? Very arcane. If you use ROLEMASTER for a while, you may grow to enjoy it, but nothing has been truly simplified--combats still take forever, their is no unified resolution chart and there is a lot of critical hit resolution tables.

Like a classic, ROLEMASTER appeals to a specific audience--if you'd like a game system with no real world that covers generic fantasy in very rule-oriented detail, this is your game.

The Verdict

If you loved or hated it before, nothing much will have changed for you. If you do use ROLEMASTER now, I'd advise looking the book over and getting it if the new clarity will help you run your games. I can't recommend it to anyone not already playing the system--you'd be better of having someone introduce you to the game than buying it on your own.