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It has long been the nature of gamers to disect their games, to find issue with this rule or that convention and to argue alternatives. The Chronicles of Ramlar seems to me to be very much in that vein. I can see players now, grousing over pooled hit points, or Base Attack bonuses or the D20, sitting around the table, and then on stands up... maybe even on the table... and shouts
"We CAN do it better! We will make OUR game and it will be good...no, It will be GREAT! THE GREATEST! To arms!" and off they go, pencils scribbling like mad as they worked out their masterpeice.
I was tempted to hate this book. The Larry Elmore cover isn't the best, the art inside is cool, but the text? Start with a tepid, derivative theology.... I know, I'm hardly one to point fingers, and move from there to a knock off rule set... what is there to love?
Plenty actually. It isn't the most innovative book ever, but it is very much what many gamers have designed in their minds when discussing what they might do differently comes up.
So... bog standard setting, way too much dwelling on the Gods, a few wonky names for stuff, and you have the setting, complete with dark skinned evil elves, elves from another continent (which apparently is empty now... the book was unclear), dwarves that are the sole providers of a fantastic metal 'Kasmarium', Elves which have an even fantasticer substance (spirit bone) that is the best at everything, but they don't share it.... and plenty of impossible things. I suspect the thing that irritated me most about the cosmology was this: the actions of the 'evil, fallen God', resulted in the fall of his creations (the evil elves...) not because of anything they did. Apparently they were good, kind, noble, proud well loved by other elf sort of elves, but simply because their creator was condemned for disobeying the bigger God's law, they were instantly evil. Gah.
So, the writing doesn't win any points with me yet, how about the system?
Ah... well, you still have classes. In fact, you have D&D classes, only with new names. You have druids and preists and wizards and rogues and warriors. Only Ramlar calls the druids and clerics methwargs and sevars respectively. After that the similarity gets weaker. Yes, there are levels, only there are no charts to read for your next line of bonuses and abilities, there are no dice to throw to expand your hitpoints. In fact, a more ambitious designer might have tossed the classes all together.
At it's core, Ramlar uses percentile dice for everything. It's not BRP, it's not Rolemaster. Skills, for example, are not used for combat or theft or magic. Any conflict uses a pre configured number... Attack, Defence, Subtlety or Magic (Contact), against the targets difficulty. These are one to twenty numbers, but are cross referenced to get a percentile difficulty. Oh noes...you say, charts!
Sort of. Since YOUR number (attack, subtlety or contact) doesn't change often, you are told to write the appropriate line down on your character sheet. If you don't, remember that all steps are 3 percent. Simple.
You define your character solely through 'feats'... called talents here, this is your big bennie for leveling. You do get skill points as well, along with a little more durability, namely one point per hit location. A higher level character could be quite tough, but the massive ballooning of health seems largely absent. I have no idea how high a level is 'suggested', the game doesn't suggest a top end.
I won't go into every detail of the system here, though it is quick to learn, though with plenty of permutations. One concept I'd like to touch on is 'momentum'. If the characters win in a round of combat they get 'momentum' points to spend the next round. This is where a lot of your tactical options come into play, and it's rather neat. The same system is used for all three conflict types (subtlety and magic here...), though it's written only in combat speak. Spells are memorized, but not burned during casting. That is, you memorize the spells you want to cast without your book, but you spend mana, retaining the spell in memory, a nice compromize between the spell list crowd and the magic endurance crowd. The spells seem fairly traditional, but the ability to adjust them 'on the fly' is a much needed addition to the game.
What really got my attention is the 'expirence' system. I'd seen references earlier in the book to Demeanor/Theme Circles, but had no real clue what they were. The chapter was an eye opener.
Forget the wonky name. This has nothing to do with narrativism, or personality mechanics. How this works is you have five circles with ten dots around them. One circle is always 'leveling', the other four allow you to pick a method of growth for your character. As your character accomplishes goals towards that growth the GM awards a point to fill in a dot. Things you can do with your circles include raising attributes, getting new skills, access to 'prestige classes'... I mean Elite and Master classes and more. What do you mean by 'more', you ask? Ah.. well, things like gaining and maintaining favor in a God's eyes (special boon talents...), campaign goals (toppling the evil king), personal goals (get married, find a magic sword)... which probably covers just about any long term project you can think of. Now, each point filled gives you bonuses to related dice rolls, and the mechanism is encouraged to use for instant gratification, via the rewarding of points for doing 'stuff', as well as encourage and track long term progress. The GM awards the points, allowing him to regulate the flow of the game. All and all, brilliance in three pages. This has to be the slickest expirence system I've ever seen. I'm stealing it for use at my table.
The geography stuff, divided unnaturally into 'marks' was hit or miss. Mostly hit. If you intend to use the setting as written you won't lack for plot hooks, which is a very good thing. Hell, you could probably mine the setting for hooks for other fantasy campaigns, this area is full of them. Each geographical region has it's own little 'whats going on' section which is 'hook central'. Of all the setting stuff, this area is the strongest.
Other than the monsters. The monster chapter is on the short side, aside from the 6 or so species of dragons discussed, and the renamed pegasii. You have chameleonic saber tooth cats, you have thirty foot tall flaming demons, you have... well, you have monsters. Some are just renamed (vampires are Kriegs, wights are Winsher), but once you leave those out, and the very dull Orcs, you are left with truely horrific threats. Maybe I spent too long staring at the artwork, but if you can't use these things to scare the piss out of your players, you obviously need to hand over your GM's card.
In the end what can I say? I mean, it's incredibly Derivative, but very good at the same time. If I wasn't the jaded soul I am now, I'd play this in a heartbeat over yet another D&D game. Hell, if someone offered me a game, I'd play it now... my dance card ain't that full, and it should be pretty fun. Personally, I've got a half dozen settings lying around that blow this one out of the water... cool archivists of the Gods dwarves and all... but nothing about this book should be hard to import to a new setting, nothing at all.
Give it a look, you might like it.
