Roles and Rolls in Ancient Rome
Gearing up for gaming
It’s no secret I’m a nerd boy. I played World of Warcraft for years, geek out over Warhammer 40K lore, and buy tabletop RPGs because they look cool and I want to read the rule books.
As I’ve gotten older, it’s been more difficult to find time to get together with friends for gaming. Especially old friends from college. We’re all scattered across the country now. Online tools are available, but still suffer from scheduling issues and conflicts. And it’s not quite the same. What’s a group of old friends to do?
Well, in our case, our old GM effectively said, “Hey, we’re all adults. How about we all take a week off and get together to eat junk food and adventure together like we use to back in school?”
And that’s just what we’re doing. The weekend after LibertyCon, I’ll be flying out to Seattle to hang out with my old gaming group. We’re assembling the usual party of misfits and miscreants. Odd-job men hanging out on the edges of a Roman Empire that never was, filled with minotaurs, magic, and inevitable mayhem. At least, once we get going. :)
Our RPG of choice for years was Rolemaster, so that’s what we’re going to spend this week playing. It’s been fun digging through the rules again to create a character. If you’ve ever encountered RM, it’s what’s referred to as a “crunchy” system. Lots of numbers. Characters have ten base stats, about as many derived stats, an can choose from hundreds of skills and spells. Every weapon has it’s own to-hit table with individualized columns for twenty different armor types. And don’t get me started on the critical hit tables!
It’s a game system built for min-maxers; but while it it incredibly complex in theory, in practice, it’s not too bad. At least for the players. You generally have your little slice of the system that you care about: the weapon tables, spells, and skills you can use. Those are different for everyone, but that’s part of the fun. Yeah, combat can take a while, but it’s really not too much longer than the same sort of thing done in D&D 5e.
What’s interesting for me is that because the system is so rich, it has always driven me to develop the idea of my character first. I come up with who they are before I worry about the stats. In the past I’ve played a warlock because they sounded cool; a Dwarven archmage to go against type; and a half-wolf woman who fought like a demon and desired nothing more than to leave her mark on the world. No matter what the idea, the system can generally wrap itself around it.
Will that be the most effective character you can come up with? Probably not. Will playing them be fun? Oh, heck yeah! Plus, really… in a system where any encounter can potentially leave you crippled or dead, “min-maxing” only gets you so far. So why not lean into your character concept and have fun with it?
This time around, I’ve decided to play—well, no. I’ll save the details for another update. In the meantime, though, thanks to a little AI magic: meet Ptolemaios Khemetides, warrior-scholar of the Library of Alexandria.
The Business of Writing
After the first round of edits on The Novel Formerly Known as Blue as Sky, I circled around to spend a few weeks working on edits for Sigils, my Weird Pittsburgh YA/NA novel about a mysterious girl, a young man, and something wicked haunting (and hunting) their dreams. That got thrown over the wall to the publisher earlier this week. Now I wait to see what they send back to me…
In the meantime, I return to TNFKABAS. With the easier parts done, I now need to start addressing the harder harder bits (“what does this mean?”) from my critiques. Oh, and to add in those pesky chapters. In the meantime, if you’d like to meet a younger version of one of the side characters in the novel before it lands, you can pick up a copy of Cannon Fodder 2025: Tales from the Gun Crew!
I have a story in there, “Footprints in the Sand”, that’s an origin story of sorts for Nissa Nedom, seer of the Black House. There’s fourteen other stories in there as well from great folks like
, , , Charli Cox, Scott Huggins, and more!
Around the house, it’s spring. Things are growing, including the grass surrounding the cable and phone lines that are still down in our yard. I told my wife we need to get a little cake and have a one-month anniversary celebration. Come on, Xfinity & Verizon—I know things have been busy, but I’m going to start sending you bills for storing your stupid cables in my yard.
We did get the squirrel feeder up in the tree down from the house. There are three obviously young tree rats, likely siblings from the same litter, who have found it and now take turns playing “King of the Feeder”. Watching them scamper back and forth and chitter at each other is definitely entertaining.
We may end up getting a trail cam to put out because it looks like the squirrel feeder is likely doubling as a raccoon feeder. That’s our suspicion, anyway, based on the fact that most mornings it ends up on the ground and empty, having been carefully unhooked from the tree. It’s either a ‘coon, an unusually considerate bear, or a very strange squirrel.
Speaking of Strange Squirrels, have you joined us over at Strange Squirrels of the Apocalypse on Facebook? It’s a place to chat and be weird with each other . You should definitely go check it out.
Whatever strange critters you have in your yard, I hope you’re enjoying their antics. In the meantime, take care and enjoy the good weather!
I'm staying tuned to see what the critter is. Please get the critter trail cam!
I am envious! I've never gotten to play many TRPGs period and even fewer in person. I've played some Rolemaster Unified though the group I was in ended explosively one evening because of politics *sigh* I'd love to learn HARP but no one on the Iron Crown discord would ever answer when I requested a game to learn in, so I gave up.