Customer Reviews

Rolemaster Companion

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Rolemaster Companion V has the same format as all the other Companion books. It presents new character classes and optional rules. I didn't find anything too significant on the rules section but I liked all the 3 new classes (Wizard, Forcemage and Maleficiant) a lot. The book also has many new spell lists for all these three plus some older character classes. Especially druid fans should love these new add-ons. New magical items were a nice bonus for a gamemaster tired of inventing his/her own.

Rolemaster Companion V is one of the most rare books of the Rolemaster saga to be found specially abroad. As a brazilian customer I had no doubt weather to buy it or not when I found it on Amazon. The book was simply perfect, even better than the other ones in my collection. Surely I will be back here in the review session.

D&D is a 20 sided dice system where life is limited to points. Dragons can't be ripped from the sky by piercing its wings. You can't remove horns from a minotaur. Experience is only given for a kill. You are stuck. Iron Crown's, Rolemaster was the first attempt to go beyond the 20D system. Experience was given for travel and other learning tasks besides hack/slash. D&D added critical hits and hoped Iron Crown would go away. In the early 90's all gaming types were dashed by a crashing US economy. With a final blow, Tolkein pulled its license from Iron Crown (they also did this to Sierra in 2003...very fickle). Next the French gobbled up D&D. Most of the MERP websites, catalogs, and Angus McBride art have vanished. The French began closing roleplaying stores in 2003 in the US, and most of what you see today is on e-bay. It was the end of gaming as we know it. The Asian market made a desperate bid to buy the company in Virginia and to make it an anime factory. But an American banker swooped down like a hero and saved Iron Crown for the time being. I'm not too big on the new HARP product (goofy name). Now the French D&D company does that weird stuff (violent pre-teen hormone) expensive Asian trading cards aimed at 7 year olds). All the D&D art is being given up for free on the D&D websites. You can use about hear the previous developers crying when you look at the website. We can all guess what's next.

Rolemaster Companion is one of the last great paper game products ever produced. I loved the new spell lists in all the Companions. In the companion are Mentalism, Essence, and Channeling high level lists, as well as new professions. I'm not into the science mage. Putting too much emphasis on why people did or did not wear glasses, could perform magic but not combustion, and goblin electricity are totally defeating of escapism to me. Terms like mana were used by artists in later products like the Diablo PC game series.