Rolemaster was the great simulationist alternative of the 1980s: a skill-based system of modular "Law" books whose critical-hit tables and open-ended rolls influenced a generation of crunchy games, and whose simplified form powered Middle-earth Role Playing.
Overview
Rolemaster (originally styled Role Master) is a fantasy roleplaying system published by Iron Crown Enterprises of Charlottesville, Virginia, beginning in 1980. It arrived not as a single game but as a series of books named "Laws" — Arms Law, Claw Law, Spell Law, Character Law and Campaign Law — first marketed as modular upgrades for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and then assembled into a complete system of their own.
Its reputation rests on detail. Where D&D resolved a sword stroke with a single hit-or-miss roll and a few points of damage, Rolemaster consulted a table specific to that weapon and that armor, then — if the blow was good enough — a critical-hit chart describing exactly what happened to the victim's body.
Origins
In the late 1970s, Pete Fenlon was running a long D&D campaign set in Tolkien's Middle-earth at the University of Virginia, and with S. Coleman Charlton and Kurt Fischer he developed house rules to make its combat and magic more realistic. After graduating in 1980, the group founded Iron Crown Enterprises — named for a regalia of Middle-earth — to publish them.
Arms Law (1980) came first, followed by Spell Law, Claw Law for monsters and animals, Character Law and, in 1984, Campaign Law; the books were gathered into a boxed second edition in 1984. Meanwhile ICE secured an exclusive license from Tolkien Enterprises in 1982 and launched a Middle-earth line of sourcebooks, which led to Middle-earth Role Playing (1984), a simplified version of Rolemaster that became one of the best-selling fantasy RPGs of the decade.
How it plays
Characters have ten statistics, such as Strength, Agility, Memory, Reasoning and Self-Discipline, each scored from 1 to 100, and belong to a profession — fighter, thief, magician, cleric, ranger, bard and others — that makes some skills cheap to learn and others expensive. Characters still gain levels, but at each level the player spends development points to buy ranks in individual skills, from weapon use to climbing to spell lists. Magic is drawn from three realms: Essence, Channeling and Mentalism, with spells organized into lists learned progressively.
Almost everything is resolved with percentile dice. Rolls are open-ended: a very high roll (96–100) lets you roll again and add; a very low one (01–05) means roll again and subtract, so spectacular successes and disasters are always possible. In combat, the attacker rolls, adds an Offensive Bonus and subtracts the defender's Defensive Bonus, then looks up the result on the attack table for that weapon against one of twenty armor types. The table gives concussion hits and, on good results, a critical of a certain severity. Then comes the fun and the dread: a second roll on the appropriate critical table — slash, crush, puncture, or heat, cold and electricity for spells — which might yield a bruise, a severed tendon, or instant death described in grim prose.
A Rolemaster session therefore feels slower and more consequential than early D&D. Fights are short and deadly, a single lucky critical can end a hero, and the referee spends a good deal of time turning pages. It has long been nicknamed "Chartmaster," with affection or exasperation.
Reception & impact
Reviewers admired its ambition and argued about its complexity. Arlen Walker in Dragon #88 (1984) asked whether the $48 box was worth it and answered "a resounding 'maybe,'" praising the freedom of its character design; he singled out Campaign Law as nearly invaluable for building a world. Rick Swan wrote that it read "more like a collection of supplements than an integrated system," and later joked that it was the kind of RPG "calculus professors play on their day off." A 1996 Arcane reader poll still ranked it 15th among the best roleplaying systems.
Legacy
Rolemaster was revised as the Rolemaster Standard System (1995) and Rolemaster Fantasy Role Playing (1999), kept alive through ICE's financial troubles and changes of ownership after 2000, reissued as Rolemaster Classic (2007), and rebuilt as Rolemaster Unified in December 2022. ICE's own setting, Shadow World, grew from its early Loremaster modules, and the system spawned the science-fiction Spacemaster (1985). Its fingerprints — open-ended rolls, skill ranks, and above all the gory, specific critical-hit table — can be found across later "crunchy" designs, and its Middle-earth offshoot introduced a generation of Tolkien readers to roleplaying.
Marginalia
- It grew from house rules for a Middle-earth-set D&D campaign run by Pete Fenlon at the University of Virginia in the late 1970s.
- Iron Crown Enterprises took its name from a regalia of Middle-earth — Morgoth's iron crown.
- Arms Law (1980) was sold first as a drop-in combat system for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
- Each weapon has its own table cross-indexing the attack roll against twenty armor types.
- Critical hits are looked up on separate charts by type — slash, crush, puncture, heat and more — with vivid wound descriptions.
- The 1984 second-edition boxed set cost $48, a price Dragon's reviewer openly weighed.
Quick answers
- When was Rolemaster first released?
- Rolemaster was first released in 1980 (Arms Law); boxed system 1984; Rolemaster Unified 2022.
- Who published or developed Rolemaster?
- Iron Crown Enterprises.
- What kind of work is Rolemaster?
- Rolemaster is a tabletop RPG in the Tabletop Roleplaying Games tradition, released for Modular rulebooks (Arms Law, Claw Law, Spell Law, Character Law, Campaign Law) and Percentile dice.
- Why is Rolemaster important?
- Rolemaster was the great simulationist alternative of the 1980s: a skill-based system of modular "Law" books whose critical-hit tables and open-ended rolls influenced a generation of crunchy games, and whose simplified form powered Middle-earth Role Playing.
