Part 3: Against The Darkmaster
Against The Darkmaster is one of the newer games I’ll visit in this series, in fact the hardcover has not yet reached my doorstep. It is, however, based on an old favorite. VsD, as the authors abbreviate it, is not quite a retroclone of Iron Crown’s classic Middle Earth Role Playing Game, or MERP. MERP is itself a streamlined version of Rolemaster, known for its multitude of charts and tables. I find that MERP, and VsD, hit just the right spot for my tastes in this manner. They are simpler and more straightforward than Rolemaster, yet retain quite a bit of that system’s unique flavor. VsD makes some genuine improvements on MERP, which is why I say it is not quite a retroclone.
VsD uses a d100 to resolve pretty much everything. And if you roll at the upper end of the 1-100 range, you get to roll again in most cases, adding the rolls together. Same if you roll at the lower end, but subtracting. The precise numbers vary, but 96 or better is standard. Add your bonuses or penalties. Stats used to be a lot like D&D in MERP and Rolemaster in that you had a number, and that number was looked up on a chart to yield a modifier. In VsD, we just skip that step and the Stat is the modifier. Makes it a lot simpler. The stat is added to a skill bonus to get the bonuses for most things. It’s pretty simple.
In combat, there are result tables that do some pretty neat things. First of all, they weigh the type of armor being worn. For example, the same attack roll might completely miss a person wearing no armor, but hit someone wearing heavy armor for a couple of HP. But go further up the chart, and the heavily armored character is still getting banged around for an HP here and there while the unarmored character is being hit with a lethal critical hit. The crits themselves can differ based on the presence of a helmet, or greaves. It makes every equipment choice really matter, and keeps combat pretty fresh.
Let’s dive in and see a character take shape.
Character Creation System:
So, I often complain about game systems where “it takes a freaking spreadsheet” to make a character. I will admit to you that I’m using a spreadsheet of my own design to make this character, not because it’s that complex, but because I built the spreadsheet to help me knock out quick pregens for the Halloween game I ran in 2020. Now, I ended up spending WAY more time building the spreadsheet than I would have making the characters by hand, but now I have it, and it’s fairly useful.
The first thing we do to make a character for VsD is generate stats. They give two ways to do this, point buy and random. Point buy allows one to distribute 50 points of stat bonus to the six stats, with no stat less than zero or greater than 25. Random rolls can generate values outside these limits. The Stats are Brawn (BRN), Swiftness (SWI), Fortitude (FOR), Wits (WIT), Wisdom (WIS), and Bearing (BEA). Since I’m in grognard mode today, I’ll roll dice. Heck, I’m even using 20-siders numbered 0-9 twice.
25, 01, 07, 11, 41 and 20. Ugh. This is karma getting me back for the 18 STR in Post Zero. OK, so… that gives us a final modifier set of: +0, +0, -5, -10, -10, -20. This is grim. But we play ‘em as we roll ‘em, so let’s move on. An idea is starting to form in my mind- maybe an older character, somewhat aged, and perhaps more than a bit gruff. Or maybe injured grievously, explaining the physical issues. There’s almost always a way to make rough stats something with personality.
BRN -20
SWI -10
FOR -10
WIT +0
WIS +0
BEA -5
Next we choose a Kin, which is the VsD replacement term for race. I’m going to choose High Man, which is the sort of diminishing race of men who were dominant in the old days, like the humans of Gondor in Lord of the Rings. The bonuses help balance out the bad BRN, FOR and BEA we’ve got above, but more importantly it fits the character shaping up in my head. Next we must choose a Culture, which will determine some skills our character has picked up as a youth. Kinda sticking with the Gondor mental picture, I go with City. This gives us some skill with weapons and armor, a bit of athletics, some rogue skills, and some lore skills. High Men have the special trait of Imposing, granting them a +15 bonus to their Charisma skill. They also being with Wealth Level 1, and 4 background points.
The next step is to choose a vocation. So, in my head, this character was a warrior until they were maimed in battle. Upon recovering somewhat from their injuries, they took an interest in the arts of the healer, eventually becoming an apprentice in the art. Thus, our Vocation becomes “animist” - sort of a cross between Cleric and Druid for the D&D folks reading along. This gives us some bonuses to Adventuring skills, along with some more bonuses to Lores, including Healing.
The Vocation also gives us our Development Points, or DP, which we use to buy ranks in skills and Spell Lores. These are allocated to specific skill areas- 0 for Armor, 1 for Combat, 2 for Adventuring, 1 for Roguery, 4 for Lore, and 0 for Body. 5 DP are allocated to Spell Lores, however. Spell Lores are areas of related spells, and for each rank in a Lore one learns a spell of that Weave, or level, that they can try to cast. At any given level, including this one, only 2 ranks can be added to any skill, including Spell Lores. But most characters can’t cast spells with a Weave above their Level anyway. So… onward we go.
We’ll spend the single DP in Combat on Ranged, as this character won’t want to get back into the thick of things unless someone needs help. In Adventuring, we’ll spend 1 DP each on Nature and Wandering. Our Roguery DP will go to Perception. In Lores, we’ll take one each in Charisma and Cultures, and two in Healer. Now on to Spell Lores. Healing is a given, two DP. Then we take 1 DP each in Aspects of Nature, Movements of Nature, and Master of Plants.
Now it’s time to spend our four Background Options. We’ll spend two of the four points on Exceptional Training, granting 2 ranks in Healing, and a an item that grants a +10 bonus. We’re going to call this a Healer’s Kit. We’ll also take Healer’s Hands (Minor) and Gifted (Minor) to represent the training he received under his mentor, who we’ll say is the lead healer in the lands. The Gifted bonus will go into WIS.
The next step is choosing starting equipment from that offered by our Culture, and note that our Wealth Level is 2, one from High Man, and another from City culture. We take a leather jerkin, a bow and arrows, and bandages & healing salve from the options.
After equipment, we choose Passions for our character. The game suggests a Heavy Metal atmosphere, and even gives examples of metal lyrics to use as passions. Given that our healer was badly injured in service to his nation, and has recovered so that he may bolster his fellows with the healing arts, we’ll go with a Sabaton lyric, “Facing the storm, battered and torn
Fighting for our Glorious Land!” from the Art of War album. This will be his Nature, since warfare has become a constant in his life, and he has been ‘battered and torn’ and still continues to do his part. We will also choose an Allegiance, which will be to his sovereign, and a Motivation, which will be to keep his brothers and sisters in arms alive. Passions, and role playing them, result in Drive points, which can be used to manipulate die rolls during critical moments.
At this point normally you’d calculate derived stats, like save rolls and movement rates, but the spreadsheet has done this for us on-the-fly. Armor hinders your mobility, but reduces the effectiveness of incoming attacks. That’s a main thing that will be obvious when filling in the defensive stats for a new character. Let’s name this healer, and see how things turn out.
The Character:
Ciaran of Bridgestone took pride in his city, named for the stonework causeway that linked the city to the shores of the lake in which it rested upon a large island. Bridgestone was known throughout the realm for the justice and charity of her Duke, and Ciaran wanted to serve and do his part. At age 16, Ciaran joined the Regulars, training for just three months before nearly every man and woman were ordered into the field to slow the advance of an army marching in the name of the Darkmaster. The Regulars stood, and died, yet held until troops from the nearby Elven and Dwarven lands arrived to relieve them. Ciaran himself was torn to pieces by the jaws of a dire wolf, and appeared beyond help.
It was then that the Duke’s Master Healer, overseeing the ministrations of his order, spotted Ciaran and recognized that the young man had an aura about him, a kindred aura. Ciaran was carried back to Bridgestone and began the long road back to health, while learning the arts of healing both magical and mundane. After ten years of tutelage under the watchful eye of the Master Healer, he was granted a healer’s bag of his own, handed down through the Order since before the fall of the Old Empire. Now Ciaran ventures back onto the battlefields with his brothers and sisters in arms, but to heal, not to hack.
My Thoughts:
Against the Darkmaster is made of pure awesome, I love the feel and atmosphere the authors are going for, and find the system much more appropriate to the Middle Earth-adjacent world they describe, rather than Middle Earth itself. It has just enough of Rolemaster’s DNA to do the cool things Rolemaster does, without the layers of complexity my current group finds a bit too much. I ran this recently, and my players enjoyed it quite a bit, as did I. In fact, the one-shot turned into a short campaign.
The artwork can’t be applauded enough. The look of the book and it’s art really drives home the intended feel of the world. I like to page through the PDF just to ogle the art. The system is solid, I almost wish it had taken one step further and simplified the d100 to a d20, but that would have reduced a lot of the wonderful table results. It’s a lot more interesting to get a result that describes 1d5 fingers being severed than the good old double damage. The setting is sketched out, but left open for individual campaigns to define. Even the Darkmaster may take a different form in every campaign, there are several options presented.
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