How Much Rolemaster in D&D?

[Staffan]

Don't buy it. If the D&D skill system resembles any antecedant, it resembles Alternity.

IMO, the most direct ancestor of the D&D skill system is Ars Magica (co-written by Jonathan Tweet). It has stats centered around 0 (like the bonuses in D&D), added to skill levels (ranks in D&D), with special abilities providing bonuses (like skill-enhancing feats). The only real difference is that in Ars Magica, you use d10+bonuses vs. target number, and in d20 you use, well, a d20.

Alternity is an off-shoot in a different direction. Yes, it has the whole stats+skill ranks thing, but there are many differences.
1. Alternity is a roll-under instead of roll-high system. This may seem like semantics until you look at:
2. Alternity has degrees of success based on rolling under a fraction of your skill total (under half: Good; under a quarter: Amazing).
3. Alternity's difficulty levels are expressed as a variable die added or subtracted from the die you use to roll under your skill.

 

[Psion]

IMO, the most direct ancestor of the D&D skill system is Ars Magica (co-written by Jonathan Tweet). It has stats centered around 0 (like the bonuses in D&D), added to skill levels (ranks in D&D), with special abilities providing bonuses (like skill-enhancing feats). The only real difference is that in Ars Magica, you use d10+bonuses vs. target number, and in d20 you use, well, a d20.

That is an element of resemblance, though it is not one that did not have prior examples. A D&D riff-off called Arcanum (precursor to Talislanta) used unified modifiers based on a 3-18 scale, much like D&D 3e, before Ars.

Tweet himself said that the design team for 3e already had shaped a system much like his before he was added to the team: "When I joined the 3rd Edition team, the other guys were already working with a system with many of the same basic assumptions. It's nice to watch things circle back on themselves."

Alternity is an off-shoot in a different direction. Yes, it has the whole stats+skill ranks thing, but there are many differences.
1. Alternity is a roll-under instead of roll-high system. This may seem like semantics until you look at:
2. Alternity has degrees of success based on rolling under a fraction of your skill total (under half: Good; under a quarter: Amazing).
3. Alternity's difficulty levels are expressed as a variable die added or subtracted from the die you use to roll under your skill.

That's rather not the point. I refer more to how skill ranks are produced. It's sort of hard to ignore:

1) Alternity skill ranks limited to level +3 -> D&D 3e.
2) Alternity skill ranks come in "class" and "cross class" costs, like D&D.


More generally, I would make the point that it is easy to see influences of a variety of games, but I beleive that if you look at D&D and see the fingerprints of only one game, chances are that it is because you are familiar with that one game and are ignoring many other obvious influences. There are a great many attibutes of D&D that evolved as conventions in a wide variety of other RPGs.

 

[Krieg]

I can see it now...

D&D 4th Edition...now with 15% more Rolemaster!

 

[Rel]

I can see it now...

D&D 4th Edition...now with 15% more Rolemaster!

I sure hope not. Even the Rolemaster crowd seems a bit disenchanted with the system these days. Last I saw they appeared to be flocking to HARP, which bears far more resemblence to RM than D&D ever will and is a much better system (IMHO).

I'll probably never play RM again. If I decide I want to go in that direction then HARP is what I'll be using.

 

[Ron]

I would say that the main Rolemaster influence in d20 design was the concept of hybrid system combining both class/level and skill based designs. In Rolemaster, classes are much less restrictive than AD&D and even d20. RM's classes mainly serves as indicators of how much one should invest points to acquire skills. The third edition design team made a similar decision, creating d20 as skill based, class/level hybrid, although they never went as far as Rolemaster, as in d20, classes have a lot of characteristics of their own. As already posted, Rolemaster included rules for classes, skills (BTW, better than d20), and feats, which are the three layers used to describe a d20 character. No wonder they are somewhat similar.

It is unfortunely that the current version of Rolemaster (RMSS/RMFP) added so much detail that I wiil not play it anymore. Still, 1st and 2nd editions are great games, although not for everyone.

 

[Kuld]

This is true, but I think the real thanks 3E owes to RM is the concept of class vs cross-class skill buying. RM's Middle Earth variant (I don't own any other RM) was the first game system I had seen in which you paid one price for skills in your class's specialties and a bit more for ones outside your class's specialty (though you could still buy them). Most other games I've seen in which you buy skills don't have that concept.

Not true. In AD&D "cross class" proficiencies (out of class catagory) costs an additional slot.

 

[arscott]

Were Rolemaster skills tied to ability scores? that's something else Alternity did.

 

[Rel]

Were Rolemaster skills tied to ability scores? that's something else Alternity did.

Yes. In RM2 it was based on an average of the applicable bonuses.

In RMSS it was the ability score bonuses were lowered and the bonus to the skill based on adding these ability score bonuses.

 

[SableWyvern]

Combat expertise is essentially a limited form of RM parrying. Defensive fighting may have sprung from similar inspiration.

Open ended (aka exploding) rolls (introduced in the ELH?) are definitely RM, but are not uncommon now in a range of systems, and I don't know whether or not RM introduced the concept.

The skill system moved towards RM, but it's a stretch to say more than that. If the DC for success was a fixed number for all skills, to which modifiers applied, there would be a stronger case for claiming direct RM influence (especially if the DC was 20).

The comparisons of feats to talents is a poor one, IMO. HARP talents bear more similarities, and in this instance any link flows from D&D to HARP, not the other way around. Certainly, the concept of talents and flaws did not originate with RM, and can be found in a vast array of earlier, non-ICE systems.

I certainly see RMisms in D&D, but they tend to be subtle influences, rather than more direct links. I'm sure there are influences from other systems that I miss because I am less intimate with (or compeletely ignorant of) those systems compared to RM.

 

[Rasyr]

Open ended (aka exploding) rolls (introduced in the ELH?) are definitely RM, but are not uncommon now in a range of systems, and I don't know whether or not RM introduced the concept.

Yes, Rolemaster did introduce the concept of open-ended rolls.

The comparisons of feats to talents is a poor one, IMO. HARP talents bear more similarities, and in this instance any link flows from D&D to HARP, not the other way around. Certainly, the concept of talents and flaws did not originate with RM, and can be found in a vast array of earlier, non-ICE systems.

Actually, the talents in HARP owe more to the point buy option of background options found in one of the old RM Companions (IV, IIRC), and to RMSS's Talent Law, than to D&D, though I am sure that D&D did have a small bit of influence on it as well. Where RM got those influences from, I can't say, because I don't really know.