Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
How Much Rolemaster in D&D?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 2143079" data-attributes="member: 99"><p>I must reiterate that I don't consider these similarites as striking as you do. Consider:</p><p></p><p>RM does NOT give a certain number of Development Points based on the "class" (or "profession" as it is called in RM) of the character. Your DP are determined by your stats.</p><p></p><p>There is no such thing as a specifically defined "Non-Class Skill" in RM. You might pay 1DP for a skill that is strongly associated with your profession, 5DP for one that is loosely associated with your profession and 20DP for one that is largely foreign to someone of your profession. This is further limited by how many ranks of a skill that you can purchase at each level. Some skills that are strongly associated with your profession allow you to purchase up to three ranks each level and some are limited to a single rank. This is a far cry from D&D's "1 point for Class Skills, 2 for Cross-Class, buy as many as you can afford" mechanic.</p><p></p><p>There is no such thing as a "DC" in RM though there are set thresholds for various set difficulty levels. In some ways this is less flexible than D&D where you can say "The DC is 19". In RM the difficulty would be something like "a Medium maneuver" that requires rolling a 111 or better with the next threshold being a Hard Maneuver requiring a roll of 121 (i.e. a 10% granularity rather than a 5% granularity).</p><p></p><p>RM and MERP also both have a maneuver table to track how far along you are on a maneuver that could require multiple rolls. So you might accomplish 10% of your maneuver on the first roll, 40% on the second roll and 50% on the third roll. There is nothing similar to this in D&D.</p><p></p><p>RMSS incorporated individual "Maneuver Tables" for most skills that gave results for critical success and critical failures as well as "unusual results" (on a roll of 66) in addition to the typical thresholds for "Failure", "Partial Success", "Success", etc. D&D has no such concepts except those added by the GM via house rule.</p><p></p><p>Also, many things that D&D incorporates as "Class Features" are included in the skills section of RM. Things like Hit Points (which are a fixed amount per rank and based on your race), spells, increases in general weapon skills, martial arts maneuvers, "Adrenal" skills, special weapons maneuvers and so forth are all incorporated as skills.</p><p></p><p>Suffice it to say that I think the differences are large and significant. I only make this as an observation based on my experience with both systems and not as a value judgement. While I gave up RM (in part due to getting tired with the many, many charts one had to consult for simple things like a dagger thrust) for 3E, I had a great many years of fun with it. That is not diminished by the fact that I moved on to something else.</p><p></p><p>Nor do any minor similarities with RM lessen my enjoyment of D&D.</p><p></p><p>It does rather sadden me that some in the roleplaying community seem to have a rather large chip on their shoulder about the issue though (I'm not pointing fingers at anybody in this thread). One reason why I left behind the RM online community that I was part of for many years was because of how angry some of them seemed to get whenever the subject of D&D was brought up. The idea that some mechanics shared by RM were incorporated into D&D was cause for them to make accusations of WOTC being "copycats" or "trying to mimic the superiority of RM" rather than simply acknowledging that these were solid, useful and flexible mechanics that many games could benefit from.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Rel, post: 2143079, member: 99"] I must reiterate that I don't consider these similarites as striking as you do. Consider: RM does NOT give a certain number of Development Points based on the "class" (or "profession" as it is called in RM) of the character. Your DP are determined by your stats. There is no such thing as a specifically defined "Non-Class Skill" in RM. You might pay 1DP for a skill that is strongly associated with your profession, 5DP for one that is loosely associated with your profession and 20DP for one that is largely foreign to someone of your profession. This is further limited by how many ranks of a skill that you can purchase at each level. Some skills that are strongly associated with your profession allow you to purchase up to three ranks each level and some are limited to a single rank. This is a far cry from D&D's "1 point for Class Skills, 2 for Cross-Class, buy as many as you can afford" mechanic. There is no such thing as a "DC" in RM though there are set thresholds for various set difficulty levels. In some ways this is less flexible than D&D where you can say "The DC is 19". In RM the difficulty would be something like "a Medium maneuver" that requires rolling a 111 or better with the next threshold being a Hard Maneuver requiring a roll of 121 (i.e. a 10% granularity rather than a 5% granularity). RM and MERP also both have a maneuver table to track how far along you are on a maneuver that could require multiple rolls. So you might accomplish 10% of your maneuver on the first roll, 40% on the second roll and 50% on the third roll. There is nothing similar to this in D&D. RMSS incorporated individual "Maneuver Tables" for most skills that gave results for critical success and critical failures as well as "unusual results" (on a roll of 66) in addition to the typical thresholds for "Failure", "Partial Success", "Success", etc. D&D has no such concepts except those added by the GM via house rule. Also, many things that D&D incorporates as "Class Features" are included in the skills section of RM. Things like Hit Points (which are a fixed amount per rank and based on your race), spells, increases in general weapon skills, martial arts maneuvers, "Adrenal" skills, special weapons maneuvers and so forth are all incorporated as skills. Suffice it to say that I think the differences are large and significant. I only make this as an observation based on my experience with both systems and not as a value judgement. While I gave up RM (in part due to getting tired with the many, many charts one had to consult for simple things like a dagger thrust) for 3E, I had a great many years of fun with it. That is not diminished by the fact that I moved on to something else. Nor do any minor similarities with RM lessen my enjoyment of D&D. It does rather sadden me that some in the roleplaying community seem to have a rather large chip on their shoulder about the issue though (I'm not pointing fingers at anybody in this thread). One reason why I left behind the RM online community that I was part of for many years was because of how angry some of them seemed to get whenever the subject of D&D was brought up. The idea that some mechanics shared by RM were incorporated into D&D was cause for them to make accusations of WOTC being "copycats" or "trying to mimic the superiority of RM" rather than simply acknowledging that these were solid, useful and flexible mechanics that many games could benefit from. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
How Much Rolemaster in D&D?
Top