The first thing I try to understand about a game is how experience and level gaining and skills work. MO has a lot in common with both DR and GS III - as completly opposite as those games usually seem to be with regards to this. In many ways, MO is a kind of a middle ground, which can be as aggrivating as it can be confusing.

	GS III	DR	MO
Levels	Levels gained by experience gain	Circles gained by meeting Guild-set skill requirements	Levels gained by noteriety gain
Skills	Skills gained by points from gaining Levels	Skills gained by practice	Skills gained by practice
Attributes	Attributes set in Character Creation - Little/No Gain?	Attributes gained by Training - Cost in Funds and TDPs	Attributes gained by skill practice - Attributes degrade with lack of practice
EXP style	EXP gain from hunting - Field + Real EXP	Skills have learning pools - Field + Real EXP	No learning pools - No Field EXP
Caps	No Level or Skill Cap	No Level or Skill Cap	The total of all a character's skills can't exceed 16,500

GS3 characters gain levels in the way familiar to gamers everywhere, EXP points gained toward level goals. It might have changed a bit, but I recall very few acts outside of hunting critters to award EXP.

In MO, levels are gained through "Notoriety" points. This is very similar to EXP, but it is much more open. Notoriety can be gained through combat, but also by learning skills, solving mysteries, and probably several other things I haven't thought of.

Of the three, DR is the really different one, as circles (what levels are called there) are gained by meeting guild (class) requirements in selected skills. There is no general number to shoot for.

Both DR and MO benefit from a practice/lesson based skill learning system. This means that for both games, there are two ways of learning most skills. One, you can actually practice it! This really is a more novel idea than it may sound, as so many other games make skills level based instead. IE, I'll kill a hundred trolls so I can improve my ability to pick locks and play music. This was something that always annoyed me greatly about GS3. With this method however, if you want to be a better musician, you'll need to practice playing/singing music.

The second method of learning is to listen to a more skilled practitioner teach a class in it.

But, be sure to note below the differences in the way experience for these skills is acrued.

The development of personal attributes (Strength, Dexterity, etc.) is something that I still haven't gotten used to in MO. GS was a bit like D&D in that your stats at character generation were pretty much set. I may be wrong, but I don't recall ever being able to really develop these further.

In DR, you have the ability to Train attributes at select locations, with an escalating cost in both currency and TDPs (Time Development Points). New characters begin with 600 TDPs to spend getting themselves up to guild standards and then as they see fit. More TDPs are gained from learning skills and gaining circles. So, your attributes develop as you choose as you advance.

MO, on the other hand, is really on a different hand!

There, you only have 4 attributes: Strength, Agility, Vitality, and Mentality. The development of these is not consistant. Mentality acts differently than all the others, and is a bit easier to explain. You improve your mental stat by acts of the mind, specifically, learning the ESP Ability, and/or Humanities. Gains in mentality seem to be permanent (unless you deliberatly forget a mental discipline).

Strength, Agility, and Vitality, however, are on a kind of a sliding scale. Practicing certain skills in certain ways improves your stats, but they can also degrade. For example, if you go hunting, you'll drive your strength up. But, if you sit around a bar listening to classes, it'll fall back down.

What takes the most getting used to among these three games is their radically different styles of experience gain. They blend with and oppose each other in a confusing muck that can be daunting to grasp.

I have already adressed the key confusions with level advancment experience, so here I am specifically targeting skill advancment experience, and thus particuarly DR and MO.

DR offers an exceptionaly complex learning system. In DR, the character has a skill learning pool that can be filled with what is refered to as Field EXP. Field EXP is a state of learning, how active your mind is on that subject. The learning pool ranges from clear (not learning anything) through stages like thoughtful (learning a little), muddled (learning a fair amount), and finally to mind locked (learned so much your brain is shutting down). The more you practice a skill, the more you fill this learning pool.

Over time, this pool drains, and the field EXP becomes Real EXP, the actuall numbers you see under [EXP]. Mental atributes (Int, Wis, and Disc), level of field EXP, and overall mindstate (clear, tired but alert, etc.) all effect how quickly or slowly this changeover occurs.

MO, on the other hand, has no field EXP or learning pool for skills. Instead, practice and teaching grants immediate real EXP. However, this is regulated by a skill timer.

Which is better? It's really hard to say. One one hand, you can find yourself repeating an action too quickly in MO (such as shoving a rapier down a thug's throat) to gain EXP from every occurance, whereas you want to repeat actions quickly and often to fill a DR pool. On the other, you can see an MO skill move MUCH more quickly than a DR one.

One of the things about DR is that it is continually striving towards being larger, and boasts of having no caps, that you can keep learning any skill indefinately. Of course, this has led to many problems as many of those in middle grounds in some skills feel squeezed out of advancing.

That's why one of the real, "Huh?" moments I had on arrival to Morada was the notion of skill level caps. No skill is trainable past 500, and you can have at most 16,500 skill points total (ranks of all skills added together).

Later, I went over those numbers a bit more objectively. There are 46 learnable skills in MO. With the 16,500 skill cap, you can master 33 of them, though only if you know nothing of the other 13. Realistically, I went over the list plugging in 500s for my top selections and 90s into everything else, and still had room to move some of the 90s up towards mastery. I don't think I'll ever hit the general skill cap, though I certainly intend to hit the skill caps in a few.