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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
What is the "role" in roleplaying
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<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6936258" data-attributes="member: 2067"><p>Yeah, I think being "a protector" (for instance) is as much a personality thing as a mechanical thing, sure. And Rath's flightiness might be exemplified in him also being a wild mage. The main thrust there was just that personality impacts fiction without needing an appeal to function. Rath can be a flighty front-line defender as much as he is a flighty thief or a flighty cleric. Maybe his flightiness affects his choice of party role, maybe it doesn't, but either way it can affect the fiction. </p><p></p><p></p><p>This counterpoint seems weird to me for a few reasons.</p><p></p><p>The first is that you call the example "contrived," but there's lots of examples every time I play in group decisions being made like this. The party needs to choose an option, and the "correct" choice isn't clear, or there may be trade-offs no matter what the party decides.</p><p></p><p>The second is that you use Insight, Survival and Perception as examples of "class choices," but these things haven't been class choices in D&D for decades at this point - it's not like it matters if you're a wizard or a druid or a ranger for those skills. They also aren't assured of revealing any new information - those checks could fail, or simply be irrelevant. The same is true for actual class features that might give more information - they can fail or be irrelevant. Even if they <strong>do</strong> reveal new information, it might not help the decision at all. </p><p></p><p>The third is that you say that if a player's class choice doesn't impact the outcome that it's poor game design, but this would mean that any classless game is, automatically, "poor game design." It would also mean that any mechanic that diminished niche protection (such as 5e's "everyone is minimally competent" design or 4e's +1/2 level mechanic) would be "poor game design." I don't think you've shown that to conclusively be the case yet, so your strident declaration that this is the case doesn't seem very well supported.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 6936258, member: 2067"] Yeah, I think being "a protector" (for instance) is as much a personality thing as a mechanical thing, sure. And Rath's flightiness might be exemplified in him also being a wild mage. The main thrust there was just that personality impacts fiction without needing an appeal to function. Rath can be a flighty front-line defender as much as he is a flighty thief or a flighty cleric. Maybe his flightiness affects his choice of party role, maybe it doesn't, but either way it can affect the fiction. This counterpoint seems weird to me for a few reasons. The first is that you call the example "contrived," but there's lots of examples every time I play in group decisions being made like this. The party needs to choose an option, and the "correct" choice isn't clear, or there may be trade-offs no matter what the party decides. The second is that you use Insight, Survival and Perception as examples of "class choices," but these things haven't been class choices in D&D for decades at this point - it's not like it matters if you're a wizard or a druid or a ranger for those skills. They also aren't assured of revealing any new information - those checks could fail, or simply be irrelevant. The same is true for actual class features that might give more information - they can fail or be irrelevant. Even if they [B]do[/B] reveal new information, it might not help the decision at all. The third is that you say that if a player's class choice doesn't impact the outcome that it's poor game design, but this would mean that any classless game is, automatically, "poor game design." It would also mean that any mechanic that diminished niche protection (such as 5e's "everyone is minimally competent" design or 4e's +1/2 level mechanic) would be "poor game design." I don't think you've shown that to conclusively be the case yet, so your strident declaration that this is the case doesn't seem very well supported. [/QUOTE]
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