Roles in Roleplaying Games

[Mark CMG]

A recent quote from the "Rule of Three" article from Rich Baker on the WotC website has me wondering if the designers of D&D are rethinking the trend in the last decade or so of thinking in terms of "roles" being codified as the role a character plays in combat.

Role insulation helps to guide players into building effective characters, but it also limits creativity. It'd be nice to give players more control over which role their characters were filling, or even if they were filling a role at all.

How does this affect your own sense of the game? Have your games always had "roles" tied to their combat role (regardless of edition)? Does codifying "roles" as combat roles affect the way players approach the game? How so, in your own experience?

 

[Umbran]

I think that in general combat roles are a fairly natural development. In the real world, military tactics have used formalized roles since the Romans, Greeks, and before, and similar things are still used today right? Why shouldn't gamers use the same basic concept?

Unless your game has no stats whatsoever, a given character is going to be better at some things than others. And one (as a player or character) will probably tend to play to strengths in a situation as risky as a fight, so what the character is good at will tend to define your role in combat for you. In a game with classes, then, a class will tend to fall into some combat role, whether the roles are formally defined or not.

There will probably always be some bleed over from combat role to non-combat abilities, if only because some combat roles call for certain skills and attributes, and those skills and attributes lead to proficiency with related things outside of combat.

 

[Jack7]

Roles in the games I create or in my settings never go to assigned positions. To me this is a Napoleonic-era/British and Austrian Imperial strategy regarding capabilities, similar to that employed by the Great Europeans armies of that age -where commissions and ranks and positions could be bought and sold, or were assigned by artificial means of determining "status."

In my games and in my settings any role (be it combat, group leader, explorer, tracker, etc) goes to that party member best suited to the role, having the most experience, or whom the party decides is best qualified. It is also not for me as GM to tell them who they feel is best suited to lead in any given situation - they role play, that is their job. I don't micro-manage such decisions either by Game Design, or by refereeing action. The players are not my children, and I am not their coach. They should make their own leadership choices. (Even if they were my children I personally would encourage them to use their own reason and experience to decide who is best at what function.)

Roles are assigned based upon merit and by no other set of standards. I have found this works in Real Life, and it works for anything and everything else. Merit and real capability makes for the best leaders.

In my opinion everything else is entirely artificial, counter-productive, and even dangerous to long-term operational success.

Leadership should be earned and merited, never bought, and never assigned by any arbitrary method, no matter how theoretically logical it may seem at first glance. Merit and experience and talent creates reliable men and good leaders. Theories breed case-studies.

I've rarely ever seen models based upon "assigned leadership patterns" work out beneficially, but I've often seen them end disastrously.

I'd easily follow a truly capable. meritorious commander. (Or a truly capable anyone.) I've refused to follow assigned and incompetent ones.

I've no interest in "assigned disaster." And that's what you're shooting for with pre-assigned roles.

 

[Wycen]

For me, when I hear "wizard" or "cleric" or "tank" I have a good idea of what you are talking about and can generally guess how they might work in party. Sure you could have a wizard diviner who likes asking questions and doesn't have many "pew pew" spells, but I still understand what you are talking about.

When I heard "leader" or "controller" it makes me smirk. So you are a leader because you can trigger an extra action in other characters? I don't think roles have much influence on how my characters act. My stats will influence my actions far more. If I have a low STR I'm probably not wading into melee combat.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

The codification of roles in 4E hasn't really changed anything about character development for our group. Old classes used to be able to cover multiple combat roles depending on how you made your character, whereas now you choose a class that supports the role you want to play. I find that non-combat roles are less constrained now than in previous edition when the non-combat role is tied to specific skills.

I'd easily follow a truly capable. meritorious commander. (Or a truly capable anyone.) I've refused to follow assigned and incompetent ones.

I wasn't following how your post relates to the topic of codified roles in RPGs, so maybe it doesn't. But it seems you are equating "4E Leader" with "Party Leader." A "4E Leader" is actually shorthand for "Healer and Buffer" while the party leader can be taken on exactly how you describe it by any character and/or player.

 

[Wycen]

I wasn't following how your post relates to the topic of codified roles in RPGs, so maybe it doesn't. But it seems you are equating "4E Leader" with "Party Leader." A "4E Leader" is actually shorthand for "Healer and Buffer" while the party leader can be taken on exactly how you describe it by any character and/or player.

This is a good example of how the roles can be confused depending on who's talking about them.

 

[Niccodaemus]

I don't understand the who "role" thing in the first place. This is some sort of 4e lingo I take it?

 

[GSHamster]

I don't understand the who "role" thing in the first place. This is some sort of 4e lingo I take it?

The idea is that there are different "roles" that people naturally take in a combat game. Some people go for heavy defensive stuff, some people go for weaker defense but higher damage. Some people don't attack the monsters directly but make other people better. Some people inhibit the monsters mobility, but don't actually deal damage to kill them.

The argument is that these "roles" always existed, but in the past were very implicit. If you made a fighter with sword and shield, you tended to fight more defensively, to put yourself between the monster and the wizard. If you dual-wielded instead, you tried to do lots of damage.

4E made the roles explicit, and assigned classes to each role. That way you could talk about multiple classes being the healer, rather than specifying druid/cleric/warlord.

Then, because relatively few people want to play a pure support character, they named the "support" role "leader" to attract people to that role.

 

[Desdichado]

A recent quote from the "Rule of Three" article from Rich Baker on the WotC website has me wondering if the designers of D&D are rethinking the trend in the last decade or so of thinking in terms of "roles" being codified as the role a character plays in combat.

Sounds promising.

How does this affect your own sense of the game? Have your games always had "roles" tied to their combat role (regardless of edition)? Does codifying "roles" as combat roles affect the way players approach the game? How so, in your own experience?

Well, honestly it doesn't, because I'm as unlikely to play 5e as I was to play 4e. But in my games, with various groups, we have not been role-protection type guys. Combat is something that's fun, but it's more like an action scene in a swashbuckling adventure story than it is a serious tactical challenge. We're more about building characters that we think would be interesting characters if we were authors of a book, not "effective" characters who work like a well-oiled machine with a number of other optimized characters as a tactical unit.

 

[Ringlerun]

About the closest we have ever got to roles in any game is when we chose party formation. Who is going first, second ect. Other than that i find the whole idea of designating characters as tanks, healer, and such completely absurd.

I have run games were a mage has been on point the whole time. A few select spells (like stoneskin and blur) and a bag full of wands. Why would the warrior step out in front?

I have never read in any sword and sorcery or pure fantasy novel were the main characters are pigeon holed into combat roles.
LOL it would be funny tho having a group of adventurers escorting a prince and when it came to combat they push him in front

"Come on Prince, up front, your the tank now do your job.. No No we can't do it we're only strikers. Look it's just a little Ogre and some kobolds, just soak some damage while we get rid of the minions first. Hey could you push the ogre closer to those boulders. Thats a good lad"
After the carnage of battle and the prince lying half dead in a pool of his own blood the captain of the guard approaches. "See Prince nothing to worry about we're here to protect you"