Archetypes, are they useful anymore?

[tx7321]

RFisher: "the hero needs to be broken up into multiple heroes, each of which is a facet of the one."

Isn't the same true in many novels, movies, television shows etc.?
I agree though, that the main purpose was to create the need for group partisipation.


Also, this would explain what might be going on in 3E (the creation of a single hero that can do it all (part, fighter, part spell caster, part thief).

This change in rules might have something to do with WOTC market research which found the typical group had way fewer players and those players expected the game to be played for a shorter periods of time (in comparison). I haven't seen that research posted though in years. Does anyone have it?

 

[RFisher]

Isn't the same true in many novels, movies, television shows etc.?

To an extent, but less so because the characters aren't controlled by different players as in the game.

Plus, the author can easily split things up in any arbitrary way for the story at hand. The game wanted to present a (more-or-less) single way of splitting things up that had to serve lots of different groups of characters.

(& I'm not saying RPGs can't do it other ways, I'm just saying that I think this is the reasoning behind why D&D did it this way.)

&, especially when considering pre-D&D fantasy literature, the ensemble cast isn't all that common. It's more typical to have a single protagonist + sidekicks. Though there certainly are examples.

 

[Storm Raven]

1e characters are constrained. They're forced into a particular model or career path which, in most cases, is based on clear literary antecedents, and for which some of us have been incorrectly using the word "archetype" as shorthand. These constraints have the feature of streamlining/speeding up play, but they do so at the expense of flexibility in character generation.

I don't think anyone is really disagreeing with this entirely. I mean, it is clear that some of the classes have antecedents in literature: Cugel, Aragorn, Rhialto, and so on. Some don't (the cleric and the druid spring to mind). But, they are designed in such a way as to be playable gaming constructs.

I just disagree that they represent overarching archetypes. They would need to be much more flexible than they are for that. I mean, it is one thing to be able to play a party made up of characters closely identifiable as Cugel, Rhialto, abd Ogier. It is another thing entirely to play in a party in which someone is playing an archetypical wizard.

 

[Storm Raven]

Are you kidding? Could you please show me one illustration of a magician wearing armor and carrying a sword that was viewed by more the 10 Americans in the 70s.

Merlin, in The Once and Future King, published in 1958. best selling book. Gwydion from The Book of Three (and sequels), published in 1964, Newberry Award winning book. Several of the wizards in A Wizard of Earthsea (and sequels), published in 1968, including, notably, Erreth-Akbe. I could go on.

Your arguments always seem to fall apart when the actual evidence is brought forward. Why is that?

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

You seem to keep missing the point. AD&D was based on creating a recognizable fantasy world (heavily based in the "typical fairy tale", "knights in shining armor", setting....why? Ask EGG. I suspect because they liked that setting, it was easily understandable by anyone who grew up reading fairy tales and popular fantasy like "The Hobbit". So why the heavy constraints (weapons and armor limits etc.)? My guess, to protect the image of that particular setting. And to give players roles that required them to work together to reach particular goals (some sit back and cast spells, others fight hand to hand, while others scout ahead and get past locks and traps). For what ever reason, Gygax and Arneson wanted a world where magicians ran around in robes with staves, fighters carried big swords and wore the heaviest armor possible, thieves were sneaky SOBs in light leather and were lightly armed, and clerics in armor but not so heavily into hand to hand combat. AD&D was a game heavily rooted in mental imagery.

And the mental imagery it was rooted in... BECAME (not was, became after the fact) the mental imagery of stock fantasy. Prior to D&D's popularity (especially among burgeoning fantasy fans and authors), these things were by no means universal or even common.

The arcane/divine split? Spellcasting clerics in armor? Thieves as a separate class? Fighters locked into heavy armor? Mages without said armor? These were gameplay constructs to force players to work together as a team. Simple as that. They created mental imagery that was later adopted as the standard by writers whose first or most memorable exposure to fantasy was through D&D and/or publishing industry suits who saw the D&D tropes as the salable ones for stock fantasy.

Pretending that they map to pre-D&D fantasy in any meaningful way flies in the face of the evidence. At best you can say that Gygax and Arneson took their favorite literary flavors and mixed them together in a gameable way, dropping any influences they either didn't like or didn't see how to incorporate into the play model they wanted to foster.

 

[tx7321]

Raven "Merlin, in The Once and Future King, published in 1958. best selling book. Gwydion from The Book of Three (and sequels), published in 1964, Newberry Award winning book. Several of the wizards in A Wizard of Earthsea (and sequels), published in 1968, including, notably, Erreth-Akbe. I could go on."

Honestly, I haven't seen one of these. I'm not saying these weren't popular books for a group of people. What I'm saying is these books were not known by many of TSRs primary demographic (when compared to other sources like Grimms, Disney, The Hobbit etc.)...and surely you can see that even if they were, the characters in these books would not fit in with the stereo typical fairy tale/Tolkien feel OD&D/1E had.
Oh, BTW do you have any links to pictures..would be interesting to see.


Raven: "Your arguments always seem to fall apart when the actual evidence is brought forward. Why is that?"

Raven there's no need to be so keyed up all the time. Please chill out dude.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

I contend that the constraints were less about speeding up play & more about creating a team.

I agree that the mutual interdependency of the characters in a traditional party was an important element of game design, but I feel that the streamlining (i.e. getting people past the character generation stage and quickly into play) was at least equally important.

The interdependency was propped up by the alignment mechanism, which I think in its original incarnation was intended to force the characters to work together. I think alignment's an unsubtle, brute-force mechanic and I understand why it's usually dropped from the more sophisticated roleplaying games of today. I don't really know why D20 retained it.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Merlin, in The Once and Future King, published in 1958. best selling book. Gwydion from The Book of Three (and sequels), published in 1964, Newberry Award winning book. Several of the wizards in A Wizard of Earthsea (and sequels), published in 1968, including, notably, Erreth-Akbe. I could go on.

Your arguments always seem to fall apart when the actual evidence is brought forward. Why is that?

Oh, I can't let that pass unchallenged. Let's examine this evidence a bit more critically.

I think The Once and Future King is hardly the definitive description of Merlin. He's a character many centuries old. I think Le Morte D'Arthur is a much better source for material about the character.

The Book of Three does have an iconic mage character, who is Dallben. He has a spellbook, carries a staff and doesn't wear armour.

Gwydion has formidable magical powers, but he's primarily a warrior.

A Wizard of Earthsea is stuffed full of mage characters. Virtually without exception, they wear no armour and carry staffs. Erreth-Akbe isn't actually encountered in any of the books; he's an ancient mage-hero featured in a couple of songs and legends who was also the original owner of the Ring of Erreth-Akbe which forms the focus of the second book in the series.

Also, while I accept that E-A may be described as wearing armour, I know those books pretty well, and I'm struggling to think where. The reference must be a relatively obscure one, and it certainly runs contrary to the prevailing description of mages from the books.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I don't really know why D20 retained [the alignment system].

IMO:

1. Because it's very "D&D." d20 changed many things, and dropped some other elements that say "D&D" (e.g. descending AC). But they wanted to keep some.

2. Because it does make spells like detect evil, protection from evil, or items like holy weaspons, et cetera, unambiguous and easy to apply.

 

[Storm Raven]

Honestly, I haven't seen one of these. I'm not saying these weren't popular books for a group of people. What I'm saying is these books were not known by many of TSRs primary demographic (when compared to other sources like Grimms, Disney, The Hobbit etc.)...and surely you can see that even if they were, the characters in these books would not fit in with the stereo typical fairy tale/Tolkien feel OD&D/1E had.
Oh, BTW do you have any links to pictures..would be interesting to see.

Your lack of experience with some of the most prominent works of fantasy circa 1970 does not make them "unknown". In point of fact, I'd say that many more people who made up TSRs primary demographic in the 1970s were much more familiar with these works than with anything Vance had ever written.

And wouldn't fit into the stereotypical fairy tale world? Are you kidding? The Once and Future King is King Arthur. You don't get more stereotypical than that. The Chronicles of Prydain is a pure fairy tale. I think you need to go back and read some classic fantasy before you start arguing about what does and does not fit "stereotypical fantasy".