Mmmm... Nah.
My writing style isn't against forum rules. Your thing, however:
Italicized for emphasis!
D&D General Character Classes should Mean Something in the Setting
- Thread starter Steampunkette
- Start date
My writing style isn't against forum rules. Your thing, however:
jasper
Rotten DM
I have read you long posts. And I still no clear if you want official lore or a novel about sorcerers in the Forgetton Realms. And in your version of FR can a npc or man on the street tell a wizard from a sorcerer? A fighter from a rogue if the both wearing leather armour. You wall of text gave me the impression you wanted that way.
Long posts are not walls of text.
A Wall of text has no breaks or structure. It is a continuous unbroken block of words. There may be punctuation, but paragraphs to separate thoughts or segments of an argument or idea are absent. Even my longest posts are not "Walls of Text" because I have an "Enter" key and use it fairly liberally. I use Paragraphs a lot.
No. That isn't what I want. Nor is it reflected in any of my statements that a commoner walking the streets of a given town or village should be able to go "Is that a Wizard?" and be corrected by his neighbor "Nay, y'see the leather strip 'e wears 'pon left wrist? Such is the mark of a Sorcerer of the Bloodline of Leck! We're lucky t'be graced by 'is noble presence."
What I feel is that every character class in a given setting should be represented as a living and breathing element in a setting's narrative. Fighters, Wizards, Rogues, and Clerics need very little work to tie them into the world's lore. Any general or captain of the guard is either a fighter or more importantly evokes the narrative role of a fighter. Any Wizard's tower or school of magic, any church or temple, any Thieves Guild or Pirate Ship, you get the idea. These things provide a cultural context for character classes in the world, even if a given player chooses not to hold to them for their character of a given class.
It also works just great in the negative! The Evil General and his Armies of Darkness. The Necromancer or corrupt Advisor. The Cultists of the Evil God. The Assassin who comes for the King. These things -also- provide context of what the classes are
Some classes require more specific writing than the "Generic Classes", like Sorcerers or Rangers, Artificers and Druids. Because when you're writing a setting, these classes do not have a presumed role or set of roles to fulfill. The specificity of their abilities, their roles, or their identities require additional work to blend them into the world. Work that is often not done.
Most settings don't write up a whole lot about Druidic Circles or Orders because they just kind of... exist. Out in the wilderness. Little villages or wandering nomadic bands of Druids doing "Nature Stuff". They're generally just kind of written off as outsiders and hermits with the occasional mention of a "Hedge Witch" or "Lizardfolk Leaders are often Druids". Hell, even Elves in most settings don't actually fit with Druids terribly well. They're the "Nature" Race who spend decades shaping living trees into homes by carefully bending branches to grow into walls and doorframes, but they're largely led by Wizards or Clerics.
What I want isn't something I've described, here. I've described things that I think and feel about this topic. And have asked others to share their thoughts about the same. Because what I want is really difficult for me to put into words. And as you can see, I use a -lot- of words!
100%
Job #1 for a DM interested in a cohesive setting is deciding which classes and races fit. Players are presented with that menu of choices from which to create a character. For example, if I ever get to run a campaign in Barovia or Innistrad the only playable race will be human and there won’t be any wizards or sorcerers or warlocks in the party. Clerics, paladins, rangers, rogues, fighters and alchemists will be on the menu.
The fun with this thread is that you can find a dozen of jobs that a fighter can do, and then find out that any other class can almost do the same jobs with a different style but certainly a decent efficiency.
we can imagine
a Druid bounty hunter
a Monk spy
a Wizard leading a hitman squad
a Ranger in charge of the security of a labor camp
a fiend Warlock working as a demon Hunter for a Church
a Rogue obedient to a King working as diplomat and spy
and so on.
Note that is very nice to imagine some dedicated roles for specific class in a society, cast are common in medieval like society. But usually a hero break such code, and thus I would allow pc more choice.
we can imagine
a Druid bounty hunter
a Monk spy
a Wizard leading a hitman squad
a Ranger in charge of the security of a labor camp
a fiend Warlock working as a demon Hunter for a Church
a Rogue obedient to a King working as diplomat and spy
and so on.
Note that is very nice to imagine some dedicated roles for specific class in a society, cast are common in medieval like society. But usually a hero break such code, and thus I would allow pc more choice.
And I'll bet you'll have narrative roles for each!
You'll have a Church or Deity for the Clerics and/or Paladins. The Rangers will be part of some style of fighting force or be used to represent a specific subset of "Monster Hunters". Rogues will have shady organizations to be part of, fighters will have their orders or towns to guard or what have you...
I'm curious as to the narrative role you'll have for alchemists, personally, 'cause I -always- love to hear people's particular interpretations for those! Will they be the "Q" to the Ranger/Monster Hunter's "Bond"? Providing magic items and crazy auto-crossbows to stake a dozen vampires at once, Van Helsing Style? Or are you more interested in them being Investigators like Ichabod Crane from the Depp Sleepy Hollow?
VERY Excited to hear more!
I have repeatedly stated, both in descriptive prose and in direct declarative statements: This isn't about PC Straitjackets.
This is about the cultural impact of character classes in the setting's narrative. If a player at my table wants to use the Sorcerer class and call themself a Wizard and wear the pointy hat and study spellbooks (that they get no mechanical benefit from) then they're a Wizard and the world will treat them as such, with all the social expectations provided to a Wizard.
This is about the cultural and narrative assumptions in the game's setting about what Sorcerers, Druids, Artificers, Rangers, and members of other classes are on a societal level.
Do people hate Sorcerers? Are they hunted as "Abominations" due to their wildly mingled bloodlines? Are they considered largely indistinct from Wizards? Does their magical heritage afford them social status in the way wealth or political power would? What does your average nobleman think/feel/expect when a player character says to him "I am not a Wizard. I am a Sorcerer!" ?
Setting. Not Player Character.
Oh no! I didn't see this post yesterday. I'm sorry!Dael Kingsmill recently had a video about this very thing, with regards to Wizards. How to tie them in to a campaign world. What it means when your charachter is a young wizard/apprentince out on their own in the world.
Great stuff.
I like the idea of a campaign world where every class has a link to the setting, even if the link for some classes is "they don't fit in."
- Warlocks who all draw their power from the 100' burning iron cube rotating beneath Mount Mysticalicos
- Monks who train for 100s of years, only to be reincarnated to walk the earth as a "new soul" every few millenia.
- Sorcerers who are all in a single extended family/bloodline that includes the Magus/Emperor. Every sorcerer you meet is distant (or close) family.
You can build whole worlds around this approach if you want.
Or you can have them "just exist", which is a bit less work.
I've actually never heard of Dael Kingsmill or Monnarch's Factory... and I'm watching her right now as I write and holy crap I love her to bits.
This is a really great video that I appreciate!
FrozenNorth
Hero
To get back to Jenny, she was born during a planar storm, no need for bastards or links to Mage Aristocracy.
The point I’m making is that you definitely gain something from making classes tightly tied into the setting, but you also lose something.
More specifically, the DM forces their vision of the class on the players (like making Jenny a bastard to fit the DM’s vision of the sorcerer class). Is what you gain better than what you lose? That depends.
I would say that in this instance, the WotC approach is probably the best one: in the base game, the one individual DMs are supposed to tailor to their own games, be expansive about how classes fit in.
In DM’s individual games, or in specific settings, you can tie the classes to the setting more closely.
I like this. I mean not specifically using Xanathar's (though this is a pretty decent list, really). But could be fun to run up a list of particular characters that are setting specific.
I mean more specific than this. Assign them to the classes to nations/regions within a setting. And, basically, make...I don't know, 3 seems fair -and resulting in a reasonably sized list- 3 different setting versions of each "base" class. So a total for a particular game, maybe a cut off/"top" of 15 (maybe 16) classes for a given setting.
Heck, with proper prep, for the world-builders out there, you could change the whole campaign/setting you are playing in every few months depending on how often you get to game these days, or every session for that matter, with a completely new group of "classes." Takes some of the creative fun out of things for some players, but might be useful for enforcing/encouraging immersion and flavor for those more...narratively/creatively or imaginatively challenged but still want to "play a game."
But could that be a step back into/towards the "TT D&D as video game" problem with 4e's design? I don't know if it is or would be. Just a concern/question.
