Forcing rules to accomodate character concepts

Roger said:
I think it handles other fiction just fine, too; a short list off the top of my head: The Odyssey, Beowulf, The Great Gatsby, Moby Dick, Brave New World, Macbeth, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, The Maltese Falcon, The Catcher in the Rye...

Did you have some particular work in fiction in mind that you have found, or would find, problematic?
3.5 core D&D has no rules for children. The minimum starting age for a PC is 16 for a human so it would be hard to do Lord Of The Flies. The level system creates all sorts of problems. It's impossible for a character to be highly skilled without also being extremely good at fighting through BAB and high hit points. Core D&D has no rules for lots of modern activities such as driving so how could you build a character with driving skills? The creatures in Animal Farm would have to be awakened by druids yet as far as I know there are no druids in Orwell's work.
 

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I agree with the OP pretty much 100%. Almost a sure sign of the entitlement mentality when one thinks a wrist-crossbow should be an uber weapon when it is actually a pretty poor one.

Yet I think it important to separate the complaints of I can't be an uber-character right away that can throw a metal spike with the force of a 155mm canon, to it is impossible under the sytem to ever, even at "level 20," create that character concept.

The latter is a justifiable complaint of game system inflexibility, especially if it is inflexible in ever being able to create reasonable characters from the genre that attracts and inspires its players. Although that inflexibility may be made and work very well for, ease of play, genre and/or game balance reasons. As to D&D, IMHO all these "complaints" can be traced to the class based system. It has many advantages, but the disadvantage is that it links many things and makes it very hard to emulate much in literature, fiction, or even real life heroes and adventurers without special exceptions and rule bending.

I'm not even talking uber characters, as a previous post put it so nicely D&D's take on class+level can mean:
Doug McCrae said:
.... It's impossible for a character to be highly skilled without also being extremely good at fighting through BAB and high hit points.....

One solution is a class for every new combination of skills or to mix classes. Last I looked D&D had 100s of classes. I think the Barbarian class was created to address the plethora of complaints that one couldn't make Conan ever under the rules as written, no matter what level you became and even if you naturally rolled 18/00 strength. Conan, besides being very strong, is really not a far fetched over the top character concept, a barbarian that is adapt at outdoor skills (of course), is stealthy (see outdoor skills re hunting, stalking) and can fight (of course), later in life he learned to sail and lead.

The obvious solution to the concept creation problem is skill based systems, then add on a bunch of feat-like advantages to cover all the cinematic stuff if you wish. These systems often provide more choice and options, but that leads to balance issues if not well implemented. I used to say they also had a lower ease of use, but skill tree based character improvement with lock-ins or chains of prerequisites that require extensive build planning makes that argument a non-starter.
 

I think its key to remember that D&D does not have to be core D&D. No talking animals, create a world were the PCs are talking animals, ala Animal Farm, or Redwall. Just add then races.

Want to have a progression wher the Wizard doen't have to get better at combat; fine let him trade the +1 BAB for a feat and two extra skill points.

Want to play Amber... create prestige classess, and model the arcane abilities of the princes on the artificer - just seems more appropriate than any of the other classes.

If players want to play an archtype from fiction ask them what do they think the character was like at the beginning of their career, or whatever the appropriate point of progression.

The system has flexibility.

Ironically, I think it doesn't represent accurately how actions are acted out in D&D novels...
 

I find that the easiest way to avoid such problems is to make sure that the rules and setting are a good, tightly-coupled fit. It's a lot easier to turn down a character concept because of its incompatibility with the setting than because of its incompatibility with the rules.
 

Zaruthustran said:
I think your issue arises from the fact that people can use the same ruleset but play different games.

For example, it sounds like the game you want to play is more of a by-the-book, problem-solving tactical simulation. And the game played by the players you're complaining about is more of an escapist, wish-fulfillment player fantasy.

I could be wrong about those specifics, but point is that the structure of the rules don't set a certain play style in stone. I think both styles (and more) are possible from the single rule set. Neither is more "correct" than the other.

Take a look at the player types from Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering: http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/models/robinslaws.html . They're all viable, and the trick of a fun game is figuring out a way to satisfy these sometimes different wants via the same content.

-z

PS: In other words, there's nothing inherently wrong with a player saying "That guy is cool. He does cool stuff. I want my character to be cool too, so I'd like to model him after that guy."

Actually, I don't really prefer simulationist gaming to narrative-based gaming, as such - I can play a lot of stuff, but one thing I'm consistant about is wanting to play the game well.

Because as long as - in addition to the RP - it is still a game, as opposed to some... exercise in cooperative storytelling... then 1. It has defined rules which let you make rational predictions about the consequences of your actions and 2. Skill is a factor.

So I don't get people who sit down at the table and then - basically - demand that the rules not apply to them, because that'd make them feel cool. It seems sort of... infantile. (no offense meant to you)

Although I think that, more than anything, I'm just frustrated by some experiences with people who simply don't get or don't care about the concept of being a team player (D&D being a group activity and all)
 

Hmmmm... first this:
mmu1 said:
The question is this - is it actually reasonable to expect RPG (or D&D, specifically) rules to closely accomodate many of the character types one commonly finds in fiction?

Then this:
I see a lot of people complain that they can't make a carbon copy of a character from their favorite book, movie, anime, whatever.
So, which is it?

The first is perfectly reasonable, IMO. In fact, I think this says it well enough, at least for me and my set of peers:
Roger said:
Sure. In general, the D&D rules succeed in closely (if not perfectly) accomodating many (if not all) of the character types one commonly finds in fiction.
It's worked for us for 15+ years.

I also agree with those that said that wanting to be Gandalf means that said person does not want to start at Level 1.

Anyway, I guess I'm done ranting... What does everyone else think?
Since I've never had the experience you have had, all I can do is shrug. However, I do agree with the general sentiments in your post. Nothing unreasonable there.
 

Slife said:
The main thing is that at high power levels the entire d20 system starts breaking down. (To be fair, IMO the last few novels started to do that too with their power-sprinting). Epic rules don't fix this at all.
I can see what you're getting at with this. On the other hand, this article suggests that even high-powered characters might not be very high-level; it's an interesting point.

Whether really high-powered character types are commonly found in fiction, I dunno. Maybe.

But, yeah, D&D isn't really built to be a superhero game, and if you're trying to implement a lot of superhero character types, it might be unreasonable to expect the D&D rules to handle it gracefully.


Cheers,
Roger
 

Doug McCrae said:
3.5 core D&D has no rules for children. The minimum starting age for a PC is 16 for a human so it would be hard to do Lord Of The Flies. The level system creates all sorts of problems. It's impossible for a character to be highly skilled without also being extremely good at fighting through BAB and high hit points. Core D&D has no rules for lots of modern activities such as driving so how could you build a character with driving skills? The creatures in Animal Farm would have to be awakened by druids yet as far as I know there are no druids in Orwell's work.
Yeah, I intentionally picked some examples there that might be a bit tricky. Children, talking animals, car drivers... it's stuff that's outside what D&D was designed for, definitely.

But, after all, we are talking about commonly found character types. "A child" is a property of a character, sure, but is it really fundamental to character type? Maybe, in some works. Similarly, there may be character types that are really built on the bedrock of "talking animal" or "car driver", but I think they're more often "long-suffering laborer" or "daredevil adventurer" character types who just happen to have those characteristics.

In summary, my response to this thread is:

Yes, it is actually reasonable to expect RPG (or D&D, specifically) rules to closely accommodate many of the character types one commonly finds in fiction. This is the question first posed by the thread, and the question I've tried to answer.

No, it is not all that reasonable to expect RPG (or D&D, specifically) rules to perfectly accommodate every unique character one rarely finds in fiction. I'm not entirely sure how or why the thread seems to have drifted in this direction, but there we go.



Cheers,
Roger
 

Think of it from the reverse. I would probably suck at writing a fantasy novel as I would try to make sure my 3.5 paradigm limited or at least defined what the characters in the novel could do.

Thanks,
Rich
 

rgard said:
Think of it from the reverse. I would probably suck at writing a fantasy novel as I would try to make sure my 3.5 paradigm limited or at least defined what the characters in the novel could do.
How fortunate we are playing a game and not writing a novel then!
 

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