And is Deacon Fryer a healing specialist, or is his personality more of a battle cleric? They are hardly interchangeable.
Again, I respectfully disagree.
Will Igor's slot be filled by just any fighter? Hardly. He's more than just an axe with legs. His class may determine what general duties he performs, but it's his personality that dictates how he performs those duties.
One fighter might be the "bonzai" type that charges headlong into melee, while another is a steadfast "hold the line" type.
Once more I find myself disagreeing with you. If the DM is the writer, then he doesn't need players at all. The characters in a game really are just whatever personality the actor/player wants to adopt. Yes, they have a function in the story, and that function is that they are the ones writing it, collectively.
It has to do with the definition of "role". Is it the job, or the person doing that job?
I'll put it to you like this. D&D can function without the players adopting alter ego's. It cannot function without the players adopting classes/roles. When Igor Thud leaves the party and they replace him with Yohann Van Gogen the human fighter.....and the game continues. The D&D universe does not collapse because some
personality is absent.
What I do think is true is that when most people think of "RPG's" today...they don't envision specific roles...they envision "acting" as some character in a play. What's funny about your comparison is that when you take a "role" in a play, you are on a railroad, to use your own phrase. Actors in a play aren't given choices as to who their character is or what she is supposed to convey to the audience.
Nevertheless, a role is a function in D&D. In sports, particularly basketball, you'll hear people talk about a lack of "role players." What are they talking about? People who specifically perform a needed and necessary function and setting aside their ego/perseonality e.g. rebounder, defensive specialist, outside shooter, etc.
What you're essentially arguing is that people's personalities will interfere with their ability to perform their....role. A cleric's unique role and responsibilty is to heal the party. If the player instead chooses to play the cleric like a rogue and won't heal anyone, then he isn't playing his role is he? He's playing some other role and that causes problems...most likely the party will die.
Early modules for D&D were not made considering personalities...they were made considering the roles people would play in a campaign: fighter, cleric, theif. Remember, early D&D was very rigid in what roles you could play.
Again, I think you're confusing "role" as in a play with role as in a function. Think of it like this...early D&D books gave you instructions on how the roles were suppose to function. They didn't give you instructions on how to act like you were in a play. Nevertheless, I'm sure Gary Gygax would tell you D&D "roleplaying" is meant to encompess both.
EDIT
It occurs to me that we may both be slightly off the mark. The term roleplaying may be used because you play a "character" who is part of a story. So it's not really about the role/function you play nor is it that you are supposed to be "acting."
