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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arrowhawk" data-source="post: 5642782" data-attributes="member: 6679551">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. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> EDITIt 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."</blockquote>

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