Rogues: essential class or sacred cow?
- Thread starter Pickaxe
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Someone
Adventurer
Doug McCrae said:
That's the equivalent of saying "The purpose of the D&D ruleset is to provide a rules frame to model the things you can do with the D&D ruleset" which is itsef not only a tautology, but is also a testament to D&D sacred cowness and would freeze any future developments if taken seriously.
Tonguez said:
This is a good example of what I don't get about trying to class literary characters as DnD classes. It just seems to me that they are two entirely different systems. I agree with the person that said that DnD is it's own genre.
Jack, as best as I can tell, has a good climb skill, and that's about it (and it's possible that the DM just fudged his climb rolls in order to get him into the dungeon). I don't recall him sneak attacking the giant. I think he has a poor appraisal skill, and given that he couldn't keep his mother from throwing his magic beans out of the window, I would chalk that up to a poor initiative score and/or poor pick pockets skill. I don't recall him having to disable any traps in order to steal the golden goose or whatever. I don't recall him carrying weapons or wearing armor (as opposed to Jack the Giant Killer - which was probably that player's next character). I don't see why Jack would be any other class other than commoner.
And don't get me started on Sindbad (mediocre sailor "expert" with a skill focus in hanging on to floating wreckage).
I think Cugel and Grey Mouser are probably the closest to DnD rogues - probably even the inspiration for the class.
I don't get this "archetype" thing. I don't think it's use by DnD people would be recognized by the Joeseph Campbell folks, seeing as that their archetypes is stuff like "hero" and doesn't get down to the minutae of whether or not so and so warrior tracked somebody in chapter 2 or not (which presumably changes their "archetype" to ranger!?)
Bottom line is that I like classes because they allow for people to play character's that don't step on each other's toes ability wise. Wizards could probably stand a revamp - moving spells like invisibility and fly to higher level so that rogues abilities weren't so easily duplicated by magic. Other than that, I think there's a role for the rogue type in the DnD game, and IMO that's the most relevant question.
Doug McCrae
Legend
It's an argument against the idea that in order to succeed D&D must model other subgenres of fantasy, such as sword & sorcery or high fantasy. D&D is old enough to stand on its own two feet now. That doesn't mean it must remain frozen, far from it. All living genres are constantly changing and adding new material.Someone said:
D&D pulls in ideas from all over the place - rangers from Lord of the Rings, magic from Vance, law/chaos from Poul Anderson or Moorcock, undead from Hammer horror films, the displacer beast from an AE Van Vogt story, the Green Star Adept from a Conan tale, the Soulknife from X-Men comics - changing these ideas as required to fit with what has gone before.
That doesn't mean the success of D&D (or elements of D&D such as the rogue) is to be measured in how well it copies the fiction it steals from. The original fiction is irrelevant, it served only as a source of ideas. D&D is a game. It's success is measured in how well it works as a game.
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Someone
Adventurer
gizmo33 said:
Not quite, at least it isn't a valid definition; it's like saying that a circle is something totally like a circle, just rounder.
Which D&D is the true D&D, then? (yes, we all know Diaglo's opinion) Every edition modelled things in different ways that every other edition, which means that every edition except one don't fulfil the purpose they are conceived to do.
If instead every edition's purpose is to model what the edition models, then we could make a copy of the Cyberpunk 2020 rulebook, stamp it with the D&D logo an call it D&D 4th edition, which obviously can't be what you mean.
So it's evident that D&D's purpose isn't only to model D&D.
Someone said:
Then define Monopoly. You're ignoring most of what I wrote, which I suppose would change the subject to things I'm not interested in.
The fact is that "circle" has a basic, idealized mathematical definition but if I drew a "circle" type object on a paper and showed it to 10 people, I bet all 10 would say "that's a circle" and all 10 would be wrong by strict mathematical definition because I can guarantee you that every point on that image is not equidistant from a central point. The fact is, the definition is sufficient for people to know what they're talking about, and idealizations are rarely useful outside of a relatively narrow technical field.
The 4e, in theory, could very well look like the rules for Cyberpunk 2020. There's nothing in principle that prevents that from happening. The reason that it's highly unlikley doesn't have to do with anything grounded in logic. I find this line of reasoning to be overly pedantic. You can simply state what you believe DnD is supposed to be modelling and that will give us sufficient information to judge the truth of it. Otherwise, I think the question of a "valid definition" is harder than you think.
Someone
Adventurer
Doug McCrae said:
I can buy it. I won't call D&D a failure because it can model exactly a famous character's abilities as described or seen in books and films, but IMO it should be able to make posible (and I mean playable) a similar character. Very few heroic archetypes are described as unskilled, with little training or unable to do anything outside a very narrow area of expertise: most fighter types can sneak around quite well or have good social skills, starting with Conan, and most "rogue" types are also very able to hold their own in a fight, starting with the Grey Mouser.
This means that most archetypes should be built as multiclass rogue/whatever, which isn't in itself bad. My point is that the rogue itself isn't an archetype came from literature, is (by Gary's admission) a wargaming role given some fantasy disguise. Given that D&D supposedly encourages teamwork by giving each character a exclusive set of abilities, right now the rogue stands among the classic four as the skill well, which means that as long you want to play an archetype you have to multiclass it with rogue.
I don't think I'm explaining myself as clearly as I'd want, so I'll put an example. Gary is inventing the game in an alternate dimension, and needs to introduce a skilled class to fulfill the skill/scout department. In that dimension Gary got a discount on books of the pirate theme when he bought Jack Vance's works, so intead of the Thief he introduces the Pirate. Twenty some years later the Pirate as a core class becomes part of the game as a skill monkey, though with another name, the Mischief, which is still loaded with some pirate-ish tropes, like expert rope use and being able to navigate using the stars. Most people classifies Bilbo, the Grey mouser and a plethora of other characters as Mischiefs, which means that any archetype based on them, and so Bilbo, the Grey Mouser and Zorro's inspired characters become expert rope users and navigators though nobody think it's strange, the same way nobody think today it's strange they become expert trapfinders.
Someone
Adventurer
gizmo33 said:
I think you should think the tone of your posts before hitting the reply button, but anyway. If I'm disputing the logic of D&D's definition as something like D&D, just a bit more D&Dish I don't have to provide my own: it's enough to demonstrate that it isn't valid.
I don't accept that D&D is a self contained entity, living in a vaccum, that devours itself as some people think, nor believe that kind of thinking does the game any good. If the game imports characters and concept from other sources, it must be for some purpose; that purpose could also be very well be archived by killing some sacred cows.
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