Roles in Roleplaying Games

[Mark CMG]

But, Mark CMG, in D&D, class has never really been tied to any sort of broader role. Not really. There's been nods to it of course, but, certainly it's never been as closely tied as something like Pendragon.

Bluenose mentioned Pendragon so I used that as an example of an RPG that had noncombat roles closely tied to class. Nevertheless, saying that D&D never had that isn't the same as saying it has never had combat role tied very closely to class in some editions, generally speaking.

Forex, if I play a cleric in D&D, I'm supposed to have an entire faith built around my character. There should be some form of heirarchy and organization. Yet, where are the rules for this? What out of combat role should my cleric be undertaking? Am I supposed to minister to the masses? Am I supposed to root out heresy?

Outside of combat, what is my cleric supposed to do, according to the rules of the game?

I don't want to get into an edition war, so I'll keep this as general as possible. Break out the core books from the various editions (easy enough to just check the first PHB and DMG from each one, I should think) that you have on your own shelf and you tell me. Check out spells that are noncombat, check out rules for travel and the roles some classes would play in that, look toward uses for hirelings, look for rules regarding social status and class in some of the books, look for rules on territory development and strongholds, etc. I'll leave it to you to tell me if some renditions of the rules are stronger than others for noncombat roles, and whether ot not it is tied to class.


If, however, we can discuss edition with out this becoming warlike, what is your opinion on this previous statement?

I wonder if "roles" could be less well-defined? In the lifespan of RPGing, "class" seems to have moved from being a sub-species of "role" to synonymous with "role" to being an overarching category of numerous "roles."

 

[Tallifer]

For me, when I hear "wizard" or "cleric" or "tank" I have a good idea of what you are talking about and can generally guess how they might work in party. Sure you could have a wizard diviner who likes asking questions and doesn't have many "pew pew" spells, but I still understand what you are talking about.

When I heard "leader" or "controller" it makes me smirk. So you are a leader because you can trigger an extra action in other characters? I don't think roles have much influence on how my characters act. My stats will influence my actions far more. If I have a low STR I'm probably not wading into melee combat.

The roles in 4th edition are real and have been used since OD&D. It is just that now 4th edition gave them names and definitions. Unfortunately, the names chosen are not always appropriate. Leader is the worst name: it implies leadership and authority. In fact the role is called "support" in other games, but no one wants to play "support" so 4th edition tried to make it more palatable by calling it "leader." Enhancement and healing magic is necessary, but does not always seem very heroic.

(Also, "tank" is not a D&D term from ANY edition. "Fighter" or "paladin" are. I never encountered "tank" until I first played a massively multi-player on-line roleplaying game, Dark Age of Camelot.)

 

[Mark CMG]

The roles in 4th edition are real and have been used since OD&D.

Not as such. Previous editions allowed for more mutable combat roles, and perhaps role was not necessarily merely a combat consideration. As far as combat goes, in OD&D (and AD&D, I would venture, maybe even in 3.XE, though perhaps less so), a character might be stepping into combat for a few rounds then stepping back to support, possibly administering healing, by potion or spell, then pulling out a bow/sling/x-bow and helping in that manner. Neverthless, the thread's real question might be moot for you, since the question that I'm asking as the OP is regarding how tightly "role" is tied to combat. Perhaps you see no sense of "role" in RPGs outside of combat?

 

[Jack7]

I wasn't following how your post relates to the topic of codified roles in RPGs, so maybe it doesn't. But it seems you are equating "4E Leader" with "Party Leader." A "4E Leader" is actually shorthand for "Healer and Buffer" while the party leader can be taken on exactly how you describe it by any character and/or player.

Yeah, I have a problem with that. By that I mean sometimes I will make a general point and then use a sort of tangential example to illustrate that is obvious in one way, but not obvious in all ways.

I talk in terms of commanders and rank and order because that's my nature. It's easy for me to formulate those examples. But I didn't mean that example to be an entire encapsulation of what I meant. I didn't mean to restrict everything i was saying to that one example. So I admit that can be confusing at times, and it was my fault.

My real point was a general philosophical one and it was this:

Game Designers should not be establishing roles for players. Players should.

Players know through play and the dynamics of their party who will be best at any role, be it combat or other roles.

I have nothing against Game Designers speaking about roles, or giving examples of how they may work in any given situation, but it's the players who are or will become good at certain roles. Pre-fabricating roles and pre-designing them and affixing them to classes or other component structures is a big game design and construction flaw in my opinion.

Players should be free to assume roles, create roles, change roles, etc. It is role playing after all not Role-Assignment. That treats players like children who must be prescribed their role, rather than develop or construct or create their own role(s) through role-play.

Role play is the job of the players and it should be their choice, not the Game Designers choice to pre-arrange and pre-assume "Role Structures." Game Designers should stay out of role-playing except maybe to give advice and examples.

This occurs in my opinion because far too many game designers want to emphasize their own importance and supposed genius than that of the people who will use the game. There's nothing wrong with a clever and creative game designer, but to me this is like the Senate fighting a war. Soldiers fight wars, that is their job, not Senates. governments can say, a war needs to be fought, or it doesn't, but it should not be taking command of an army, planning strategy, or running ops.

Hope that better explains my point and I tried to avoid all but one example in this case so as not to tangentially confuse my point.

 

[Hussar]

Bluenose mentioned Pendragon so I used that as an example of an RPG that had noncombat roles closely tied to class. Nevertheless, saying that D&D never had that isn't the same as saying it has never had combat role tied very closely to class in some editions, generally speaking.





I don't want to get into an edition war, so I'll keep this as general as possible. Break out the core books from the various editions (easy enough to just check the first PHB and DMG from each one, I should think) that you have on your own shelf and you tell me. Check out spells that are noncombat, check out rules for travel and the roles some classes would play in that, look toward uses for hirelings, look for rules regarding social status and class in some of the books, look for rules on territory development and strongholds, etc. I'll leave it to you to tell me if some renditions of the rules are stronger than others for noncombat roles, and whether ot not it is tied to class.


If, however, we can discuss edition with out this becoming warlike, what is your opinion on this previous statement?

How are those class specific? Hirelings were based on your charisma, not your class. Social status and social class were based on a random role, again, not character class.

Rules for travel? Now that one you've got me. Not sure where you're gong with this. IIRC, rangers had something about this in AD&D, and Druids had Pass Without a Trace (kinda useless since it only applied to the druid and not anyone else), but, that's a pretty big stretch.

As far as spells go, I'd point out that, as a percentage, there are easily as many utility powers and non-combat powers in 4e as there are non-combat spells in any edition. Total numbers might not be as much, although, considering every class gets them in 4e, I'd say it's pretty darn close. So, while casters might have had about 1/3 of their total number of spells apply to non-combat situations (and that's being VERY generous), in 4e, you have every class have about 1/3rd of their powers being out of combat.

Granted, that's going to depend a LOT on which powers get taken. Forex, an Encounter utility is going to come up a lot more in game than a Daily. Then again, all non-combat spells in earlier editions were Daily only. I'd say it's a wash more or less. Sure, you might cast Water Breathing when needed in 3e (probably after resting first), but, I'm busting out my Skill Bonus ability Encounter Power every chance I get - which is pretty much several times per session.

At the end of the day, it's a wash.

Now, I never did play Companion rules, so, the Territory development and whatnot rules passed me by. Are they class specific? Does a cleric and a fighter get different domains? Do they rule things differently? I honestly don't know.

But, the examples you provided Mark CMG, by and large, have nothing to do with class.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, I have a problem with that. By that I mean sometimes I will make a general point and then use a sort of tangential example to illustrate that is obvious in one way, but not obvious in all ways.

I talk in terms of commanders and rank and order because that's my nature. It's easy for me to formulate those examples. But I didn't mean that example to be an entire encapsulation of what I meant. I didn't mean to restrict everything i was saying to that one example. So I admit that can be confusing at times, and it was my fault.

My real point was a general philosophical one and it was this:

Game Designers should not be establishing roles for players. Players should.

Players know through play and the dynamics of their party who will be best at any role, be it combat or other roles.

I have nothing against Game Designers speaking about roles, or giving examples of how they may work in any given situation, but it's the players who are or will become good at certain roles. Pre-fabricating roles and pre-designing them and affixing them to classes or other component structures is a big game design and construction flaw in my opinion.

Players should be free to assume roles, create roles, change roles, etc. It is role playing after all not Role-Assignment. That treats players like children who must be prescribed their role, rather than develop or construct or create their own role(s) through role-play.

Role play is the job of the players and it should be their choice, not the Game Designers choice to pre-arrange and pre-assume "Role Structures." Game Designers should stay out of role-playing except maybe to give advice and examples.

This occurs in my opinion because far too many game designers want to emphasize their own importance and supposed genius than that of the people who will use the game. There's nothing wrong with a clever and creative game designer, but to me this is like the Senate fighting a war. Soldiers fight wars, that is their job, not Senates. governments can say, a war needs to be fought, or it doesn't, but it should not be taking command of an army, planning strategy, or running ops.

Hope that better explains my point and I tried to avoid all but one example in this case so as not to tangentially confuse my point.

The problem is, you're conflating combat role with roleplaying. They aren't related. The arguement basically goes that every version of D&D has had combat roles built into the classes. The fighter fights, the cleric heals, the Magic User is artillery. This is precisely the way the classes were formulated back in the day from their wargame roots. Anyone coming from a wargame background would immedietely recognise any of the classes as correlating to a wargame unit.

However, that doesn't preclude roleplaying in the slightest. Telling people that a fighter (to go to a 4e example) class is really good at stepping up and putting the slippers to someone while taking the beats doesn't change anything. It simply makes explicit what was alway implicit anyway.

 

[Mark CMG]

How are those class specific? Hirelings were based on your charisma, not your class. Social status and social class were based on a random role, again, not character class.

Rules for travel? Now that one you've got me. Not sure where you're gong with this. IIRC, rangers had something about this in AD&D, and Druids had Pass Without a Trace (kinda useless since it only applied to the druid and not anyone else), but, that's a pretty big stretch.

As far as spells go, I'd point out that, as a percentage, there are easily as many utility powers and non-combat powers in 4e as there are non-combat spells in any edition. Total numbers might not be as much, although, considering every class gets them in 4e, I'd say it's pretty darn close. So, while casters might have had about 1/3 of their total number of spells apply to non-combat situations (and that's being VERY generous), in 4e, you have every class have about 1/3rd of their powers being out of combat.

Granted, that's going to depend a LOT on which powers get taken. Forex, an Encounter utility is going to come up a lot more in game than a Daily. Then again, all non-combat spells in earlier editions were Daily only. I'd say it's a wash more or less. Sure, you might cast Water Breathing when needed in 3e (probably after resting first), but, I'm busting out my Skill Bonus ability Encounter Power every chance I get - which is pretty much several times per session.

At the end of the day, it's a wash.

Now, I never did play Companion rules, so, the Territory development and whatnot rules passed me by. Are they class specific? Does a cleric and a fighter get different domains? Do they rule things differently? I honestly don't know.

But, the examples you provided Mark CMG, by and large, have nothing to do with class.

And so, to address the larger question of the thread . . .

A recent quote from the "Rule of Three" article from Rich Baker on the WotC website has me wondering if the designers of D&D are rethinking the trend in the last decade or so of thinking in terms of "roles" being codified as the role a character plays in combat.

Role insulation helps to guide players into building effective characters, but it also limits creativity. It'd be nice to give players more control over which role their characters were filling, or even if they were filling a role at all.

How does this affect your own sense of the game? Have your games always had "roles" tied to their combat role (regardless of edition)? Does codifying "roles" as combat roles affect the way players approach the game? How so, in your own experience?

 

[MichaelSomething]

This would cause a lot less confusion if there was a separate term for combat roles as well as a class's social role.

 

[Mark CMG]

This would cause a lot less confusion if there was a separate term for combat roles as well as a class's social role.

It does on the surface seem to be a similar semantic dilemma. (I've been having the same thought since they first decided to use the term "role" and waited for some time to see if they would divorce that from the overarching idea of "roleplaying" but I've not seen that design directive.) Yet, as Rich Baker points out, there was a design plan to tie "role" to class and combat type, and the idea that what you "role"played was what you did in combat was what they had intended to codify, so I don't think it's quite the same discussion as regarding the multiple meanings of the word "level." Hussar's posts above seem to indicate that is what stuck with the main players, as well. It's a funny comic though.

 

[pemerton]

Had a bad personal experience with that?

No. I don't even know if Encounters runs in Melbourne. I'm just going on my impression from this forum and from the WotC site. My sense of Encounters is that it is railroady (because the adventure has to progress in a certain way) and that the players are able to have little or no longterm effect on the fiction (because the adventure has to be pick-up-able on a week-by-week basis).

Assuming these impressions are right, they suggest that Encounters is a game in which the fiction makes almost no difference apart from providing a bit of colour to the overall experience, and perhaps affecting some points of tactical resolution (eg if the hindering terrain is a swamp rather than a sand pit, the GM might look more favourably on my PC's attempt to use a raft to help get over it).

Whereas I think the strengths of 4e are precisely that it supports non-railroady (but non-exploratory) play in which the fiction, and the players' effect upon the fiction, is central. Or to put it another way: if 4e has strengths, it is in introducing indie-RPG design sensibilities into an otherwise mainstream heroic fantasy RPG, whereas Encounters seems like a format which makes almost no room for those indie sensibilities to display themselves.

How about gameday and convention games? Might be able to do that with little or no investment.

Sure. And - depending on how these are run - they might be better than my impression of Encounters.

Break out the core books from the various editions (easy enough to just check the first PHB and DMG from each one, I should think) that you have on your own shelf and you tell me. Check out spells that are noncombat, check out rules for travel and the roles some classes would play in that, look toward uses for hirelings, look for rules regarding social status and class in some of the books, look for rules on territory development and strongholds, etc. I'll leave it to you to tell me if some renditions of the rules are stronger than others for noncombat roles, and whether ot not it is tied to class.

My books aren't in front of me, so for me you've posed a test of memory rather than of comprehension. And the first thing that comes to my mind is the advice, in the XP section of Gygax's DMG, to rank each player's performance in each adventure from 1 (best) to 4 (worst) and then to generate an average, in order to work out how many weeks of training are needed by that player's PC to gain a level.

The grounds for those rankings spell out an implicit role for each class - the manner in which a player is expected to play them. As I said I don't have my books in front of me, but my memory is that fighters are expected to take the front line and do tough things, clerics are expected to heal and provide support, thieves are expected to be stealthy and skullduggerous, and MUs are expected to apply spells and intellect to the solution of problems. Conversely, a fighter who cowers, a cleric who refuses to heal, or a thief or MU who behaves like a typical fighter will score poorly in the rankings, and have to spend a lot more gold to undertake his/her level training.

Again from memory, Gygax's roles are expressed primarily by reference to combat activity - fighting, healing, etc - although (particularly when it comes to thieves and MUs) the more generic notion of "resolving problems" is to the fore. I don't see a radical difference in this respect from 4e, as far as the content and scope of the roles are concerned. In the 4e PHB, for example, it is rangers, rogues, wizards and warlocks who have the greater share of non-combat utility powers, meaning that for them their mechanically-supported role extends beyond combat to "problems" more generally, just as Gygax suggested for thieves and MUs in his DMG.

The are two obvious differences from 4e, but they don't pertain to the content and scope of the roles. Rather, they are that (i) in 4e information about roles is provided to the player, not the GM, and (ii) in 4e it takes the form not of advice about criteria a player must satisfy in order to progress in the game, but rather advice about approaches a player might adopt in order to do well at/enjoy the game. I think both these differences are indicative of broader differences in tone and style between classic D&D and 4e. (Sometimes these differences are expressed using the phrase "player entitlement". Given that overall I'm a fan of these differences, though, that's not the phrase that I personally would use!)