Roles in Roleplaying Games

[pemerton]

Can you find a game store running "Encounters?" You could give the system a test drive.

I could be wrong, but my impression of Encounters is that it doesn't present the system in it's best light.

That said, I don't have any sage advice for an alternative intro, other than find a group who are already playing it and tag along.

 

[Mark CMG]

I could be wrong, but my impression of Encounters is that it doesn't present the system in it's best light.

Had a bad personal experience with that?

That said, I don't have any sage advice for an alternative intro, other than find a group who are already playing it and tag along.

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

 

[Darwinism]

That's my point, I don't WANT to be told what I should do. Regardless.

Then don't play D&D. It's that simple. D&D has always been about fantasy archetype roles. There's a plethora of other systems that won't tell you what to do. D&D is not and has not ever been one of them.

I respectfully disagree. There is nothing right and everything wrong in my opinion.

Why? What is wrong with progress? If someone else has a good idea, why should you ignore it just because it's part of some other system? To give an analogy; if a sedan was using a 60mpg engine, does that mean no one designing trucks should use it simply because they didn't design it first? There is nothing wrong with cribbing good ideas unless you're convinced you're at the pinnacle of design. In which case you're a complete basket case.

My point was, he didn't want his player to be the healer, he was a cleric, not a medic... And frankly, I thought it was great that he was doing something so far out of the norm. Just because someone expects you to play your character a certain way is their problem, not yours.

No, it's not their problem, it's the system's problem. When clerics by default make the best healers in the system it's not the player's fault that they expect clerics to heal. And you didn't address my question; why should a class who makes the only good healer until you add splats be restricted to either healing or being fun? Why shouldn't they have the capability for both?

I said it was improbable not impossible - please don't put words in my mouth.

Please tell me how it's improbable. Because it's not. I mean, I know you want it to be, but man it's not even all that rare to see a 4E Fighter who's not wearing anything more than Hide, tops. I know you want it to be improbable like it was in 3E because there were so many mechanical penalties, but man to anyone who knows 4E even vaguely you're just making things up.

Wow, you came up with that hogwash all on your own... I NEVER said suboptimal was better RP... EVER - I said I prefer people to think outside of the box....

You give the implication that you think some quirky sub-optimal character somehow is better, in your view, and then attack a system you don't even understand for not letting you make sub-optimal characters as easily. But you don't even know the system you're attacking, so you don't know that 4E is actually better at making niche builds. That's what's funny.

Oh and the insistence that the quirky builds are why you play D&D, when 4E is the friendliest to them in an unfriendly series of systems and there are tons of systems that would perform better to fulfill your stated desires out of a TTRPG.

As far as stopping either character from being made, again, I said it was improbable, not impossible. The real question comes from expectation. The idea that a fighter is a tank made only to suck up damage or a ranger is a DPS (what ever the #*$8 that means in D&D since seconds aren't used as far as I know) is MUD/MMO thinking. It goes beyond what I believe an RPG is supposed to do and moved the RPG back into the realm of combat simulation. Combat is not a required element of play even though it is the one most often associated with D&D. If a player associated fighter with tank then the player is more apt to ignore the RP part and go just in for the combat (third wheel mentality). Again, this isn't a given, but is more likely to happen rather than not. Yes, I'm sure you don't do it and none of your friends or anyone else you know has, that's great, but it happens, I've seen it, I loathe it.

Hahahahahaha oh my god you think that D&D isn't a combat simulator? And that roles somehow define all a character can ever do period the end? My god. You don't even understand your own hobby. D&D has always been a combat simulator; it's based off of a wargame, for the love of god. What do you think it is? Some intricate socio-political simulation? Just because skills are tacked on and you can RP doesn't mean it's not primarily combat-focused. RP can happen in any system regardless, and the skill system's importance is very much downplayed compared to combat. Not to mention being pretty bad compared to other systems.

And, no. A player who wants to RP is going to RP regardless of what they're told. A player that wants combat is going to get into combat. I know full well my Paladin's role is a tank. It has never once stopped me from RPing him as far as I choose. Clarifying roles only tells people what they should expect when combat comes around. It's not more likely than not to influence their out-of-combat decisions and unless the people you play with are robots it doesn't tell them that the only answer to any situation ever is their role.

Also an over-emphasis on combat can be present in any edition of D&D. Might as well swear them all off, too! Because some people somewhere might have fun with combat, the whole system is flawed!

Go try other games.
Darwinism has been banned from the thread for this post. Hopefully everyone else can continue without further incident. Plane Sailing

 

[Mark CMG]

Then don't play D&D. It's that simple.


(. . .)


Go try other games.

Let's leave that sort of advice out of this thread, please. Allow me to quote my OP to help bring us back on track -

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?

 

[steeldragons]

How does this affect your own sense of the game?

Technically, Mark, it doesn't....since I don't play 4e.

Have your games always had "roles" tied to their combat role (regardless of edition)?

I am inclined to say "no" but then, there have been arguments made in this thread that give me pause. Perhaps they did...we just didn't call them that back then...and I don't call them "roles" now. And, in keeping with my original post here, I see no reason I need the rules to tell me what the "role" of my character is.

Does codifying "roles" as combat roles affect the way players approach the game?

I will give this an unequivocal "YES"! It absolutely does. And I will go further to say that this was intentional on the side of the developers. "Make them feel like they're playing a video game". Yes. Absolutely. The creation/codification of roles was designed to effect how players approached the game.

How so, in your own experience?-

Well...sorry I cannot tell you that...as I have no (or next to no) experience with this style, and I DO consider it a 'style', a 'perspective', of play. Not a 'system' thing.

I simply do not subscribe or agree with that perspective or style for me and mine to have fun.

Cheers for getting things "back on track."
--Steel Dragons

 

[Tayne]

This is a well moderated forum if i've ever seen one.

 

[Imaro]

@Umbran , you are absolutely right. I did not mean this as a cheap shot, but I can understand that it can be taken as such. This is the type of banter that we sometimes have around the table among friends, but in this case it was not appropriate.

@Imaro , if I offended by the comment, I hope you accept my sincere apology.

Thanks.

Hey D'karr... in all honesty the comment did rub me the wrong way, but life's too short to hold grudges especially on the interwebs so I have no problem with letting bygones be bygones. It was real classy of you to apologize, and I can't do anything but respect that, thanks.

 

[Bluenose]

Have your games always had "roles" tied to their combat role (regardless of edition)?

From the perspective of someone who plays a lot of different RPGs (and games in general), why should characters be equally good at all the different things they might want to do? There are few other games where using a sword regularly makes you better with a spear, or a mace, or a bow - and in those, the level of detail in the 'how' situations are resolved tends to be quite low. Even when the level of detail is low, you find characters becoming competent/expert in different areas - developing specific "Roles" within a group. They may not be the same roles that 4e uses, and they're rarely described explicitly, but the idea that they don't exist isn't one that I've noticed. Even in a game like Pendragon or Legend of the Five Rings where characters all come from similar backgrounds, roles were split between different members of a party.

 

[Mark CMG]

From the perspective of someone who plays a lot of different RPGs (and games in general), why should characters be equally good at all the different things they might want to do? There are few other games where using a sword regularly makes you better with a spear, or a mace, or a bow - and in those, the level of detail in the 'how' situations are resolved tends to be quite low. Even when the level of detail is low, you find characters becoming competent/expert in different areas - developing specific "Roles" within a group. They may not be the same roles that 4e uses, and they're rarely described explicitly, but the idea that they don't exist isn't one that I've noticed. Even in a game like Pendragon or Legend of the Five Rings where characters all come from similar backgrounds, roles were split between different members of a party.

Interesting but I am not sure that answers the question as to whether we are talking about a "role" in a larger sense or specifically a combat role. For instance, a "Knight" in the game Pendragon, to choose one of your examples, has any number of potential combat styles but also, as a knight, has certain societal expectations tied to the role. One could play such a character and focus on combat but the rules of the game draw up a much broader role than simply that of a combatant and, as such, the game supports roleplaying both in and out of combat quite well.

 

[Hussar]

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.

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?

Sure, I have options. But, again sticking with cleric, almost all the mechanics related to my class is combat based - weapons, armor, 2/3rds of the spells, etc. And, again, IME, the cleric is expected to be the healer in the group. All of his abilities are directly tied to that role. Yes, you can play against that role, but, if I announce I'm playing a cleric and then refuse to heal anyone, there's going to be some choice words at the table.

OTOH, if I play my cleric as a back up tank and healer, everyone nods and pats me on the head for playing my role. Out of combat, I can be whatever the heck I want. A zealot heretic who's out to found his own sect (just to point to one of my favorite cleric characters). But when initiative starts, everyone at the table is looking at me to perform fairly specific tasks. If I bring my cleric to the table in no armor, because I don't see myself as getting into combat, the rest of the group is going to suffer because they are lacking a pretty key element in the group - namely a backup tank.

When Bob's fighter gets ganked because my cleric refuses to get into combat, I'm thinking that Bob's not going to applaud my choice to play against role.