But, do you not see why that might not be fun for other people? If you weren't having fun, would you be stuck playing that character or would the DM let you switch it out? To me, I'd be turning to the DM and having some pretty strong words about why he was wasting my time. Why one earth would you start a campaign and not know what the campaign was about. Sheesh, everyone else at the table was on the same page.
No, everyone else at the table was lucky. As I recall, one player ended up creating a rent-a-cop who worked in mall security, and ended up fighting monsters more effectively than my comedian. That's not a purpose-built character, just one that happened to be better suited to the situation that he ended up getting thrown into.
How a DM/GM prepares his players for a campaign is a pretty deep and diverse topic, but I often (and other DMs often) try to avoid the players metagaming by not telling them what the game is about. Since people usually don't know these things, characters don't either.
My briefs for my modern campaigns often read something like "make two characters, level 3-5 or so, roll up some ability scores, and have them do whatever you want". My briefs for D&D might be a little detailed; I gave out something like "make level 1 characters with X ability scores and Y gp and include in their background a reason for being in (either through travel or by residence) small town Z". Conversely, if there is a theme that the characters would need to adhere to, I might give specific guidelines on qualifications the PCs need to meet to be selected to a special forces team for a particular and known mission. It depends on the campaign.
I could imagine why a person might not enjoy being in that situation, but I don't think their dissatisfaction would reflect a justifiable criticism. Naturalistic character creation allows for an emergent play experience. Just as there are many genre fiction examples of characters getting thrown into circumstances for which they are not ready, it is a perfectly reasonable paradigm for a roleplaying game.
In a D&D context this can lead to dramatic effects. Witness one example where I told the players to make characters for desert exploration, but that was just a prologue before they were relocated to an undead-filled keep. The player who happened to make a positive energy-based cleric really lucked out. He had no idea he'd be facing any undead, but there they were, being vaporized by enhanced turning and maximized cure spells left and right. Conversely, in another example the same player makes an fire-based evoker for an undifferentiated campaign, and finds combat rare and enemies frequently resistant to his effects and rarely coming in groups as he would like. His main spell throughout the campaign is magic missile, and his main contributions are knowledge checks. Tough luck, one might say. But he and the others were fine in both cases.
As one player put it to me recently (the one who has now been excluded from not only one but almost two complete sessions without any participation whatsoever), as long as the story is engaging the contributions of the character are secondary.
I'm not sure if by "modern" you mean "recently designed" or "set in the contemporary era". I think the latter?
I mean modern settings yes.
It seems exclusive to fantasy-not even other genre fiction-the idea that different subgroupings of characters should all be equally adept at combat. Which is very odd to me.
As [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] already pointed out, many RPGers (perhaps even a majority?) do not play the game simply to experience "being there". They want a more proactive role in the game. D&D has traditionally been aimed at those players (2nd ed AD&D was something of an exceptin). It is therefore simply not feasible (in market/commercial terms) for D&D to be designed without having regard to the mechanical capacity of different PC builds to influence the game.
I don't know about "traditionally", but as I put it, the evolution of D&D as I see it has been away from player-centric metagaming and more towards world simulation, immersion, and strict in-character roleplaying. I find it unlikely that "many" strong dissenters from this paradigm exist, but if there are I would suggest that they try another game.
As you like to point out, there are many that suit those needs. The language "metagame mechanics" is telling; in D&D mechanical elements that divorce the player from his character are "meta" or outside of, the game itself. However, in a system that does not adopt player=character as a baseline assumption (say, Cortex+), they are not metagame, they can be a part of the game.
The solution to not being "forced into a box" by your class abilities is, really, not to play D&D or any of the other class-based games where your character's abilities automatically advance in a way that boosts their combat skills.
True. But it also suggests to me that D&D should eventually be one of those games, as the progression of D&D has been from dungeoncrawling with a heavy wargame influence towards generic roleplaying. That's why we went from 2e multiclassing to 3e, for example, it's about breaking that box I'm describing.
I'll note that D20 Modern is one of those games, even if you are a Charismatic Hero your BAB and hit points advance regardless of your wishes.
A fair point. One of the flaws of d20 Modern, IMO, is that it hews too closely to D&D traditionalism, and fails to realize all the possibilities that the d20 system has to offer.
Though given the genre expectation of D&D, based on Appendix N in the original books, I don't think a character who can't contribute anything in combat is part of the basic paradigm. And perhaps should not be, though that's an entirely separate discussion.
I don't know about that. I've often had players who see combat as something of a chore, an obligation to be added on after they finish their character. I often read genre fiction where combat skill is secondary to the point at hand. Maybe the original books do use that conceit, but I don't think that people playing the game today do.
