Protectable Roles

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 4:35 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: It isn't important to the character of Cheshire whether the game mechanical high level function call that determines that he gets teleportation and won't get dominate is a character class called "Warper" or a personal element of "Silver" or an astrological sign of "Tenebrus" or an assignment of starting merit points into "Dimension" out to 3 dots. The character doesn't see any of that, and it generally shouldn't come up in play. What is important is that he gets to teleport and he doesn't get to dominate enemies.

It may not be important to Cheshire, but it is important to the game as a whole, simply because the game presumably is going to be made to handle character concepts beyond Cheshire, Titus, etc. And that's when it gets important exactly how those characters are created from a design standpoint.

Because the game goes beyond a simulation of one party and you need a character generation system that has options, yet still maintains role protection. I'm curious how you intended to do that. For instance, which of these concepts can I make?

A dimensional mage who is a master of teleportation and summoning.
A speedster archer who personally gets extra actions, is never surprised and almost always wins initiative.
A necromancer who can summon incorporeal wraiths and also hordes of skeletons.

How all this works out in general concept really is important, because if you can only make the character concepts you outlined in the OP, that's a rather weak and limited system. It might work if you're making an X-men RPG where you have to pick one of the existing X-men to play, but if you have any kind of character generation, we really need to see how the role protection works there.

You're right when you said that I'm not seeing the forest from the trees. I'm in fact curious how all this comes together in the big picture.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 4:57 pm

Teleportation was given as a protected example separate from either of the major summoning schticks. So being a primary summoner and teleporting would be right out. Lesser pet schticks were specifically untagged, so you could presumably have like an astral imp or something that you could throw around while phasing into and out of reality.

Being a time folding archer would definitely be a go. Ranged attacks are very explicitly on the everyman list, so if you want to use slows to root kite you can totally do that.

Necromancy is unclear, since with the limited window into that setting it is entirely unclear if there is in fact any necromancy to be had.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 5:00 pm

Frank wrote: Similarly, let's consider Black Forest for a moment. In Black Forest you're using the 10KF advancement scheme and you literally have no abilities that are permanently and uniquely yours. When you select new abilities you just take whatever you want (or whatever you have foreshadowed if you advance in the middle of an action sequence). And then your "type" is a dynamic fact that you select on the fly based on what the abilities you happen to have allow you to qualify for. As such, characters are constantly going to be grabbing each others schticks, because being shown something by another character qualifies as foreshadowing. If one kid is sneaky, the entire team can learn to do that and have sneaky adventures together. The thing that is equivalent to your class is actually something that you will almost certainly outgrow completely several times in a long game.

Would you say that role protection is more important in games where characters don't really advance or change their core competencies? I'm just asking for your (and everyone else's) subjective opinion here.

My other question is, how much overlap would and should be allowed even if it does constitute schtick infringement? For example, say Ted and James both are huge fans of Bleach and want to make teleporty swordsmen. However, Ted wants to make his magic swordsman to be able to create and manipulate the shape of water/ice in addition to teleporty sword powers. James wants his teleporty swordsman to be able to construct elaborate illusions in the middle of his swordplay.

Is that too much schtick infringement? If it isn't, what if instead of being in a game where teleporty swordsmen were common they were both playing in, say, Exalted? Would that be too much?

If it is too much violation of each others' niches, what if we added another power on top of the water manipulating/illusionist swordsmen trick? Ted's swordsman now also can summon a tiny UFO that has a tractor beam and a death ray who will blast enemies while he's doing all that crap. James' swordsman can also now manipulate his bone structure to create creepy bone grafts that give him extra 'limbs', toughness, and necrotic damage. Would there still be too much overlap or would these characters suddenly diverge enough that it's okay for both of them to be teleporty swordsmen?

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 5:00 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Teleportation was given as a protected example separate from either of the major summoning schticks. So being a primary summoner and teleporting would be right out. Lesser pet schticks were specifically untagged, so you could presumably have like an astral imp or something that you could throw around while phasing into and out of reality.

So basically as I'm understanding this, you get a single pick from the "Major Schtick " list and that's it. Then you can fill in with a few minor schtick powers like shooting bows or throwing spears.

That sum it up pretty good?

NineInchNall · Post by **NineInchNall** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 5:13 pm

I think it's even simpler than that. There's the stuff that YOU can do (that no one else can), and then there's the stuff that everyone can do.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 6:02 pm

I think what Frank presented is just an example. He has also stated that the decisions for what is and isn't available one or all are all made by whoever designs the game. So in Franks example you can have teleporty swordsmen who do both (using ice and/or making illusions) since either one isn't a schtick that is unavailable to everyone. The system doesn't limit anyone from picking the same major schtick . It just ensures that if the players don't choose the "class" with that major schtick that there is no other way of having it.

NativeJovian · Post by **NativeJovian** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 7:41 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:My other question is, how much overlap would and should be allowed even if it does constitute schtick infringement? For example, say Ted and James both are huge fans of Bleach and want to make teleporty swordsmen. However, Ted wants to make his magic swordsman to be able to create and manipulate the shape of water/ice in addition to teleporty sword powers. James wants his teleporty swordsman to be able to construct elaborate illusions in the middle of his swordplay.

I think that would be the difference between two different characters of the same class. While both Ted and James are taking levels in the "Teleporty Swordsman" class, their feats and skills and whatnot are going toward "water magic" and "illusions" respectively. Anything that's role protected gets its own class, and you can't do it's thing without taking levels in that class, but the non-protected stuff is open to everyone. So as long as "water magic" and "illusions" aren't protected in your system (and they shouldn't be), Ted and James can both do what they want.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:03 pm

What is and is not a protected thing is going to depend on your intended campaign world. If you're going all Bronzagetastic, having a decent ranged weapon might legitimately be a unique deal. On the other hand, in a modern game it clearly would be available to all characters.

In an actually Bleach generated world, basically everyone teleports and stabs fools, and most peoples' maneuver list reads like a set of available chess moves. Protected schticks are whatever the hell else you do with magic, such as tricking people with illusions or beating them with hydropump. In a game based on Taoist heroes, controlling wind, water, and illusions is standard fare that everyone can have more or less of, while teleporting or doing anything else involving solid objects is a protected schtick.

The key is that you define these things ahead of time and then you stick to it. If two players are playing the same type of character in that context, then they will be necessarily aware of that fact and presumably take the steps to make that a rewarding experience rather than an insulting one.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:34 pm

I have no idea why that was so hard for me to understand.

I do think this means that you can't have classes like Fighters and Clerics anymore. I think I'm okay with that.

NineInchNall · Post by **NineInchNall** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:48 pm

I think it's all the time spent thinking about 4th Edition. It's not healthy, Lago, and you need to lay off that shit.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:54 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote: I do think this means that you can't have classes like Fighters and Clerics anymore. I think I'm okay with that.

Certainly not like Fighters. Clerics actually did classically speaking have some schticks reserved for them. As the sole arbiters of Raise Dead, there is some room to be had to give them a reserved schtick at all levels to justify their existence.

But in general, if you go back to the original classes, the basic ones (Clerics excluded) really don't have anything reserved for them even in conceptual outline (let alone fact). But you could do something with the derived classes. Thief doesn't have any reason to exist, but Thief Acrobat and Bard could both have respectably reserved schticks for themselves. Magic User has to go, but Illusionist and Necromancer could work. Fighter is a non-starter, but Paladin and Ranger have potential. And so on.

-Username17

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 9:10 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I have no idea why that was so hard for me to understand.

No idea, its not hard.

The gist is:

Roles are defined by the things they they and only they can do. You can't protect a role that you expect everyone to do.

What is actually protected is arbitrary and completely determined by the setting.

Once you protect a role its set in stone. Letting other roles infringe on something that you protected fucks the system up. As soon as you do that you've moved to a roleless system. If thats what you wanted you should've just designed one of those in the first place.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 2:37 pm

Now, when you say "set in stone", do things open up again if one party member leaves/dies? For example, if Cheshire leaves the group, does that free up teleportation magic for Titus?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 2:52 pm

RobbyPants wrote:Now, when you say "set in stone", do things open up again if one party member leaves/dies? For example, if Cheshire leaves the group, does that free up teleportation magic for Titus?

Since it's based on the campaign world and the game system, no. No individual character coming into or leaving the game is going to cause a radical reevaluation of what abilities are available to specific classes.

-Username17

shau · Post by **shau** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 6:26 pm

I still don't seem to be getting the idea here.

Let's look at Fantastic for a second. Now Fantastic, as of right now, has 30 different characters. Furthermore, these characters are divided up into groups based on class. So Captain Victory, Queen Maive, and Praetor all have the cape powers, which are sort of a generic mix of blasting, flying, and super strength and damage reduction. But the cape powers aren't the really exciting part of these characters. The main reason to play Captain Victory for example is his Major Schtick, which isn't defined yet but will be one of 30 or more absolutely unique Major Schticks that each character will have one of and only one of and no one else can have. Looking at the list, that probably won't be teleportation since that seems to be the obvious schtick choice for Tesseract. Is that it?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 6:37 pm

Captain Victory or Praetor will be made out of a combination of Cape Powers and universal powers. So the things that Captain Victory has that are "protected," the things that Doctor Octagon won't end up doing as an afterthought, are going to be exclusively on the Cape list.

If you had a game with both Captain Victory and Queen Maive in it, they would both have access to the Cape Powers, meaning that they could very well end up grabbing each other's powers. The advantage provided by a class-based system is that it warns you ahead of time when such power uniqueness conflicts can arise. So if a five person team shows up, and you have Dr. Octagon, Tesseract, Ice Princess, Captain Victory, and Queen Maive, you have one possible character conflict to worry about. In a classless system, you would have ten.

That means that it is up to just two players to work out a screentime sharing agreement where they either double team enemies Powerpuff style or purposefully take different Cape options or play out an in-character rivalry or romance, or whatever. The point is that you've reduced the number of conversations along those lines that you have to have to one instead of ten. A literal 90% reduction in character generation drama.

That, when it comes down to it, is what a class system should be for. Not to prevent another player from stealing your thunder (since no matter what the game system, another player can make identical choices and/or rolls during character generation), but to restrict the number of thunder stealing conversations you have to have to a workable and small number.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 8:16 pm

If you have a game where you have a lot of protected schticks but characters are also expected to have more than one major schtick (like Naruto) would it be okay to handwave some overlap as long as it doesn't get out of hand?

It seems like it would be way too much to, say, make a fire + water class, a fire + earth, fire + wind, a water + earth, a water + air, and a earth + air class when you could just have a fire/water/earth/air class and tell people not to go crazy with it.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Fri Oct 23, 2009 9:48 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:If you have a game where you have a lot of protected schticks but characters are also expected to have more than one major schtick (like Naruto) would it be okay to handwave some overlap as long as it doesn't get out of hand?

It seems like it would be way too much to, say, make a fire + water class, a fire + earth, fire + wind, a water + earth, a water + air, and a earth + air class when you could just have a fire/water/earth/air class and tell people not to go crazy with it.

Naruto would be more of a signature technique with more Everyman filler deal. Like Naruto gets Friendship no Jutsu (dominate) and the ability to make a bunch of himself. Sasuke gets a minor schtick copy ability and ZOMG defense/illusion as a minor. Rock Lee gets to be really good against unskilled opponents and can make himself totally fucking hardcore for a limited amount of time. Sakura has the medical know-how and can modify her and other people's physiologies. Orochmaru summons chaff and has one or two awesome summon tricks like Soot.

The problem here is if fighting is a general thing, what with taijutsu being an Everyman thing, how do we make the guy who wants to be Rock Lee not feel like shit next to Sakura of all people. Sasuke's major trick being anybody else's minor trick for a period of time may be a cause for concern as well.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Sat Oct 24, 2009 3:10 am

So how many Roles should you have in a given game? Is there a breaking point where you have an overabundance of Roles and then Conceptual Space falls apart?

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sat Oct 24, 2009 6:22 am

In a slightly difference direction, the relation of role protection to supers games had me considering my ongoing Champions game.

[hopefully this makes sense despite it being 2:30 am with an open bottle of Johhny walker Red in front of me]

Now as you all know Champs/HERO is point-based so there is no hard-coded role protection. But this is a largely experienced group and there are only a dozen or so standard archetypes that are truly effective in Champs without being cheesy. Thus most of the PCs were originally designed around the system's psuedo-classes of "Brick", "Flying Energy Blaster", "Martial Artist", "Mentalist" or "Speedster" or hybrids between them (the campaign world and some chargen houserules precluded: "Trick Ammo Dude", "Has Powersuit" and "Dr. Mystic")

But with a year and a half in the game, and a large group of players who have known each other for years, the actual functioning of the game is quite different. The characters are pretty much set up so that everybody has roughly two to maybe as many as four big schticks. And for whichever schtick a PC has, at least one other PC has pretty much exactly the same schtick - IE individual schticks are totally unprotected.

But where it gets interesting is that no two characters really overlap on more than one schtick. IE the aggregates are totally protected.

Lemme give some examples:

The metamorph and the guy made out of rocks are both "brick" archetypes who have crazy high strength and are capable of taking loads of punishment in melee.
But the dude made out of rocks other big schtick is science and engineering, while the metamorph's other big schtick is infiltration.
The other science and engineering character is the telekinetic, whose other schtick is a bunch of crowd control.
The other infiltration character is the mentalist, whose other schtick is street contacts.
The other crowd-control character is the ice dude, whose other schtick is media relations (party face / spokesman)
The other street-contacts character ex-pirate, whose other schtick is weather control flying energy blaster.
The other flying energy blaster is the guy with the sonic powers, whose other schtick is being the vehicles and transport dude.
The other party transport character is the teleportationist, whose other schtick is media relations.

Thus no PC has any single truly unique schtick, but every PC is a unique package of schticks. A new character with "science and engineering" and "media relations" would be okay. A new character with "Brick" and "Street contacts" would be ok. But a new character with BOTH "science and engineering and "brick" would not - as that package is already taken and therefore forms a protected role.

Granted, in this game, this is due to "gentleman's agreement" behavior - but I think it could be workable for some types of games and even desirable for some design goals.

The result is a party where PCs frequently break into pairings based on common schticks or larger subgroups based on complementary schticks to handle relevant tasks.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Sat Oct 24, 2009 6:37 am

What happens when you need someone to back up another person with the same shticks then? Does the "gentleman's agreement" just disappear? What happens when someone new comes along and doesn't get why there are two with the same shticks?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Oct 24, 2009 6:48 am

Ganbare Gincun wrote:So how many Roles should you have in a given game?

At least more than the expected number of players and more than the expected number of times you will play the game. If every player wants to be different from every other player and/or different from all of their previous characters in the system, that should be possible.

Is there a breaking point where you have an overabundance of Roles and then Conceptual Space falls apart?

Yes. But where it is depends upon how the information is presented. For example: in RIFTS, where everything is just a confusing unordered list jumbled together with OCCs and RCCs, it bypasses most peoples' complexity thresholds in the first book - even though there are only 7 OCCs or so in te basic book. On the flip side, D&D has things divided into 4 basic groups and has no problem throwing 11 at the player in the basic book.

People don't get hopelessly confused and lose track of the Arcane Casters, for example, until the list is:

Wizard
Sorcerer
Walock
Dread Necromancer
Beguiler
War Mage
Bard?
Duskblade?
Shugenja?
Witch?
Adept?
Magewright?
Artificer?

The length of the sublist, as well as the uncertainty of its contents means that it passes peoples' conceptual space threshold and they don't know what things do or what options are available.

4e actually had a great idea, not with the roles, but with the power sources. By putting classes into specifically arbitrary groups, your number of classes would stay well within conceptual space limits.

When your Arcane Classes list is:

[*] Wizard
[*] Warlock
[*] Sorcerer
[*] Bard
[*] Artificer[/list]

You're good. That works fine. If you throw down some memorable list of Power sources like say five or six (Arcane, Divine, Martial, Primal, Psychic, and Shadow), you could seriously have 30 classes and stay in conceptual space territory (albeit, only barely). Now, you'd still have to do something that was individually memorable with each of the classes of course. Those Arcane classes fit the bill, but Wardens and Invokers do not.

-Username17

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sat Oct 24, 2009 5:07 pm

shadzar wrote:What happens when you need someone to back up another person with the same shticks then? Does the "gentleman's agreement" just disappear?

No, actually that's part of the setup here. The common schticks are one of the ways that PCs break into sub-groups to tackle parts of the adventure.

For example:

If part of the adventure involves going undercover to find out what The Legion of Gloom's real plans are, then it's actively encouraged that both the characters with the infiltration schtick should team up and work together on that. One uses shapechange to look like a member and the other use jedi mind tricks to avoid potentially revealing questions, but really that's the same basic schtick.

If those two then uncover a weird piece of technology, that could have been sent back from the future to aid the bad guys - then it is outright expected that the Solid Rock Brick and the Telekinetic will work together poking at it in the lab to figure out what it is.

But common schticks are not the only ways of selecting subgroups:

For example when those two's tests determine that the gizmo is a more advanced version of a prototype that was stolen from a research lab on the other side of the country a few weeks back it's clear that a transport character and a investigative/street contacts character are needed to get there fast and look into it.

In this case there are two possible transit characters: the teleportationist or the vehicles dude. One also brings media savvy to the table, the other brings flying energy blasting.

There are also two possible street contacts characters: the ex-pirate and the mentalist. One also brings flying energy blasting, the other brings infiltration.

Any pairing of "one from column A, one from column B" works here, so the deciding factor is how likely it is that the (in this case) secondary schticks are going to be to relevant to the investigation. If the players expect that investigating the robbery will lead quickly to a firefight with the bad guys, they'll send the two flying energy blasters. If instead they expect that they'll have to infiltrate the staff at the research lab to find the leak while asking the media for help in cracking the case, they'll send the other two options.

What happens when someone new comes along and doesn't get why there are two with the same shticks?

Assuming we move past "gentleman's agreement" and over into hard-coded rules, the answer is:

"Dude, you can, and probably should, share any one schtick with any other PC. But you cannot overlap with any other individual PC on more than one schtick. "

But the point of all this is to raise the question of whether and when protecting groups of schticks rather than singular schticks serves the interest of a game or ruleset. Whaddya think?

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 5:42 am

FrankTrollman wrote:4e actually had a great idea, not with the roles, but with the power sources. By putting classes into specifically arbitrary groups, your number of classes would stay well within conceptual space limits.

When your Arcane Classes list is:

[*] Wizard
[*] Warlock
[*] Sorcerer
[*] Bard
[*] Artificer[/list]

You're good. That works fine.

So the kind of class structure that Final Fantasy Tactics (and to a much lesser extent, Earthdawn) uses where every magic type has an entirely separate caster class assigned to it is the exact opposite of what you need to do to keep your conceptual space from breaking, then? Even though all Wizards might have the same primary function in the game, by varying the power sources and giving them different secondary schticks, you manage to keep things interesting even though every Wizard might be a Controller or a Nuker or whatever, correct?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Oct 25, 2009 6:33 am

I wouldn't say that at all. The FFTA job chart compresses very nicely and fits easily into conceptual space limits. Having sublists like "Vierra Jobs" and "Human Jobs" is a good start, and further splitting them into Basic and Advanced Jobs as well as Animist Jobs, Mage Jobs, and Thief Jobs (or whatever) carves it up into very easily digestible nuggets of memorability. FFTA has 32 classes, but divided up as they are into groups of 5, it's actually quite handlable.

-Username17