I've noticed that if you DO engage the player, by allowing them to be whatever it is they want, they tend to stick it out.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;861333I've noticed that if you DO engage the player, by allowing them to be whatever it is they want, they tend to stick it out.

In reality I have found this to be true IF what they want isn't related to game mechanics.

Quote from: Spike;861193Based on the OP rather than the first fifty or so responses, my answer is that I've seen more times as a player, or potential player, where the GM puts some arbitrary restrictions on playable characters for personal reasons than players who really wanted to break the setting.

My own observation runs something in parallel to yours: I've seen a lot of restrictions placed that -- if you grilled the GM until he confessed -- boiled down to "I had a problem once with a guy who ran one of that class/archetype."

Quite aside that there's no class or archetype that can't be abused by a relentless enough minimaxer or boundary pusher, said "problems" seemed fairly often to be personality clashes rather than based around game mechanics.

I am generally a pretty open dude, but there is a definite correlation between problem players (who are problems because of their behavior, not what they play) and hearing "I want to be a catgirl," "I want to be a succubus," "I want to be a minotaur," "I want to be a ninja turtle," or "I want to play Abraham Lincoln," or "I want to play Colonel Sanders and have a chariot of gold and seashells pulled by six nubian slaves" in session 1.

I tried not to come to the same conclusion, but my experience has been similar. I have also known a similar overlap between that type of player and "fap GMs" who want to masturbate their Mary Sues in front of a "live, studio audience," as Spike and Ravenswing experience. I just don't have the patience for sitting with such GMs that long, so spotting and correcting that situation is easier (I walk); as GM I need to suss out that player personality before it disrupts my table however.

Quote from: Ravenswing;861443My own observation runs something in parallel to yours: I've seen a lot of restrictions placed that -- if you grilled the GM until he confessed -- boiled down to "I had a problem once with a guy who ran one of that class/archetype."

Quite aside that there's no class or archetype that can't be abused by a relentless enough minimaxer or boundary pusher, said "problems" seemed fairly often to be personality clashes rather than based around game mechanics.

I personally HATE the D&D Bard, absolutely despise it, because everyone who wants to be one in my experience tries to be the 'Jack of All Trades and Master of EVERYTHING'.  But I don't stop anyone from playing it.  And invariably those who don't realize what a Bard really is in D&D (The party's Face and a support structure) often get bored with it.

And the thing is, it's the way the class is built, they're not actually demanding anything of me, they're just rolling up whatever class/race combo they want.

I think it's more player expectations that gets them bored, if they do.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;861492And invariably those who don't realize what a Bard really is in D&D (The party's Face and a support structure) often get bored with it.

That is how I played my bard up until his demise and return as a gnoll which essentially was a re-demise as had to retire him. Support and the group negotiator. And when I got to un-retire the character for one last adventure in a big TSR staff run Greyhawk adventure he ended up the one who completed the quest by just talking to the spectre and finding out what it wanted. Also because I was the support character I got to save the partys dwarf from being eaten by a mimic because no one else was paying attention.

Quote from: Omega;861535That is how I played my bard up until his demise and return as a gnoll which essentially was a re-demise as had to retire him. Support and the group negotiator. And when I got to un-retire the character for one last adventure in a big TSR staff run Greyhawk adventure he ended up the one who completed the quest by just talking to the spectre and finding out what it wanted. Also because I was the support character I got to save the partys dwarf from being eaten by a mimic because no one else was paying attention.

If my crew has watched that silly film, A Knights Tale, I point out that the Chaucer character IS what a bard should do in a game.  Usually works.

Now that I think on it, honestly, seriously think on it, I'm not against the class, I'm against what it got billed as, and unfortunate experiences surrounding it.  But the Bard as the party Voice/Negotiator and the like?  No issues there.

A discussion I had wayyyyyy back with TSR staff come to mind too on this. The proliferation of more and more classes was seen occasionally as players wanting to stand out from the norm.

Others were just honest desires to translate XYZ into D&D terms or fill a percieved gap that sometimes did not really exist or need a class to define it. Dragon got alot of "odd" submissions apparently for classes.

Omega, I think the real problem came with the "character class" concept in the first place.  

In a point-buy system, there's no problem.  You want to play a performer?  You throw a few points as picking up a few music- and/or acting-based skills.  There's nothing otherwise about being a "bard" that should be about -- or preclude -- being a skilled swordsman, being a wizard, practicing burglary, what have you.  I've had minstrel-types in my parties that weren't the party spokesmen: being entertainers defined their roleplay, but it didn't often affect their battle strategies, except in so far as lutes are fragile things you don't want anywhere near a melee.

But D&D being D&D, you had to build a character class around it ... with unique abilities, powers tied to achieving this level or that, the whole nine yards.  There had to be something about "bard" which was every much as valuable a niche as "wizard" or "fighter" or "cleric," and didn't come off as a retread of what other classes did.  That the writers made a hash of it isn't surprising; it would've been very tough for them not to have had, without a radical redefining of D&D's structure.

Seems like annoying player and GM behaviors are the real problem, and sometimes but not always, certain odd things are hints someone may be a problem. Best to investigate by talking to them to get more clues what they're like in play.

Specific examples of odd characters may work out if the player is right and the group and the GM and the game world and agreed play style can handle it. Although the more strange it is, the more likely it'll conflict with something, even if the player is good.

As for GM's excluding certain things, again the examples given were of GMs who turned out to have issues, and the limits could be clues, and again, talk to the GM before joining a game if you want to try to avoid GMs with issues. I think limits are less likely to be a problem by themselves, and can actually be a sign of a great GM. That is, most of the GMs I really like would limit a lot of player choices, or even provide their own very specific list of what is and isn't appropriate for their campaign. In those cases, it indicated the GM has carefully and intelligently designed something interesting and thought about what would and wouldn't be appropriate. I'm concerned if a GM tells me I can pick anything from a massive range of possibilities, and it's going to be a group game. ("A dwarf, an orc, a vampire, a priest, a paladin and an ettin meet at a tavern and form a heroic party....")

Quote from: Ravenswing;861621Omega, I think the real problem came with the "character class" concept in the first place.  

Nah. Classes work fine. Its just that players kept missing the point, over and over an over and over. Or creating whole new classes which were just class X with one or two new quirks. Rifts takes this to the Nth degree while Tunnels & Trolls goes the opposite and distills it down to 2.5 classes.

In Red Shetland I had about 12 classes. This was mainly to tell the GM what the players base concept is and what the character and player identifies with most. From there you were free to dabble in whatever you wanted. You just might not necessarily excel at it as well as someone who focuses within their starting paramiters. The main thing was that say a knight focuses on picking up and excelling at magic then his or her knightly skills will almost certainly fall on the wayside as they progress.

Freeform chargen has its own pitfalls as Gurps and other like games have shown aplenty.

Neither is inherintly better and personally I prefer the middle. Base classes and then freedom to explore outside if so desired.

Ravenswing, character class is a great labor saving device.

1) "I want a guy who does x,y, z ..." When we can identify that as "Oh! A ranger" or a druid, or an illusionist, or whatever, what we tend to do in a points-distribution game is whip out a set of stats we've already worked out and then modify as needed.

Having popular types already done up saves the labor of "reinventing the wheel" over and over.

2) Points systems give the illusion that every possible combination has been thoroughly play-tested when that is not the case. "But the points add up! It's a legal build!" Sooner or later, the GM will have to close a loophole, and it may be a destroyer-sized one.

With a new character class, we know it's in development. Once we've tested it, we know that as well. The scope of variables in the experiment is explicitly limited.

So, maybe one player wants a Bard, another a Skald, and another a Troubador. Starting with one take on the basic concept of a keeper of oral tradition and maker of sometimes enchanted poetry, we can deal with specific variations and adjust them with experience in the campaign.

Character classes work well in abstract games that support strong archetypes.

The fighter class is extremely broad and encompasses a wide variety of character styles within that archetype. A character class is not a profession or even a skill set, it is who your character is.

In the D&D world there are many people and creatures that fight with weapons. Some are better at it than others. A fighter is more than that.

The proliferation of classes to include niche abilities came about because people forgot what a class represents.

If broad archetypes are not interesting to you, then it might be better to play classless systems.

Verily. There was no thief class till later in D&D (Greyhawk).