Quote from: Ratman_tf;907750I think it was Kevin Crawford who mentioned "strong" and "weak" niche protection.
I like weak niche protection. I dislike strong niche protection.
CP 2020 springs to mind, where it's skill based, but each "class" gets their one role special ability.

Yeah - they are like 'archetype templates' - Good example.

I'd love to see D&D re-worked like this. But as the Class System thread indicates, most people would consider it "D&D". I'd still like to see a fantasy game structured like this built on the Interlock chassis with modifications. That would be interesting.

Ravenswing covers most all my thoughts/opinions on it.
It's never been something I've endorsed and I think I generally prefer not to play with folks who do.
But I have seen a good bit of GM advice recommending character creation be done together so the group can be 'balanced'... and I've seen a lot of groups that subscribe to that notion. There's the usual mantra in any D&D game that 'someone has to play a healer!'
There seems to be a sibling notion that goes along with it that the PCs need to operate like a crack team of Navy Seals... at least that's the line I keep hearing from various Pathfinder/D&D players, "We can't play this adventure path unless everyone knows their function in the group!".
I think it comes out of folks playing lots of World of Warcraft, which also shoves the team construct down your throat by trying to force group members into certain roles and having a very narrow path to success (at least in raids).

I have never worried about niche protection in the games I run. I create sandbox for the player characters to explore and interact with, seed it with adventure hooks, and turn them loose. I do try to set out hooks that feature what the characters are most competent at as this is often what the player is most interested in doing during the game.

Not every hook relates to a character skill set though, and I am fine with a party pursuing a hook that they lack the obvious skills to tackle. A group of non-combat focused characters can sign on to be caravan guards if they want to but will likely face a greater challenge than a group of fighters would.

I also like to see player ingenuity and creativity. I don't set one solution puzzles. Instead I set a situation and let teh players come up with their own solution. I have seen groups deal with locked and trapped doors through thieves picking the lock and disarming the trap, burning the door, wizards using Knock spells, even a group that took out pickaxes and tunneled through the wall next to the door. To me niche protection seems a bit like computer games where there is one correct solution to the adventure so you need the set of characters that will provide that solution.

I tend to think of intentional "niche protection" as a sign of design failure in a game.

On the other hand I do like games that allow specialization and to distinguish the abilities of characters who have extraordinary skills in their specialty, and wouldn't want those to be equaled by non-specialists, which is not the same thing as niche protection.

I think the idea of having a group of people with mixed skills to cover various needs is ok as long as it makes sense, but when it's forced and worked into the game design and classes and challenges designed to require those classes, I think that's annoyingly forced. I find it especially annoying when the idea is the players will for a party that must include a wizard, a thief, a cleric, and whatever else, else they will be screwed because the adventures are designed to need those.

I also don't much care for games that require a party to all be PCs. No one wants to be a healer? Get an NPC healer to join, or hire one if need be.

Looking back, a game that I think exemplified the virtues of weak niche protection, at least for me, was MERP.  There were classes, but they were pretty meaningless as everything was skill based. Furthermore, the list of skills was minimal with a strong emphasis on combat. Combat was vicious and deadly so no one ignored those skills.  You had 6 classes, but really you just had different flavors of fighters, fighting rogues, and magic dabblers who depended on their fighting skills to survive.  Magic was weak, especially at low levels, so even mages and animists took fighting skills so they would have a function in-between warming blankets and talking to trees.  There were no soft skills either, so character interaction depended on story, background and actual role-playing.  MERP was basically a combat engine (By today's standards people might say it was a flawed and  incomplete game) which funneled everyone into a fighting role of one flavor or another, because mechanically, that's what there was to do.  Players had to spend valuable points on the few non-combat skills, or invent stories and roleplay to create differentiation and "niches" within the setting.  None of this, I think, was intended by ICE, but it made for endlessly interesting characters, parties, combats, and stories.

I've never had a problem with "niche protection" and I am not even sure if everyone is using it the same way. Giving the PC's somewhere to shine is not a bad thing. I've never GM'd an adventure around a spotlight. Give them a problem and let them determine the best way to solve it. A locked door. The thief has the best chance of picking it. The Fighter can get through quicker but everyone will know, etc.. I like best the skilled templates like Chivalry and Sorcery where everyone can buy any skill as but the skills related to your class were at a discount. Everyone had a specialty but everyone broadened out as you became more experienced.

Rule-mandated nice protection is a way of propping up a lack of player interest. If I am playing a thief, and I am sitting at the table waiting for the spotlight moments when I get to pick a lock or sneak around, it suggests I have no motivation or engagement with the story. I'm just sitting there waiting for my turn for the GM to let me do my thing. Without niche protection and a specified role, how would I ever know when I was supposed to act?

I remember the issue of niche protection came up a lot back when Savage Worlds was new. Many people complained that without niche protection, all PCs would end up the same. I never had an issue with it. First of all, players just tended make their own unique character builds simply because they had different tastes. Even when players did make something that was similar on paper, like one party that had two swordsman, the characters never seemed similar in play. The players brought those characters to life in entirely different ways. Their stats could have been identical, and they still would have been different characters because they were different people. It also helped that SW has a wide variety of combat tactics. They had very different fighting styles, not because of the numbers on their sheets, but because of the tactical choices they made.

D&D gets a lot of blame for niche protection, but I got some good lessons from it. I started with B/X and characters are so mechanically simply that your character identity has to involve a lot more than what is on your sheet. While I like a lot of the complexity of character design that evolved in the '80s, it did encourage some players to think of their characters as purely what is on their sheet. If your character sheet isn't different than the guy next to you, then its the exact same character. That helps to fuel an obsession with niche protection. You need a game with a 1000 crunchy bits just to make sure that your character has bits that are distinct from everyone else.

Getting away from mechanics, there will always be people who are protective of their role. It's like in real life, how some people in the work place jealously guard a duty that anyone could probably do. That's an interpersonal issue though, and no rule is really going to help with that.

Quote from: Dave R;907714Anyway...  Am I wrong, and there's a counter-argument I'm not seeing?

You're not wrong, but there is a counter-argument.  Several, actually:  Mission: Impossible, The A-Team, Leverage, Ocean's Eleven, etc., etc.  Heck, for that matter, any combined arms tactical wargame.

There's nothing wrong with niche protection.  There's also nothing wrong with not having it.  But a game that mechanically enforces it is going to produce situations that reward it.

Quote from: Baulderstone;907792Rule-mandated nice protection is a way of propping up a lack of player interest. If I am playing a thief, and I am sitting at the table waiting for the spotlight moments when I get to pick a lock or sneak around, it suggests I have no motivation or engagement with the story. I'm just sitting there waiting for my turn for the GM to let me do my thing. Without niche protection and a specified role, how would I ever know when I was supposed to act?

Agreed.  And on a positive note, niche protection works well for new players who are getting comfortable with what they should do in the game, and with casual players who like to define their characters in a single word or short phrase.

QuoteI remember the issue of niche protection came up a lot back when Savage Worlds was new. Many people complained that without niche protection, all PCs would end up the same. I never had an issue with it. First of all, players just tended make their own unique character builds simply because they had different tastes. Even when players did make something that was similar on paper, like one party that had two swordsman, the characters never seemed similar in play. The players brought those characters to life in entirely different ways. Their stats could have been identical, and they still would have been different characters because they were different people. It also helped that SW has a wide variety of combat tactics. They had very different fighting styles, not because of the numbers on their sheets, but because of the tactical choices they made.

SW still has a reputation (I think undeserved) for producing "same-y" characters.  I hazard to guess this might come people with class-based assumptions.

Do I hate niche protection? Oh, boy, do I ever. I've ranted about it a couple times on my blog.

And bear in mind I prefer D&D and don't really care for the classless games anymore. I specifically gravitate towards OD&D because there's no real niche protection, especially if you approach it with the right attitude. You see, the classes aren't meant to exclude non-class abilities in OD&D. Being a fighter doesn't mean you can't try to open a lock or sneak up behind someone, and fighters can even cast spells by the book, with a Ring of Spell-Storing. Classes are meant to be extras, an indication of what that player wants to see more of. "I want to be able to use a lot more magic, so I will play a magic-user." vs. "I just want to hit stuff, so I'll be a fighter." By the book, 1st level characters all have the same chances of hitting an opponent, and they all do 1d6 damage, regardless of weapon type. Clerics don't even get spells until 2nd level, so you can't even use the "we need a healer" argument. There's just no real niche protection, and I prefer to accentuate those features.

I am convinced that niche protection led to many of the great evils of RPGs, including the proliferation of classes. Niche protection sucks.

I suppose I can be said to not like 'niche protection' because when I'm playing a class-based game, I'm usually playing as a multi-classed character.

D&D, and other class based games, I think of as an attempt to artificially generate niches. And it doesn't always work.
Lots of skill-based games still give characters that are quite distinct. A lot of it boils down to the game mechanic, I think, though the cost of a +1 also factors into it. If one character is rolling 5d6 and adding the pips to fight and the other is rolling 10 dice to fight, then you have a niche, whether or not there's a class in there somewhere. Meanwhile, a roll of d20 or d100 is likely to let whoever do whatever.

Quote from: Madprofessor;907814Agreed.  And on a positive note, niche protection works well for new players who are getting comfortable with what they should do in the game, and with casual players who like to define their characters in a single word or short phrase.

Sure. I don't object to classes or prepared templates. They are also a great way to get a handle on the kind of characters that exist in a setting. They become a problem when you mandatory classes needed for a party.

Someone mentioned Kevin Crawford earlier. I think Stars Without Number gets classes right. You have the class that is extra good at combat, you have the class that is great with skills and you have the psychic class. Each class has a lot of variety in it and can take any skill they want. Also, there is no skill required for a party. You can play a party with all warriors, all experts or all psychics, or any possible combination.

QuoteSW still has a reputation (I think undeserved) for producing "same-y" characters.  I hazard to guess this might come people with class-based assumptions.

I'm not surprised. While I still play SW off and on, I don't really participate in online discussion of it anymore. The Pinnacle boards were a friendly place, but I reached a point where I knew the system well enough that I wasn't getting anything out of talking about anymore. I'm just interested in playing it.

Quote from: daniel_ream;907795You're not wrong, but there is a counter-argument.  Several, actually:  Mission: Impossible, The A-Team, Leverage, Ocean's Eleven, etc., etc.  Heck, for that matter, any combined arms tactical wargame.

There's nothing wrong with niche protection.  There's also nothing wrong with not having it.  But a game that mechanically enforces it is going to produce situations that reward it.

Not just entertainment, but real life as well, most jobs have a niche they want their employees to fill.  Military/commando teams, civil engineering, construction work, I could go on.

The big problem with D&D's niche protection is that they present and then, from the first day, mucks it up by making Magic more useful and reliable than a sword to the face.  Early editions it wasn't noticed so much, because everyone was wowed by the new shiny!  But as they iterated and changed it, especially when certain magic loving designers touched it, destroyed any sense it had of players being specialists in their field, because magic could easily fill it for a little while.

What I generally want to avoid is when you have two characters who are basically trying to do the same thing, but one of them is just strictly shittier at it than the other character and will always be stuck in that beta position. There are a number of ways to work around this:

- Make gameplay broad, giving people more things to make their specialty. (But this needs to he coupled with a broad, universal competency so that you don't end up with the "and now it's Bob's scene" problem.)
- Include resources that can equalize unequal characters. (D&D does this through magic items, although the effect can be blunted by groups who follow certain types of treasure distribution.)
- Use a class system or similar mechanical measure to enforce (or somewhat enforce) these divisions.

And so forth.

One of the games which does a rather nice job with this is GUMSHOE: Character creation parcels the investigation abilities out amongst the PCs so that everyone has their unique angle on things, but everybody is broadly competent and if you're the one who gets the right idea then you're in good shape.

I also find that niche protection tends to be less important in groups which place more importance on where a particular idea comes than in groups where only the act of actually doing something is valued. For example, at my primary tables if Sue says, "George, you're the archaeologist. Can you tell how old the sarcophagus is?" and that pans out into an important lead, then Sue feels good about having come up with the idea and is supported by the rest of the table who share in that belief. This tends to be ideal, because George's contribution in such situations isn't devalued, either. The communal sense of contribution and participation is a rising tide that lifts all ships.

But I've also seen tables where Sue won't feel good unless she's the one who actually determines the age of the sarcophagus. Or tables where the others don't recognize Sue's contribution, so that over time she stops making those suggestions. (I'm not saying this is a verbal thing like, "Good job, Sue!", although it can be. It's a subtler social fabric than that.) These also tend to be the groups where players can't enjoy being audience members: If their character isn't actively doing something, they tune out. These groups are, IMO, strictly inferior to the groups that can take joy and entertainment from everything that happens at the table. (But I digress.)

Quote from: Ravenswing;907725* "Enforcing the genre expectations?" Please. If the GM can't manage to run the anticipated genre and the players aren't interested in running the anticipated genre, no character class written will compel them to do so. You can never legislate the munchkins out of existence. You can say, bizarrely enough, "Nice try, but no."

I wanted to comment on this one point: wanting to play a specific genre and understanding the genre conventions are two different things.  I often have players that want to play a specific strong genre game (Indiana Jones-style pulp adventure, Modern Age superheroes, Conan-esque sword & sorcery) but don't consciously understand the genre conventions and so tend to fall back on D&Disms because that's what they're familiar with.

Mechanics that enforce genre conventions, up to and including "character classes", are a convenient way of channeling the players into behaviour that gives them the experience they want.