Quote from: yosemitemike;930603Most people do think they are right which is why most people don't consider arguments they don't already agree with to be worthwhile.  Fans never find criticism of the object of their fandom to be valid either.  It's the way of the world.

That's the way of closedmindedness, not of the entire world.

Quote from: Maarzan;930677You are not understanding,I assume.
If it works out, it will usually resemble some kind of "class", because decent specialisation is usually the most efficient way to do things (even if you neglect that most non-primitive cultures work by creating specialists).

No, he understands what you're implying, it just doesn't work like that! Seriously, I don't know who you've been playing classless systems with and for how long.
But I know that from experience.

You only create class-like PCs in classless systems if you wanted to play exactly like in D&D in said system to begin with.
At which point, you should have just played D&D, and be done with it:D!

And the point about specialization is also untrue in many classless systems, like GURPS.

Not to mention, the point is fucking irrelevant, because no society works by creating PCs. They're always something that just happens, much like tropical storms;).
Well, maybe Drow society works by creating PCs, I'm not an expert on Salvatore's excuse for literature:D.

Quote from: Robert A. HeinleinA human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Quote from: Maarzan;930677You are not understanding,I assume.
If it works out, it will usually resemble some kind of "class", because decent specialisation is usually the most efficient way to do things (even if you neglect that most non-primitive cultures work by creating specialists).

For some widely variable value of "usually", where you seemed to be listing this way and three bad ways and implying there was no other way.

It seems to me this depends greatly on what level of specialization is needed to be considered fun and/or capable in each campaign/adventure, and depending on what you consider resembling a class (is anyone who can fight pretty well a Fighter(tm) class?).

That is, most adventurer characters in the GURPS games I've played in or GM tend to have appropriate values for their race, gender, culture, background, and profession, plus whatever hobbies, unusual backgrounds, and adventure-relevant skills they have. i.e. they make sense and are a lot like people or characters in stories about supposed people. If you are going to tell me that "resembles" classes and is what you were talking about, then the only difference of opinion is about what we're even talking about. I don't think of any of those things as being classes at all.

Quote from: Skarg;930687For some widely variable value of "usually", where you seemed to be listing this way and three bad ways and implying there was no other way.

It seems to me this depends greatly on what level of specialization is needed to be considered fun and/or capable in each campaign/adventure, and depending on what you consider resembling a class (is anyone who can fight pretty well a Fighter(tm) class?).

That is, most adventurer characters in the GURPS games I've played in or GM tend to have appropriate values for their race, gender, culture, background, and profession, plus whatever hobbies, unusual backgrounds, and adventure-relevant skills they have. i.e. they make sense and are a lot like people or characters in stories about supposed people. If you are going to tell me that "resembles" classes and is what you were talking about, then the only difference of opinion is about what we're even talking about. I don't think of any of those things as being classes at all.

Ok, perhaps you can tell me where those characters deviate from a class system (with a decent skill system, say rolemaster).

I consider a character having a "class" when the skills are recognizeable chosen to fulfill a rather typical "job" in a group or in the games I try to do in his cultural background/profession.

Quote from: Maarzan;930691Ok, perhaps you can tell me where those characters deviate from a class system (with a decent skill system, say rolemaster).

I consider a character having a "class" when the skills are recognizeable chosen to fulfill a rather typical "job" in a group or in the games I try to do in his cultural background/profession.

If that's your definition, then I don't disagree with you except about what I mean when I talk about what counts as a class.

My knowledge of Rolemaster is basically what's written at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolemaster . So it has "classes" called Professions, which sound like they just modify proficiency attributes? Unless I misunderstand, that doesn't sound like a class-based system to me at all. It sounds like less of a class-based system than GURPS with templates is. So if I'm not missing something, and that's what you call "a class system with a decent skill system", then again our definitions are very different and we don't disagree on substance.

My definition of a class system is one where a PC has one or more classes that are a major definition of what kind of person they are, and determines what abilities and restrictions they have and don't have, how they relate to the world, what abilities they gain as they gain experience, and perhaps other strange things like how powerful they can get, how many hundred hitpoints they can amass, whether they can learn spells or wear metal armor or not, what weapons they are allowed to wield, whether or not they can sneak around well or learn to pick locks, etc. Oh and also there may be weird rules where some classes or class combinations require high attribute scores, or certain races can't be certain classes or whatever. They generally seem to enforce stereotypes and genre and fantasy-racial expectations more than they tend to represent real logical reasons. They help by removing from consideration the details of what skills would seem appropriate to certain types of characters, but present obstacles to players who want PCs to be able to do things outside their niches.

Classes also represent to me a weird crude measure of character ability and power - weird to me because the classless systems have ability in doing things represented as ratings in those things. Like attack success and abilities being based the class levels of the opponents, as opposed to just the levels of the skills & stats being used.

Quote from: AsenRG;930679
You mean anyone plays those games:p?

Yeah, more to the point, I'm almost starting to think this concept is way too fucking hard for some people to grasp. Don't know why, but I sure hope it's nothing but a consequence of lacking experience with classless systems;).

Or some people would fucking argue about anything.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;930714Or some people would fucking argue about anything.

No they wouldn't.

Quote from: One Horse Town;930717No they wouldn't.

That's not arguing, that's simple contradiction.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;930727That's not arguing, that's simple contradiction.

That was never two minutes.

Quote from: CRKrueger;930614So in a classless system when someone chooses to put points in "Skill X" instead of "Skill Y" they're really making classes within a classless system - let me guess, they're also naturally moving towards niche protection and everything else that went into 3e class design because really that's the only way things work either forced by mechanics or naturally done by players...

Yeah. Ok.

No, people who want to play Batman will often (Not always) want to stick with being as 'Batman' as possible.  I've noticed in my local circle of gamers that once someone picks 'Batman' (or whatever) the other players will shy away from being 'Batman' too.  Sometimes out of respect, sometimes out of 'needing to fill another area, or play a foil that the party' (remember you're often playing RPGs with friends, but you'd know that if you actually gamed instead of stalking people on the internet) or some such reason.

Is that 'niche protection', Iunno.  I don't much care.  What I'm saying is that I've seen people in classless systems stick to their own special areas to excel, with very little bleed over, because that's what they want to play, inadvertently creating a class system, which may or may not map to traditional fantasy.

For example, my Sunday Mutants and Masterminds game, we have a Batman like Detective, a physical/psychic powerhouse, a flying sonic blaster and a superspeedster archer.  All unique specialties that the players wanted to play.  Is there crossover?  Absolutely, both the Powerhouse and Detective are expert martial artists, but how my players enact them differs.  Bulldog is an ex-Boxer/MMA turned superheroic bodyguard, he tends to deal with problems head on.  Shadowhawk prefers the shadows, but emits violence with quick, brutal, efficient bursts before vanishing back into the dark.

Let me repeat, people in games, whether is has classes or not, tend to want to play a specific type of character, which may map easily or not to whatever options they have.  That to ME feels like they are making their 'own classes' that they want to play.

This has been my experience on and off the Internet for the past 30 years. YMMV.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;930779No, people who want to play Batman will often (Not always) want to stick with being as 'Batman' as possible.  I've noticed in my local circle of gamers that once someone picks 'Batman' (or whatever) the other players will shy away from being 'Batman' too.  Sometimes out of respect, sometimes out of 'needing to fill another area, or play a foil that the party' (remember you're often playing RPGs with friends, but you'd know that if you actually gamed instead of stalking people on the internet) or some such reason.

Is that 'niche protection', Iunno.  I don't much care.  What I'm saying is that I've seen people in classless systems stick to their own special areas to excel, with very little bleed over, because that's what they want to play, inadvertently creating a class system, which may or may not map to traditional fantasy.

My players, one of whom had played MMORPGs but the others that hadn't played RPGs or MMORPGs, talked with each other about what each of them wanted to play and were building for characters (DwD Studios BareBones Fantasy). They talked as they went about how they did this to make the party more flexible, since they could see from the character design process they couldn't all be good at everything. If some things overlapped, that was OK with them, but they made sure they, as a party, could do damage, cast magic, heal, and do "thief things".

Quote from: Christopher Brady;930779Let me repeat, people in games, whether is has classes or not, tend to want to play a specific type of character, which may map easily or not to whatever options they have.  That to ME feels like they are making their 'own classes' that they want to play.

I think that's true to a point. Players will typically begin chargen in a classless system with some archetype in mind that they want to portray. From there, they have the capability to personalize the archetype in many, many, many different directions. (depending on classless system used). They are, in-effect, customizing the "class" of their character.

But, when there are hundreds or thousands, or tens of thousands of mechanical combinations and customizations that are possible, I think "own class" in this sense becomes a poor description. What the player is actually doing is creating an individual.

Quote from: K Peterson;930786I think that's true to a point. Players will typically begin chargen in a classless system with some archetype in mind that they want to portray. From there, they have the capability to personalize the archetype in many, many, many different directions. (depending on classless system used). They are, in-effect, customizing the "class" of their character.

But, when there are hundreds or thousands, or tens of thousands of mechanical combinations and customizations that are possible, I think "own class" in this sense becomes a poor description. What the player is actually doing is creating an individual.

Yeah, everyone creating their own unique class is a nonsensical use of the term.  That's like saying every human's entire learning experience is a class.

Someone who actually played a classless system would understand how deep the skill systems usually go, more than enough depth so that any two characters who both possess the rough equivalent of Hide in Shadows, Move Silently, Pickpocket and Find/Remove Traps are extremely different.  In fact one, may be the "Fighter"...why, because he bought armor and a shield and knows how to use them.

Quote from: Skarg;930680That's the way of closedmindedness, not of the entire world.

I never said anything about the entire world.  In my experience though, many people are quite close-minded.  How many people have you met on the internet who only go to news sources that consistently validate their point of view?  Liberals that get all of their news from The Huffington Post or The Daily Kos?  Conservatives that get all of their news from The Drudge Report or Rush Limbaugh?  Take two points of view expressed in this discussion

1) Classless systems let you play a character that is a real person with all of the depth and breadth of a real person.  Of course this is obvious nonsense.  There's no way any RPG PC will ever be as fully fleshed out as a real person.  For one thing, there just isn't time.  Someone just hitting legal adulthood in the US has been growing, maturing and developing for nearly two decades.  Damn few characters are played for even a tenth that long.  Also, they live in a living, breathing complex world.  Even the most detailed RPG worlds are only a sketch of a world.  Most are not really even that.  RPG character, in any system, are not like real living, breathing people.  

2) If a classless system is working, it's because the players made their own classes in the system.  Of course, this is also obvious nonsense.  The games play just fine without classes.  They were written to play that way.  Characters who are used to systems that have classes will tend to make something like classes but this observation has been stretched to an absurd degree to make any character that isn't a random pile of stats into some sort of class.  Building toward a character concept, emulating some fictional character or building around an archetype common in the fiction all become making a character class.  This stretches the definition of character class so far that the term loses all meaning.  If I like fritz Leiber and make my very Gray Mouser knock-off in a Fantasy Hero game, I have created a fighter-thief hybrid class?  Oh, please.  

These arguments are both wildly overstated.  Characters in a classless system like Hero can be more like real people but they are not actually like real people.  Some players build class equivalents in classless systems but it isn't required to make the system work and all players don't do it unless you stretch the definition of class so far that it doesn't mean anything any more.  Yet here we are.

Quote from: James Gillen;929885I want my voiceover to be Ron Howard.

JG

Quote from: CRKrueger;930024Morgan Freeman, maybe Tom Hanks.

No one on earth is cool enough to have James Earl Jones as a voiceover, not even James Earl Jones.

We think samely, Morgan Freeman was at the top of my list. Now that I think about it I would want Makoto Fujiwara or Tōru Ōkawa. They both have epic voices.