Thief, Priest, Fighter, Wizard.  They excite the imagination and get people playing post-haste.  Classes work.

Now what would they be for a high school game?

So, before anyone jumps too quickly to a conclusion:  Yeah, I did my time in high school, and I generally remember what folks were like.  I was not under a rock.  But it wasn't the most ... y'know ... self-aware and reflective period of my life.  I blame the hormones and also a healthy dose of my own stupidity.

The end result is that while I have lived with all the high school roles, and I certainly recognize them when they are pointed out to me ("Oh YEAH!  Poets!  Arty folks who flounce around and talk about how they can't wait to get out of high school and into the deep meaning that they know is out there for them!  I remember them!") I have this feeling that any list I dredge out of my memory is going to have hugely embarrassing gaps that, the moment they're pointed out to me, I'll say "Oh, that is funny ... how could I have forgotten ?"

Maybe I'm repressing stuff.  That wouldn't surprise me

But anyway, let's have some fun with this!  Seems like it'd be a hoot to have folks brainstorming on what sort of classes fill out a high school, and it'd really help me out besides.  Here's what I've roughly got so far:

   Prince(ss)
Poet
Champion
Scrapper
Slacker
Bookworm
Nurturer

Nurturer and Champion are ... not quite the right words.  Champion is my rough take on "Jock," which has all sorts of connotations that are, well, pretty damn restrictive.  I'm pretty sure Champion isn't the right word either, though ... "Competitor"?  Sheesh.

And "Nurturer" is ... grghle ... well, I've been watching a lot of Ah My Goddess, and so I want a place for the sweet girl who spends her time trying to take care of others (even when that means that bad stuff befalls her).  Dunno what quite the right word for it is.  Martha-Stewart-wannabe?

Quote from: TonyLBPrince(ss)
Poet
Champion
Scrapper
Slacker
Bookworm
Nurturer

Nurturer and Champion are ... not quite the right words.  Champion is my rough take on "Jock," which has all sorts of connotations that are, well, pretty damn restrictive.  I'm pretty sure Champion isn't the right word either, though ... "Competitor"?  Sheesh.

And "Nurturer" is ... grghle ... well, I've been watching a lot of Ah My Goddess, and so I want a place for the sweet girl who spends her time trying to take care of others (even when that means that bad stuff befalls her).  Dunno what quite the right word for it is.  Martha-Stewart-wannabe?

What is it you find too restrictive about Jock -- do you not want it limited to athletes?  I can understand that, but at the same time, the competitive aspect of it seems less important than the peer group, hence why I would go with Jock over Champion/Competitor.

I don't know as that there really is a male equivalent to the Princess for the purposes of this setting, so I'd leave out Prince.

I like Scrapper, Slacker, and Bookworm.

Nurturer, I don't know about.  I recognize your goal with it, but IME it was something that occurred in all groups/cliques, so I don't think having it be its own class works so well.

In junior high school we played an RPG called Revolt! where you killed all the teachers. There were three character classes: Jock, Normal, and Nerd. The axis was fighting vs. sneaky tricks like making a sulfuric acid gun out of loose parts in chemistry lab, but Nerds could also go berserk, at which point they would fight as well or better than jocks for short periods.

Game was lots of fun. I'm sorry for the kids growing up today, if they had a game like this they'd be expelled, interrogated by Homeland Security, and probably thrown in jail as potential Kiebold/Harris/Cho types.

I'm assuming the slacker class represents the stoners. If not I would add that class.

Let's see. I went to a large (4100 kids) midwestern (Denver), suburban high-school from a reasonably affluent district. We had jocks, cowboys, nerds, freaks, and losers. The nerds were academic. The freaks were drug-involved. The losers had the least descriptive, most derisive title because they didn't really fit anywhere else. They were the auto shop, work after school, not that interested in "the scene" kinda-kids. Of course, they would've been the most highly-skilled class. So it goes.

classes are supposed to be iconic, and by their nature are restrictive.

If you don't have Jock you have something obviously missing.

So:

Cool Kid
Jock
Slacker
Stoner
Nerd
Geek
Goth
Nice girl (used to be nurturer, and yes it's judgemental but so is high school)
Princess (there is no prince, that's what Jocks are for)
Arty kid

And that's about it, stuff like nurturer etc I simply don't recognise.  Frankly, the test for a class is if you say it to someone who doesn't rpg they should be able to work out roughly what you're talking about (and yes, the cleric does fail that test).

First:  I'm not sure these are 100% about peer group.  I think that there could easily be Slackers and Scrappers on a football team, for instance.  I really do think of it more in terms of the classic D&D adventure party ... being a Fighter didn't mean that you only hung out with other Fighters (though, certainly, there was a certain ... understanding there, even among opposite sides on a battlefield).

Not really sure.  Should it be just peer group?  Or is peer group something subtly different?  Is the tension between Who you are and Who you hang with something worth examining?

I agree that the iconic weight of "Jock" overrides my personal quibbles about the term.  "Jock" it is.

Second:  On the additional classes (thanks everyone!  Keep 'em coming!):  Geeks, yes, hell yes.  I was driving around, before I even got back here, and I realized "Oh shit, Geeks and Bookworms are completely distinct things.  Geeks are about being enthusiastic about something that has minimal objective importance:  Ron in Harry Potter is, in the context of a Quidditch match, a hopeless geek.  Bookworm is about a concentration on outside authority and structure.  The two can combine well, but don't need to."  So yeah ... Geek and Bookworm both, I think.

I do not, personally, think that "Nerd" has enough currency as a phrase distinct from "Geek" to make it a contender for ousting "Bookworm."  I've had that discussion with my friends ("Who's a Geek, who's a Nerd?") but for me it fails the iconic test.

Prince/Princess:  Japanese influence there, I'm afraid.  There very much is a distinct Prince class in Manga, with strong parallels to Princess.  If I could find a better term that encompassed them both in a less gender-freighted way that'd be thrilling.  "Cool Kid" is close, but ... really ... don't we want to believe that all our PCs are "Cool"?

I dunno about "Stoner."  I mean ... okay ... I get the peer group.  I get the archetype.  I'm just not sure I think it's either wise or interesting to single it out and offer it to people.  Maybe I'm just too puritanical or something there ... but, y'know, one could also have "Slut" as a character class, and I'm pretty sure I don't want to do that either.

Fantasy Flight's "Grimm" game had the following classes:
Bully
Dreamer
Jock
Nerd
Normal Kid
Outcast
Popular Kid

Also I'd like you to know that after reading this thread, I suddenly have the "Don't your forget about me" song stuck in my head...

From my recollection, there were the "princesses" (ie. the girls who were popular because of their looks and fashion), and then there were indeed two classes of "prince": the ones who were cool because they were Jocks, and the ones who were cool because they were Rich. Even in high school, money was an automatic buy-in to the upper classes unless there was something seriously wrong with you (as in, speech impediment, terminal shyness, fatal ugliness, social retardation, etc.; but there were no such thing as "average" Rich kids; the ones with money were all automatically in the popular crowd, EVEN if they sucked at sports, unless there was something about them that made them a Freak). Whereas you could also be a poor kid but end up in the elite because you were good at sports.

RPGPundit

No one got Teacher's Pet (the basic kiss-ass)?

And while the 90's are fading into distance history (legend becomes myth), something like "Goth" might be iconic enough to be a class (or maybe a sub-class).

I seem to recall some lines of musical identification (I went to High School in the 80's) so there would be the kids who liked Metal and the kids who liked Country (and Hip Hop, of course, and so-on).

While not exactly classes, I think clubs might be important also: The kids in Yearbook, for example. Chess club, computer club, etc. Band.

And while we're doing not-quite-classes, the kid who has a car is kind of iconic (although these days I suspect everyone does). Also people with actual jobs tended to have responsibilities and resources that might be interesting in game terms...

Kids with criminal connections (specifically pharmaceutical) might also qualify for classhood (I'm thinking "dealer" -- Freak / Stoner is clearly in the "user" category... although at 5th Level a Stoner can become a "reseller")

I agree that the wealthy and the children of the power-elite would clearly be their own class.

If you're doing urban schools "Gang Banger" would clearly qualify.

Cheers,
-E.

One question that occurs to me is how much are these categories a reflection of social roles and how much are they a function of actual skills and pursuits. The reson I ask is that I think one of the most interesting things about high school was the growing tension between those things. You see it especially as people get a little older and out of high school, and the groups start to interact with each other and maybe the jock gets interested in his major, the bookworm decides to dabble in lifting weights, etc. The stereotypes become less relevant, but the seeds were already there.

For example, I remember the stoners that I hung out with in high school. It included the abslute slackers, many a bookworm, and the arty types, and even a few atheletes that just hadn't bought into the jock mentality. I also remember in the jocks there were some that were genuinely interested in developing their skills and others that were just happy to be king for 4 years, some that studied, and others that were happy not too.

What I'm saying is that the social stereotypes intersected the personal skills in a way that was interesting. It might be interesting to preserve that somewhat by keeping the social roles and stereotypes as related by distinct subsystems of the game.

Just a thought.

Class based High School is so different from where I come from. Where is the Gangster class..would this be Ruffian ? Tough Guy ? And you don't really want to go into the whole Private High School social groups

Regards,
David R

This thread is spectacular case study in why classes serve poorly in modern or realistic settings.

:rolleyes:

This is beginning to sound like The Breakfast Club, the d20 Supplement. Which isn't a bad idea at all, but it would have to take into account the generation-to-generation changes in pop culture base classes. My High School of the 1980's would be both different and the same from the High School of the 2000's (having an 18-year old daughter taught me that).

For instance, how would the game handle what my daughter calls the Trenchcoat Mafia? Dissatisfied teens more than willing to shoot a few classmates or teachers on a whim.  This wasn't even a thought back in the 80's, but since Columbine it is an almost common occurrance.

EDIT: I just thought of how it could be handled. A Cyberpunk humanity-like mechanic to indicate how socially adjusted the High Schooler is.