Quote from: AsenRG;923613And in everyon else's terms, they're just the memorable characters that you've read about or seen at the screen, which you don't need classes about.

Memorable characters become archetypes over time.  Like the master swordsman, the knight in shining armour, each of those have a distinct and recognizable set of abilities that define them, even if we don't remember who the originator of said archetype exists.  Most Class based games (at least the better ones) take said archetypes and make them into a standardized set of abilities, but add customization for variation within the archetype, because not every Knight is Lancelot or King Arthur, or not every swordsman is D'Artagnan or Miyamoto Musashi.

Classes are character creation short hand.

There's are good class systems (D&D) and bad class systems (D20 Modern). Good class systems guide the players to an appropriate array of characters/talents for the main adventuring activity of the game.

Good classless systems get that effect in different ways, either by alternative structures (templates, careers) or by some other structure or mechanism in the game.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;923612And you would be entirely wrong.  Having a background in say, siege engineering is not likely to get you very likely to get into something like...  Botany.  Most likely due to lack of interest.

A background or motivation defines what you (again, general not specific) are interested in pursuing in a career.  If you are into trains and engineering is more likely to steer you towards jobs/occupations/careers that involve aspects of those things.  Sometimes it doesn't work out that you get into those types of jobs, granted, but more often than not, because you have an interest (AKA MOTIVATION) and then train/learn said interest with the goal of making it a career (having a BACKGROUND), means at the very least that's where you wanted to go.

You are overthinking the issue it is sufficient to say it is possible for a person to be good at siege engineering and botany. Whether you find it plausible beside the point, it on the player to justify the plausibility of the combination and my experience they are a pretty imaginative bunch. Since classes are just a package of abilities and skills. Gronan is absolutely correct with his pithy remark.

And before you go wah wah Paladin wah wah Druid wah wah any other classes associated with a particular background or culture, that a result of convenience on the part of the designer. If a player makes a interesting case for a different background than the original I would probably roll with it. However if it stupid or utterly implausible then I will tell the player to try another class or come up with a different background.

For example I wrote the Myrmidon class to reflect the abilities and skills as holy warrior of the Church of Set has in the Majestic Wilderlands The expectation that they would gotten to 1st level the way I spelled it out in the text. However it plausible but very rare, that Set in his wisdom decided to make a holy warrior out some person with a completely different upbringing.

Or a 1st level Thothian Mage was never an apprentice but rather found a burned out conclave with enough books and material surviving that he learned all the thing a normally trained Thothian Mage would have learned.

The classes I wrote in the Majestic Wilderlands is reflect the reality of my setting. However they are just a slice of a entire world with a life of it own. Exception can and do occur all the time like it does in real life. So I don' t treat class like it holy writ.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;923612How long does it take to get into the 'Polymath' state?  Ignoring the fact that most people tend to gain a wide breadth of skills, if not much depth (very few people, for example, learn how to drive a car beyond the basics, very few learn defensive driving techniques, or become race car drivers), how many game sessions in that particular classless system do you in which players get to be able to do everything?  That can be two separate issues.  The first is the pacing of the game session or system, which is up to the GM/DM to decide how fast advancement happens, and HOW it happens.  And the second, may be your players wanting to be able to do it all, because they want to dominate the game, rather than play it,  These types of players are also the ones who tend to whine about multiclassing in classed based games.

If it is Fate not long at all if the referee is being generous with experience. If GURPS it could take a while. If you read my original post carefully you mention that this will happen at different times for different systems. However in the end all skills based designs will converge on polymaths given enough time.

I posted that because of some of the topics being debated on class vs. classes were pointless. It doesn't matter.  The choices are not binary, it 2016 and the range of known designs has mate the issue a spectrum. What works for you and your group is purely a matter of personal preference.

The only things that matters are:

1) does the design reflects the reality of the setting
2)  is it useful within the context of a leisure activity
3)  are the choices interesting for the players
4)  does it detail things at the level everybody prefers.

Classes are useful for packaging up a set of abilities and skills and defining how they progress through experience. But their focus is narrow.

Classless allows precise customization of characters, however the choices are not always obvious. And the same features that allows for customization can be abused to produce johnny one-shots and polymaths.

Both approach work, both approaches have negative aspects, the hybrids have various consequences.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;923670There's are good class systems (D&D) and bad class systems (D20 Modern). Good class systems guide the players to an appropriate array of characters/talents for the main adventuring activity of the game.

Good classless systems get that effect in different ways, either by alternative structures (templates, careers) or by some other structure or mechanism in the game.

It is a very well-made point that game mechanics in classless games that still support people being better or worse at a thing, based on their past and training, can provide many of the advantages and the feel of niches and specialization while giving many of the advantages of a skill-based one; flexibility and creativity for both the player and the GM.

Quote from: estar;923678However in the end all skills based designs will converge on polymaths given enough time.

While I agree there is a tendency towards that. That's not a function of the design, it is a function of player choices. Which of course are influenced by design and by GM decisions. But at the end of the day, if the the players continue to enjoy playing characters who aren't good at absolutely everything there is nothing in the system forcing them to optimize their character development by having all their PCs become polymaths.

• The system may encourage horizontal skill growth by charging higher point costs for higher skill levels, thus making it seem more economical to broaden rather than deepen (or heighten) skills.
• The GM may encourage broadening skills by broadly structuring challenges and by making the cost of failure at any challenge, even one in an area where the PC is weak, severe.
• But ultimately the choice is up to the player.

Quote from: estar;923678You are overthinking the issue it is sufficient to say it is possible for a person to be good at siege engineering and botany. Whether you find it plausible beside the point, it on the player to justify the plausibility of the combination and my experience they are a pretty imaginative bunch. Since classes are just a package of abilities and skills. Gronan is absolutely correct with his pithy remark.

I was using those extreme examples to prove that one thing tends (not always, but tends) to lead into another.

There's nothing preventing someone from choosing siege engineering and/or botany, that's not my point.  My point is that a person's, fictional or not, life experiences and, dare I say it, background figures a lot into the choices they make later in life.

A person's life determines things like, to pick on D&D for now, occupation, alignment, skills if the version they are playing uses them or not.  Are they the type to confront problems directly?  More than likely a fighter, BUT not always.  A lot of people go into things wanting to be the OPPOSITE of what they grew up with, but even then, their experiences define who they are and likely become.

Gronan's statement, pithy as always, claims that none of that matters.  Not one iota, that every choice the player makes on that spot is all that matters.

And if that's the case, then you may as well be playing a board game, like Monopoly, where one player picks the iron, the shoe and the race car, and then they get to decide where the go, and what to buy.

Is that wrong?  Fuck no.  If that's how you want to play D&D or any other RPG, that's your prerogative.

However, I come from a more literary background, as do a lot of my friends.  And that's not to say I am smarter, what I'm saying is that due to my life's experience of being picked on for being short and ugly, I spent a lot of my time in various libraries, often alone, looking for something to do.  Which was reading, and sketching, some times even writing.  And how I got into D&D was in that method.  Hell, I was that kid who used to read the dictionary when he was bored.  And in every book I've ever read, from Fiction of all types to Non-Fiction of all types, one thing that has struck me is that a character's background influences what they do later in life, from how they think to how they act.

The other issue is that Gronan is famous for his passive-aggressive, often cleverly pithy, claims that his way is the only way to play D&D.  He always denies it, but every single time, he often pretends to or perhaps genuinely expresses confusion at some D&D related post claiming that's not how he remembers it, or how people are over-thinking it.  As if they just did it HIS way, it would all work out.  But he gets a pass on that sort of bullshit because he was one of the original guard, the oldest of the Old School.

Which is yet another issue, whether they mean it or not, the OSR with their revision of the various versions of D&D and renaming it is implying that their system is how it was meant to be played, again, claiming that anyone else playing differently is doing it wrong.

It gets old that I've been playing D&D incorrectly for the past 31 years.

In short, a background defines a character, to claim otherwise is both a blind and sadly ignorant, statement.  It doesn't have to matter in a RPG, but for me, and perhaps me and mine alone, it matters at our tables.

YMMV.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;923797It gets old that I've been playing D&D incorrectly for the past 31 years.

Then...oh I dunno...try playing differently?

Quote from: Bren;923749While I agree there is a tendency towards that. That's not a function of the design, it is a function of player choices. Which of course are influenced by design and by GM decisions. But at the end of the day, if the the players continue to enjoy playing characters who aren't good at absolutely everything there is nothing in the system forcing them to optimize their character development by having all their PCs become polymaths.

• The system may encourage horizontal skill growth by charging higher point costs for higher skill levels, thus making it seem more economical to broaden rather than deepen (or heighten) skills.
• The GM may encourage broadening skills by broadly structuring challenges and by making the cost of failure at any challenge, even one in an area where the PC is weak, severe.
• But ultimately the choice is up to the player.

This is a very well made point.
Horizontal skill growth always becomes valuable as higher abilities in a skill or dropdown/advanced skills are harder to grow or acquire.  One secret to mitigating this is to have the skill trees based on very slow growth in a broad swath of a skill tree but with the option of more specific areas with faster growth within that area.  Also to make more esoteric skills sub skills on a tree with basic skills.

Quote from: Larsdangly;920757The key is to have more than one model for character advancement and excellence. There are some amazingly good classless games that start with diversity in character types when the power level is low, but everyone funnels into a common type. Original Runequest comes to mind. I don't care where you start in that game; where you are headed is a runelord priest who fights with double iron bastard swords and starts every encounter with Shield 4 and bladesharp 4.

So true! A similar flaw confounds the TSR CONAN system, where every character ends up focusing on Animal Reflexes, Movement, Damage, and one Weapon talent.

Quote from: Bren;923800Then...oh I dunno...try playing differently?

Oh, there REALLY is a 'right way' to play D&D, then?  Please pray tell, inform me of how, or even which is the proper edition of D&D that's considered the 'real' version.  Then that way I can tap into the proper mindhive and indoctrinate the rest of my local crews.



Christ...  And here I thought that White Wolf started the whole 'badwrongfun' bullshit.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;923965Then that way I can tap into the proper mindhive and indoctrinate the rest of my local crews.

Report to the correction booth.  Six hours ought to suffice.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;923965Oh, there REALLY is a 'right way' to play D&D, then?  Please pray tell, inform me of how...

There is not one right way, but there certainly are some wrong ways. You said, and I quote:

Quote from: Christopher Brady;923797I've been playing D&D incorrectly for the past 31 years.

You said you were playing the wrong way, not me. If you aren't satisfied with the way you are playing D&D then you obviously are playing D&D the WRONG way. Try playing it some other way and see if that is more satisfying.

Quote from: daniel_ream;923980Report to the correction booth.  Six [strike]hours[/strike] months ought to suffice.

Fixed that for you.

A great classless system has a solid task resolution system with just the right number of skills to emulate the intended gene of the game.

Quote from: Bren;923981There is not one right way, but there certainly are some wrong ways.  You said you were playing the wrong way, not me. If you aren't satisfied with the way you are playing D&D then you obviously are playing D&D the WRONG way. Try playing it some other way and see if that is more satisfying.

Of course, I'm playing it the wrong way:  I LIKE THE NEW STUFF, so clearly I must be wrong.  Worse, the tables I run at home or at the Adventure League are ALSO liking it, and since it's not the little brown books, WE must be doing it wrong.