What are the most archetypic elements of generic Fantasy?

[Andur]

Hi. I want to create an D&D-inspired game system. "D&D-inspired" means: Class-based, level-based. otherwise, it's my own and has very little to do with D&D. It is meant to cover all classic Fantasy, everything from Sword & Sorcery to High Fantasy, from Psionics to Time Travel and Plane-hopping.

Now I would be interested in finding out what the rules have to cover for a very complex system that covers everything from the above. However, at this point, setting is still a non-factor, as the rules will be designed to use any campaign setting. So please don't put in any answers that only concern the secondary aspects, i. e. setting of a RPG. Stuff like: "You need to explain why there are so many mages. Is magic really so simple over there?" Since that would concern the campaign setting, NOT the game per se.

For the moment, let's just concentrate on the most basic elements of Fantasy gaming, those elements that would be part of almost every fantasy game in some form or other.Let's see, what elements did I come up with?  Character generation, obviously. Rules for building, maintaining and ruling dominions. A combat system. A melee combat system. A mass combat system. Rules for movement, time & healing. Rules for the generation of deities. Planar travel. A Skill system. A magic system. Psionics. Money & Equipment.

The most important part: Character Classes. What would you people consider the most important classes of all, the most archetypic, the ones part of just about every major Fantasy saga? Remember, the point is not discussing whether a game needs classes or not: It's already a given that classes (Archetypes for character-types in a tale) are a major part of this game.

Until now, I came up with the following Classes:

The Fighter: From Conan to Arthur and everything in between, the fighter is the single most important part of Fantasy Literature and Gaming.

The Mage: See above, from Gandalf to Merlin.

The Healer: Think Elrond, think Goldmoon.

The Bard: The "spell-singer" who charms other people or even objects with his music is a major part of mythic lore. Think Orpheus, think Kalevala.

The Thief: The seedy character who's good with traps etc. is in fantasy literature just as archetypic a character as the healer, and even moreso in fantasy gaming. Think Bilbo, think the Gray Mouser, think Cyric.

The Cleric: Rather than using healing spells (a role already filled by the Healer), the Cleric serves some "deity" and uses miracles granted by that deity-- kind of like the AD&D 2rd Ed Priest.

Those six I consider the "core classes". All other character classes can be "sub-classes" of one of these classes. What do you say? Any ideas, especially whether you believe the Bard, Healer and Cleric different enough from each other and important enough to be major classes?

Also, what other classes -"core" or "sub" - would you add? I myself would add Ranger, Monk, Paladin and Seer (the 3 first ones as sub-classes of the Fighter, the last one as a sub-class of the Cleric).

Again, what's your idea to this?

[chronoplasm]

Sword Wielding Mage
As with Elric of Melnibone, or perhaps the Jedi of Star Wars if you really want to stretch it. You might consider making this an option for mages rather than a class in itself. Why not? Gandalf had a sword. Even Harry Potter got to use a sword.

Evil Armor Wearing Mage
Sometimes the players don't want to be the good guys. Sometimes they want to play as a Sauron or a Darth Vader or a Doctor Doom so they can cover their faces in scary armor and shoot spells at people. This might not be a good idea for a base class, but I think make a neat option for higher level mages.

The Tourist and his Luggage
A Discworld reference, I admit. Let's think about this though... Frodo from Lord of the Rings, Dorothy from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Hank Morgan of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. These are all major characters in their respective stories, but what class would you put them in? What they all have in common is that they are outsiders thrust into a strange and fantastic world with little but their magical (or seemingly magical) artifacts to aid them.

[Chris Flood]

I have to agree with the "Tourist and His Luggage," definitely a prevalent trope in the fantasy genre.

You might want to define what you want each class to delineate. Is it what the character does primarily to achieve her aims (fight, cast spells, sneak around, play music), or is it the aims themselves (conquer, heal, steal, charm, obey my deity)? I think answer this question will determine which classes stay and which go.

What is your goal in creating a D&D-inspired game that is not D&D?

[Guy Srinivasan]

If you haven't already, you should probably read Dave Noonan's series on the origins of the archetypical "roles" in RPGs: http://nnnooner.blogspot.com/2009/09/roles-where-do-we-go-from-here.html

He has some interesting ideas on the emergence of the "Tank" and "Healer" as core roles, and how their emergence was more happenstance than "oh yeah Tolkien had a Tank so we should too!".

[Andur]

Hi.

Sword Wielding Mage
As with Elric of Melnibone, or perhaps the Jedi of Star Wars if you really want to stretch it. You might consider making this an option for mages rather than a class in itself. Why not? Gandalf had a sword. Even Harry Potter got to use a sword.

Certainly. But I want to offer that via the skill system. A mage can't do that at low levels, since he needs all his low-level skill-points to focus on his magic skills-- but when he gets around to be a mid-level mage, there's no reason why a player can't say: "Okay, my character knows enough about brewing potions, developing spells, etc for the time being. Now I want him to turn his focus toward getting away from being a pushover in battle, but I don't want him to change classes, just have him work on his martial skills."

Evil Armor Wearing Mage
Sometimes the players don't want to be the good guys. Sometimes they want to play as a Sauron or a Darth Vader or a Doctor Doom so they can cover their faces in scary armor and shoot spells at people. This might not be a good idea for a base class, but I think make a neat option for higher level mages.

Exactly, see above.

The Tourist and his Luggage
A Discworld reference, I admit. Let's think about this though... Frodo from Lord of the Rings, Dorothy from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Hank Morgan of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. These are all major characters in their respective stories, but what class would you put them in? What they all have in common is that they are outsiders thrust into a strange and fantastic world with little but their magical (or seemingly magical) artifacts to aid them.

Yes. Kinda like a zero-level thief, isn't it? That "character class" is floating through my mind since I started out in Gaming in 1985, and it's called The Adventurer: A character who has no true "training" in a character class, but is no true loser, either. The best comparison would be to Taran from the first book of the Prydain Chronicles, or Lucy from the first Narnia book, or Dorothy and Tip from Oz.

I finally ditched the Adventurer class a few months ago, since I thought there are too few precedents in literature, and players wouldn't want to play an adventurer, since this class is less developed (and hence, less powerful) than any other.

Was I wrong about this? Would there a demand after an adventurer class after all?

[Andur]

I have to agree with the "Tourist and His Luggage," definitely a prevalent trope in the fantasy genre.

You might want to define what you want each class to delineate. Is it what the character does primarily to achieve her aims (fight, cast spells, sneak around, play music), or is it the aims themselves (conquer, heal, steal, charm, obey my deity)? I think answer this question will determine which classes stay and which go.

I'm sorry, but I didn't get your question? My game system (especially in regard to its character classes) is designed to do 2 things: For one, to be able to "simulate" pretty much any Fantasy story, whether it be The Wizard of Oz, The Never-Ending Story, The Lord of the Rings or Dragonlance Chronicles. Second, to enable the player to play "authentic" yet nonetheless dynamic and potent character types (like Bards, Healers or Mages) without the player getting forced to suffer any of non-authentic crap like Clerics being Healer and may not use swords and such stuff. That way, you can use my rules to play in any setting, although of course, you need to tweak the rules for different settings (a campaign in the Young Kingdoms is very different than a campaign in Krynn or Oz, but a minor tweaking of the available classes, races, skills and rules will take care of that).

But I am pretty sure that wasn't what you wanted to know. Can you rephrase your question, please?

What is your goal in creating a D&D-inspired game that is not D&D?

D&D is too clumsy, too unwieldy, and too limited. The concept of D&D is tops, in fact, barely beatable; the execution of that concept is not. Hence a new RPG, which is inspired by D&D.

[Andur]

If you haven't already, you should probably read Dave Noonan's series on the origins of the archetypical "roles" in RPGs: http://nnnooner.blogspot.com/2009/09/roles-where-do-we-go-from-here.html

He has some interesting ideas on the emergence of the "Tank" and "Healer" as core roles, and how their emergence was more happenstance than "oh yeah Tolkien had a Tank so we should too!".

Certainly, but the precedents were there, anyway.

For instance, no healing on-battlefield? Remember Aragorn and Glorfindel tending to the wounded/cursed Frodo in the wake of the Nazghul attack? Both Aragorn and Glorfindel clearly had levels in the Healer class, even if such a class is rare to non-existent in Pulp Fantasy. But if I limited myself to pulps, I'd ditch both the Cleric and the Healer, since both classes have no real place in a pulp game. But since my system covers all of Fantasy, either the Healer or the Cleric classes stay-- maybe both.

Also, it's absurd from that writer to insinuate the Grey Mouser was as good at fighting as Conan or even Fafhard. If you pit Conan vs Fafhard vs Grey Mouser in a fight, do you really expect a tie? Because I'm pretty sure Conan will be the sole survivor after less than five minutes...

Also, keep in mind that we're not discussing some "story-roles" like "leader", "striker", "tank", or such. We're trying to find out the most archetypic fantasy elements.

[chronoplasm]

I finally ditched the Adventurer class a few months ago, since I thought there are too few precedents in literature, and players wouldn't want to play an adventurer, since this class is less developed (and hence, less powerful) than any other.

Was I wrong about this? Would there a demand after an adventurer class after all?

I'd play it if it was done well. I like the idea of a contemporary person transported into a fantastic medieval world. For a low level character you could have someone like Fone Bone from Bone and for a high level character you could have someone like Ash from Army of Darkness. They might bring knowledge of modern technology with them and may even have a few such devices with them (cameras, pocket watches, flashlights, bicycles, chainsaws). They could be very genre savvy, and even break the fourth wall at times. If they are transported back from the future they may have advance knowledge of events that are yet to happen (predicting solar eclipses, etc.)

[chronoplasm]

To add to the previous post:
I want to see something that plays with the idea of 'anachronism'. Something like Dr. Who.

[Chris Flood]

I asking about how you were defining "character class," and I offered two possibilities: 1) what the class generally does (swing a sword, cast spells) in the game or 2) their role in the game (healer, tank, etc.). It sounds like your answer would be neither, and that you are just trying to identify the most common types of characters that appear in fantasy stories, whether there's an internal logic separating them or not.

Honestly, I don't think the original D&D was too far off the mark with Fighters, Magic-Users, Clerics, and Thieves. My understanding is that the limitations on these classes (no armor, no sharp weapons) were attempts to balance the classes, even though this made D&D unable to simulate all fantasy worlds. Additional classes were spin-offs of these original classes (Barbarians, Bards, etc.). Of these, I'd say the Bard is the most unique, and the first one you ought to consider in addition to the original four, in addition to the Tourist with Luggage, which I don't think D&D was trying to incorporate.

[Chris Flood]

I asking

I "was" asking...

[7VII7]

Hmmm. . . I'm not quite sure how applicable this is to the conversation but have you looked at Tarot Cards? The high arcana in particular seems to cover a good number of character archetypes, though it might be more specific then what you're looking for, a good link to it is here: http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/learn/meanings/ As for the Adventurer class maybe you can spice it up by adding sort of a "fate" mechanic that allows him to acomplish things others wouldn't be able to do though seemingly luck and maybe a mechanic that allows you to train into a different class. Also a good place to find stuff like that would be http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage they have pages on all sorts of things including what you're looking at.

Er, did that make any sense?

[Andur]

I finally ditched the Adventurer class a few months ago, since I thought there are too few precedents in literature, and players wouldn't want to play an adventurer, since this class is less developed (and hence, less powerful) than any other.

Was I wrong about this? Would there a demand after an adventurer class after all?

I'd play it if it was done well. I like the idea of a contemporary person transported into a fantastic medieval world. For a low level character you could have someone like Fone Bone from Bone and for a high level character you could have someone like Ash from Army of Darkness. They might bring knowledge of modern technology with them and may even have a few such devices with them (cameras, pocket watches, flashlights, bicycles, chainsaws). They could be very genre savvy, and even break the fourth wall at times. If they are transported back from the future they may have advance knowledge of events that are yet to happen (predicting solar eclipses, etc.)

Hmm. I'll consider it. But it sounds more like a feature for certain campaigns ("On this world, there are turning up more and more denizens from some strange future-world") than a true character class. But you could certainly use the Adventurer class to simulate that particular character type...

I guess the Adventure is in the classes after all.

[Andur]

Ah. Now it becomes clear to me.

I asking about how you were defining "character class," and I offered two possibilities: 1) what the class generally does (swing a sword, cast spells) in the game or 2) their role in the game (healer, tank, etc.). It sounds like your answer would be neither, and that you are just trying to identify the most common types of characters that appear in fantasy stories, whether there's an internal logic separating them or not.

Yes. In fact it's both 1) what the class generally does (swing a sword, cast spells) in the game, and 3) trying to identify the most common types of characters that appear in fantasy stories, whether there's an internal logic separating them or not.

Both are equally important. 1) for the player options, that is, for giving a new player varied but well-known character archetypes that nonetheless are far removed from each other to choose from, as well as giving a more advanced player the opportunity to upgrade his character in almost any direction he wants (hence, the Paladin as sub-class of the Fighter: you can play a character that pairs the Fighter archetype with features of the Healer class, so he doesn't have to multi-class or change his class for good into the Healer).

And 3) comes into play as the solid fundament on which both the rules and the player options are built. For only if we consider the truest archetypes of Fantasy literature (and myths) can we get a system that's easily tweaked to accommodate the vastly different game styles from Tolkien, Moorcock and the Norse myths, for instance.

Honestly, I don't think the original D&D was too far off the mark with Fighters, Magic-Users, Clerics, and Thieves. My understanding is that the limitations on these classes (no armor, no sharp weapons) were attempts to balance the classes, even though this made D&D unable to simulate all fantasy worlds. Additional classes were spin-offs of these original classes (Barbarians, Bards, etc.). Of these, I'd say the Bard is the most unique, and the first one you ought to consider in addition to the original four, in addition to the Tourist with Luggage, which I don't think D&D was trying to incorporate.

I'm totally with you about the bard and the 4 D&D classes. But what about the different classes of Cleric and Healer? A Healer heals (and can brew poisons and healing potions). A Cleric is pretty much cast in the role of  a AD&D 2nd Ed Priest: he doesn't heal (unless he serves a god of healing; but than he needs levels in the Healer class, too), but a Cleric gets "Miracles" from his deity. Seems to me both are equally represented in literature, and both are equally different from each other yet important enough to standard Fantasy gaming that they should belong in the basic ("core") classes. However, if I had to drop either the Cleric or the Healer, I'd probably ditch the Cleric, since "Healing" is an archetypical element of both literature and gaming. More important than unleashing fireballs in the service of a fire god. What's your view of it?

[Andur]

Hmmm. . . I'm not quite sure how applicable this is to the conversation but have you looked at Tarot Cards? The high arcana in particular seems to cover a good number of character archetypes, though it might be more specific then what you're looking for, a good link to it is here: http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/learn/meanings/ As for the Adventurer class maybe you can spice it up by adding sort of a "fate" mechanic that allows him to acomplish things others wouldn't be able to do though seemingly luck and maybe a mechanic that allows you to train into a different class. Also a good place to find stuff like that would be http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage they have pages on all sorts of things including what you're looking at.

Er, did that make any sense?

Yes, it did. The Tarot symbols are probably out of the question, since they don't quite fit with my game direction.

But your "Luck" feature for the Adventurer class is a great idea! (And, by the way, the Adventurer class was always meant to have people starting out in it and later having them graduate into a different class: I just can't imagine a 27th level Adventurer, since at that high level a character would long since found his true interests and quite naturally picked by now the class best equipped for those interests.)