I noticed something about the way we treat characters in D20 Fantasy games these days.
Have we overcomplicated our fantasy TTRPG experience? These days we have classes and subclasses and multiclassing to create all of these crazy meta power builds in Dungeons & Dragons. It’s gotten to the point where if you want an insane character build that often involves dipping into three and sometimes four classes, it can reach a point where they won’t even need a party.
Contrast this with the old theory of TTRPG design where the very core of the game revolved around four character archetypes. Multiclassing was optional and came at a high experience cost to the point where it was rarely worth it. Then there was the theory that magic-users, aka wizards, mages, etc shall not cast healing magic, ever.
I’m doing research into different D20 character classes for Shadowdark.
Would you like to guess what I’m finding? There are hundreds of different takes on character classes, subclasses, specializations, archetypes, and variants on all of the above. For D&D and Pathfinder 2E especially, if you can come up with it, there’s probably already a way to do it laid out in triplicate somewhere. That’s how it seems to me, anyway.
I mean, the creativity that goes into creating a new class, subclass, or archetype is tremendous. I appreciate the hundreds of content creators out there making new player-oriented game products every day. I’m still missing some of the ones I want to play personally, but that’s okay. I’ll eventually find a way.
What got me started on this journey was a 5E class release for the Bounty Hunter. This same type of entry appears in the PF2E Advanced Player’s Guide as an archetype. Once upon a time in the 3E D&D years, my wife played a homebrew variant on the rogue as a Bounty Hunter. There was a 2E AD&D Kit for the Bounty Hunter. Everything one can imagine in between has been done under the same name. I’m sure if I dig deep enough, Castles & Crusades probably has a Bounty Hunter.
No one single game or system does it better or worse than the others.
I love TTRPGs, D20 Fantasy games in particular. I’m not saying there’s a must-have, perfect rules-as-written way to do it. The 5E way of doing things (official or homebrew) is no better or worse than prior editions or iterations. I happen to like the way Pathfinder 2E does things, but Dungeon Crawl Classics or Shadowdark work just as well.
The major differences come in the style and execution of these things. Take B/X D&D or Dungeon Crawl Classics for example. There are 4 basic classes. That’s it. If you want to be a bounty hunter at First Level, you can tell the DM/GM, “Hey, I want to be a bounty hunter,” with whichever one of those four classes you happen to be playing.
Pretty simple, right? I want my character to be a bounty hunter. Maybe he looks for bounties posted publicly or even goes to assist local law enforcement. There are no special bonuses, or anything involved. It’s just what the character does. Maybe we get a few adventure seeds or plot hooks for it. Maybe the GM let’s my character carry manacles and earn some extra gold between adventures or something. Back in ye olden days, there were no mechanical advantages for being a specific in-game occupation.
I think 5E and similar modern games have spoiled us mechanically and dramatically.
There has been a steady shift in the paradigm of roleplaying over the last 10-15 years. I think the advent of actual play podcasts on the internet have especially brought about a far more dramatic playstyle. It seems that many people, particularly newer players, were highly skilled in theatrics and cosplay before joining the hobby. Many DMs/GMs try to emulate a certain voice actor’s popular style of running the game.
It’s not just the way we run characters, either. The D&D (or similar) games have changed mechanically to reflect the deeper theatrics, it would seem. Characters are more powerful, fully fledged, competent individuals almost from the very start nowadays. This probably also explains why so many campaigns top out between 9th and 12th levels now. Some characters can now save or wreck the game world as soon as they hit double digits now whether their character sheet reflects it or not.
Back in my day, we didn’t have a “Path of the Blue Ox” Barbarian.
Heck, back in the 1st Ed AD&D era, we thought having Barbarian as a separate class is pretty cool. If you go back even farther, in Basic D&D we had a Fighter or maybe a Thief that possibly came from a tribe of barbarians somewhere in the DM’s campaign world. No bonuses or penalties, you just plain played the character.
It wasn’t really until 2nd Ed AD&D that we started noting differences between the various types of Barbarian characters. Vikings emerged different from the classic Conan style Barbarians. Then there were pirates and plains tribes among others classified as Barbarians. Kits emerged from the various 2E splat books. Then it was more interesting, and characters could even take the same or similar kits from various classes. Swashbucklers could be from Fighter, Rogue, or even Ranger classes if the DM allowed.
Kits were the turning point for character specialization arcs. Prior to that, characters were just the same basic classes played in a slightly different, often historical, or classical fiction context. We didn’t really do much voice acting back in those days. In fact, many players described their character’s actions in the third person most of the time.
I think finding a niche has become more difficult.
I know that sounds crazy in a game where there is literally a character type for everything. It’s tough to come up with character concepts that seem unique without creating a whole new lexicon, tropes, appearance, spells, and statistics separate from the main game. Heck, if it seems too alien to whatever system we’re playing, it may as well have its own TTRPG to go with it. Personally, I’m praying my new classes fit into Shadowdark well enough that I won’t have to create an entirely new world to go with them.
That was always the challenge of creating a class back in the old days, too. It was a matter of finding a way to express a new character niche while still using the same old classes, stats, weapons, spells, and so forth. Going the extra mile meant matching a preexisting character class to the idea or creating everything from scratch. It’s not as easy as it sounds thinking that far out of the known box without having most DMs balk at the very notion.
There’s more to discuss on this, but we’ll leave it here for now. Thanks for stopping by today. I appreciate you.
Jeff's Game Box 