Comments on: Developing Roles

By: The Seven-Sided Die » Fiction first

The Seven-Sided Die » Fiction first — Fri, 29 May 2009 02:09:35 +0000

[...] is an advantage of the system to some people. I’m not saying they’re playing wrong, only that it’s a [...]

By: The Rules Gap | A Butterfly Dreaming

The Rules Gap | A Butterfly Dreaming — Thu, 07 May 2009 14:07:52 +0000

[...] 4e Monk project « Developing Roles [...]

By: Redefining Character Roles — Dungeon's Master

Redefining Character Roles — Dungeon's Master — Thu, 07 May 2009 10:04:03 +0000

[...] Scott at A Butterfly Dreaming wrote an interesting post on Developing Roles and this got me thinking more about this subject and the argument that roles are indeed the new [...]

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:38:19 +0000

@Jonathan: Funny that you should say that, at about the same time as the trackback above from Campaign Mastery. His take on it is that 4e stereotypes characters more than previous editions. That’s pretty much the opposite of my experience. But I think I can see where he’s coming from. Led me to rewrite my next post (which will hopefully go up tomorrow morning).

By: “The more things change…”: An essay on the future of RPGs | Campaign Mastery

Wed, 06 May 2009 00:18:53 +0000

[...] at least, that’smy impression. However, it works too hard to stereotype characters (refer to this blog post) and forces campaigns into an official straightjacket – a problem that had previously caused [...]

By: jonathan

jonathan — Tue, 05 May 2009 04:59:20 +0000

Nail on the head Scott.

Nail on the head.

It’s frustrating to see/read so much about what 4E is or isnot among so many blogs these days (empahsis on isnot more often). The last comment @ Anarkeith above is also dead one — we need to remind ourselves that it is the game, not the rules, that shape our play. 4E mechanics are all about allowing players to do whatever they want in a unified framework. Thinking outside the box and adapting/shemping/recasting the crunch to suite your “fluff” is the way to go. Maybe they should have just labeled all the classes “Class A”, “Class B”, and all the powers “Power L1A, Power L2A, etc”.. to demonstrate this point even further. Its your imagination that matters here.

Not to belabor a point — but I’ll say it again: 4E puts the roleplaying back into players hands and focuses on making consistent rules for characters.

nice post. thanks for the bedtime story. [late as hell here, why am I up?]

jonathan´s last blog post: Portraits of a Villain – Sir Mordred

By: Anarkeith

Anarkeith — Sun, 03 May 2009 03:29:32 +0000

great thoughts, and a much-needed reminder that creativity is a vital part of DnD. It’s not the rules, but how we use them that is important.

By: Wimwick

Wimwick — Sat, 02 May 2009 15:53:14 +0000

Some interesting thoughts and observations. I originally thought you were going in a different direction with this post. I like your idea of a swashbuckler using the barbarian class as it's template. You're correct in that if players think outside of the box with character creation there are some interesting builds and options available to them. With each read of the various books that WotC has published I find additional layers of complexity. Looking forward to your next entry on this topic. Wimwick´s last blog post: Month in Review: April 2009