The thought "process" that went into the D&D 4th edition rules was probably something like "Hey, look at that famous MMO game. Boy, they have many players. We should base our combat mechanics around the roles of a tank, dps et al, and call them differently." It's really hard to imagine how else they could possibly have thought of the role idea (and many others) for a genuine pen and paper roleplaying game.

Of course, in computer RPGs there is a different set of rules to follow when creating RPG mechanics, as you cannot possibly implement the kind of fine detail rules with multiple exceptions that a pen and paper game does (or that D&D did before the 4e).

However, I still dislike being condemned to a single, heavily specialized role within a group, with only a limited set of abilities and very limited space for improvisation and strategy.

I often like to mention Starcraft as the game which managed to achieve fundamental uniqueness and diversity between the playable races, without limiting the player to a very narrow, finite set of actions he is expected to perform playing each race. Of course, Starcraft is an RTS, but the philosophy remains the same regardless of genre.

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Original post by Talin The thought "process" that went into the D&D 4th edition rules was probably something like "Hey, look at that famous MMO game. Boy, they have many players. We should base our combat mechanics around the roles of a tank, dps et al, and call them differently." It's really hard to imagine how else they could possibly have thought of the role idea (and many others) for a genuine pen and paper roleplaying game.

Haha, I remember my friend showing my 4e and I thinking a similar thing. Also note how the ability system is very MMO like. very]i] mmo like. There is a certain uniformity among the way the classes go about performing their various things in the world that is very related to cRPGs.

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Original post by Talin The thought "process" that went into the D&D 4th edition rules was probably something like "Hey, look at that famous MMO game. Boy, they have many players. We should base our combat mechanics around the roles of a tank, dps et al, and call them differently." It's really hard to imagine how else they could possibly have thought of the role idea (and many others) for a genuine pen and paper roleplaying game.

Well one way is by looking at what players do with the characters. Fighters, even back in 2nd edition, took the role of a front line unit. Rogues always have been characters that try to get past the enemy "fighters" and strike the vulnerable back line units with massive damage (backstab) attacks. Clerics have always been healers (in fact they became so stereotypical healers, they didn't get used for much else), Magic-Users have always had area effect attacks (fireball is the clichéd one) that could take out lost of weak enemies quickly.

So, at most, you could say that D&D just used the formalised reference that has developed with MMOs, and remember, these MMO character classes are loosely based on D&D in the first place.

Formalised reference Yes. Class concepts, No.

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However, I still dislike being condemned to a single, heavily specialized role within a group, with only a limited set of abilities and very limited space for improvisation and strategy.

I have been playing 4th ed (as both GM and PC) since it came out and I can say this assessment of it is incorrect. First of all, each role is not a highly specialised role. It can be, but this does not mean that it has to be.

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Of course, in computer RPGs there is a different set of rules to follow when creating RPG mechanics, as you cannot possibly implement the kind of fine detail rules with multiple exceptions that a pen and paper game does (or that D&D did before the 4e).

Actually, what occurs in cRPGs to prevent them from being able to create all these subtleties is that they try to create social interactions and other aspects of role play by using combat mechanics.

They try to model the interactions between two character as a fight! This is why they fail. If you are trying to subtly get information out of a bartender about various village elders (who might be in the bar as well) would you model this as if you were trying to beat the bartender's head in?

No.

This is why the subtlety of social interactions in cRPGs fail: They are treating it as a combat.

It can be modelled in different ways, it has been done and it has been done for decades, it is just not used in cRPGs.

A really good way to look at these situations is with Game Theory (it is actually a branch of economic theory and not exactly to do with computer games). In game theory, it tries to model how and why people make certain kinds of decisions. In the early days of Game theory, they assumed that each entity was a perfect decision maker and behaved absolutely logically all the time. They now know this assumption is very wrong (and also now have the tools by which to work out how they actually behave).

But this is off topic now. However, I do recomend doing a bit of reading on game theory and the application of human psychology to it. you will quickly see why current cRPGs fail in their attempt at social interactions, and how you can design mechanics to do it well.

The obvious solution to not play a very specialized role is to actually play a party of people that are all specialized in different fields.
That also means you don't necessarily have to socialize with random Internet people to be able to interact with the game world in the case of an MMO.

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Original post by loufoque The obvious solution to not play a very specialized role is to actually play a party of people that are all specialized in different fields. That also means you don't necessarily have to socialize with random Internet people to be able to interact with the game world in the case of an MMO.

I would much rather play a single character with a unique twist on a blend of roles than a group that has the same thing. If you have a class that has a unique twist that has the appearance of a role, but in reality they are a bit more diverse than that (an example maybe being priests in WoW being able to do shadow spec for damage) then its the same thing as playing as a group. The end result is a single player having the capabilities of doing multiple roles. Why complicate it with more players, especially in an MMO?

I actually solo 90% of the time while playing MMOs, but I don't think a game company would go for minimizing socializing, as that is what keeps a lot of players. Why would you raid for gear you already have in order to help your guildies unless you had a strong sense of community? Not all guilds know each other in real life. I suspect that a great majority met through other people or from random groups that worked well.