Quote:
Originally Posted by mxyzplk
I agree; the roles are the #1 thing that concerns me about 4e. It's odd that they learn their lesson about the pigeonholing that alignment has saddled the game with and are removing it, but are implementing something that will be used in exactly the same way. "You're a fighter! Get to the front line and tank!" "But I've tuned my character to do this other thing..." "I SAID TANK!!!"
In a MMORPG having strictly defined roles is helpful because you're forming pick-up groups with unknown people all the time. "LFG: Feral Druid for Dire Maul!" But it seems pointless in a tabletop game environment.
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But that's the exact challenge that a pen-and-paper game like D&D faces these days. The structure of the D&D game worked "back in the day" (70's - 90's) because of the environment in which it was played.
Nowadays D&D, as a social game, is in direct competition with MMORPGs. The gamers that would be playing D&D in the past are playing MMO's in the present.
So, it is to the advantage of D&D to change with the times and become easier for "pick up groups" to play... and especially, for players to volunteer to be DM (for without the DM, a D&D game doesn't happen.
D&D is well served to create role-based characters where players can bring their "alts" to the table, creating a good party mix, and play a random adventure with an ad-hoc DM. If you remember, that's what D&D way back in the day was. I have been a part of numerous game sessions that consisted of "I'll play the fighter! I'll play the thief! I'll play the elf!" with characters that required about 5 minutes each to roll up.
That doesn't mean that you can't play the game with a tight group of friends and play an extended campaign, but D&D also needs to serve the much larger pick-up-group style of game session creation.
D&D has to stay relevant to
today's generation of gamers in order to survive.