Quote:
Originally Posted by Fifth Element
The design goal of defining the roles is to ensure characters of each class always have something fun they can do. A striker will always be able to strike. But that's just the basics of the class, with other things built on top of it (feats, etc). There's no pigeonholing (well, no more than usual for a class-based system), they're just explicitly considering what role each class will play in the game while designing its mechanics.
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I fully agree. In fact, roles defined classes in the original D&D. There was a very limited set of classes and each modeled a role. Later editions muddled things.
I'm very, very far from being a fan of D&D but this a feature I really like. In fact, I think it is a key aspect of the game and one that explains it's success more than anything. The reason is simple: D&D is proudly a game, it is not ashamed of being it. Roles are a device that make it work very effectively as a game. Most people playing D&D want to play a game. Now, other companies seem to be ashamed of providing games that are simply that, games. They seem to be more intent on providing some kind of out of this world experience that no one is really able to define. Needless to say, there's almost no one able to get into it.
I like rpgs as games and nothing else. I just would love to see other companies providing tools to make their systems and universes to work more as games, including explicit roles to be played.