Thoughts and discussions about classes in RPGs

Last night I was in the shower, after having spent some of my day thinking about my RPG, Stuff of Legends, I had a thought. To intro with some background, I've decided to design Stuff of Legends without classes or character levels from the get go, letting skills and their levels describe the character.

So I had a thought, and it was following playing both Numenera and D&D 5th edition lately. In either game, there are classes present, subtly in the prior, overtly in the latter. The way the games function, and how the characters act out based on and despite of their class, got me thinking on why classes were retained as a feature, despite moving away from the wargaming roots.

Thougths
My thoughts about classes are mixed for all kinds of reasons, but now I find a warmer spot for them in my heart. The complexity of the 3rd and 4th editions of D&D had turned me off them, but D&D's 5th edition had given me a chance to rethink why exactly I had issues.
I've found out that I do not actually have issues with the concept of classes. The idea that a character had spent their formative years learning a specific trade or, in this case, class, is more than OK - it makes sense. In this regard, I find classes logical, since they provide a lens on the character and their life before being generated.
But I still have issues with classes, despite it. For starters, in some games, a wealth of information and in-game-world choices are present. If a game were to be set in modern times, it would make very little sense to me to rely on classes. If the game is fantastic, or medieval, a different issue rises: multiclassing. I honestly multiclassing has no room in fantasy gaming, unless it is handled like older D&D did it - once you pick up a new class, you can't return to an old one*.
So the train of thought continued and brought me back to my game: why do I not have classes in my game? The answer feels half-hearted: because it restricts the move from concept to on-page character. Restrictions apply due to setting, so you won't find Earthbenders from Avatar in Steampunk England, nor would you find a wuxia hero in a pre-historical hunter-gatherer style game.
But when you look beyond the restrictions of setting, classes seem to restrict in less-ideal ways. Let's use D&D 5th edition for some examples, since it's the most essentially flexible of the bunch. Let's take the Eldritch Knights path for the Fighter. This path talks about wizard-mixed fighters with strictly abjuration or evocation spells - defense and offense. Spells only up to 4th level and a limited amount of them. Assuming we define within the spell levels allowed, you cannot have an Eldritch Knights with Alter Self, See Invisibility and Dimension Door, for a type of spy-counterspy Knight. If you wanted this, you would have to houserule or multiclass. If the GM has chosen to not do the first and not allow the second, the player has a concept that they cannot realize and that chafes for me.
I think that, in the bottom line, I am torn - classes give a very clear outline of who the character sees themselves to be. As far as I know, the vast majority of people in the past several thousand years required a very good reason to change how they were going about their lives. In the context of fantasy RPGs, for a wizard to dip into fighter there would need to be a very major event in their lives, as would the other way around. But in the same time, classes are restrictive in their nature and even the most flexible systems leave things to be desired.

Discussions
The term discussions serves two purposes for me: the first is to open the floor for discussions, while the second is to point at a subject as something I am not sure about. Below I have a few such discussions for which I would like comments, replies and actual discussion to come up. My thoughts are laid out, in part, above and, while they may change, will direct what direction I want to take with the discussions.
Additionally, before the discussions, are some relevant mechanics from my game, as it is the primary subject of the discussions:

• Currently, characters receive some definition by spreading points between 3 pillars: warrior, specialist and arcanist, which describe the 3 primary types of characters: combat, non-combat and esoteric. Besides providing advantages, these pillars have no other mechanical use as of yet.
• The number of skills which describe character roles and capabilities stands at 17, though this number will change. These are grouped under attributes and are as general as I was able to get them, with skills like Combat and Knowledge.
• Nearly everything comes in 4 levels which map to beginner through master.

Discussions are kept in a numbered list for convenience of reference.

1. The issue with which way to take, classes or classless, stands strong for me now. So does multiclass - or picking up new skills out of the blue. I prefer to remain classless, but then a skill system needs boundaries as to what skills may be picked up and I'm not sure how to work this out.
2. If restricting multiclassing, the question of when the restriction lifts is a big one. As this is restriction, rather than banning, when does the restriction lift, how and where does the limit for lifting stands? If for skills, how to even model that?
3. The pillars currently serve a small but relatively significant role, providing an image of the character which could be filed under multiclassing from the get go. This fails, though, to help map out progression, which is where multiclassing fails for me. I'm not sure if to rely on the pillars for a solution at all.

That's pretty much all I have right now, though more might crop up. I'm not entirely sure what kind of comments and replies I'm looking for, but if I had to define: new views or examples from existing games - things to broaden my scope.

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*I recall this from Baldur's Gate, so I suppose the right older D&D is AD&D.

D&D 5th Edition and Infrequent DMing

I've run my first game of D&D 5th edition just now. I woke up before the sun did and went in with little prep.
Luckily, the results were good.

So impressions from the DM side about the mechanics that were taken into account, given no combat occurred and barely more than 1 spell used:

1. The minimization of applicable bonuses and calculation thereof is wondrous. Because there are no branching and overly complex stats, calling a roll for anything has become easy and pleasant.
2. The game still relies a lot on combat, as far as characterizing the characters. There are RP spells and RP character options, but they are a bit too few.
3. I'm probably skipping a lot of rules by winging it, since the game felt barren of rolls, but it was fun and interesting. I suspect I might need to give the book a more thorough read.
4. There are not enough monsters to really run a campaign with right now.

However, I'm also brought to another point: I feel like I'm a fair enough, but below average, DM/GM. Partly, the fault lies in how infrequent I get to do so, but I hope to remedy that. In another part, I think I need to get used to getting usable prep done for games, since by how much I'm winging it, I sucking out potential awesome from the game.

While we're here, let me tell you how it went. Playing were +Alex Perucchini and +Other Tim. +Anthony Fournier was slated to play but didn't show up last minute.

The mission the party got was to find out why the heck these local, nice kobolds were acting up and raiding farmsteads for food and goods, taking livestock and anything else they can conceivably lay their hands on.
They headed out, Alex a Paladin and Tim a Warlock, to the den of the kobolds. The guards outside were forthcoming and called for those in charge once they saw adventurers and feared for their lives. Out came a pair of Dragon Priests, who agreed to discuss the recent events within the den.
The party was taken to the priests' chambers, where the aforementioned refused to disclose details, and eventually the priests led the party to their draconic patron, a massive green dragon. The priests did not actually come with the party, so they did not hear the dragon debunk their story and request that the adventurers resolve this. The party got back, entangled the priests and got out of them that they are paying off a hobgoblin racket. Back to the dragon and then instructed to get this all resolved and kill the hobgoblins.
The party got back to see a small riot happening around the priests in the main chamber of the den and through character abilities found out the location of where the priests were keeping the money they were collecting. Since it was hidden, the party surmised that there wasn't actually a hobgoblin threat. With the recovered money, they paid off the town and gave half the remainder to the kobolds to live off.
0 combats, lots of roleplaying and one very big dragon.

+James Young - in case you were wondering what had happened.

Another Valoria, WIP and Stuff of Legends draft 3

(click to embiggen)

Above is the map I've chosen to place Another Valoria on, its use gracefully allowed by Herwin Wielink. Thank you, Herwin :)

The current state of Valoria is such:

• It's populated strictly by humans, although precursor races exist and those are not dwarves, elves or any other sundry race.
• The humans are centered around several locations and the majority of the continent is wilderness. There are no mechanical differences based on where a character originates from.
• Magic is uncommon but viewed with careful acceptance.
• A crystalline element, called Varinium, is relatively plentiful and can be worked into a form that produces thrust. The use of Varinium acts as a scientific catalyst which jump-started advanced locomotion - airships are rare but functional, ships can travel more reliably and hovering vehicles are uncommon but in wide-spread use.
• The cosmology of Another Valoria places the prime material plane in the center of 7 layers of planes. 
• At the top is the Essence layer, from which all is made and where the creator god resides. 
• Below Essence is Light.
• Between Light and the prime material plane, Fire and Air share a layer.
• At the bottom is Void, where things cease to exist.
• Above Void is Darkness.
• Between Darkness and the prime material plane, Earth and Water share a layer.
• It is believed that the further up you ascend, the closer you get to Essence. In the same vein, if you descend into the earth you move closer towards Void.

It's not much, but it's progress.

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I am also working on Stuff of Legends draft 3. Slowly I write my way through character creation. When I have enough to share, I will.

Short, celebratory post

While I was sleeping, my blog achieved precisely 1000 views. I feel like this number is very much celebration worthy, so here's a post to celebrate that with some bits of information about myself and blogs.

Bit #1: I've had 3 or 4 blogs in the past, my count is iffy. One was when I had been a teenager and another one or two when I was a bit older. The very first one held up relatively well, with infrequent updates, but it was also a personal one so I don't really count that. The other one or two were more about my interests and lasted several months before I completely forgot about them.

Bit #2: I don't remember how many views my blogs had among them, although the later one (might've been another one in the middle, but no idea if it exists and where) has 416. One way or another, I think neither got to 1000 and most certainly not this quick since I created it.

Bit #3: I've been refreshing the view count every 30 min or so last night, since my latest post went up. I have a tendency to define a part of myself through definitive achievements, preferably numbers, and 1000 views feels like one such achievement.

Bit #4: I never thought I'd get quiet so high, given the fact that 1000 isn't even that high.

<edited in>
And here are some fun stats

• With 63% of all views, Chrome is the browser used the most to access my blog, followed by 29% Firefox and an assortment of others making up the final few percentage.
• 49% of all views came from Linux machines, 35% Windows and 11% Mac. Picking up the slack are several others, with a whole 6 views from "other Unix" operating systems.
• A massive majority of views, 810 of them, are from the USA, as could be expected. The far second is, unexpectedly, Israel with 75 views. I know I gave them links, I did not think they accounted for such a relatively large part of my views.
• The most viewed post is Stuff of Legends - Character Basics with 44 views as of this post. Fun fact: it's using the first draft rules and terms, which were a mess.

I've not messed nearly at all with layout options before this post and any functional layout is probably going to be newer than this post.

 </edited in>

Thank you, readers and bots alike, for giving me the drive to keep writing and sharing by giving me your views and your +1s. Thank you very much! :)

Another Valoria, take 2

I was writing the third draft of Stuff of Legends, to work with the Another Valoria concept (third draft in chronological order. The second one has not been abandoned... I think). I got to writing about races and I noticed something: I couldn't figure out how to account for 2 entire races being completely wiped out - moreso by a war.

I mean, extinguishing a localized people is relatively simple, given you have the correct tools and methods. But an entire, continent-spanning race? I cannot begin to imagine how one such entire race is wiped out, deliberately, by another race, much less how two wipe each other out.

So the question I'm faced with now: what changes to enact in order to fix this lapse in the setting's narrative. Which bits do I compromise on and which do I hold onto?

Point 1: dwarves and elves evoke certain imagery and concepts, whether present as a race or as history.

Having either or both allows me to evoke certain images and concepts in players and GMs, without having to resort to sprawling descriptions and in depth analyses. This is double-edged, as it provides a familiar foundation, but it also takes away from the wonder in the world, as it sets it firmly in the well known.

Point 1 Verdict: they are both useful, but they aren't necessary. Compromise seems safe. Other races in their place?

Point 2: massive war definitely has immense casualty, but it rarely ends with complete genocide.

To push the part about not being able to imagine just how two races manage to completely wipe each other out. It takes an incredible coincidence to have 2 sides lose to the same degree. In the same vein, some force could intervene and tip the odds. Either the casualty is greater or this just doesn't work.

Point 2 Verdict: this makes little to no sense, except being "cool". Definite compromise. Exterior forces attacking? Shifting of how it ends?

Point 3: avoidance of elves and dwarves as PC races helps avoid reliance on the safest tropes.

Back to point 1: even if they aren't actively around, they still affect the world. Their general presence is a safe bet in design, which I suspect is harming the setting as a whole.

Point 3 Verdict: also back to point 1: other races as a compromise?

Point 4: the state of the continent is supposed to be bad. Disarray and massive swaths of land changed after the Event. Where kingdoms and maybe empires had been, now are city-states at most.

Points of Light is the bread and butter of many D&D-esque games. Adventure is found away from civilization and there is less civilization than there is wilderness. This is compounded by the rarity of safe wilderness, due to beasts and monsters. I want the taste of adventure.

Point 4 Verdict: if I want to achieve that, I need any kind of Event. To continue from point 2, it doesn't have to be a war, although those tend to do it.

Conclusions: It looks like compromise is the way to go here, after I give an honest look over at the original concepts. But it's not yet clear how to proceed - do I nix the elves and dwarves completely? Do I keep them but lose the war? Do I drop the war and find some other Event? Perhaps, is the Event still going on?

Going Forward

I don't really want people to see dwarves and elves in the list and say "Ah, of course!" and take some trope or other. While they are fully in the right of doing so, it feels lazy and plain to me. If I had to cobble together something right now, that takes into account all the compromises:

The Event is likely still going on and is an invasion of some sort - extraplanar or from another planet. There are ways and things. If there are elves and/or dwarves, they aren't recent. Theirs are the grand ruins where the greatest treasure lies. Maybe humans are gone too, since humans tend to be boring. Heck, maybe it's a big like Numenera, where the world now is much different than the world of a long time ago.

Heck, I might do just that.

Playing over Hangouts

After scheduling conflicts had been resolved, I've joined +Other Tim's Numenera game, being played over Hangouts. It's been around a year and a half since the last time I played, I think, and the game had been +Chris McDowall's Into the Odd.

I had fun. I really, genuinely had fun. Numenera is a pretty great game and Tim is a good GM. He really gets in character with NPCs and can really push a particular image or sensation into your mind, in that good way.

I'm playing a glaive that really quite show-offy. He's a decent fighter and a decent person.

Highlights included vivid descriptions of some creepy things, a fight with two mutants which I crushed with skill and really shifting the plot by killing what could've been an important NPC. She was creepy and spoke in my head.

So I'm looking forward to the next session, both since it was a fun, specific group and it's nice, in general, to get back to playing rather than just GMing.

Also, following some short discussion, we're planning to have a one shot of D&D 5e and I'm set for DMing it. Huzzah!

Another Valoria

While in the shower, and shortly before it, I was thinking about Stuff of Legends - the RPG I'm writing. I've hit a rut both in the system itself and in the development of its setting, Valoria. So while in the shower, I thought about what I could do differently, or at least what bothers me so much that I'm stuck, and it hit me that I still have a pretty ordinary fantasy world, except with some palettes switched out for different ones. It took me very little to picture a different Valoria.

Base assumptions

Valoria was thought up with some certain base assumptions: there were elves and dwarves and now there weren't, there was mighty magic and now it's harder to access, there are dragons and they aren't uniformly evil nor good across certain spectrums and finally - there's little actual and true evil anywhere to be seen.

I wanted to get rid of elves and dwarves since they were becoming less interesting for me alive. Their ruins are exploitable, but actual characters are... boring to some degree. Magic has a price, as can be seen in one previous post. Dragons are more of a united race. There are no demons.

Valoria v1

Saying it's the first version is misleading. It went through a bunch of iterations, but it's the first solid version. There are 5 races, after the elves and dwarves had gone, that all stem from humans - warped in one way or another. There are conflicting political superpowers. There are mysterious things to still come to know. But overall, when I write it out like this, doesn't it seem... kitchen-sinky? Not a bad thing to be, but I suddenly find myself boring.

The rut

I've been stuck for ages on other races. A full fledged five! One did this certain type of character well, another did that other type well. In trying to sidestep a trope, I walked right into one. I feel ashamed of myself, in a way. The same goes towards the political superpowers - the same old lady but with different clothes. Their precise creeds, forms of government and cultural quirks do little to make them truly interesting. And then there's the whammy, which hit me hard - what game am I trying to make again? Why do I care so much about political superpowers spanning half a continent? I felt like I lost sight of what I was going for.

Imitation and intentions

An advice that comes up often is to try and avoid building games from scratch, not because it's hard, but because it can be redundant. It follows with trying to see which game best fits the style you're going for and hacking or imitating it to a worthwhile degree.

And so I gave that some thought: I want adventures and adventurers, but I don't want classes. I want combat but I want it to matter. I don't want social interactions to be a heavy system. I don't want spell slots. There are numerous games out there in the fantasy genre and many fall into any number of these wants and don't wants, but I haven't yet run into one which answers everything. Hacking or imitation sounds about right, though.

So what is my game supposed to be about? It's supposed to be about going out on adventures and delving into dungeons, about exploring the wilderness and the unknown, about attaining power. This sounds like D&D, but some of my don't wants stand out. So do I hack or imitate? Remains to be a question.

And what this post is really about

But I went on a really long, winding path to get to my point. This post is about another Valoria, not necessarily Stuff of Legends as much as the setting that I wish to tie the game into.

In this other Valoria, some things are different but share a common base assumption:

• The elves and dwarves did die, just not sequentially and quite recently. All out war brought the continent to its knees and the setting takes place during recovery.
• From 5 races remain 3, and they get a bigger spotlight. Instead of covering bases, I want to make choosing a race an interesting choice. More than giving you general guidelines, I want the process to give you a feel for who your character is just from the racial choice process. I'm playing favorites and nixing races that felt too out of place and redundant.
•  A multitude of disparate factions in favor of a few unified ones. Gone is the empire and other such superpowers. Spared are those who were far from the war. Points of Light all the way.
• The elves and dwarves dying out took with them more than just cultures and history - inherent parts of the world became weakened.
• The Not-Demons can be allowed to be more... unseemly.

These points still fall into many tropes, but out of them I see my vision as more fun to attain. I see a game closer to what I want to do and how I want to portray it, though this setting.

So there's a second Valoria. It isn't the new one, or the better one, just another one.