Colour Pie Subclasses

Idraluna* added flavours to OD&D Magic-Users using the five colour system from Magic: The Gathering to group spells into schools. The colour pie is an incredibly elegant thing and it maps very well to OD&D magic because you can map the colors to just about anything. It helps that spells are exactly what it was designed for in the first place, but it uses broad philosophies rather than strict definitions, so it's very widely applicable.

*The chain of inspiration goes deeper if you follow the links in that blog, but it's the post that directly inspired this.

Almost the colour pie, but it's actually just a coloured pie graph that happened to be CC licensed.

Not only did Idraluna apply the colours to spells, but to the Magic-Users themselves. They have to wear colour-coded robes and can only cast their colour's spells. Each colour was also given one innate power, effectively making five subclasses of Magic-User.

This works pretty well with my philosophies around class design. There's options, but it's still pretty broad. The colours of Magic-User can roughly map to modern understandings of Clerics, Wizards, Warlocks, Sorcerers and Druids, but there's plenty of wiggle room in there to be your own character instead of the prescribed stereotype.

I liked this so much I wanted to create similar subclass systems for other classes. I began with Fighting-Men. I workshopped a selection of four or five fighting disciplines that functioned similarly. The core class remains the same, but the fighting discipline modifies it in some broad flavourful way while having a set of tools available that has some crossover with other subclasses (spells for casters, weapons for fighters). I came up with Military, Religious, Martial Art, Barbarian, and Competitive archetypes I wanted to cover, but it still just didn't feel right. The closest I got to something I liked was a trio, with trained fighters (soldiers, knights, gladiators), ascetic fighters (monks, paladins, barbarians) and those who fight dirty (rogues, brawlers, swashbucklers). That almost maps to alignments, which I think is neat, but it still wasn't quite where I wanted it to be.

At some point it suddenly struck me that I'd been missing the obvious: just use the exact same subclasses as Magic-Users. This can apply to the Fighter and the Expert (Thief/Specialist).

The subclasses for all classes are White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green.

Fighters

Here are some Fighter subclasses I threw together. They are quick and untested and I opted for evenly spread passive bonuses to encourage certain styles rather than active abilities - partly because I feel like an active ability defines the character too narrowly (again, I like classes with wiggle room). Note that these are designed for something like Chainmail, where +1 is fairly significant (and simultaneous turns are relevant to a handful). In other systems, granting advantage might be more appropriate.

White Fighters are knights, soldiers, paladins. They fight as part of a collective, for order. 

• +1 to melee when fighting as part of a formation or close group.
• +1 to missile fire when firing as part of a volley.
• -1 to melee when caught alone.

Blue Fighters are commanders, duelists, weapon masters. They are well-studied experts in fighting.

• +1 to melee for one turn after successfully dodging or parrying.
• +1 to missile fire at long range.
• -1 to melee for one turn after taking a hit.

Black Fighters are rogues, brawlers, ruffians. They fight to win and will do whatever it takes to survive.

• +1 to underhanded moves in combat and while catching the opponent off guard (flanking, attacking while stunned etc).
• +1 to missile fire while unseen.
• -1 to melee when you don't have an escape route.

Red Fighters are berserkers, renegades, dervishes. They fight uninhibited, striking with passion (or reckless abandon, depending on your perspective).

• +1 to melee when fighting in light armor (or none).
• +1 to missile fire when close enough to the target to be at risk of a charge.
• -1 to melee when your opponent moved toward you this turn and you did not move toward them.

Green Fighters are barbarians, rangers, hunters. They fight with their instincts, knowing their capability as a predator.

• +1 to melee versus creatures significantly larger than you.
• +1 to missile fire versus creatures that are flying or climbing.
• -1 to melee when outnumbered.

Experts

This is a bit of a tricky one because I'm gearing it toward an Expert class that could have any set of skills like the one I did for DCC. That's why it's the Expert, not the Thief. In contrast to Fighters where I didn't feel it was appropriate to solidify one archetype as the colour's title, the titles here are still broad enough to encompass any Expert skillset.

It's also assuming 7-in-6 odds. Again, other systems will need their "+1" to be something else.

White Experts are Initiates, part of a cooperative guild or some other organization or community. As skilled cooperators, they are granted a +1 when their skill check directly enables someone else's action or protects them.

Blue Experts are Students, often formally trained and in the pursuit of knowledge. As academics, they perform best when they have time to study. Performing one extra dungeon turn of observation, research, or prep before making their skill check grants a +1.

Black Experts are Professionals, doing what they are best at for personal gain. Their skill checks are granted a +1 when their actions put someone else at risk, or someone else takes the heat.

Red Experts are Mavericks, maybe not doing things the conventional way, but certainly doing it with aplomb. Skill checks get a +1 under pressure, immediate danger, or during combat.

Green Experts are Improvisers, working with what they are given. They get a +1 to all skill checks for which they need to improvise.

Dwarves are more interested in gold

"... the player must make an offer to tempt the desired character type into his service. As a rule of thumb, a minimum offer of 100 Gold Pieces would be required to tempt a human into service, dwarves are more interested in gold, Magic-Users and elves desire magical items, and Clerics want some assurance of having a place of worship in which to house themselves."

- Men & Magic, p. 12

This line from Volume 1 of the original little brown books stands out to me. "Dwarves are more interested in gold."

Apparently the common consensus is that this means dwarves want more gold than other races to be hired. This makes sense, as dwarves have advantages that make them extra useful as a hireling.

On the other hand, my first reading of this was that dwarves would be more pleased with gold than other races. If you were to offer 100gp to a human and to a dwarf, the dwarf would be more interested. Which is to say, you could actually get away with paying them less.

Just one of many cases in OD&D where the conversational, example-driven text leads to massive ambiguity about what the actual rule is supposed to be, though one I hadn't seen anyone talk about specifically. In this case, complete opposite interpretations can both adhere to the text, "rules as written".

Discovering Spells in OD&D's Empty Spaces

Salty Goo's GLoG magic gives each spell a combination of two words which make up the essence of the spell. Kind of like these spells but backwards, where the spell comes first and the words come later. The important thing is, you can use these words to mix and match and create new spells.

I thought that was an awesome mechanic, so I defined a bunch of spell words for all the spells in OD&D (plus Turn Undead, so it can be treated as a spell), because that's the game I'm currently fixated on. I iterated on this a few times to reduce the overall number of words - you'll see why underneath the complete word list below.

Some spell words.

The Spells and their Words

1. Animate Dead - animate + dead
2. Anti-Magic Shell - nullify + magic
3. Bless - divine + enhance
4. Cause Disease - create + disease
5. Cause Light Wounds - create + harm
6. Cause Serious Wounds - create + harm
7. Charm Monster - charm + monster
8. Charm Person - charm + person
9. Clairaudience - distant + sound
10. Clairvoyance - distant + sight
11. Cloudkill - cloud + death
12. Commune - divine + speak
13. Confusion - impair + knowledge
14. Conjure Elemental - conjure + elemental
15. Contact Higher Plane - divine + speak
16. Continual Dark - everlasting + dark
17. Continual Light - everlasting + light
18. Control Weather - control + weather
19. Create Food - create + food
20. Create Water - create + water
21. Cure Disease - heal + disease
22. Cure Light Wounds - heal + harm
23. Cure Serious Wounds - heal + harm
24. Curse - divine + impair
25. Dark - create + dark
26. Death Spell - creature + death
27. Detect Evil - detect + evil
28. Detect Good - detect + good
29. Detect Invisible - detect + invisible
30. Detect Magic - detect + magic
31. Dimension Door - dimension + door
32. Disintegrate - make + dust
33. Dispell Evil - dispel + evil
34. Dispell Good - dispel + good
35. Dispell Magic - dispel + magic
36. ESP - sense + thought
37. Feeblemind - impair + mind
38. Find Traps - detect + trap
39. Finger of Death - make + dead
40. Fire Ball - projectile + fire
41. Fly - air + move
42. Geas - quest + death
43. Growth/Animal - animal + grow
44. Growth/Plant - plant + grow
45. Hallucinatory Terrain - illusion + area
46. Haste Spell - enhance + speed
47. Hold Monster - hold + monster
48. Hold Person - hold + person
49. Hold Portal - ward + door
50. Infravision - enhance + sight
51. Insect Plague - insect + plague
52. Invisibility - person + invisible
53. Invisibility, 10' r. - invisible + area
54. Invisible Stalker - invisible + person
55. Knock - open + door
56. Levitate - levitate + self
57. Light - create + light
58. Lightning Bolt - projectile + lightning
59. Locate Object - detect + object
60. Lower Water - reduce + water
61. Magic Jar - soul + container
62. Massmorph - morph + area
63. Move Earth - move + earth
64. Neutralize Poison - nullify + poison
65. Part Water - part + water
66. Pass-Wall - part + wall
67. Phantasmal Forces - illusion + force
68. Polymorph Others - morph + person
69. Polymorph Self - morph + self
70. Projected Image - illusion + sight
71. Protection/Evil - repel + evil*
72. Protection/Evil, 10' r. - good + area*
73. Protection/Good - repel + good*
74. Protection/Good, 10'r. - evil + area*
75. Protection/Normal Missiles - repel + projectile
76. Purify Food & Water - purify + food
77. Putrefy Food & Water - taint + food
78. Quest - quest + curse
79. Raise Dead - heal + dead
80. Read Languages - read + language
81. Read Magic - read + magic
82. Reincarnation - new + body
83. Remove Curse - nullify + curse
84. Sleep - creature + sleep
85. Slow Spell - impair + speed
86. Speak with Animals - speak + animal
87. Speak with plants - speak + plant
88. Stone-Flesh - stone + flesh
89. Telekenesis - distant + force
90. Teleport - distant + location
91. Transmute Rock-Mud - stone + mud
92. Turn sticks to snakes - stick + snake
93. Turn undead - repel + undead
94. Wall of Fire - wall + fire
95. Wall of Ice - wall + ice
96. Wall of Iron - wall + iron
97. Wall of Stone - wall + stone
98. Water Breathing - water + breathe
99. Wizard Eye - sight + move
100. Wizard Lock - close + lock

*Protection from evil/good and its AoE equivalents are given entirely different words. This does two things: solidifies their status as distinct spells rather than two power levels of the same spell, and also gives Clerics/Anticlerics access to the words for both good and evil. Of course, the way they use those words is restricted by their faith.

The Word List

The colored emojis by the words denote which classes have access to that word through their listed spells - 🔵Wizards, ⚪Clerics and ⚫Anticlerics. Word restrictions could be because they are forbidden, kept secret, impossible for their kind of magic, taboo, undiscovered, or simply not practiced by that particular tradition.

1. Air 🔵
2. Animal 🔵⚪⚫
3. Animate 🔵
4. Area 🔵⚪⚫
5. Body 🔵
6. Breathe 🔵
7. Charm 🔵
8. Close 🔵
9. Cloud 🔵
10. Conjure 🔵
11. Container 🔵
12. Control 🔵
13. Create 🔵⚪⚫
14. Creature 🔵
15. Curse 🔵⚪⚫
16. Dark⚫
17. Dead 🔵⚪⚫
18. Death 🔵
19. Detect 🔵⚪⚫
20. Dimension 🔵
21. Distant 🔵
22. Disease ⚪⚫
23. Dispel 🔵⚪⚫
24. Divine 🔵⚪⚫
25. Door 🔵
26. Dust 🔵
27. Earth 🔵
28. Elemental 🔵
29. Enhance 🔵⚪
30. Everlasting 🔵⚪⚫
31. Evil 🔵⚪⚫
32. Fire 🔵
33. Flesh 🔵
34. Food ⚪⚫
35. Force 🔵
36. Good 🔵⚪⚫
37. Grow 🔵
38. Harm⚪⚫
39. Heal ⚪
40. Hold 🔵⚪⚫
41. Ice 🔵
42. Illusion 🔵
43. Impair 🔵
44. Insect ⚪⚫
45. Invisible 🔵
46. Iron 🔵
47. Knowledge 🔵
48. Language 🔵
49. Levitate 🔵
50. Light 🔵⚪
51. Lightning 🔵
52. Location 🔵
53. Lock 🔵
54. Magic 🔵⚪⚫
55. Make 🔵⚫
56. Mind 🔵
57. Monster 🔵
58. Morph 🔵
59. Move 🔵
60. Mud 🔵
61. New 🔵
62. Nullify 🔵⚪⚫
63. Object 🔵⚪⚫
64. Open 🔵
65. Part 🔵
66. Person 🔵⚪
67. Plague ⚪⚫
68. Plant 🔵⚪
69. Poison ⚪⚫
70. Projectile 🔵
71. Purify ⚪
72. Quest 🔵⚪⚫
73. Read 🔵
74. Reduce 🔵
75. Repel 🔵⚪⚫
76. Self 🔵
77. Sense 🔵
78. Soul 🔵
79. Sound 🔵
80. Sight 🔵
81. Sleep 🔵
82. Snake⚪⚫
83. Speak 🔵⚪⚫
84. Speed 🔵
85. Stick ⚪⚫
86. Stone 🔵
87. Taint⚫
88. Trap ⚪⚫
89. Thought 🔵
90. Undead ⚪
91. Wall 🔵
92. Ward 🔵
93. Water 🔵⚪⚫
94. Weather 🔵

But why?

So that's 94 words to make up all the spells in OD&D. Ignoring the handful of duplicates (multiple spells are allowed to use the same combination of words) this creates a "wordspace" of 8742 combinations of words - or at the very minimum, 4465 if you don't consider "fire + projectile" and "projectile + fire" to be different.

And yet the wizards and clerics of the world have only discovered 100 spells. There are between 4365 and 8642 completely unused spells worth of wordspace in the magical continuum. And that's assuming they've discovered all the words, and that new ones couldn't mutate.

• 🔵Wizards have a vast library, but they are not able to cast any spells with Dark, Disease, Food, Harm, Heal, Insect, Plague, Poison, Purify, Snake, Stick, Taint, Trap, or Undead.
• ⚪Clerics are much more restricted, having access to only 34 words, but several of those words are inaccessible to Wizards. They exclusively have access to the Heal and Purify words, and also Undead which they use for their Turn Undead ability.
• ⚫Anticlerics mostly have the same words as Clerics, minus Enhance, Heal, Purify, and (bizarrely) Undead. They have access to Make, which Clerics don't, through the Finger of Death. They have exclusive access to the Dark and Taint words, making them the class which can literally bring darkness and corruption to the world.

With those restrictions in mind, let's do like this guy and discover some theoretical magic. I'll kick this off with some random rolls.

food + stick: An excellent first roll. This Cleric/Anticleric word combination produces the fearsome spell Conjure Banana.

door + dark: A Wizard would need to steal an Anticleric's spell (or vice versa) for this combo to be possible, as sharing spells between disciplines is almost universally forbidden. These words could create Veil Portal, which completely blocks perception through a doorway.

disease + purify: A Cleric spell, Proliferate Cure, which converts a disease into an infectious antidote.

food + dead: A Cleric (subject to faith) or Anticleric spell, Corpse to Food. Does what it says on the tin. Perhaps it could alternatively create a spell for humanely slaughtering livestock, though that seems less useful from an adventuring point of view.

plague + sleep: Another spell that requires input from both classes, Plaguesleep has a delayed effect which puts a target to sleep and spreads like a disease to those who touch the target (for instance, attempting to wake them up). Anyone it spreads to becomes drowsy takes a few minutes to fall asleep and can spread the effect to anyone else. Each generation of infection past the second gets a cumulative +1 to the saving throw (becoming easier to resist the further it spreads).

Not all combinations of words produce a useful or interesting spell, but that's fine. In-game, this won't be done by simply choosing random words as I did above. Finding the interesting ones is what players are for.

How to use this in-game

When PCs do spell research, have them only be able to create effects which can be combined from words they know through other spells. Discovering a whole other new word requires either researching the word itself or stealing a spell from another caster acquiring a spell with that word through legitimate means. This is technically a nerf, but it adds depth and a whole new layer of game to the process of spell research. It might help some players to have spell creation be more defined too, rather than just telling them they can make whatever they please. Limitation breeds creativity, after all. I know I wouldn't have ever written "Conjure Banana" without being prompted by the words.

Reversed Ability Checks

This idea attempts to solve a modern problem and make sense of an old school oddity at the same time. In the end, I think results are mixed. There's something here.

The Original Issue

"Strength will also aid in opening traps and so on.

[...]

Intelligence will also affect referees' decisions as to whether or not certain

action would be taken

[...]

Wisdom rating will act much as does that for intelligence.

[...]

the charisma score is usable to decide such things as whether or not a

witch capturing a player will turn him into a swine or keep him enchanted as a

lover."

- Men & Magic

But how?

OD&D gives a few examples of things that ability scores can do. Most of them are directly tied to a specific game mechanic. The above examples, however, are just stated outright with no given resolution method. It looks to me like the implication from a direct reading of the text is that the referee simply decides whether or not you have a high enough score to do something. This sucks and obviously didn't strike people as the right way to play because the early RPG scene quickly decided they needed a solution. I'm sure it led to arguments at the table; it's practically GM-fiat, lacking that arbitration of the dice that makes us blame Lady Luck instead of the person across the table.

Best I can tell, the question was first officially answered in 1981 by Moldvay's Basic with roll-under-attribute checks, though legend has it that Gygax was doing something similar before then with 3d6 instead of a d20. Until then, I'm not sure what most people actually did. An honest reading of the rules tells me I'm supposed to simply decide that the guy with 15 strength can open things the guy with 6 strength can't. I don't expect people did that for long, if at all.

Let's not even talk about Intelligence and Wisdom outright restricting player choices. Eugh.

The Modern Problem

The party wants to bend some bars to squeeze through a space. The barbarian with 18 strength is the perfect fit for the job. He rolls a natural 3, so he fails. But then the gnome wizard steps up with his glorious 6 strength and rolls a 20, putting him to shame.

There are really two problems at play here, but they both have to do with making multiple attempts on a swingy die roll (and my solution isn't limiting the party to a single attempt - that's a problem too because it just makes sense for someone else to try after their buddy fails). One problem is that the 6-strength individual has any chance of beating the 18-strength individual in a strength contest at all. The other is that this encourages every person in the party to have a go at something when it only makes sense for one person to try it and then the best-suited to step up if they fail. The law of large numbers cheapens tests to the point of triviality.

I chose a clean strength-based example because in a realistic scenario there isn't much random chance at play. Generally, you are strong enough to do a task or you are not. What we refer to as "strength" maps pretty well to a measurable capacity to exert a force. This doesn't vary much on a case-by-case basis. In real world (or verisimilitudinous narrative) scenarios you don't generally have a ~65% chance to be able to lift something. Weightlifting contests aren't decided by a coin flip.

Reversed Ability Checks

The idea here is essentially to use that 3d6 roll Gygax once used but to frame it differently. Rather than having the player roll and attempt to score under their ability score, the roll sets the DC for the ability check. The referee notes the result. Then, anyone attempting that ability check immediately passes if their ability score is equal or greater. Any number of people can attempt the task, but the roll does not change. The person best suited will always do the best. For more or less difficult tasks you can roll more or less d6s.

What's the difference?

You are checking to see whether the bars being bent are bendable rather than whether someone gets lucky enough to bend the bars. Rolling a 3 means the masonry holding the bars in place was worn, the bars were old and decayed and probably weren't that well-made to begin with - anyone could get them out if they tried. Rolling an 18 means the bars are extremely tough and you'll need to get your strongest party member to take over. The player who had the idea still gets to make the check and attempt it, and Buffman McMuscles gets to step in and save the day if it's too hard.

This framing changes the way the check feels without changing the fact that even the referee doesn't know how it's going to play out until it gets there. The randomness of player characters' capability is instead shifted to randomness of the world. You as a player know exactly how capable you are, but not exactly what you're going to face.

When doesn't this work?

Loads of the time, to be honest. While allowing the character with the best strength to shine for strength related tasks is one of the advantages of this type of check, the disadvantage is that the obvious choice is now to always have the person with the highest in a given stat do the thing, and nobody else ever. This means that any character who isn't the best at any one thing likely never gets a chance to shine. I can see this being a problem at some tables, but if preference is given to the character of the person who thinks of the idea, it might not be. Only have Mr Save-The-Day step in if the instigator fails their attempt.

Having a single person with an 18 in the party means any checks for that ability now might as well not even be tested if the difficulty isn't extreme enough to warrant a 4d6 check. Everyone knows if the instigator fails, Baron von Biceps is guaranteed to succeed anyway. This could be a good or bad thing depending on how often it comes up and the table's preferences - it means less rolling and more moving forward.

You can't use it for something like combat, where repeated checks are necessary. Extend this limitation to any instance where there are multiple chances for failure.

So when do I use it?

I think the best way to use this style of check is, like in the bar-bending example, a player-vs-world situation. Climbing? Any player with greater than 3d6 dexterity can make it up incident-free, the rest of you have a chance of failure. It may also work for passive checks like saves - everyone with a save vs. blast greater than 3d6 takes half damage. Possibly group stealth? If every single person in the sneaking group has dexterity greater than 3d6 the group succeeds, else they fail. You're only as hidden as your clumsiest adventurer, but you don't have to go through the near-certain failure of the repeated stealth check.

OZ ORC 2 - My first RPG convention experience

I, along with about 60 others, attended a local old school gaming convention on Saturday: OZ ORC, the Australian Oldschool Roleplay Convention. It's the convention's second year and my first. It was a lot of fun, I met a lot of cool people, connected with the local scene in a way I hadn't previously, and of course, I played some games. I found myself on the younger end of the demographic, playing alongside those who experienced AD&D in the decade before I was born. I felt a nostalgia for a tradition I wasn't there to build as I saw the way others game align with the way I want to game.

Here's what I played. It's an odd selection and in a way I'm glad I was a little late to the signups because of how it turned out.

Game 1: Mork Ratta

A Mork Borg hack of the GM's creation in which we formed a party of rats and entered a sewer that was randomly generated as we explored it. The game was one that the GM had put together as something to play in between campaigns or when the full crew didn't show up. We even played on the same map as previous players (complete with random doodles), choosing a new point to explore from.

Highlights were most of the party getting stuck in a cockroach trap because of a statistically improbable amount of natural 1s, and one of the PCs dying because they drank what turned out to be hair dye.

Intermission: Sorcery TCG

What? This isn't an RPG. Well, it certainly has the old school vibes, and it was at the convention (sort of).

During the first intermission I spotted what I thought was a friendly game of Magic: The Gathering. On closer inspection it turned out to be Sorcery: Contested Realm. A few months ago I had been looking for the Gothic precon decks so I could give the game a go, too no avail. I asked to sit in and spectate, to which one of the players offered their seat so I could try the game myself instead. It turns out this fellow runs learn-to-play events for the game so he was eager to get me involved.

He described the game briefly as Magic meets chess. By the end of the game I was surprised to learn how true that description is. Your cards move around on a 5x4 grid and your player’s avatar is a unit on the board. Coupled with the way the game ends (after hitting zero you don't die - but you can die next round by taking any damage to your avatar) you end up with a card game that sets up a board game which decides the winner.

It was fun. I like the current, slower pace of the game and I hope it has plans to retain that and fight the power creep long term. He gave me a small booster pack and an invitation to some future events. I wish I had the time and funds.

Game 2: Goat Quest 2

This was run by Konsumterra of Elfmaids and Octopi, who posted about it here. It was another animal-based homebrew hack, described as "probably more like Castles & Crusades than anything else." We played as ancestors of the goats who were the PCs last year - some of those players returned for this year! We were blessed with sentience and tasked with protecting the village from the forces of Chaos, all without the villagers finding out.

We were told about the legend of the Anti-Goat and let loose on the town. Our first port of call was to go to a hamlet that was burned down by our ancestors for being cultists. We burned it down again, because there were cultists again.

The Holy Goat, the cleric stand-in, had the very creative ability of "Turn Shapeshifter". I'm going to have to steal that idea for a spell or something. It was very cool and saw multiple uses. It had the ability to not just drive them back, but alternately to force them to change forms!

Highlights of the game for me were being KO'd by an old lady after spectacularly jumping into her window and missing two attacks, and a Chaotic Evil woman warning us to watch out for her son. Her son is pictured above. Yes, he was the snake.

Game 3: The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen (DCC funnel)

This was my first time being on the other end of a DCC game. My last several posts give away the fact that I've been on a major OD&D kick. I haven't been able to get the DCC table together for a good while so that campaign has stalled. This definitely reaffirmed my love for DCC.

Since this one was a module I don't want to spoil anything here. If you've played in this one, you likely know more or less what our game looked like. It's a good module and if you're umming and ahhing about getting it, it's a great opener into an urban game. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Signing off

A good time was had by all. I'll be back for next year. Hell, maybe I can work up the courage to put myself down for running something. Now that would be an experience.

Classes As My Balls

I was pondering as I often do about classes in RPGs - or was I self-analyzing my tendency to like contradictory game mechanics? maybe both - when I had a bit of an epiphany.

I've often argued that you "don't need" certain classes in your elf games. Barbarians are just a type of warrior, all casters might as well be wizards, etc. On the total flip side, I'm as much entrapped by the goblin-fueled black hole as so many others in the RPG blogosphere, where there are hundreds of classes ranging from 30 different kinds of "Fighter" (by my count) all the way to person whose dog is a ghost and brings them money.

Liz over at Magnolia Keep has two great blog posts (about combat and player skill respectively) deconstructing the reasons why different groups call the same thing different things for different purposes, and why the way we tend to categorize them is mostly wrong. I happened across these posts at around the same time I had these ponderings, and it fit the format, so here we are. Here is my own take on As My Balls.

Let's talk about what classes are, and why they are actually several different things.

Classes as Classification (Type 1)

This is the one I have argued in favor of in the past. The classic Warrior, Mage, Thief trichotomy is so ingrained into the zeitgeist of RPGs both tabletop and computer that I think it's fair to argue that almost all other classes are subsets or combinations of the three. There is a whole (ironically, classless) TTRPG by almost exactly that name. The original RPG had only fighters, mages, and clerics that were explicitly somewhere between the other two (thieves weren't until Greyhawk, despite their status as an RPG icon).

When using classes like this, the reason they were called "classes" to begin with is clear. They are broad classifications of types of characters. Stepping further back in time, the wargames that RPGs grew from had "classes" of troops, but one Light Foot and another Light Foot weren't the same. I don't think the basic classes were ever meant to be "the" options for characters, but rather the real characterization was to develop within the broader classification.

This is classes in their most literal sense and I like it for the narrative and thematic freedom it grants through its lack of mechanical specificity. Important mechanics are based on a broad category and the rest is worked out in person through play. The monk, archer, pirate, and dwarf in the party are of course different, but the class they all belong to only tells you that they do big hits and don't do magic.

The caster, martial and half-caster groupings essentially function as this kind of class in 5e, if you stopped there.

Classes as Archetypes (Type 2)

Give someone a fighter and it isn't long before they ask for a paladin. It only took a year from the birth of the hobby (from OD&D to Greyhawk) for this to happen in an official capacity. Granted, adding new classes was an obvious move to make and in part its status as a subclass was an attempt at giving Fighting-Men something exciting, but the point stands. With only three or four broad options, people just wanted more.

By now, a culture had begun to develop around these classes. There was some idea of what a Cleric or a Fighting-Man was like. In turn, there would have been players who wanted to play something a bit different, and for some a logical leap was to create a new class. To be fair, it's what Volume 1: Men & Magic tells you to do. A player can play as virtually anything, even a dragon, as long as the referee determines the progression.

For some, spreading out within the bounds of the broader "Magic-User" class either does not come naturally or does not feel as appealing as having a true mechanical differentiation. A Wizard, a Warlock, and a Sorcerer might be the same to me, but to other players this distinction really matters. (Sidebar: I actually think the level titles of OD&D lessened the freedom players felt here, because Wizard, Warlock, Sorcerer and even Necromancer were defined game terms that were only differentiated by level). Take this a few steps further and you get to recent editions of D&D, which provide about ten-ish classes for players to build a character within. These are more specific than "does magic, hits things, or has skills" but still fairly general archetypes.

Everyone knows what the Bard is supposed to be. The class comes with not only mechanical expectations but roleplaying ones too. There is a whole default personality to fall back on if necessary - and I really don't mean this as a dig against modern D&D. If D&D's good at anything, that thing is being the standard, and this approach to classes makes it pretty easy for all players to get something they want out of it without expecting a specific kind of effort in return. With most bases mostly covered, players are free to put their effort where they want to.

This middling number of classes is enough to create a "best of" of well-known fantasy character archetypes while not being expansive enough to induce high levels of analysis paralysis.

Classes as Options (Type 3)

Multiclassing in 5e comes close to bridging the gap to this next one, but I'd argue that it doesn't quite cross it because the classes are still designed with clear and separate individual identities and multiclassing is sort of an afterthought. 5.5e even more so, with the sweeping structural changes to classes making multiclassing less mechanically appealing. Pathfinder on the other hand very much seems to expect multiclassing and has more specific classes in greater numbers.

This is also where you are likely to stop seeing race-as-class entirely. Games that favor options for the players will prefer having races as another option to combine with your class rather than the defining characteristic of your character.

A great example of classes as options is Shadow of the Demon Lord, whose classes are in essence a menu of options to choose from when you level up. Games like Dragonbane or other Basic Roleplaying-based games also fit into this, being "classless" but with your profession and combination of skill selections primarily making up your character identity where your class normally would.

This is for the players who want to have lots of mechanical choices at their fingertips. When I say mechanical choices, I mean the ones that are written into the rulebook rather than presented by the GM. It's not necessarily just for powergamers, though this type of classes does create the kind of game most conducive to powergaming. Even many classless games, which I once thought of as the cureall to powergaming, lend themselves to optimization for those who don't specifically choose to play suboptimally. Having options kind of just does that.

This approach to classes is great for those who value the progression of their character being written into the game for them to strategize their way into rather than abilities being handed out at the GM's judgement. I will grumpily admit there is merit to that, despite my own preferences for diegetic progression.

Classes as Specific Fantasies (Type 4)

When all of these seem like reasonable classes, you are in Type 4.

The complete opposite end of the spectrum from Classification is when you are no longer grouping characters into classes, but creating bespoke classes for character concepts. This is what GLoG classes do. You come up with what you want to do and a class can be made for that. And that character fantasy can just as well be Conan or Aragorn as it can be a werewolf unionist or the classic "weird little guy".

In Type 4, the more classes available to the players the better, and these games are usually designed such that creating a class is quick and easy, maybe even doable in ten minutes before the start of your first session.

Classes as Nonexistent (Type 0)

The philosophy of classless systems counterintuitively shares a lot with the countless-classes philosophy of the extreme end of Type 4. Both of these kinds of systems want the players to have game mechanics ready to go for exactly the character they want to play. While I was writing the section for Specific Fantasies classes, I remembered an interview with someone from Chaosium (I apologize for not remembering the actual source!) where they discussed having played a game with a player whose character was a dolphin in a mechsuit.

That is GLoGgy as hell.

Follow the arrows as classes get more specific.

And I think this hits the crux of why I am drawn to the seemingly contradictory ends of the spectrum. Type 1 and Type 4 aren't actually so far apart when what you want is something that allows the player to do what they want to do without too much bloat. I consider classes a useful and intuitive player-facing tool for this, which explains why I love the two ends of the spectrum and have a soft-spot for classless systems. I consider an excess of mechanical options to be bloated, gameable, and come with a lot of baggage, which explains why I don't Types 2 and 3. But those are just, like, my opinions, man.

DCC across the 2 Axes of Abstraction

Murkdice wrote about what games are about based on what they have rules for and what they don't have rules for. It's an interesting ludological article, though I'm somewhat skeptical of the suggestion that anyone seriously claims 5e isn't about combat specifically because most of its rules are for combat, though. There were some cool four-sector charts in there so I wanted to do one for DCC, and in the process I had a few thoughts of my own about what the axes of abstraction actually tell us.

Go check out the original article. There's more charts!

It's a bit more cluttered than Murkdice's examples but the point of that post wasn't to deep dive into any one game, it was to demonstrate an overall point about what games tell us they are about.

When you illustrate the point like this, it becomes clear that the things the game is about are the things it expects to become complex. This is true across the entire coded-free spectrum. DCC goes to great lengths to tell you about all the things it wants you to do but doesn't have specific rules for, so it's really a perfect demonstration of this.

DCC is about unpredictable magic because it has a lot of rules and charts to follow (making it complex), and DCC is about Questing For It because it leaves the quest-and-reward process open and free (making it complex). You can entirely throw away the axis of codedness and find that the number of rules a game has about a particular thing actually has no correlation to what the game is about.

It turns out a game is actually about what you spend time focusing on while you play it.