Thread about appreciating, sharing and cooking up stuff relating to proper depictions of casters and warriors.

Not one of those spammed power scaling threads, and not system specific. Read further for elaboration.

In the modern TTRPG landscape, one of the great plagues upon good writing is taking things for granted. certain concepts have been so engrained into the media that they are almost inherently ignored during gameplay.

For character classes, or whatever other term your system uses, no one got it worse than the three/four classic roles. I am of course talking about the warrior, healer, caster and specialist (commonly rogue or thief). Today, these are the blandest archetypes that a character can embody, and out of them, the warrior and caster are the worst of the worst.

But this is not how it is meant to be. With just a bit of literary analysis, one realizes that the caster and warrior are a perfect duo for quality storytelling. Their skills compliment each other extremely snugly - one deals with the supernatural, while the other is extrmely down to earth. One has vast knowledge, the other masters tactics and diplomacy. Now, add more case-specific character dynamics. These archetypes inherently go after different goals. Power versus leadership? Seclusion versus fame?

Another way to put it, is that people have forgotten just what it actually means to be an adventurer as stereotypes became more and more rooted - and none are as forgotten and bogged-down-to-nothing as the warrior and wizard.

So, did you ever subvert this properly? Do you have any ideas on how to discourage players from ignoring their characters' entire profession? Seen any good writing about it in ttrpgs? In books? (And yes, go ahead and bring up what systems you like, but no power level crap)

To tell you the truth anon, the difficulty lies in game pacing. Warriors and casters have different roles throughout myth and stories, but many of their benefits came from out-of-combat: warriors made good leaders, casters would scry the future, warriors would hunt for food and casters would delve for magical secrets. Even when it comes to combat, wizards were either separated from combat entirely (Merlin), incredibly powerful to the point of needing quests to defeat them (Koschei), or simply used a sword and mostly cleaved people (Gandalf).
Most players don't really want that. They want their armored warrior to kill enemies, they want their wizard to blow people up. It's difficult to have these other prospects appeal to them, especially when the combat flies in the face of them. Power scaling ends up happening as a result, as well as an emphasis on "how good can my character kill".

To answer your question, I did once try to subvert this with a magical character, a warlock. The character was going to study leylines and runes in order to gleam the threads that connected life: his intend was to sever life itself from the planes through a disease, so he was reclusive and usually just killed people for eating and understanding. Sadly the sessions ended quickly, but it was nice having a goal besides "make money".

>>96175049

You've brought up a very fair point about simply wanting to blow people up. In fact, the general feel of the hobby, wargaming aside, has gone away from collaborative fantasy writing and more into wish fulfilment. That means more slaughter and more loot, less proper development, regardless of the character's themes.

An underlying question then would be - how would one even attempt to get a group together that -does- enjoy the more classical writing themes? Because, big surprise, advertising as such does not work. Even better - how to even describe such a game? If you just call it serious or in-depth or whatever, sure, you'll get people who like their backstories, but it'll still miss this mark.

>>96175100
I'm not sure how feasible it'd be, beyond what you said about people who like their backstories. But for me at least that is close enough: pushing for a Dark Fantasy styled campaign and asking for backstories that are more seriously inclined would help a lot.
Truthfully anon, have you considered that the issue may be less on players and more on systems? Think about it, players usually choose smaller goals like opening a tavern or getting some artifact because those concepts are accessible and "real" to them: most TTRPG games these days (read: DnD) have much less emphasis on a lived in world with different cultures and histories, and act more as backdrops for homebrew. How can you be invested in diplomacy if every kingdom is Generic Human City? Why would a wizard be interested in studying ancient runes or divination if at the end of the day it's all just loot tables in a world that feels pastiche?

This probably explains the prevalence of exotic humanoid races (derisively called freakshit): who can blame players for picking tieflings, elves, dwarves? They have the closest approximation to "lore" that is available, and thus story hooks. If you play a human, you're just a human from a village. If you play an elf or dwarf, you can at least make stories about hating dwarfs or elves respectively and you can "play into your role" because you are familiar with it.

I'd say a good starting point would be ensuring that whatever setting you run is thoroughly built like a real world. Different cultures and kingdoms and myths, known to the players beforehand, mysteries that are implanted into the world beyond just loot. After all, the One Ring was a simple invisibility ring when it came down to effects, but it was its Master that drove the story and demanded attention. If you can tie player actions and quests to a world that feels 'real', even if it's as small as saving a village, then I'd imagine they would take their stories and archetypes more seriously.

>>96175199
(dropping the namefagging, only wanted it for 1st post, but same anon)

Well, back when I first started running games, I had no idea how to do this, or rather, doing it seemed like a massive amount of work.

As I learned more, I realized that you don't actually need huge amounts of worldbuilding, what you do need is a good basis for what themes and "side quests" you can run to make a place seem real.

Players don't benefit from lore dumping en masse, they do benefit from a good description of the location they are currently in, with some neat events happening while they do their stuff. Also, naturally, having realistic interactions with NPCs and in combat (Fleeing, surrender, diplomacy, etc. It actually makes encounters where the enemies really are merciless stand out more)

I'd call the style immersive but not comprehensive. So far, I caught some players off-guard with it, most enjoyed it, and I did get a few great ones who integrated their chars in the world nicely, but even then it seemed to miss the big gripe here, which is that the actual significance of being a competent adventurer in a fantasy setting is completely underplayed. Among those great players I mentioned, I can only recall one who truly played their profession - a sort of archaeologist wizard who was uncovering ancient ruins to learn from. (of course there was more to it, evil shit lurking inside, etc.)

Traditional games?

writing is part of playing ttrpgs. don't be a skrunchel