Needs Help: An Adventurer Is You

I agree that that page is a bit of a mess, but it's not really directly related to this issue. I'd say make a separate thread for it.

Not sure what you're saying here. What I'm arguing for is that we merge Damager, Healer, Tank and An Adventurer Is You into MMO Holy Trinity. Are you saying that we should just use Damager, Healer, Tank as-is? There's nothing really wrong with that trope except for the fact that it's got almost no wicks or inbounds, but I'm also not fond of the title (which I believe is a big part of the reason it's not a very popular page). My proposed Sandbox.MMO Holy Trinity is most of the same content from Damager, Healer, Tank, just reformatted and with a better name (ie, the one most of the community uses for the trope).

The current proposal is to have Fighter, Mage, Thief as a subtrope of Common Character Classes, though I'm not sure that there will actually be enough concrete examples of the former to justify it. I haven't done any example-sorting yet, but it's something to keep in mind when we get to that point.

Combat and Support is a bit of a mess. The description talks about combat vs non-combat personnel (eg, a field agent and their mission control staff, a mecha pilot and their maintenance team, soldiers on the front line and the general directing the battle, etc) while almost all of the examples are about support roles in combat (eg, a pure healer can't defeat enemies on their own, but can offer support to other combatants). But someone who heals and buffs in combat is still in combat, so that doesn't really fit the "combatants vs noncombatants" description that the article starts with.

The distinction I'm making is between a class (what you are) and a role (what you do). Common Character Classes are about classes, and MMO Holy Trinity is about roles. The entries in Common Character Classes are deliberately broad, because a list of class names isn't a trope. It doesn't really matter whether it's called "fighter", "knight", "soldier", "samurai", or whatever — if they have average-ish stats (maybe leaning toward low speed and high power) and are designed to engage in direct combat with the enemy, then they're a Warrior. The trope isn't "fighter/knight/soldier/samurai/whatever as a character class", it's ""character class that has average-ish stats (maybe leaning toward low speed and high power) and are designed to engage in direct combat with the enemy".

That's still separate from combat role, though. A warrior can be either a tank or DPS. A rogue likewise (as a dodge tank or a rapid-attack DPS). Rangers and nukers are both DPS, but they're different kinds of DPS, while all healers are support but not all support are healers. There's definitely not a one-to-one mapping between classes and roles, anyway.

I agree that everything in An Adventurer Is You can be put in either Common Character Classes or MMO Holy Trinity, but I'd tend to say that it should be redirected to the latter rather than the former, given that it seems to be more about party roles than specific classes. That's how it tends to be used around the wiki, anyway.

Useful notes are generally comments on real-world things that often turn up in fiction, so aren't tropes themselves but are helpful for understanding tropes. For example, Common Ranks helps explain tropes like Ensign Newbie, Sergeant Rock, The Captain etc. I'm not sure what tropes Fantasy Character Classes as a useful note would help illustrate or explain.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I wonder if we could make Fantasy Character Classes more about the stereotypes of each class in a party and when an RPG Episode or just fantasy series comes around they have to use those classes somewhere. Even though RPG Episode could be any kind of RPG, they always choose fantasy and always throw the same classes into the mix.

Like say Record Of Lodoss War a Roleplay where everyone in the party is a standard fantasy class character

• Parn the Knight
• Deedlit the Summoner elf
• Etoh the Holy Priest
• Slayn the Wizard
• Ghim the Dwarven 2 Hand Warrior
• Woodchuck the Thief

You never actually meet someone who is not a Fantasy class in the entire franchise including the 3 animes.

Or Final Fantasy which every party member fits a class since III even though not all of them use an actual Class System that uniqueness is still there. When someone makes a fantasy series they almost always use those defined classes and such, even if its not a class based game the characters will fit in those roles because that is what defines that type of fantasy party.

Like say a Fantasy RPG Party Classes or something.

edited 25th Jul '16 10:30:10 AM by Memers

We already have tropes for character archetypes like that, though. For the Knight, we have Knight in Shining Armor (or Knight in Sour Armor), the Black Knight, the Dragon Knight, The Paladin (for a holy- or light-flavored knight), etc. I'm sure we have an index of fantasy character archetypes around somewhere.

edited 25th Jul '16 11:11:49 AM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Which makes calling out the idea that "fantasy character archetypes exist, yo!" into more of a supertrope than anything that requires actual examples.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

If we truly had all the classes covered it would be the primary index of gathering those classes, with an example list of the shows that adhere this template for everyone in the show, episode or the main party.

Also those who break out of the non-standard set of fantasy classes to add like The Gardener and such.

And those mess with the formula. Like Kono Subarashii Sekai Ni Shukufuku O messes with things a lot and I would never play with this party in any RPG.

Note: that work's character page is a huge example of why we need to sort these and clean em up. A 4 person party yet they have pretty much all the 3 type tropes listed and just leave off the 4th party member that doesn't fit.

edited 25th Jul '16 3:34:37 PM by Memers

I mean, I figure that Splat would be at least related to this issue. I'm not saying we should fix it ASAP.

I meant that I was overseeing DHT's YKTTW when it was made. We discussed a bit about the MMO Holy Trinity thingy there.

I recall that Damager, Healer, Tank was chosen because it's, well, clearer? Its lack of wicks is because it's relatively new as a page.

And btw, some things in An Adventurer Is You aren't covered by Damager, Healer, Tank, like buffing/debuffing, mesmerizing or playing with pets.

Eh, they're unrelated to this? Huh. (Just to comment: I think Combat and Support is broad enough to conflate support in and out of combat, but it's just me.)

Then we have a different way of saying what classes and roles are? (I mean, both tanking and healing are but 2 of many supportive abilities, while Warrior, Ranger, Rogue and Nuker are all damager in different ways...)

@ bolded 1: Which trope are you referring to?

@ bolded 2: Dunno man, DPS is separate from Nuker in An Adventurer Is You, but I think they'd be the same in Damager, Healer, Tank.

It's complicated. Sure "Damager" is pretty encompassing but "Healer" and "Tank" aren't.

@ bolded: say hello to Fighting Games, for instance.

Fantasy Character Classes might instead be a "stock" trope like those in Stock Room?

MAX POWER KILL JEEEEEEEEWWWWW

Clock is ticking.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

@ first post: I would agree with the second option but I dunno what to do with the first one.

We don't need justice when we can forgive. We don't need tolerance when we can love.

Oh hey, this thread.

Proposals still on the table: 1) replace An Adventurer Is You and Damager, Healer, Tank with Sandbox.MMO Holy Trinity. 2) Merge Fantasy Character Classes and Modern Day/Sci-Fi RPG Class Equivalents into Common Character Classes, with Fighter, Mage, Thief as a subtrope if there are enough good examples for that specific version.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

So what was wrong with Damager, Healer, Tank that we needed MMO Holy Trinity?

I would argue that many "supportive" capabilities are distinct enough, way more than just "healing" (even tanking is itself a supportive ability, especially in a team combat) and there are also many distinct ways of being a "damager" especially as games like to explore more. But as we're talking mostly about RP Gs, yeah, the three seem to be the most fundamental.

We don't need justice when we can forgive. We don't need tolerance when we can love.

MMO Holy Trinity is an established term. If people are searching for the trope, then that's one of the most likely phrases they'll use.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Seems to me like there hasn't been progress since the clocking, thus closing.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman