Dn D player here, when I saw the title and your initial complaints (didnt read all the way through) I thought the trope was about the supplementary classes/races that come in non-core books (often called splatbooks). Outside of that context, I have never heard the word splat refer to a class or race.
Definitely swap and expand. An Adventurer Is You is more about the roles characters can take, so it's fine on it's own.
I've heard of the term in the white-wolf forums. But that may be a chicken or egg thing.
I've seen "splat" used for classes, affiliations, and even race/species (depending on setting).
Splat refers to the asterisk. * <- that. White Wolf published a bunch of Wo D stuff named clanbook, tribebook, tradition book, etc. as expansions. On forums they would refer to them as *books. Splat is a (somewhat informal) word for the asterisk, hence, splatbooks became a phrase referring to published supplements to a roleplaying game.
I've never heard 'splat' refer to the divisions of class, or race, or whatever in a game. My first guess was that this trope had to do with Splatbooks and for some reason had 'books' dropped off the end of it.
edited 16th Jul '10 5:17:35 AM by savage
Want to rename a trope? Step one: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
I've never heard it used like this before. The way I always hear it the splats are only really used in context of the World Of Darkness. nWod are Vampire, Mage, Werewolf, Geist, Mortal, Changeling, and so on. i.e. They're the divisions of line and creature type. I've never heard the word outside of Wo D and never in this context. Splats are the creature-types/gamelines of Wo D. I've never heard the word used for other games.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
A known swindler
I've run World Of Darkness and various other tabletop games. Splatbook I'm very familiar with, though until the above post I didn't know why they were called that. I actually first heard it in a Dn D context so it's definitely expanded.
Splat on its own I have never heard. Character Class is the term. World Of Darkness has a few tweaks on class (making race the bigger deal and class/clan the smaller decision unlike Dn D) but I see no reason to name the trope the nonsensical Splat.
edited 16th Jul '10 7:42:00 AM by Visla
Pacta sunt servanda, bitch!
I've heard of splat meaning asterisk but never the way we're using it.
BTW, I'm a chick.
Having never played tabletop games myself I think of splat as something completely different, given that it's a pretty prevalent onomatopoeia.
"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.
It's an extant fan term that I've seen used for a broad variety of factions/classes/species in White Wolf and other games on places like RPGnet, but as Known Unknown points out, it's also shadowing a plain old standard word in a way that can mislead.
"Oh, Splat is a trope? Cool, I'll add an example to the Men In Black page about that bug in the credits sequence..."
Should at least rename, though I wonder whether it's really needed at all when we have Character Class and such. Maybe a rename and rewrite to Splat Books to cover those materials?
edited 16th Jul '10 3:11:37 PM by Semiapies
...It's wierd to see Splat being the main page name and Character Class being the redirect. At the very minimum, it should be the other way around.
Helpful Scripts and Stylesheets here.
Oh, wow - I misread that and thought that Character Class was a separate trope. We should absolutely swap that name and redirect.
edited 16th Jul '10 3:12:39 PM by Semiapies
So, consensus for a swap, then? I'll start a three day countdown if there are no objections.
As well, are there any objections to expanding the definition/examples to include character classes from video games etc.?
We need to do something with the fact that we have this, Fantasy Character Classes, Class and Level System, An Adventurer Is You, and Fighter, Mage, Thief.
Helpful Scripts and Stylesheets here.
Yea, this trope just seems to be RPGs have things that make characters unique, anything that could be an actual trope here is covered by something else.
I could see making it a useful notes page on the World of Darkness which is the one place I've seen the term really used, but it's not really a trope.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Ehn, Character Classes are something worth keeping. They're not RPG Characters Have Rated Traits or anything. Many games don't have classes, from GURPS and Hero system on forward, and not all class systems are ClassAndLevelSystems.
edited 18th Jul '10 2:36:18 PM by Semiapies
Yes but how many of those don't fall into Fantasy Character Classes?
A number of Dragon Quest classes/jobs/vocations don't fall under the Fantasy Character Classes. I mean, where exactly does Jester, Mariner, and Shepard fall under? Heck, the Hero class of the series isn't covered.
Helpful Scripts and Stylesheets here.
Alright, the second question is this, what exactly do we put on a Character Class page to make it more than RPGs have classes?
Of course, if we do decide that this page is worth keeping I wholeheartedly support making that redirect the main title.
edited 18th Jul '10 2:49:19 PM by Twilightdusk
A known swindler
I think that over-stretches People Sit On Chairs in the extreme. RPGs have character classes, which act as defined archetypes and ability sets for player and non player characters to significant storytelling and game mechanical effect.
That's a trope. Unfortunately we have half a dozen tropes that try to cover it. We need to merge them, but they all contain at least a part of a trope.
edited 18th Jul '10 2:50:53 PM by Visla
Pacta sunt servanda, bitch!
There's tons of RP Gs that don't have classes. Some of the most popular RP Gs don't, like Pokemon and most Final Fantasy games. It's pretty darn far away from People Sit On Chairs.
Helpful Scripts and Stylesheets here.
Thinking it through a bit more, I suppose if Character Level is a trope, then Character Class can be as well, I'm more than a little tired and more than a little rushed right now, I wasn't thinking as clearly as I could have.
Thinking it through a bit more, I suppose if Character Level is a trope, then Character Class can be as well, I'm more than a little tired and more than a little rushed right now, and more than a little DOUBLE POST RAGING!
edited 18th Jul '10 2:53:28 PM by Twilightdusk
Er... Splat. I'll admit I'm not a huge tabletop gamer, so I could be wrong about this. But is splat really the term commonly used for this trope? Everyone I know calls these kinds of things a "class" (though the description seems to be including "races" or "species" as well). Looking on the archived discussion reveals similar confusion.
Furthermore, is it really a tabletop centric trope? Plenty of video games use classes as well, but that seems to be covered more under An Adventurer Is You... which also contains tabletop examples. Or is that about balance between classes? I'm somewhat confused about the distinction between the tropes.
All in all, this is one that's been bothering me for a while, so I figured I'd bring it to the forums. My suggestion would be to swap it with its redirect, Character Class, and expand the definition to include video games as well. Either that or a merge with An Adventurer Is You.