"Realms" of competency and "Roles" within them, discussion

[oneofmanynameless]

So in this thread I mentioned that in my gaming group we decided to go through the various "realms" of adventuring (social engineering, combat, investigation, etc) and divide them up into methodologies and have everyone have their own methodology for engaging with each one with the skills and tools that support it.
@Say, it isn't that bad! expressed interest in how we did that, but to be honest how we did it was very campaign specific. I've been thinking about it more broadly, and interested in getting peoples thoughts working out what everyone would say the major "Realms" of adventuring are, and viable complete "Roles" within those realms.

When I say a "Realm" I mean something that, when it comes up, tends to dominate entire sessions, sometimes multiple, and tends to involve an array of different skills or even different strategies for doing things.

For starters I can identify at least a handful of realms:

Social Engineering - hopefully this one is self explanatory
- Diplomat
- Leader
- Interrogator (overlaps with investigator)
- Inside man / bull *******
- Streetwise guy
- Worf
Combat - hopefully this one is self explanatory as well. =p
- Front line Fighter
- Ranged Fighter
- Asymmetric Fighter
- plenty of other roles if super powers are in play
Investigation or Spycraft - Forensics, Stake-outs, Cat-burglary, Research. Not sure if this is the ideal way of defining this. But the central theme is information gathering. Overlaps with social engineering a little.
- Forensics
- Stake-out expert
- Cat Burgler
- Research and analyst
- Interrogator
Survival - It's rare, in my experience, for games to heavily deal with survival, either urban or wilderness, but it can be an entire realm unto itself.
- hunter
- gatherer
- medic
- farmer
- animal trainer
- crafter

Any ideas about others? Or about specific roles within these or others that you've thought of yourself?

[Say, it isn't that bad!]

A lot of interesting stuff, and I'm going to have to think about it before I comment.

That being said...

Originally Posted by oneofmanynameless

- farmer

...I'm not sure how this fits into an adventure. Although I have heard it come up in regards to MMORPGs?...

[Balor Patch]

"The Phoenicians sailed from the Arabian gulf into the southern ocean, and every autumn put in at some convenient spot on the Libyan coast, sowed a patch of ground, and waited for next year's harvest. Then, having got in their grain, they put to sea again, and after two full years rounded the Pillars of Heracles in the course of the third, and returned to Egypt."

So farming was important in that adventure.

[Say, it isn't that bad!]

Originally Posted by Balor Patch

"The Phoenicians sailed from the Arabian gulf into the southern ocean, and every autumn put in at some convenient spot on the Libyan coast, sowed a patch of ground, and waited for next year's harvest. Then, having got in their grain, they put to sea again, and after two full years rounded the Pillars of Heracles in the course of the third, and returned to Egypt."

So farming was important in that adventure.

That is a really cool bit of history.

Y'know, after an adventure, adventurers typically spend their gold at training halls, churches, mage's guilds, blacksmiths, taverns, and various other places.

They don't tend to plant down a small, temporary village. I feel like this is a possible missing area in general role-playing.

[zoncxs]

Originally Posted by Say, it isn't that bad!

They don't tend to plant down a small, temporary village. I feel like this is a possible missing area in general role-playing.

That is the fault of the players (and GM) and not the game. There is plenty published right now to run a Harvest Moon* game.


*Harvest Moon is a video game where you play as someone who comes into owning a run down farm and you fix it up and become a farmer and even get married and have kids.

[oneofmanynameless]

Yeah. I was putting it together quickly just to get a discussion going. Farmer tends to become a much more adventure worthy survival role when plant magic or powers are available. I have a character with plant magic who periodically gets thrown into survival scenarios and their main job is just to carry a lot of seeds and grow food for the party on the go. She uses the gardening skill instead of the farming skill. But it's the same role.

[dataweaver]

A useful resource to consider for this would be Template Toolkit 1, specifically the chapter on Nichés.

[AlexanderHowl]

Unfortunately, many people tend to think about the roles as the three video game roles of Warrior, Wizard, or Thief (Combat, Magic, or Stealth) when there are more roles. It is one of the many reasons why I enjoy playing bards, as their utility often goes beyond the three video game roles. Of course, the classic fictional roles are often the represented of the Five-Person Band (in which the bard tends to be the leader or the heart).

[Kromm]

Realms and roles vary greatly by campaign. You can strain analogies to the breaking point to make, say, netrunners resemble shamans (because they both deal with entities in realms most people don't perceive properly), and to pretend that a high-tech medic is more like a magical healer than a science geek . . . but eventually, the analogies will break. Even in the same genre, at the same TL, players may want to focus in some areas more than others, and might choose to explore a single, narrow realm of adventure in which roles that are only marginally different contrast sharply (e.g., infantry soldiers who have substantially the same training, but slightly different loadouts and the skills to use that gear).

I'd definitely point people to GURPS Template Toolkit 1: Characters – not because I wrote it, but because it explores these things in great depth. Some key niches there can be found across many GURPS supplements, notably in the Action and Dungeon Fantasy series; you usually won't get very far without people who are good at combat, exploration/scouting, medicine/healing, and "dishonesty" such as deceit, sneaking, and stealing. Then again, there are some niches that don't show up everywhere. Fantasy tends to need people adept at dealing with animals, plants, and the outdoors, as well as the supernatural in its own right; action doesn't. Action tends to need experts in communications, detective work, vehicles, and science and technology in their own right; fantasy doesn't. You can find exceptions (for instance, gnome "technologists" in fantasy, and outdoorsy cowboys in action), but they prove the rule: They stand out because they're exceptions.

Other good places to look for advice are GURPS Action 4: Specialists (which devotes fully half its page count to an in-depth analysis of modern-day "realms" and "roles"), GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Career Guide (which offers an exhaustive list of all the things fantasy heroes are likely to do), and GURPS Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills (whose numerous examples double as a long list of niches). To some extent, the Reassigning Skills discussion in GURPS Power-Ups 9: Alternate Attributes is also germane. And of course there's the free GURPS Skill Categories. I'd pore over all of those resources if I were serious about this subject.

The takeaway message from all of those supplements: Realms and niches tend to be defined by collections of skills above all else, so sorting skills sorts character niches. After you've done that, you can assign groups of dramatically or functionally related skills to templates, wildcard skills, or even new attributes for roles that are going to matter a lot in the campaign. But there are many, many different ways to do this, so in all cases, the "how to" in those supplements is more important than the examples.

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by Balor Patch

"The Phoenicians sailed from the Arabian gulf into the southern ocean, and every autumn put in at some convenient spot on the Libyan coast, sowed a patch of ground, and waited for next year's harvest. Then, having got in their grain, they put to sea again, and after two full years rounded the Pillars of Heracles in the course of the third, and returned to Egypt."

I'm having a hard time understanding the geography there. The Arabian Gulf (also called the Persian Gulf) is in the Red Sea and lets out into the Indian Ocean. During Phoenecian times there was no Suez canal, so the only way to get to Libya by sailing would be to go all the way around Africa and pass the Pillars of Hercules. Only then would you come to Libya and by then you'd be practically already home.