Vague vs Defined
I found myself wondering about a game like Pathfinder, that by now has a very long list of playable classes and races, and something like the Black Hack, which has no rules for races at all and only four classes.
At first glance it looks like Pathfinder gives you more options for classes, since it has rules for hundreds. But in the case of races, the Black Hack actually gives players more options. Since there are no rules for races, the number of racial options is truly infinite. In Pathfinder there is a need to have rules for your race, so you tend to only choose from the options that are already there.
Does having only four classes make the Black Hack limited? Again, you can use the warrior class in many many ways, it's possible to use it to describe many different types of martial characters.
What I think I'm realizing is that, going into a new campaign, I don't want there to be a book that lists all the options for race, class, homeland, skills, and so on. I want there to be nothing listed. I'll just come up with my character based on what I want to play. If my concept isn't a good fit for the others, or the concept that the GM has, then I'll try another. If there is going to be a list of options, I want that to be very short. If we're going to be restricted to certain options, I don't want that list to be so long it becomes a task to read it, and then find out the idea I have isn't possible anyway.
Obviously Pathfinder is pretty popular, so I guess there are plenty of people who don't think like I do about this. But even looking at D&D5 now, I feel that it falls between the two poles of vague and defined. It has too many options for me to actually read them all, but the options that are there are too narrowly defined to allow me to just play a wizard and be the exact sort of wizard I want, rather than the nearest approximation that the rules allow.
I think I'll look for games that have a few archetypes for characters, but then allow freedom to the player to define exactly how they operate within their archetype. Or games that don't have any archetypes at all.
At first glance it looks like Pathfinder gives you more options for classes, since it has rules for hundreds. But in the case of races, the Black Hack actually gives players more options. Since there are no rules for races, the number of racial options is truly infinite. In Pathfinder there is a need to have rules for your race, so you tend to only choose from the options that are already there.
Does having only four classes make the Black Hack limited? Again, you can use the warrior class in many many ways, it's possible to use it to describe many different types of martial characters.
What I think I'm realizing is that, going into a new campaign, I don't want there to be a book that lists all the options for race, class, homeland, skills, and so on. I want there to be nothing listed. I'll just come up with my character based on what I want to play. If my concept isn't a good fit for the others, or the concept that the GM has, then I'll try another. If there is going to be a list of options, I want that to be very short. If we're going to be restricted to certain options, I don't want that list to be so long it becomes a task to read it, and then find out the idea I have isn't possible anyway.
Obviously Pathfinder is pretty popular, so I guess there are plenty of people who don't think like I do about this. But even looking at D&D5 now, I feel that it falls between the two poles of vague and defined. It has too many options for me to actually read them all, but the options that are there are too narrowly defined to allow me to just play a wizard and be the exact sort of wizard I want, rather than the nearest approximation that the rules allow.
I think I'll look for games that have a few archetypes for characters, but then allow freedom to the player to define exactly how they operate within their archetype. Or games that don't have any archetypes at all.
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