Roles and Role-Playing

I want to begin this article with a couple distinctions regarding the term "role-playing game." The first of which I will refer to as the "original," the later being the "newer" style. The original is associated with the beloved tabletop RPGs that many of us have played, whether it is D&D, Rifts, Shadowrun, or even a Cthulhu RPG. In these older games, "role-playing" refers to the acting that a player does while in a gaming session, whether it is being surly and bellicose as a barbarian, or snooty and snarky as a wizard that started the game out with an 18 in INT. Unfortunately for me, my experience with these older RPGs stems from 3.5 and 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons, but from conversations I have had with older players, the acting is what is key in role-playing. Next I am going to cover what I consider to be this "newer" RPG style.

At some point is gaming's past, the acting aspect, which I would almost refer to as the real social aspect of tabletop gaming, was altered to just refer to which character class one is playing. Now, I would think that most of us were introduced to the concept of classes during a videogame at some point. Assume that the benchmark of this was the first Final Fantasy game for the NES. You have six character classes with different combat abilities, and you just bop about the world killing the people that get in your way to restore crystals that maintain the balance of the world. After this game, the RPG videogame genre exploded, which was lucky considering that Final Fantasy was the last card that Square could play before it went bankrupt. But hey, it pretty much made the market from which we have had some great games, but these days only a few companies or games try to incorporate any real notion of role-playing. The Ever Scrolls series, virtually anything by Bioware, and the Fallout series happen to be some good examples.

"Where am I going with this?" you may ask, and really, this is just a brief background for one of my favorite gaming genres. One thing that I doubt many would contend with me on is that in these later games, players pretty much just want to play high damage dealing classes when it comes to party type games. We are all familiar with what is referred to as the "classic" party consisting of a front line armored fighter, a spell-slinging wizard, a small thief type person, and a cleric of some god that can heal people. I cannot say I know when this came about, but it is often referred to. Problem being, in League of fucking Legends, people only want to play the high damage dealing bozos, without thinking ahead and co-operating with the team to actually have a good spread of abilities. I am referring to the auto-lock in pricks that grab whatever and whichever carry is available at the time. Xin Zhao, Ashe, and Anivia all come to mind. The damned issue is that you do get some players once in a while that will play a tank, and example being last night I saw a Lee Sin tank for the first time, and it worked out surprisingly well, yet rarely does anyone play a support character.

I have read up on a few things concerning support characters in ranked matches, like they do ward coverage rather than buy items, but as of right now I have not attained level thirty, so I have no experience there. What I do have a bone to pick with is that not enough teams grab someone that can heal well, or even just heal, let alone take those items that give area buffs to team mates, like Aegis of the Legion. Most recently I have been playing support more and more. Although my favorite character is Poppy, too many play assassins as is, so I have been playing Soraka quite a bit. This support character is Utility incarnate. She has an immense heal, a silence/mana regeneration spell that costs no mana, an aoe that has a short cooldown, yet reduces magic resistance with each hit, one of the few global ultimates left that heals a lot, and even her passive gives nearby champions an extra sixteen magic resistance. This chick will keep your team in the fight, in the lane, and keep you alive. Team players like this are needed to succeed in matches in League of Legends. With Dominion right around the corner, I think that supports will have a tougher time in-game, given that they generally need a teammate to lane with in order to be effective. We will find out, I suppose.

So, in those games where you're itching to play the super damage-dealer, yet all your teammates are locked in and nobody could be arsed to play a still-needed "role," grab a tank or support to help your team succeed.

Accurate, Brief, and Complete, Ishamael