Because D&D had "general guidelines", giving the DM a lot of control over their games, it depends on how one played the game.

In my group (pre-computer games - circa 1979), our fighters would "roleplay" and taunt bad guys into attacking them by actually voicing their taunts, if they had a common language between them. Usually, depending on the taunt, our DM may add some extra percentage for the bad guy to hit the taunter.

If anyone hit with a particularly nasty hit, he would get bonuses for attracting the bad guys next attack.

Then again positioning factored into the fight a lot more than any MMORPG I have played. Tough to hit that wizard who keeps well out of range.

Our cleric always asked the fighter how many HP he had left, waiting for the right time to heal them.

True, "DPS" was not a role, but "damage dealing" was. Yes, everyone could deal damage, but some classes were much better at it than others.

When we rolled up new parties, we would ask amongst ourselves if we had a fighter and a cleric to insure those roles were covered.

[an aside]
ahhh... the original Bard class. One of my friends and I took that road. Gaining 7 levels as a fighter (to get that extra attack per round) then going through 9 levels as a Thief (to max out the thieving skills) before finally getting to be a Bard was a great experience for me. I think I retired as a level 17 Bard... Those were great times :)

[EDIT]

---

Originally posted by grimal
The trinity, I think, refers to that special Tank/Healer/DPS formation and the focus of aggro grabbing through taunting mechanisms.

---

Yeah there was no aggro management in DnD, and consequently no trinity. The 4th edition is designed around MMOs and video games to make the ruleset more relevant to today.

I agree that old school DnD was more like GW2 than EQ1 / WoW / Rift / any other trinity game.  Not once did any of my friends ever play a heavily armored person, they simply werent needed. Usually one person went a cleric or druid to make things easier, but even those could be avoided by using potions or being careful.

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by endgame1

There's was no "trinity" in D&D while I as growing up.

If the dungeon master, (the guy running the campaign), pulled out a module for the group to do, the module would simply say "adventure for characters level 4-7", and any class combination could do it if they played intelligently. You could have three people playing, with all three rolling a thief, or everyone rolling a fighter, or two wizards and a fighter, or whatever, and they would be just fine. Your characters could buy potions of healing, scrolls of healing, bandages, there were certain items that would heal you, you could hire an npc to heal you, wizards had spells like vampiric touch that would heal them, etc..

Never in my history of Dungeons and Dragons was a group unable to do something because it didn't have a dedicated tank or healer. Anyone saying differently, I don't think they really played the game.

Agreed on this. ^  There was never any requirement or even a mention of a trinity (or the term tank, healer or dps) in tabletop roleplaying, and I've been doing it since 1977.   There certainly was never a shortage of people wanting to play a fighter or cleric though.  Given the huge variation in genres (Call of Cthulhu or The Morrow Project), there were a lot more variety in character occupations in tabletop gaming as well.  The trinity as a concrete requirement is an invention of computer gaming, and I would say even later computer gaming (possibly EQ?).  Early games such as Ultima I-VII and Wizardry did not require a trinity either, though often those roles existed.

Great post. I'm also currently enjoying the blog linked in your sig, which makes me doubly glad you posted!

Originally posted by Ortwig

Originally posted by endgame1

There's was no "trinity" in D&D while I as growing up.

If the dungeon master, (the guy running the campaign), pulled out a module for the group to do, the module would simply say "adventure for characters level 4-7", and any class combination could do it if they played intelligently. You could have three people playing, with all three rolling a thief, or everyone rolling a fighter, or two wizards and a fighter, or whatever, and they would be just fine. Your characters could buy potions of healing, scrolls of healing, bandages, there were certain items that would heal you, you could hire an npc to heal you, wizards had spells like vampiric touch that would heal them, etc..

Never in my history of Dungeons and Dragons was a group unable to do something because it didn't have a dedicated tank or healer. Anyone saying differently, I don't think they really played the game.

Agreed on this. ^  There was never any requirement or even a mention of a trinity (or the term tank, healer or dps) in tabletop roleplaying, and I've been doing it since 1977.   There certainly was never a shortage of people wanting to play a fighter or cleric though.  Given the huge variation in genres (Call of Cthulhu or The Morrow Project), there were a lot more variety in character occupations in tabletop gaming as well.  The trinity as a concrete requirement is an invention of computer gaming, and I would say even later computer gaming (possibly EQ?).  Early games such as Ultima I-VII and Wizardry did not require a trinity either, though often those roles existed.

Ahh, the Morrow Project.  Great game.

Isn't the trinity a fancy way of saying there are roles in the R in RPG?  So...in any case, there's a trinity in every MMORPG, it's just that some games have Tank, DPS, Healer but some games expand on that by having Tank, DPS, Healer, Crowd Control, Buffer, Debuffer, etc.....

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Drakynn

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Drakynn

I believe the trinity has existed since PnP RPGs but the aggro mechanic started in MMORPG's to make up for the fact there was no GM overseeing every NPC action/reaction.A good GM in PnP games was nto out to kill the palyers but lead them on adventure,with a good GM a party would not die except for either really bad luck or stupidity on the players part,

There are exceptions like games like Paranoia where the game and other players are out to expose/kill the other players or Call of C'thulu where survival for as long as possible was the goal because it was accepted death or isnanity was almost inevitable.But these games were not designed for long periods of play,by logn I mean over several days,weeks or months.

You could certainly taunt in these games if you were palying a "tanky" role and you would certianly charge in first to keep the hostiles off the party emmbers who couldn't take many hits but it was up to the GM to decide how successful these actions were.

In AD&D it was common for a GM to make you roll against the targets intelligence to see if  an attention grabbing move worked and player actions during combat did indeed decide who the enemy would target.You could do allt he taunting you wanted for isntance and it might work until that mage cast a lightning bolt or fireball that would make a reasonbly intelligent enemy see him as the main threat.

The trinity is just a simplified version of ancient military roles of Offence,defence and support filtered down into a few roels and mechanics,so technically existed before even PnP rpgs.

You don't see the distinct difference between someone actively working toward baiting an enemy that otherwise wouldn't bother with them, and mechanics that make the enemy by default automatically swing wildly at the least dangerous opponent in the encounter? What you describe is the former. The trinity is the latter.

You didn't read where I said aggro mechanics were introduced my MMORPG's to amke up for the fact there was no GM overseeing every action?So no I do not beleive the lack of aggro mechanic means there were no tanks,healers or dps before MMORPGs there was just not aggro mechanic to make them even more defined to make it easier for a computer program to oversee thousands of such itneractions occuring simultaneously without the need of human oversight and decision making.

I did read it. No one said those roles or tactics didn't exist before. Here's the OP's statement:

For the Trinity to exist, there needs to exist game mechanics of "Aggro" and "Taunt".  These, as far as I know, never existed as game mechanics in old pen n paper Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks.  So even though you may have used tactics similar, it was not in fact the Trinity.

Yes, computers replaced DMs. What you are saying is that the PvE combat systems of UO, AC and EVE Online don't exist. Taunt and aggro has nothing to do with making it easier for a computer to manage AI. They were created to both support the role specialization the MMOs were introducing and to compensate for differences between the virtual world and the real world, collidable objects being the primary one.

 

 

I see what you and the OP are saying.The roles existed but it's aggro management that makes those roles into the Holy Trinity.I just don't totally agree,I think we've always tried to keep NPC attention from weaker members and healers by having those with more armor and health take damage in games where teamwork to overcome the environment is the goal.Hell I even did it with singlepalyer CRPGs where you controlled a team of adventurers.SO I've always thoguht int erms of damage soakers,dps and support whne playing RPGs.

Originally posted by vandal5627

Isn't the trinity a fancy way of saying there are roles in the R in RPG?  So...in any case, there's a trinity in every MMORPG, it's just that some games have Tank, DPS, Healer but some games expand on that by having Tank, DPS, Healer, Crowd Control, Buffer, Debuffer, etc.....

Not really no.  At least, it wasn't that way in any of the games I played.  Your role was something like "fanatical priest of the war god with a penchant for cheap booze" or "unemployed pit fighter looking for the dwarf who killed his wife."  The mechanics were there to facilitate the role-play, not to define the roles themselves.

Some MMOs in the past had 2 roles: DPS and healers.

Basically the more damage you made the fewer HPs or armorclass did you have. It is actually more complicated than that since the third class most of those games had were the thief which were a must in any dungeon for many years and still are in many P&P games.

And yes, when you did old dungeons the order you walked in were important, you put the mages last since it was harder for the enemies to reach them then which mean there were some body blocking. On the other hand did the thief always walk in front since traps were usually the main threat to the group besides the endboss.

The MMO trinity was invented in the modern form in the game "Meridian 59". Pen and paper had nothing close to that before. You never had a character that would take all attacks from the monsters while the healer keeps her alive before, unless you played with only 3 players in your group and only had one warrior/pally or other tough melee class.

The first MMOs were very close to boardgames like Descentand mostly about moving figures on the floorplans in a dungeon (we are talking "Chainmail here, the game Gygax invented that eventually got upgraded to D&D) but thye never really had a trinity mechanic anyways.

As a GM you usually let the monsters do the smart thing and target the wizard first followed by the cleric or the theif depending on the situation, the tougher characters will try to keep them alive by bodyblocking and tactics. And of course when someone have little HP left they are the main target.

Many other MMOs doesnt even have healers and some doesnt even have classes. Heck, some like Amber doesnt even use dices or cards either.

In short: The MMO trinity is a typical MMO thing but there were primitive systems (and in some cases rather advanced but very different) before it in P&P. P&P combat have always been a lot more focused on strategy than MMOs though and things like positioning and timing are more important there.

Been playing P&P since 1984 and MMOs since 1996, there are people here who played longer than me but I have a feeling they agree with me here.

Both MMOs and P&P RPGs are fun though, but they are different. And no, MMOs dont need the trinity combat, it was the first idea a small company thought of for the first real MMO and just assuming that it is the perfect system seems a bit weird to me. I would love if someone made a good porting of other P&P systems like Shadowrun, Runequest or ARS magica instead with the P&P system straight off. The bad part is that you dont fight so much in P&P as in MMOs so P&P systems are often a lot more deadlier.

There was absolutely role specializing before DnD and the trinity came from MMOS because groups could be comprised of every combination of classes but it was recomended to have certain roles covered.

I would also argue that the trinity should of been 4 roles with CC being the 4th but generally this was given to every role in some amount.

What is actually interesting to me is how roles have evolved because of the trinity. In the older days you could think of healing/DPS/tanking as quantities you do well with a certain amount of points divided between them. Does a healer do more or less damage now in comparison to a dps role? What about a tank?

Reading a bit further on, I find that the "trinity discussion" has become the "aggro discussion."

I guess, in effect, since no aggro management was used by your DM in D&D games, there was no tanking in your experience. Not every DM used a random roll to see who the mob would hit. Why did fighters wear the best armor they could get? Why did fighters get the higher hit dice per level? After all, isn't a human a human and a half-orc a half-orc? Why the variance depending upon the career one chooses? Those game mechanics tell me it was so they could take the brunt of the attacks. Unlike tanks in MMOs, they also could deal a lot of damage, which also sometimes factored into the monsters choice of target. I realize what you are arguing is the actual management of aggro. In my experience, we had some control over who the monster would hit because of our DM. It was not always a random dice roll to decide who they monsters would attack. I admit that EQ had an actual "taunt" skill, and thus aggro management became the norm and was probably the reason for term "the trinity" to be born, but that does not mean it did not exist beforehand.

I recall a battle my little group engaged in against a female troll and her young offspring. Our Fighter attacked the youngster and handily managed the momma troll's aggro. I laugh with the memory of the encounter because my DM was sick of us always asking, "What was the loot?" He said her "treasure" was an old dirty rag and an old gnawed on bone. "It was a treasure to her!" he informed us :)

As far as DPS goes, D&D combat was based on 6 second rounds. You could hit three times and miss 7 times in a turn (1 minute segment) of battle or hit all 10 times in the same turn. You could add up all the highly variable damage done by a player, divide it by the length of the battle and come up with their DPS. It really did not matter, though. The mechanic was there but rather pointless. Kind of like how it is in MMOs, wouldn't you say?

AIDS was not "discovered" before the late 19th, early 20th century. Does that mean it did not exist before then? Who knows? Maybe, long ago, deaths credited to the flu or a simple cold or chicken pox was actually AIDS and nobody labeled it as such. After all, AIDS attacks one's immune system and thus makes them susceptible to more common diseases. We will never know how long AIDS has been around. Does that mean that "the trinity" did not exist before it was coined for MMOs?

As I said previously, it really depends upon on how someone played D&D. A game mechanic DM would randomly roll for every action taken by a NPC. A roleplaying DM would react to the player's actions.

There was never the degree of overspecialization in P&P games that you see in MMOs.  Yes, a cleric could heal, but he could also take a punch pretty well.  Fighters were durable, but they contributed a lot of damage; at lower levels, they did most of the damage really.  With a balanced party -- which almost never happened in practice -- you didn't see any class totally marginalized into performing a single task.  Even the wizard, the closest thing old-school D&D had to a pure damage class, could serve as a de facto tank with the right spells.  It's easy to look back on the tactics players used and superimpose the current paradigm, but in reality combat was never as mechanical as it is in your garden-variety MMO.

Most importantly, there was never any game that had rules to determine which character enemies would attack (excluding 4th ed. D&D, which was an attempt to replicate MMO gameplay).  And even if there had been, I suspect that most DMs would have ignored it.

Edit: To clarify, yes, you usually had the burly characters up front.  But that is not what defines the trinity, or even a tank, in the current sense.  When the "tank" does as much damage as the "DPS," the distinction between the two is meaningless.  Mages, rangers and rogues had other tricks up their sleeves and were not defined only by the amount of damage they did.  On the same note, you never had "healers" simply hang back and heal while everyone else did the fighting. 

In short: The MMO trinity is a typical MMO thing but there were primitive systems (and in some cases rather advanced but very different) before it in P&P. P&P combat have always been a lot more focused on strategy than MMOs though and things like positioning and timing are more important there.

Originally posted by AlBQuirky

Reading a bit further on, I find that the "trinity discussion" has become the "aggro discussion."

I guess, in effect, since no aggro management was used by your DM in D&D games, there was no tanking in your experience. Not every DM used a random roll to see who the mob would hit. Why did fighters wear the best armor they could get? Why did fighters get the higher hit dice per level? After all, isn't a human a human and a half-orc a half-orc? Why the variance depending upon the career one chooses? Those game mechanics tell me it was so they could take the brunt of the attacks. Unlike tanks in MMOs, they also could deal a lot of damage, which also sometimes factored into the monsters choice of target. I realize what you are arguing is the actual management of aggro. In my experience, we had some control over who the monster would hit because of our DM. It was not always a random dice roll to decide who they monsters would attack. I admit that EQ had an actual "taunt" skill, and thus aggro management became the norm and was probably the reason for term "the trinity" to be born, but that does not mean it did not exist beforehand.

I recall a battle my little group engaged in against a female troll and her young offspring. Our Fighter attacked the youngster and handily managed the momma troll's aggro. I laugh with the memory of the encounter because my DM was sick of us always asking, "What was the loot?" He said her "treasure" was an old dirty rag and an old gnawed on bone. "It was a treasure to her!" he informed us :)

As far as DPS goes, D&D combat was based on 6 second rounds. You could hit three times and miss 7 times in a turn (1 minute segment) of battle or hit all 10 times in the same turn. You could add up all the highly variable damage done by a player, divide it by the length of the battle and come up with their DPS. It really did not matter, though. The mechanic was there but rather pointless. Kind of like how it is in MMOs, wouldn't you say?

AIDS was not "discovered" before the late 19th, early 20th century. Does that mean it did not exist before then? Who knows? Maybe, long ago, deaths credited to the flu or a simple cold or chicken pox was actually AIDS and nobody labeled it as such. After all, AIDS attacks one's immune system and thus makes them susceptible to more common diseases. We will never know how long AIDS has been around. Does that mean that "the trinity" did not exist before it was coined for MMOs?

As I said previously, it really depends upon on how someone played D&D. A game mechanic DM would randomly roll for every action taken by a NPC. A roleplaying DM would react to the player's actions.

I agree with this.  But if it all depends on how you play....meaning there is not a specific mechanic in the game rules, I would argue then it did not exist within the game.

I also don't think the AIDS example is a good analogy.  AIDS is a medical term to apply to an illness.  The illness was not intentionally created to bring definition to the term.  The trinity, however, was actually manufactured by game designers.

Originally posted by Drakynn

I see what you and the OP are saying.The roles existed but it's aggro management that makes those roles into the Holy Trinity.I just don't totally agree,I think we've always tried to keep NPC attention from weaker members and healers by having those with more armor and health take damage in games where teamwork to overcome the environment is the goal.Hell I even did it with singlepalyer CRPGs where you controlled a team of adventurers.SO I've always thoguht int erms of damage soakers,dps and support whne playing RPGs.

What were the CRPGs you played a party of adventurers and there was taunt and aggro management? I'm not saying none exist, rather asking which ones had that. Most used party order, where you put the weaker ones in the back. And, again, defense/offense/support is the basic set of roles in team based conflict or competition. That is not the trinity as it exists in MMOs.

Think of your average CRPG. If someone suggested creating a character that couldn't really do damage but just took damage well, wouldn't you be confused as to why they were asking you to create half a character? What if they suggested that you put the thief in the front lines? You'd probably ask them why they thought it would be a good idea to put a 4-6 hp char  in front of the fighters, priests and other characters with 8-16, right? Wouldn't you also find it rather odd to create your perfect party and then find out that the fighter has a Taunt button that he presses and everything attacks him, completely ignoring everything else that is doing damage to them? That would seem rather ridiculous.

Taunt and aggro management aren't really an MMO thing or even a class-based MMO thing. It is a band-aid over the basic combat system that became broken once collision (party order served that purpose in CRPGs) was removed and restrictive classes were made.

Originally posted by AlBQuirky

Because D&D had "general guidelines", giving the DM a lot of control over their games, it depends on how one played the game.

In my group (pre-computer games - circa 1979), our fighters would "roleplay" and taunt bad guys into attacking them by actually voicing their taunts, if they had a common language between them. Usually, depending on the taunt, our DM may add some extra percentage for the bad guy to hit the taunter.

If anyone hit with a particularly nasty hit, he would get bonuses for attracting the bad guys next attack.

Then again positioning factored into the fight a lot more than any MMORPG I have played. Tough to hit that wizard who keeps well out of range.

Our cleric always asked the fighter how many HP he had left, waiting for the right time to heal them.

True, "DPS" was not a role, but "damage dealing" was. Yes, everyone could deal damage, but some classes were much better at it than others.

When we rolled up new parties, we would ask amongst ourselves if we had a fighter and a cleric to insure those roles were covered.

[an aside]
ahhh... the original Bard class. One of my friends and I took that road. Gaining 7 levels as a fighter (to get that extra attack per round) then going through 9 levels as a Thief (to max out the thieving skills) before finally getting to be a Bard was a great experience for me. I think I retired as a level 17 Bard... Those were great times :)

[EDIT]

---

Originally posted by grimal
The trinity, I think, refers to that special Tank/Healer/DPS formation and the focus of aggro grabbing through taunting mechanisms.

---

The EQ trinity consisted of Warrior/Cleric/Enchanter. Note, these are not roles, but rather classes. Every group ever formed sought these classes out for the groups.

 

I remember taunts as well. Taunt came from D&D if I'm not mistaken, as far as games are concerned.

It looks like there's been a passing reference to the origin of the trinity in mmo's but I don't think I saw anyone go into the actual history of what happened.

The trinity was one of several mmo terms that began in Everquest. Class balance had been poor at release and SOE took a wrecking ball to the whole thing with the release of the Kunark expansion. I have never seen an in-game community turn on its own as fast or as viciously as what happened in the two months after Kunark was released ( hybrids ... those poor bastards). Part of the fallout of the balance mess SOE had made of the game was that three classes were now considered indispensable for every high level group - warrior, cleric, and enchanter with just three spaces left over for everybody else. 

The definition of trinity in mmo's have slightly changed over the years since then going from W/C/E (and I guess we will deign to allow a few of you plebians to tag along with us) of Everquest to the modern Tank/Healer/Dps.

Not so fun fact: This was the game that also gave birth the the infamous "working as intended".

Originally posted by rioban

It looks like there's been a passing reference to the origin of the trinity in mmo's but I don't think I saw anyone go into the actual history of what happened.

The trinity was one of several mmo terms that began in Everquest. Class balance had been poor at release and SOE took a wrecking ball to the whole thing with the release of the Kunark expansion. I have never seen an in-game community turn on its own as fast or as viciously as what happened in the two months after Kunark was released ( hybrids ... those poor bastards). Part of the fallout of the balance mess SOE had made of the game was that three classes were now considered indispensable for every high level group - warrior, cleric, and enchanter with just three spaces left over for everybody else. 

The definition of trinity in mmo's have slightly changed over the years since then going from W/C/E (and I guess we will deign to allow a few of you plebians to tag along with us) of Everquest to the modern Tank/Healer/Dps.

 

Not so fun fact: This was the game that also gave birth the the infamous "working as intended".

So it actually was born from EQ?  That was my original assumption as well but I didn't know the specifics of what you pointed out.  Anyone else remember this?

Originally posted by bcbully

Originally posted by AlBQuirky

Because D&D had "general guidelines", giving the DM a lot of control over their games, it depends on how one played the game.

In my group (pre-computer games - circa 1979), our fighters would "roleplay" and taunt bad guys into attacking them by actually voicing their taunts, if they had a common language between them. Usually, depending on the taunt, our DM may add some extra percentage for the bad guy to hit the taunter.

If anyone hit with a particularly nasty hit, he would get bonuses for attracting the bad guys next attack.

Then again positioning factored into the fight a lot more than any MMORPG I have played. Tough to hit that wizard who keeps well out of range.

Our cleric always asked the fighter how many HP he had left, waiting for the right time to heal them.

True, "DPS" was not a role, but "damage dealing" was. Yes, everyone could deal damage, but some classes were much better at it than others.

When we rolled up new parties, we would ask amongst ourselves if we had a fighter and a cleric to insure those roles were covered.

[an aside]
ahhh... the original Bard class. One of my friends and I took that road. Gaining 7 levels as a fighter (to get that extra attack per round) then going through 9 levels as a Thief (to max out the thieving skills) before finally getting to be a Bard was a great experience for me. I think I retired as a level 17 Bard... Those were great times :)

[EDIT]

---

Originally posted by grimal
The trinity, I think, refers to that special Tank/Healer/DPS formation and the focus of aggro grabbing through taunting mechanisms.

---

The EQ trinity consisted of Warrior/Cleric/Enchanter. Note, these are not roles, but rather classes. Every group ever formed sought these classes out for the groups.

 

I remember taunts as well. Taunt came from D&D if I'm not mistaken, as far as games are concerned.

Well, it must have predated (and discarded) the 1st ed AD&D and after because I don't ever recall fighters using taunt to force monsters to attack them.  Monsters were forced to fight the fighters because they couldn't get past them.  Tactical positioning was very important in D&D, even in the gold box and NWN games.  And even then it wasn't foolproof.  Ranged attackers would still target the magic users because they could cast or shoot past the fighters.