How I Stopped Worrying and Dropped the Fighter from my Game

Lately I've been delving into playing games with a blackbox FKR style. However, I didn't want to put all the strain of "coming up with what you're playing tonight" on my players. Something I really like about games that have character options is that those options inform players about the game world just by existing. So I set out to write a few barebones archetypes that players can lean on and jumpstart both their imaginations and their understanding of what type of world they'll be playing in.

I decided to start from the 5th edition classes, because I like how the idea of those classes inform the setting. Quickly, I had dropped some of the classes and distilled others to what I believed was their core fantasy. At the point, the Rogue had turned into the Expert, a "skill monkey" kind of archetype that specialized in a few skills freely chosen by the player, and the Fighter had turned into the Strategist - a master of combat who would be able to strategise around their foes.

I then wrote something else on the Expert. You see, I was trying to get across the idea that the Expert was just like the Rogue and would be able to "backstab", but I wanted to do that in a way that didn't clash with the open-ended format of the archetype. So I wrote words to the effect of "You can detect weak spots in your enemies and their defenses". I then realised that should be something the Strategist should do, so I dropped that aspect of the Expert.

But it got me thinking. I was already unsatisfied with the write-up on the Strategist and how it was lacking something, but I couldn't put my place on what. I then realized, if someone wanted to build an Expert who was good at combat, they not only would be able to it was probably going to look sexier than the Strategist. I then realized why. 

The Strategist was just an Expert!

Holy shit!

This is how I ended up dropping the archetype that was based on the Fighter and folded it into the one based on the Rogue. This made quite a lot of sense to me. I think distilling both those classes into one archetype has some bearing on a lot of discussions I've seen online about elf games, though I won't go further into those here.

As to my archetypes, I ended up dropping a lot of the other classes in the end. While I started from 5th edition, I found myself ending up in B/X. I think that says something about the game as well. Anyways, I've conjured up a leaflet with the archetypes and a few suggestions for referees that I will link here, though it is a half-assed job at best. I'm not your boss, nor do I want to be, so I found writing more words had no use to anyone.

Without further ado, here's This Game Has No Fighter (Kinda).