Bits and pieces of potential bloggings have run through my head lately... Everything from "The Elegance of the Blade" which entails why I find blades of all sorts fascinating to "What Having My Friendship Means" in which I discuss what I can contribute. And I may very well expand on all of them at some point, but not today. Today I speak of how I define the roles I play for other people, but potentially in terms that don't make sense to people who aren't gamers, so I'll explain them as I get to them.
Section 1.4 Geekiness/Role Defining
Just to be clear, I don't fit any one specific role, and there are a decent amount of them, but I do have strong aspects of a few of the prototypical roles in the standard MMORPGs. Those roles are:
Tank: the defender of the group, drawing the attention of the enemies an taking the majority of the damage. they specialize in mitigating damage and taking bit hits that would seriously injure the other team members. Think heavily armored knight with a shield.
"Support class": there are actually different roles within the support archetype, but they all focus more on the teammates than the enemies they are fighting, as a generalization.
"DPS" or Damage Dealers: not really appropriate for what I'm talking about, but it's the third of the MMORPG trinity of roles, an comprise the majority of groups. They focus on their namesake, doing damage to the enemy, they're the ones responsible for eliminating the enemies in order of priority and making sure that they don't get the attention of the enemies. Yeah... Not so applicable.
Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that I've said that stuff before, but I can't remember where...
Anyways, here's what I see in myself.
I am a defender of those I know, I will readily throw myself in the line of fire and protect them. I can quite readily get the attacker's attention and make him focus on me, and I happen to be fairly large and can intimidate people if need be, I get quite intense when I step up to defend someone.
I am also support, I will go out of my way to make sure that people are doing well with whatever they're trying to accomplish and will help them in any way I can. Anything from raw encouragement to direct help and explanation of how to solve a problem, I'm there to give them support. This is the role I find myself in more often than not, seeing as how it's rare to find people being assaulted in our culture, and it's a role that I enjoy an perform well in (see section 1.1 on love languages as to why), so I'm pretty content with what I do.
Summary: I can be a Tank or Support depending on what's needed at the time, and I can perform admirably as both, but I find myself being support more often than not.
Alright, that's enough out of me, and it was a good test of my new Blogger App on my shiny new phone. Now to see if I can link the post to Facebook from this app....
Cheers,
~Cam
