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I'm curious. With all the talk of "you must play your stat" when its a low one or a penalty, are some of you going to enforce it with high stats that the player is, well, dumb as bricks if they cant, with the same vigor?
I'm curious. With all the talk of "you must play your stat" when its a low one or a penalty, are some of you going to enforce it with high stats that the player is, well, dumb as bricks if they cant, with the same vigor?
They can try their best, can't they?
__________________ Bill D
"There's a fine line between a superpower and a chronic medical condition."
- Doctor Impossible
For whatever reason this discussion keeps sticking in my mind and so this post will be an attempt to clarify my own thoughts for myself and hopefully it will be constructive to the overall conversation as well.
We have a couple of approaches here to roleplaying a character and creating a personality.
At one end of the spectrum personality is determined prior to play. Either first crafting a personality and then matching the mechanics to that foundation, or doing the reverse and using the mechanics as a foundation to creating a personality that fits those numbers. In either case the basics of the personality are known before play begins and quality of roleplay is measured by how well the player acts within those pregenerated parameters and most lauded when the player puts characterization over success and survival.
At the other extreme we have character as a blank slate. The player may have a few guide post in the form of mechanics (i.e. the character a good chance at success in endeavors ABC, and a poor chance of success in endeavors XYZ) as a launching point, but personality is an unknown quality at the start of play. The quality of roleplay is now measured by the personality that emerges during the course of play as events of the game, success and failures shape actions and attitude and most lauded when the character ceases to be generic fighter #5 and becomes a distinct and memorable personality.
In the first style of roleplaying the mechanics justify the roleplay and the roleplay justifies the mechanics, i.e. the player wants to act smart because his character has a high intelligence stat and because his character wants a high intelligence stat because the player acts smart. In the second style of roleplay the mechanics exist outside of the personality of a character though the adjudication shapes the course of play and through it the emergence of personality in an organic manner.
Now I think it is fair to say that in practise most roleplayers fall somewhere between these two extremes, mixing the approaches to some degree or another. I think it is important, though we may not agree on which approach is best, that we agree they are both legitimate approaches to roleplaying. Sort of the differences between and actor that stays true to the writers vision versus the actor that injecting their self into the role and creating a new character.
Both styles do have their pitfalls, the overstating of which can make conversation difficult. In the first style, predetermination can become a straight jacket and there can be a tendency among its most militant proponents to develop an overly narrow interpretation of a given role that they try to hold others to. The most egregious example being perhaps the DM who dictates the actions of players' characters based on his or her view of the characters rather than the players' view. The flip side of that is that the openness of the second style can invite those less dedicated to roleplaying a personality to use the openness as a justification to step outside the bounds of character knowledge into the realm of meta-game knowledge that borders nearly as much on cheating as taking a peak at the DM's notes.
In my opinion, some in this discussion have tried to take opposing views to "their logical conclusion" and pigeonhole their proponents into the very pitfalls I mentioned above. I believe this is ample evidence that these approaches to roleplaying and character developement tend to work best when they are not pushed to their very extreme, but viewed in a manner that considers their most useful and practical application rather than some absurd theoretical limit.
There is also another thing to consider. These approaches do not exist in a vacuum. Their application is affected by how rules are used, and by the choice of rules set. For instance when you start using a system that quantifies advantages and disadvantages, by necessity to enforce the stability of the system you are forcing yourself to move in the direction of predetermining personality parameters to prevent unpaid for advantages. So all games may not run equally smoothly for all approaches.
Hopefully this attempt to parse my own thoughts on the matter add something of use to the discussion.
__________________ Oni
"Each man, one way.
Each horse, one stance.
Each church, one buddha.
Each master to his own technique."
Well after reading the thread from start to finish, that doesnt seem good enough. I mean, do you stop the wizard/sorcerer with a 20 Int or the Cleric with a 19 wisdom from doing stupid things? I mean their character cant POSSIBLY be dumb enough to do X that stupid, right?
Because thats the tone I hear in the thread. Got an 9/8 Int? Sorry cant actually do something intellegent, becuase you character isnt that bright/wise/charismatic......
SO I'm curious if the detractors in the thread hold the other end of the spectrum accountable.
*shrug* We have three out of 6 characters with 8/6 stats. Barbarian has the 8 charisma- but he'n not ugly, he's just crass and really doesnt get civilized behavior. But now that he's 9/10th level, he's slowly learning you cant do certain things in a city. Doesnt mean his stat has increased, but he's learned....slowly, and sometimes painfully, certain pick up lines/behaviors are just inapproriate.
The dwarf? same stat, but he's played more cranky, and he doesnt like kids of most people in general. And although he's helping the other cleric deal with orphans, he's slowly and painfully learning to deal with people on certain levels. Again, the stat hasnt gone away, but roleplaying wise its getting better.
And of course the halfling has a 6 strength. But he too has learned to work through it....mostly after getting wacked a few times on the front lines, and getting something or someone to deal with physical stuf or carrying.
Further, I dont know about the rest of you, but I HAVE sat at a table with some characters that the other players are playing with higher stats than the actual player has- brain wise. And let me tell you its no fun to be stuck with some of these dumber than brick players that have great intellegents or wisdom, or suppose smooth charsima....and they cant pull it off. And its real painful when your stuck with a riddle with these folks. I like them as people, but dont give them a riddle for gods sake.
. I mean, do you stop the wizard/sorcerer with a 20 Int or the Cleric with a 19 wisdom from doing stupid things? I mean their character cant POSSIBLY be dumb enough to do X that stupid, right?
This was already answered by myself and others earlier in the thread
__________________ "The designers of the newest edition built so much reliance on rules right into the game, to make it easier to play. As one of those designers, I occasionally think to myself, 'What have we wrought?' " -Monte Cook
" If the DM has to make a lot of judgment calls, the game is more difficult to learn. However, it's my belief that it's also more satisfying." -Monte Cook
"Don't let rules replace good DMing skills"- Monte Cook
I've been one of the strongest advocates of this stance on the boards for the better part of a decade now. However, the fact of the matter is that a player can be either role playing well, or role playing badly. Most of the time, I don't get 'too fussed' either, but depending on how egregious, disruptive, or annoying the play is, I'm probably going to have to take the player aside privately at some point and have a talk.
Bolding mine.
You know, I disagree that someone can roleplay badly. I believe that someone can roleplay in a way that annoys others, but that's not the same as roleplaying badly.
You know, I disagree that someone can roleplay badly. I believe that someone can roleplay in a way that annoys others, but that's not the same as roleplaying badly.
I wish I could agree with you... but no. Painful experience has taught me otherwise.
__________________ -Andor
"Congratulations. You just invented 'negligent regicide.'" - Schlock Mercenary
You know, I disagree that someone can roleplay badly. I believe that someone can roleplay in a way that annoys others, but that's not the same as roleplaying badly.
Do you agree that any of the following is true? -
a) One can play team sports badly.
b) One can play wargames badly.
c) One can act badly.
Why would I agree with a, b, and c and yet claim that one can't roleplay badly? Well, there are a few reasons. One is that not everything that can be done is something that can be done badly.
Another is that a and b are games with winners and losers. RPGs don't have winners and losers. PCs explore the world, interact with NPCs and monsters, and generally do stuff, but there aren't any winners or losers.
RPGs have several differences with team sports. For one thing, playing an RPG isn't a team sport in the sense two teams battle it out. If the DM is constantly kills the PCs, it isn't that the DM is a better player than PCs, it's that the DM isn't properly challenging the PCs.
Wargames are in a similar position, they're all about winning and losing. Being good at a wargame means winning regularly.
Also, in an RPG, Bob could roleplay in way that that Susie thinks is bad, but Bob could still overcome the challenges that the DM puts in front of the party. In fact, that's an important part of the chess puzzle example above. The 5 Int barbarian who's player is good at chess can roleplay "badly" but still over come the challenge. In fact, it's almost a prerequisite. In a wargame, for example, if someone wins despite playing badly it's usually because of luck, not because of out-of-game skill.
Acting, of course, isn't about winning or losing at. So why do I think that it is possible to act badly? Because the goal in acting is to communicate something to an audience. RPGs don't usually have an audience. And when they do, it's certainly not a requirement. People don't pay money do see a gamer roleplay. If anything, gamers pay for the opportunity to roleplay. The only other people typically around are other participants. So, a person acts badly if they don't communicate something to an audience through acting. Gamers, however, don't have to roleplay to convey information. In fact, often information is conveyed through other means.
I think that what happens is that someone just gets annoyed with someone else and rather than simply acknowledging that something annoys them irrationally, they say the other person is a bad roleplayer.
Well, we've got different kinds of "role playing".
The kind on which D&D was founded is acting as if one were "in the shoes of" the persona. The DM describes what the characters perceive, and the players describe what the characters do. The "role" that's important is the game-role (e.g., Fighter, Cleric or Elf); a functional type or "position". Read the example of play in The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures or the longer one in the 1st ed. Dungeon Masters Guide. Is it fair to say that the players are essentially "playing themselves", that it is rather a "you are there" kind of thing?
(One might note that the DMG "recommended reading" list includes, besides "secondary world" stories, significant representatives of the story of someone from our world exploring a "lost world" or other fantastic setting.)
Another kind is what actors do. Their "playing of roles" is an expression of personalities other than their own. (I don't think that really applies to the biggest Hollywood stars, but that's show biz.) How would Mr. Smith feel? What would he think? In what mannerisms, what way of speaking, would he express that? It's also an attempt to entertain, a performance calculated to keep an audience's attention and to elicit emotional responses.
The second kind seems these days to be ascendant.
Last edited by Ariosto; 31st October 2009 at 09:46 AM..
So if a smart but physically weak character is confronted with a situation that should require great physical ability to solve and manages to work his way around it through cleverness, then that's horrible roleplaying? After all, he was defined as the guy who is supposed to lose physical challenges.
No. And neither would it be bad roleplaying for the stupid character to somehow recast the mental challenge as a physical challenge and thus beat it. (Perhaps by smashing down the door to the treasure vault that the cheesboard guards, or by simply triggering the trap and taking the damage, or simply cutting through the Gordian Knot.)
What would be bad roleplaying is the stupid character suddenly becoming a genius whenever faced with a mental challenge. (Or, conversely, the weakling Wizard suddenly becoming an athletic giant when needed... but the rules don't allow for that of course.)
I'm curious. With all the talk of "you must play your stat" when its a low one or a penalty, are some of you going to enforce it with high stats that the player is, well, dumb as bricks if they cant, with the same vigor?
If the character is highly intelligent, I will provide a lot more clues and context, and if need be will help "fill in the gaps" as they go through the process of solving it. Eventually, if need be, the whole thing can be resolved with an Int check (at about the time the group is getting frustrated).
If the character is very wise, and the player is intent on doing something really quite foolish, I'll ask, "are you sure?" I will probably then reiterate the key facts that suggest it's not terribly wise (though maybe not all of them, and maybe with a couple of the contrary facts in there as well, so I'm not outright saying, "that's a bad idea"). But the player still gets the ultimate decision - even very wise people have made very stupid mistakes at times.
If the character is very charismatic and the player is not, then I'll deal with it by having NPCs react to the character in the best possible light. And I'll make liberal use of the appropriate skill checks, too.
I think that what happens is that someone just gets annoyed with someone else and rather than simply acknowledging that something annoys them irrationally, they say the other person is a bad roleplayer.
I don't think roleplaying badly has anything to do with being annoying. In my books roleplaying badly is breaking character.
This can be a negative experience for others at the table like a Paladin who (after a bad day on the part of the player) starts tortureing his way through an orphanage to find out who's been pilfering cookies, or it can even be positive like a grim and dour dwarf who suddenly starts cracking jokes to the amusement of the table. The point is in neither case was it a good portrayal of the character.
Case in point. I was playing a character I based off of Vir Cotto from Babylon 5. In particular his line "I work for Ambassador Molari, after a while nothing bothers you." He was supposed to be very much a 'go with the flow', 'roll with the punches' kind of guy. Yet when we had an informational encounter with a very powerful demon where he should have done just fine, I was unable to swallow my own instincts and nearly got the party killed.
And that was bad roleplaying. Not because it nearly got the party killed, but because I was breaking character.
__________________ -Andor
"Congratulations. You just invented 'negligent regicide.'" - Schlock Mercenary
I don't think roleplaying badly has anything to do with being annoying. In my books roleplaying badly is breaking character.
This can be a negative experience for others at the table like a Paladin who (after a bad day on the part of the player) starts tortureing his way through an orphanage to find out who's been pilfering cookies, or it can even be positive like a grim and dour dwarf who suddenly starts cracking jokes to the amusement of the table. The point is in neither case was it a good portrayal of the character.
Case in point. I was playing a character I based off of Vir Cotto from Babylon 5. In particular his line "I work for Ambassador Molari, after a while nothing bothers you." He was supposed to be very much a 'go with the flow', 'roll with the punches' kind of guy. Yet when we had an informational encounter with a very powerful demon where he should have done just fine, I was unable to swallow my own instincts and nearly got the party killed.
And that was bad roleplaying. Not because it nearly got the party killed, but because I was breaking character.
I think my sig sums up my feelings on this subject.
__________________ Have you ever known a person who always behaved exactly the way you expected? Real people don't stay in character.
I don't think roleplaying badly has anything to do with being annoying. In my books roleplaying badly is breaking character.
This can be a negative experience for others at the table like a Paladin who (after a bad day on the part of the player) starts tortureing his way through an orphanage to find out who's been pilfering cookies, or it can even be positive like a grim and dour dwarf who suddenly starts cracking jokes to the amusement of the table. The point is in neither case was it a good portrayal of the character.
On the contrary, your expectations were violated and you failed to recognize who the character actually was. It is a "good" portrayal of the character in that it was exactly the portrayal of that character. Short of a retcon, no other interpretation can be more accurate than how the character actually conducted themselves.
While I can understand the impulse toward realism, I cannot reconcile an imperative to "play a stat" with claiming something is inherently "out of character." Realistic people are very complex. What is the goal? A realistic portrayal? If so, as I have already mentioned, there is little grounding in realism for insisting one numeric stat should define a characterization. Likewise, real people are capable of very amazing contradictions.
While playing broad stereotypes is a useful way of giving a character a definable personality in game, I do not consider that "good role-playing." It is the first step in moving from no personality to some personality. Even the most punitive AD&D rules for alignment changes did not strictly prevent a paladin from slaughtering children at an orphanage. However unlikely, such an action is conceivable. In the circumstances under which it makes sense, it is not bad role-playing.
Is it possible for an Int 5, Wis 5, Cha 5 character to have some acumen as a battle strategist or an expert in riddles? I think clearly it is. There are plenty of people with inadequate social skills and poor memory and logic who are nonetheless very competent at certain kinds of puzzles. While I haven't met too many people that extreme, I've met computer science majors who probably qualified for straight 9s. There is also a very peculier psychological disorder that leaves a person with an extraverted personality, great imagination, and verbal ability, but gifts them with an IQ in the severely impaired range.
Setting aside modern psychology, though, I think it's clear that in movies and literature, characters are capable of great variability. The poor sap gives an inspiring speech. The barbarian mercenary perceives treachery among his advisors. The wise king fails to rein in his own intemperate impulses or those of his loved ones. The pious man takes for granted the gifts of the gods and uses them selfishly or even profanely. The hero, mad with grief, becomes a slaughterer. The simpleton sees what the wise and cunning cannot bring themselves to acknowledge. The gallant finds himself disbelieved and despised.
Setting aside modern psychology, though, I think it's clear that in movies and literature, characters are capable of great variability. The poor sap gives an inspiring speech. The barbarian mercenary perceives treachery among his advisors. The wise king fails to rein in his own intemperate impulses or those of his loved ones. The pious man takes for granted the gifts of the gods and uses them selfishly or even profanely. The hero, mad with grief, becomes a slaughterer. The simpleton sees what the wise and cunning cannot bring themselves to acknowledge. The gallant finds himself disbelieved and despised.
Variability is not a bad thing. It gives characters depth. However, when a character acts in a way that he normally does not, or in a way that he is not expected to, it tends to be one of the following:
1. It is a one-off incident, perhaps played for laughs or for dramatic effect, which is not repeated.
2. Some explanation is provided which shows how the behavior is actually consistent with the character's established personality, or which reveals a previously hidden side to the character.
3. It may be a "turning point" for the character which starts him on a path of growth or development.
A character who occasionally succeeds despite his poor mental ability scores might fall within the first category. A character who consistently does so would not. However, if some explanation can be found for why the character manages to succeed regularly, it might still fall within the second category. Otherwise, if the player undertakes to portray the character's subsequent growth, it could fall within the third.
Of course, all of the above assumes that you and your group believe that certain ability scores should correlate with certain types of behavior, that the player's insights have to be expressed through his character (as opposed to, say, the player of the barbarian PC making a suggestion that, in game, comes from the wizard PC) and that this type of role-playing is important to you and your group in the first place. If any of the above does not apply, it shouldn't even be an issue for your game!
I'm seriously tired of arguing with people, so I'm going to stop quoting people. It ought to be obvious that roleplaying is a skill, and like any skill you can be skilled in it and perform well (naturally or through practice) or you can be unskilled in it and perform badly.
Signs you are roleplaying badly:
1) You are playing yourself, and that's not a conscious choice. Your character has all of your own biases, beliefs, and inclinations despite the vast differences between your own background and experiences and the one you gave the character.
2) You continually while playing the game address other players about in game matters (such as tactics, puzzles, past events, etc.) rather than have your character address their character. In particular, you do this without even realizing you are doing it, and have no problem saying something to Jim (another player) like, "Jim, have your character move around to the other side of the hobgoblin so we can flank him.", rather than on your turn saying something like, "Sir Didimus, circle to my foes rear so we may out flank him."
3) Rather than in engaging in dialogue with the other PC's or NPC's, your first instinct is always to describe what your character intends to accomplish. For example, you might say, "I go up to the Baron and introduce myself", as a proposition rather than something, "I go up to the Baron and extend my hand in greeting, "Good morrow, your Lairdship, I'm Sir Bannet of the Lantern Company". Or you might offer as a proposition, "I try to convince the chieftain that he should allow us safe passage through his tribes hunting grounds."
4) When imagining events, you typically imagine yourself looking down on your character or looking at your character do something, rather than imagining you yourself doing something, or even worse you don't imagine events at all but always think of them entirely in terms of game states or game mechanics (the same way you might think of a chess game).
5) Your character is anonymous. No one else in the party knows any details about your character such as his name, height, hair color, habits, preferences, or in some cases even race ('You are a half-elf, I never knew.') - all things their characters should know - , but all the other players know your class, strength score, level, and BAB - all things their characters could not know.
6) Your character is a complete blank slate when it comes to personality. Regardless of your characters stated beliefs and background, whatever the game situation you encounter, your characters actions are always the ones you as a player deem most expedient (or see #1 above) and particularly most expedient under the rules you are playing. Regardless of background, class, or stated beliefs, your character's alignment can be best summed up as 'neutral survivalist' or 'chaotic greedy' (yet you refuse to play this alignment). The corollary to this is your character's personality or stated personality (such as it is) is dictated by whatever personality you think offers the most mechanical rewards in the game.
7) You have virtually no direct interaction with the game world. All the propositions you offer to the game referee are in the form of rules propositions: "I attack.", "I make a search check.", "I move six squares.", "I attempt to turn the undead.", "I cast magic missile at the darkness.", etc. This is most easily seen by the fact that you never offer up any propositions that don't have a mechanical effect on the game, so for example, your character never eats breakfast, cleans his sword, takes a bath, takes off his boots, or even indeed touches anything in the game world except implicitly as a result of a rules proposition.
8) Every one of your characters is identical (see #1).
9) You've spent literally hours outside of the game figuring out how to optimize your character up to level #20, but you don't know any of the following: the name of your character's mom, where the character was born, how the character spent his childhood, what your character was doing the day before the adventure began, what the character is afraid of, etc. (And if asked about any of that stuff, you'd probably say it was irrelevant.)
10) Your character description and mental image is essentially that of a anime character and includes any or all of the following words and phrases: "darkly handsome", "brooding", "moves with cat-like grace", "piercing intelligent eyes", "dangerous", "long black cloak". I'd almost throw "tall" on that list, but concievably tall might describe a non-twink mental conception.
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