D&D 5E Role playing and wargaming

SmokingSkull · Nov 28, 2016

For my current character I thought of his backstory first, followed by how do they solve problems followed by how did they end up as an adventurer. Enter my Goliath Fighter/Barbarian: This is a man who is strong, tough, wizened and hardened through his experiences in life. He would leave his own clan to find himself, join an army, fall in love, become a father and lose it all, all before becoming an adventurer. This would translate into him having the Soldier background, choosing two handed weapons as his first fighting style and picking skills that make sense for a rough and tumble, grew up on the fringes kind of guy. As I played him and developed his personality I would choose things that not only made him better but branch off in ways I did not predetermine.

This was the first character I multiclassed, in all the sessions of D&D I ever played. But going Barbarian was twofold: First and foremost it was a story reason why he did (His anger was destroying him, to the point where it jeopardized the party plus identity issues within himself) and secondly, the Totem Warrior was the perfect vehicle to tell this story plus what it came with was appealing mechanically. As I levelled him up I would choose things like GWM, Mobile and Resilient (Wisdom) to round out his character: GWM cause he's a big man who uses big weapons, Mobile because of his training as a shocktrooper in the army, and Resilient (Wisdom) due to the constant barrage of mental attacks waylayed against him and his untimely demise before he was brought back changed his perspective. Before any of this though I chose Champion, not because it was the best but because I imagined the character as a very straightforward, deals with problems head on type of guy. He's the heavy hitter of our party, no one else even comes close melee damage wise besides the resident Frenzy Barbarian that never MCed at all.

I've asked my friends a few times if they felt my character was OP, my DM being the sarcastic ass he is says yes but he only does so jokingly, everyone else really had no qualms though our Tempest Cleric gets a little jealous sometimes, especially when I use my AS plus a few GWM strikes to really rip the enemy apart. I digress, my previous examples are quite anecdotal but the point is I've never felt RPing a character and making optimized choices was ever mutually exclusive. Just my two copper for what it's worth.

nexalis · Nov 28, 2016

A lot of people on these boards seem to project from their own experiences when making generalizations about the evolution of D&D. I started playing D&D in 1978, and from the very beginning, I was crafting detailed backstories for all of my characters and very much focused on 'roleplaying', and only tangentially concerned with 'rollplaying'. I believe that play styles varied just as much back in "the old days" as they do now. It very much depended on who you were playing with.

Over the years, my pendulum has swung back and forth to settle somewhere in the middle, much like @Warpiglet.

These days I tend to optimize within the constraints of a particular character concept, just like @iserith. I first come up with a concept that appeals to me, and then I attempt to craft the most effective character possible while still remaining true to that concept. For the concept itself, I often draw inspiration from artwork or from stories. I have my own player biases to contend with as well. I don't do "dour and taciturn" very well since it clashes too much with my own personality, and I won't play characters with below average mental stats.

My most recent character, for instance, evolved as follows:

I thought it would be fun to play a fat and jovial stout halfling cleric modeled after Friar Tuck. Belzimer Frump (a.k.a. Brother Belzimer) was a cook at a temple called "The House of Plenty", and he is always concerned about making sure that everyone has enough to eat and drink. Within these constraints (i.e. stout halfling, quarterstaff wielder, proficiency with Cook's Utensils, etc.), I set out to create the most effective character possible, filling in certain character details to justify mechanical choices.

The Crimson Binome · Nov 28, 2016

Warpiglet said:
I am a long time player. I played AD&D 1^st edition, some third and now love 5e. I totally skipped 2e, 3.5 and played one session of 4e. If that changes anything, I thought I would throw it out there.

Over time, there has been a lot of discussion about roleplaying and rollplaying (an artificial dichotomy, I believe), power gaming, rules bending and so on. The internet has changed this discussion dramatically and frankly, I believe it has altered history in a sense.

Looking back on the game’s roots, I am struck by how much the game was focused on surviving hazards and encounters via problem solving and dice rolling. It seems to me that the strong emphasis on deep roleplaying “my character would not do that even though it is optimal,” is a newer addition to the game. At the very least, its primacy would be a later addition.

The concept of role-playing, as we know it, came to D&D between 1E and 2E. The mechanics of both editions are nearly identical, but the tone shifted significantly from wargaming to role-playing between those editions. As far as I know, that also marked the transition between selling mostly adventures and selling mostly campaign settings, but I'm not familiar enough with the AD&D 1E peripheral market to say with certainty.

One of the quirks of the eighties and nineties, while people were still getting used to the concept of role-playing, was that they would frequently under-estimate what their characters knew. This was the time when you might have a DM hide all of the damage rolls behind the screen, and not let you know how many HP your own character was missing, because "characters don't know anything about Hit Points, so that would be meta-gaming".

I think we have mostly moved beyond that point, as a collective. By now, I think more people are aware that characters can understand roughly how beaten up they are (even if they can't see HP numbers), just like they're aware that plate armor is better than chain and a longsword is deadlier than a dagger. They can't see the game mechanics, but they can see the in-game reality which those game mechanics represent. If something would be a smart move for the player, then the character can generally make that some decision for the same reason, so there's no need to meta-game anything.

Chaosmancer · Nov 28, 2016

I will also call this a continuum, but it also shows up in different ways in the game.

I've been watching the videos by Mathew Colville on Youtube, and he brought up an old module (btw I owned the 3.5 books, played 4e and finally got settled into the game by 5e) where the author (I think it was Gygax) laid out the town the heroes were in and where all the townspeople hid their gold, and how much they had.

The idea being that the thief would be robbing them or the party might kill the blacksmith for his stuff.

Those things don't really happen anymore. Nor do we have as many adventures where we start at the entrance of a dungeon for the sole purpose of delving within, or at least that's what I've heard.

As for character creation, I definitely end up optimizing more. I don't like seeing negative numbers on my sheet. Because when I imagine a character I imagine what they are good at, and then assume they are average on the rest, I don't imagine what they are terrible at.

And that is part of my issue with the tables for Ideals and Flaws and such. Some of them are way more extreme that I feel is actually neccesary, and a few things just don't work well in DnD. I've never seen a pacifist character played well in DnD, both times someone has attempted it it just caused a lot of tension in the group. Same with a cowardly character. They are cool concepts, but once the battle has started, a lot of players get frustrated when their party members stand by and do nothing, or run away.

On the flip side though, a person who plays an Oath of Devotion Paladin/ Fiend Warlock multi-class is going to be getting a lot of strange looks from me. How the heck do you make those two things fit together? There are certain things that are so far out of the realm of who the character has been presented as, that I can't see them occuring. Like someone who had a crippling fear of water (literally hiding in their cabin, under a blanket while on a boat) jumping through a raging tsunami wave because they were convinced it was an illusion and wanted to convince the party. Their character is would never do that, they've established their fear, they even went back to their fear, and there was no reason to believe it was an illusion in game. They were just convinced that the DM had made it an illusion.

Both things have their place in the game obviously, but neither should be the only facet a player or DM considers.

lowkey13 · Nov 28, 2016

*Deleted by user*

The Crimson Binome · Nov 28, 2016

lowkey13 said:
DM screens were commonplace (and, as far as I know, still sold as an accessory). So yes, DMs did roll dice behind screens- as many, if not most, still do. But I never heard of a DM in the 70s or 80s keeping track of a PC's hit points. Ever. That would be ... weird. I'm not saying it didn't happen, anywhere, ever, but it certainly never happened that I knew of, and wasn't a "quirk" that was commonplace enough that you can retcon the history.

That's why I said eighties or nineties, rather than seventies or eighties. Prior to AD&D 2E, thinking about things from your character's perspective wasn't really a "thing" that people did, let-alone the primary way in which players were expected to interact with the game. Before role-playing made its way into D&D, it was just assumed that you knew how many HP your character had, because it was a game and that's how games worked.

I don't know how widespread the practice actually was, but I know that I definitely suffered through at least one short-lived campaign where the DM tried to run things that way, and I know from multiple podcasts that my experience was not unique. I've never heard of it working out well for anyone, though, which is why I consider it to be a transition phase as people become more understanding about what role-playing really means (or before they give up on role-playing entirely); it's not a phase that ever lasts very long, because it's fairly untenable from a game standpoint.

jasper · Nov 28, 2016

…Looking back on the game’s roots, I am struck by how much the game was focused on surviving hazards and encounters via problem solving and dice rolling….
This true. The game and dm challenged the PC and the Players. How many riddles, chess matches etc. were in the 80s modules.
… It seems to me that the strong emphasis on deep roleplaying “my character would not do that even though it is optimal,” is a newer addition to the game….
This is false. It really depended on the player, and dm. I had people in 82 do things not optimal because their pc would not do that. I had players who optimize as much as possible in 1 E. And include some BS such as “Jasper I know the formula of gun powder, etc. etc., Why can’t my pc create gun powder? Waa you are a sucky dm!”
I had players who did fan boy clones of (insert favorite comic, movie, fiction, etc). And others who could play 2 pc as individuals who were not best buds all the time.

Sunseeker · Nov 28, 2016

Warpiglet said:
For anyone who likes to merge roleplaying and effectiveness, I would love to hear how you marry the two masters in a seamless whole…

And did you ever doubt your approach or wonder if it was consistent with the game’s design/purpose?

Sure, it's easy. Figure out what your character wants to do. Pick say, 3 things, in order and determine how they would go about that. Then figure out how they would go about that with the math. EX:
My character wants revenge for years of mistreatment.
How does one usually get revenge? Violence and plotting.
How does one accomplish violence and plotting in the rules? Good damage stats and good charisma/int (tricking people and making good plans).
Then we determine: how do we go about violence? Are we sneaky, stabby sort? Are we the brutal in-your-face sort? Magic?
Then we determine how we go about plotting. Are we a charmer? Planner?

Assign stats accordingly. Pick classes that move you towards your goal. If this isn't in line with the game's design/purpose, then I don't want to be right. This is how I build all my characters. High stats match up to character goals and desires. Low stats match up to things my character disregards.

guachi · Nov 28, 2016

Saelorn said:
The concept of role-playing, as we know it, came to D&D between 1E and 2E. The mechanics of both editions are nearly identical, but the tone shifted significantly from wargaming to role-playing between those editions. As far as I know, that also marked the transition between selling mostly adventures and selling mostly campaign settings, but I'm not familiar enough with the AD&D 1E peripheral market to say with certainty.

I think you're correct. I'll go with 1987 as the year the shift began, at least from a product standpoint. This was the year that the Forgotten Realms campaign setting was first published as well as the year the D&D Gazetteers were first published. I don't know what month either started, but there were four D&D Gazetteers published in 1987 so it was probably 1st quarter for the first Gazetteer.

I don't know how many copies of the Forgotten Realms set or the follow on setting books sold, but obviously it was enough because the Forgotten Realms is still here. I do know that the first D&D Gazetteer, Grand Duchy of Karameikos (which is awesome), sold far above initial expectations and they published 12 in just the first three years.

And this was, in fact, between 1st and 2nd edition AD&D, which came out in 1989.

Tony Vargas · Nov 28, 2016

Warpiglet said:
For anyone who likes to merge roleplaying and effectiveness, I would love to hear how you marry the two masters in a seamless whole…

My preferred optimization/powergaming approach to D&D (well, the editions that supported PC customization to that extent) is the "build to concept," which, I feel, does integrate roleplaying (in the sense of character concept) and (mechanical) effectiveness. It's simply a matter of deciding what you want to play /before/ you begin optimizing it, not optimizing, then looking to rationalize the results.

And did you ever doubt your approach or wonder if it was consistent with the game’s design/purpose?

I don't think optimization (or roleplaying, for that matter) was consistent with the early game, which was much more focused on luck and skilled play at the table, rather than system mastery at chargen or character development/storytelling. 3e, though, was admittedly (Monte Cook admitted it) designed to reward system mastery.