D&D 5E A case where the 'can try everything' dogma could be a problem

[Aenghus]

I've grouped these two quotes together because they both raise the issue - What does it mean to play "in character"?

I don't think I agree that it is a spectrum between "method acting" and mere tokenism. And I know that I reject the idea that playing a character in an RPG is primarily about voice or mannerisms.

Well, it's an abstraction so always loses some information, the relevant question being does the abstraction aid or hinder discussion on the topic? Personally, I have become more reserved in my appreciation of these proposed dichotomies, while at the same time feeling a strong urge to classify and dissect the RPG experience to arrive at vocabulary to discuss it with some degree of objectivity. It may well be a hopeless quest.

I think voice or mannerisms - what can more generally be called colour - becomes a focus when the players lack the capacity (due to overt rules, default play procedures, or whatever) to make any more significant impact on the fiction. But where players are able to actually impact the fiction, then in my experience the fictional events that result from those play choices are far more significant than whether or not the PC has distinctive mannerisms.

My view is expressed well in this quote from Christopher Kubasik:

Characters drive the narrative of all stories. However, many people mistake character for characterization.

Characterization is the look of a character, the description of his voice, the quirks of habit. Characterization creates the concrete detail of a character through the use of sensory detail and exposition. By "seeing" how a character looks, how he picks up his wine glass, by knowing he has a love of fine tobacco, the character becomes concrete to our imagination, even while remaining nothing more than black ink upon a white page.

But a person thus described is not a character. A character must do.

Character is action. That's a rule of thumb for plays and movies, and is valid as well for roleplaying games . . . . This means that the best way to reveal your character is not through on an esoteric monologue about pipe and tobacco delivered by your character, but through your character's actions.​

Here is a bit from pages 2 and 4 of Fate Core:

If you've never played a roleplaying game before, here's the basic idea: you and a bunch of friends get together to tell an interactive story about a group of character you make up. . . . If you're a player, your primary job is to take responsibility for portraying one of the protagonists of the game, which we call a player character . . . You make decisions for your character and describe to everyone else what your character says and does.​

I think the emphasis on decisions is important. Action over mannerisms. (There is also no very significant contrast between this and the AD&D 2nd ed text, unless you give the words "pretend" and "appropriate" in that text some very specific meanings.)

Could you elaborate on what you mean when you say "action" as the word has multiple meanings? "Action" in the context of "action movie" is very much about clearly defined external threats and situations that have to be engaged by the protagonists to stop bad things from happening. "Action" could denote having real agency to change the gameworld in plot-relevant ways, though this might not involve explosions. At a mechanical level, "actions" are the procedural rule elements that allow the players to effect the gameworld through their PCs.

I tend to be somewhat goal oriented when playing RPGs, though not to the ruthless extends some of my friends favour. I definitely want player agency so my PCs can aspire to accomplishing their goals, which tend to external, world-oriented ones.

I am aware though, some players have more internal goals, about achieving certain dramatic situations, catharsis, experiencing vicarious emotions and may be less invested in or totally uncaring about external goals such as success and failure in the gameworld, or even PC survival.

Still others seem to lack rpg-related goals and seem to prefer a railroaded game where they don't need to make many decisions.

Most players are a mix of all of the above at various times, in different proportions.

All these people are still playing RPGs, though their motivations can be wildly different. People with different tastes can combine well in an rpg group, or badly or whatever, it's very random and unpredictable.

There's also the issue of real world talent and skill. Some players aspire to a particular play style, which tends to be something they are good at, but could be something they lack skill at. Practice can help, though, in the right environment.

 

[Agamon]

Words have meaning. It's not a role-playing game if you're not playing a role, any more than you can have a video game with no visual output. A billion voices to the contrary cannot make a falsehood true. I don't care if I'm the last sane person on the internet; there are four lights, not five.

A player plays a role on FATE, in Dogs in the Vineyard, even in Fiasco, and I'd accept that it is arguable that Fiasco is actually an RPG and not just an exercise in improv.

But the last sentence of yours makes me want to back slowly away from the thread. The earth is flat. Alrighty then.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Interesting discussion. A few sincere questions for those that are vehemently opposed to metagaming:

Is it preferable to have players that have little or no experience with the game system you're running to avoid conditioned or metagame behavior? If one of the highest priorities is restraint or circumvention of metagame behavior, I would assume running new campaigns with a veteran group could be difficult. The more familiarity a player has with a system, the more mental gymnastics (s)he has to perform in an effort to disassociate personal knowledge and experience relative to a new character's lack of knowledge and experience.

Do you modify or expand upon existing systems to allow for more exploratory actions and mechanics to assist in determining and expanding the relative boundaries of a character's abilities? For example, how do spellcasters come to fully understand their spells' power variance? How do healers determine the level of spell they need to cure an ally's wounds? Are there utility spells or skill mechanics that would help probe innate defenses or test the efficacy of various actions or effects?

At what point is the effort to disassociate dropped in favor of accepted rationalization? How does a player know when his character has the proverbial light bulb turn on when exploring new skills and abilities or absorbing new information? Is the player or the DM the ultimate arbiter of what rationalization is acceptable and what crosses the line into metagaming?

This is an interesting topic probably worthy of it's own thread.

 

[pemerton]

A few sincere questions for those that are vehemently opposed to metagaming:

<snip>

Do you modify or expand upon existing systems to allow for more exploratory actions and mechanics to assist in determining and expanding the relative boundaries of a character's abilities? For example, how do spellcasters come to fully understand their spells' power variance? How do healers determine the level of spell they need to cure an ally's wounds? Are there utility spells or skill mechanics that would help probe innate defenses or test the efficacy of various actions or effects?

I'm probably not one of those you were asking, but I can answer this question within the context of Rolemaster: healing spells in that system are correlated to particular sorts of injury (eg muscle healing, broken bone healing, etc); and there are spells and skills that permit diagnosis of injuries, so that the characters know which healing spells to cast.

 

[pemerton]

Could you elaborate on what you mean when you say "action" as the word has multiple meanings? "Action" in the context of "action movie" is very much about clearly defined external threats and situations that have to be engaged by the protagonists to stop bad things from happening. "Action" could denote having real agency to change the gameworld in plot-relevant ways, though this might not involve explosions. At a mechanical level, "actions" are the procedural rule elements that allow the players to effect the gameworld through their PCs.

I tend to be somewhat goal oriented when playing RPGs, though not to the ruthless extends some of my friends favour. I definitely want player agency so my PCs can aspire to accomplishing their goals, which tend to external, world-oriented ones.

I am aware though, some players have more internal goals, about achieving certain dramatic situations, catharsis, experiencing vicarious emotions and may be less invested in or totally uncaring about external goals such as success and failure in the gameworld, or even PC survival.

Still others seem to lack rpg-related goals and seem to prefer a railroaded game where they don't need to make many decisions.

By action I was intending real agency to change the fiction by use of the procedural rules elements that allow the players to affect the fiction.

The phrase "plot relevant ways" is interesting. I think it's redundant, in the sense that if the players have real agency to change the fiction via the game mechanics then the plot is what will emerge organically from the exercise of that agency. (And if the way the mechanics empower the players to change the fiction tends to produce a plot that is uninteresting to the participants - eg if the system produces too much focus on what the participants regard as minutiae - the answer is to change the system!)

My own experience makes me think that, in RPGing, the goals or orientation of player action declarations will tend to be on external goals, because these are easily communicated at the table and also lend themselves to "party play", which is an element of many RPGs. Though I also think these external goals can be linked to emotional states. I'll give two examples, which will also show that I'm setting a fairly low threshold for achieving an emotional state.

One of the players in my 4e game has had as the goal for his drow PC to end Lolth's rule over the drow and free the drow from the underdark, so that they can return to the surface and sing under the stars with their elven fellows, as they did back before the sundering of the elves. When this was accompanied - Lolth was killed, the Abyss sealed, and the drow led out of the underdark - this was success in the straightforward procedural sense you describe. But it also had a richer emotional resonance, as the table shares in the sense of this character having successfully led his people to liberation.

The second example: the PCs were exploring a ruined temple, and confronted a large cave bear. Instead of killing it, they chose to tame it. After this was achieved, one of the players said "I feel really good about not having killed that bear". Again, this is a richer emotion than simply success at a game-play goal.

In my mind, the two examples I've given contrast with the default mission given by a tavern quest giver, where the PCs might be rescuing the princess or recovering the widget, but have no emotional investment in the goal outside of procedural success, because the backstory and stakes have been authored by the GM with no connection to the PCs as developed and played by the players. Another way of trying to convey the contrast is that I sometimes see the notion of "sidequest" used to contrast with the real (GM-established) focus of play; whereas when I think of characters and action, the player-driven quest is the focus of play, and so the notion of "sidequest" has no work to do.

I think that purely inner-oriented play probably requires more skill on the part of the participants eg to evoke those inner states via narration and performance, and so is probably going to be less common in RPGing. The closest I recall having come to this in my own RPGing is years ago now, in a Rolemaster game. One of the two main wizard PCs had suffered a series of terrible setbacks: falling down the side of the Crystalmist Mountains after being knocked from a flying skiff by a giant's boulder; killed by a demon that had been summoned by his ally but then escaped control; etc, etc. He had also become addicted to a magic-enhancing drug (via RM's addiction rules), which had required him to sell his house and in the end betray his home city for money and a prestigious official appointment. He was finally getting his life back together, in significant part because of a relationship that developed with an NPC elf, when she was cut in half by another escaped summoned demon. At which point the PC collapsed back into despair and alcoholism, until the other (demon summoning) wizard PC was able to berate him into action.

Mechanically, the game supported this via its rules for Depression criticals and for social interaction. I don't think 4e (for instance) would support this sort of inner-oriented play in the same way, because it doesn't have these sorts of mechanical devices. I'm expecting my Burning Wheel game potentially to lead to some of this sort of thing.

I agree that there are some players who lack goals and/or don't really want to make choices, but would rather be led through a plot. In those contexts, roleplaying probably doesn't mean much more than voices and mannerisms. (Also perhaps tactical choices in combat.) But I don't think of that as the essence of RPGing.

All these people are still playing RPGs, though their motivations can be wildly different. People with different tastes can combine well in an rpg group, or badly or whatever, it's very random and unpredictable.

There's also the issue of real world talent and skill. Some players aspire to a particular play style, which tends to be something they are good at, but could be something they lack skill at. Practice can help, though, in the right environment.

I agree that player skill is an issue. After the first session of Burning Wheel with my 4e group, one of the players commented that it is more demanding on the players than 4e.

Rolling the dice when the GM tells you to, and otherwise generally going along with the GM's pre-authored plot, is probably the lowest-skill form of RPGing.

 

[pemerton]

In the 90s, there was a huge on-line debate, comparable to the edition war, almost, which painted 'Storytelling' as ROLE-playing and D&D (that same 2e AD&D) as 'ROLL-playing.' Shoving them together like that strikes me as odd, like constructing a straw man.

<snip>

It's certainly true that games like D&D in the 90s (and today) and Storyteller, and many others can run very well with sufficient DM skill & freedom ('Empowerment'), but that doesn't mean that "bad rules make good games" (as one of the Wolfies famously said), just that good enough DMs can run a great game by overruling the system when needed (whether that's almost constantly, or once in a while).

<snip>

I can agree that 2e and Storyteller both hid system flaws behind that dogma.

A post on another thread seemed relevant to this element of the discussion on this thread. Here it is (with apologies to aramis erak for cross-thread posting):

A warning about Torchbearer and Mouseguard: while low on dice rolls — about 5-30 total per 2-3 hour session total for a group of 4 in Mouseguard — the dice rolls are a major part of the game, and much of the game pacing is due to the roll mechanics. They are VERY mechanically crunchy.

<snip>

Likewise, John Wick's Houses of the Blooded and Blood and Honor are quite dice heavy in feel - even tho the total number of dice rolls in a 4-5 hour session runs 20-40 total rolls - but 3-5 people rolling at a time. It can take quite a while to resolve one set of rolls. So, a major conflict in story may be only 3 sets of rolls total - and totally change the direction of the entire campaign.

It seems to me that what underpins the "roll-play" vs "roleplay" debate is an assumption about the relationship between rolling the dice and the story/thematic/dramatic aims of play - namely, that when the dice are being rolled those other elements of play are not at issue.

As you (Tony Vargas) say, the debate was framed as one between AD&D and WW, but it is not a debate between their texts. It's a debate between players. If you look at the AD&D 2nd ed PHB, you can see that it is already on the "roleplay" side of the debate - it disparages the idea of action resolution by rolling dice at every opportunity (eg it presents combat resolution as the first step on a slippery slope to a "hack-and-slash" campaign), and the whole system encourages the GM to override dice rolls in the interests of "the story", just the same as the Storyteller books.

What gave the debate genuine currency is that there werre some AD&D players who were using 2nd ed AD&D to run a game that ignored those parts of the books and was pretty similar to how many people ran 1st ed AD&D, and B/X as well - namely, the sort of "token roleplay as a veneer over skirmish wargaming" that [MENTION=2656]Aenghus[/MENTION] has described upthread.

The "breakthrough" in RPG design that makes the "roll-play" vs "roleplay" debate the irrelevance it deserves to be is identifying mechanical systems that support rather than cut across the story/thematic/dramatic aims of play. That support can be a matter of degree, but my own experience suggests that three main aspects of a system are relevant:

(1) A capacity for players to flag their story interests/inclinations to the GM by way of PC building;

(2) Resolution mechanics that allow those flagged interests/inclinations to be engaged in play without the outcomes turning simply on GM fiat;

(3) A capacity, within the system, to make the consequences of that engagement matter to future play.​

When I reflect on (1) and (2), I see a connection to a different group of 80s/90s anti-AD&D RPGers, namely, the players of the more sim systems like RQ, RM, HERO etc. The rhetoric of those players tended to be around realism rather than aesthetic sophistication, but I think the former was actually, quite often, being used as a proxy for the latter.

PC build in those systems does allow flagging story interests/inclination, because (i) players can build very detailed and focused PCs who have clear roles in the game and in the gameworld beyond fighting and (ii) the mechanics of those games, in however rudimentary a fashion, permit the GM to engage those aspects of a PC. In my own Rolemaster campaign, for instance, more than one PC was built whose primary specialty was stealth/social, with combat something of an afterthought.

In Gygax's AD&D you could get an approximation to this sort of thing if you had an all-thief party, and Oriental Adventures permitted something similar on the social front (via its honour rules which interacted with its rules for generating PC families and senseis which interacted with its rules for "contests" that are about showing off one's skill rather than looting a dungeon). But otherwise in AD&D the mechanics systematically pull play back towards non-thematically-driven exploration (secret door rolls, trap rolls etc), combat and looting. Even the very detailed social rules in Gygax's DMG put the biggest emphasis on combat morale, combat modifiers to loyalty, and gifts of treasure - so the loyalty system itself pushes play back towards dungeon exploration. Which is fine for Gygaxian play, but cuts across attempts to use the system for other sorts of play.

The biggest weakness in the classic sim games, from the point of view of my (1) to (3) above, is in (3). They tend not to have ways of carrying consequences forward into future play. (CoC is an exception, with its SAN mechanics.) Even in 4e, you can see this - healing surge depletion has to carry a very big part of this mechanical load, which means either (i) a resolute emphasis on physical challenges, or (ii) giving healing surges an ever-expanding function as an all-purpose mechanical resource, which is how many experienced 4e GMs and hackers take the game.

Systems like HeroQuest Revised (with its pass/fail cycle for setting DCs), or Burning Wheel (with "fail forward" and "let it ride" constraints upon narrating the fiction) take (3) to a whole new level compared to some of the classic RPGs. At which point the "roll-play" vs "roleplay" contrast has been left completely behind. So far from being a distraction from story/theme/drama, rolling the dice carries the bulk of the weight of play, determining the fate of these protagonists within a story context that is driven by their dramatic needs, without the requirement of a GM using force to stop the "roll-playing" getting in the way of that story.

 

[Manbearcat]

Whenever these issues arise, it always seems to me that one of the primary areas of dispute is "how is content meant to be generated for general consumption (eg during play or before play and if during then how)" and "how is the basic conversation of play + the resolution mechanics meant to snowball (if at all)".

There are all sorts of leaps of logic that I've never found compelling from a "logically following" perspective. Perhaps not outright non sequitor, but borderline. For instance, consider the following:

A game tells me that my basic job when running it is to (a) follow the rules, (b) portray a fantastic world, (c) fill the PCs lives with adventure and danger, and (d) play to find out what happens. The same game tells the players to (1) listen to the GM and other players, (2) make moves/declare action in response and generally contribute, and (3) advocate for your PC's thematic interests (which the system works to reward).

Pretty simple formula which should create interesting, emergent play. On the surface there would seem to be no reason for play to be antagonistic to an immersive experience. However, because everyone at the table is (i) privy to the simple, transparent formula and (ii) the content generation process and the action resolution mechanics are integrated (generate adventure-filled, fantastic, dangerous content > declare actions > resolve actions with dice > escalate the danger, complicate things, resolve some danger, or transition to new danger), it becomes damaging to some folks ability to achieve or maintain immersion. For some folks, there must be some level of opacity when it comes to content generation. The character in the fiction wouldn't batt an eyelash if genre-coherent danger manifested while blazing a trail off the beaten path. However, the player sees that the roll of the dice of their Trailblazer move resulted in the generation of a recently burst cocoon and a fresh, slimy, translucent trail leading off into parts unknown (perhaps still lurking nearby...) of the oppressive, dark forest that the group is traversing, and that metagame transparency is corrosive to their immersive capacity. For others, the only thing that matters is that they're a Ranger blazing a trail in a dark, oppressive forest and some creepy aberration might be lurking nearby.

I've said it before in various threads. It is all about mental frameworks. Some folks "need" stuff one way. Some folks "need" stuff another way. And still other folks are more malleable or versatile than either of the other two and don't "need" it either way.

 

[aramis erak]

Systems like HeroQuest Revised (with its pass/fail cycle for setting DCs), or Burning Wheel (with "fail forward" and "let it ride" constraints upon narrating the fiction) take (3) to a whole new level compared to some of the classic RPGs. At which point the "roll-play" vs "roleplay" contrast has been left completely behind. So far from being a distraction from story/theme/drama, rolling the dice carries the bulk of the weight of play, determining the fate of these protagonists within a story context that is driven by their dramatic needs, without the requirement of a GM using force to stop the "roll-playing" getting in the way of that story.

I suspect you're not really familiar with Wick's Blood engine...
It isn't roll for success/failure - it's rolling for who gets to pick. The dice don't decide who succeeds nor who fails - they just determine who picks the outcome.

The dice don't determine the fate of protagonists - the dice pick who gets to talk at all.

 

[pemerton]

I suspect you're not really familiar with Wick's Blood engine...
It isn't roll for success/failure - it's rolling for who gets to pick. The dice don't decide who succeeds nor who fails - they just determine who picks the outcome.

The dice don't determine the fate of protagonists - the dice pick who gets to talk at all.

I only know it from your posts about it. Your reminder here reinforces that it's quite a bit less traditional than the games I mentioned - BW and HQ revised.

What I was picking up on in your post was the idea that "dice matter" is consistent with story/roleplaying. Which seemed relevant to the discussion on this thread about the old "roll-play" vs "roleplay" debate.

 

[Flamestrike]

Finally, we got to play the real 5e game also on tabletop (before last week it has been only PbP or tabletop with playtest packets). I was the DM and we had both experienced and beginners players at the table.

With relation to skill proficiencies, I made sure everybody knew that in 5e you don't need to be proficient in order to do or use something. Rather, it is convenient for you to use/do what you're proficient at, instead of using/doing things you are not. The simplest obvious example is with weapons: with an emergency or a specific circumstance you might pick up and swing a weapon you're unproficient, but on the long term (i.e. normally) you'd better use weapons you are proficient.

So far so good... but not with skills!

The players spontaneously gravitated towards using skills they were proficient at. The Rogue had Stealth and Thieves' Tools so naturally she went scouting and searching for traps, while the others waited and watched. This felt just right!

But the players also spontaneously did the same for Knowledge skills, and here is the crux of the matter... I was very happy that they did this on their own volition, but I dread what would have happened if they exploited the system. Because in theory, all of them could have rolled knowledge checks each time it was potentially useful.

So what they did was simply, the Cleric (and only he) rolled Religion & History checks, while the Wizard (and only she) rolled Arcana checks. Whenever they needed a clue, players asked "is it worth rolling an X knowledge check here?" and they everybody looked with hope at the player rolling the check. In other words, (s)he got the spotlight, and it felt great when succeeded, and hilarious when failed (I admit that was in part thanks to me making up ridiculous results on a failure instead of just saying "you don't know").

What would have happened if the players decided to claim their rights to all try a roll of any knowledge each time?

1) With four characters, they would have succeeded almost always. Unless I artificially increased the DC.

2) The proficient character would only marginally succeed more often than the others, at least at low level when the proficiency bonus is only +2.

3) Some unproficient PC (the Rogue) had a much higher Int than the Cleric. So the Cleric player would be actually penalized by choosing the Religion skill, rather than just stick to Wis-based skills.

4) Not much spotlight effect. Probably more common for multiple characters to succeed rather than one.

5) Game slowed down a little bit.

---

Once again, I am very happy that my players did not reason in terms of what is more convenient numerically but immediately got the idea of what was more convenient in terms of fun (for our tastes, obviously!).

Nevertheless I wanted to share this, because IMHO it is something to be aware about.

I also want to point out that this is a problem only with skills that benefit the party as a whole + have no penalty for failure + have no better effects if more PC do the same. Knowledge skills are the main case, but also Thieves' Tools and Investigation are others, and some charisma skills might also be (but it depends how you adjudicate a simultaneous success by someone and failure by someone else).

Allow group checks against the DC.

Yes even for knowledge checks. Some PC's may have flawed knowledge and think someting to be true that is not (low check results) Some may know the real answer (high check results), If more than half of them succeed, then they succeed (get the good knowledge). If less than half succeed, tell them some ridiculous answer (the Barbarian and Fighter are so sure that fireballs can go around corners and have a 50' radius, they convince everyone else its true)

Such is the price of pooling the knowledge of many. See also: Wikipedia.