D&D 5E Come out and put yourself on the Gygax scale!

[pemerton]

The PHB disagrees with you: "Roleplaying is... you as a player determining how your character thinks, acts, and talks."

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], is your interpretation of the PHB definition of roleplaying that in each instance of role-play the player must make decisions about all three of the named ways the character can react to/interact with its environment, and if any one way is missing it is not roleplaying?

It is according to your quote.

It doesn't say that roleplaying is "...how your character thinks, acts OR talks.". It uses "and". That use of and means that it requires all three.

Not really. "You as a player determining how your character thinks, acts, and talks" is synonymous with "You as a player determine how your character thinks, and how your character acts, and how your character talks." And the latter clearly leaves an implicit "if at all" open in each conjunct. Writing it with or - "You as a player determine how your character thinks, or how your character acts, or how your character talks" - generates at least a weak implication that the disjuncts are exclusive, whereas using "and" allows for the fact that it might be one, some or all of the alternatives that a player determines.

The syntax and semantics of "and" and "or" in English is not the same as that of the formal logical operators that go under those labels.

Also, I think 5e is a bit equivocal over what counts as roleplaying. Eg p 66 of the Basic PDF says, "Roleplaying is a part of every aspect of the game, and it comes to the fore during social interactions. Your character’s quirks, mannerisms, and personality influence how interactions resolve." And p 35 says that "if you have inspiration, you can reward another player for good roleplaying".

This is closer towards roleplaying as characterisation than roleplaying as making decisions for one's character, I think. Which is to say that I think the D&D rules might reflect the same tension/ambiguity that we see in the community of players.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Also, I think 5e is a bit equivocal over what counts as roleplaying. Eg p 66 of the Basic PDF says, "Roleplaying is a part of every aspect of the game, and it comes to the fore during social interactions. Your character’s quirks, mannerisms, and personality influence how interactions resolve." And p 35 says that "if you have inspiration, you can reward another player for good roleplaying".

This is closer towards roleplaying as characterisation than roleplaying as making decisions for one's character, I think. Which is to say that I think the D&D rules might reflect the same tension/ambiguity that we see in the community of players.

The writers clearly aren't above colloquialism, when they think it suits their purpose. If most people understand role-playing as "the part where you talk instead of rolling dice," then that's not entirely wrong, even if it's not the formal definition. This edition isn't very big on formal definitions, after all.

What they say is true, though. Roleplaying is a part of every aspect of the game. Even combat. Even resource management. It does come to the fore during social interactions. The persona of the character is easier to observe through what they say and how, rather than through their choices in combat.

I don't know that it warrants a distinction between role-playing as characterization, versus role-playing as decision-making. I mean, how would you even know what to describe about the character, without imagining yourself to be the character and figuring it out from that perspective? Metagaming is explicitly forbidden in this edition, after all; right next to the reminder (for DMs to use when a player is tempted to metagame) of "What do your characters think?"

 

[pemerton]

Roleplaying is a part of every aspect of the game. Even combat. Even resource management.

Unless I've misunderstood, here you're agreeing with [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] (as well as with the 5e rules).

I'm generally sympathetic to this also. I'd probably want to flesh it out a bit - roleplaying means deciding what your character does, thinks, says, etc - where this means not just deciding those things in mechanical terms bu establishing some shared fiction in respect of them.

The persona of the character is easier to observe through what they say and how, rather than through their choices in combat.

I don't really agree with this, though. Who a character chooses to kill, or to save, or to spare, may tell us a great deal about that character.

And even if the combat is not so high-stakes as that, it can still involve establishing the character within the fiction just as much as other sorts of action declaration. To the extent that many D&D players perceive this as not so, I think it's because D&D combat easily defaults to being "fiction free" - ie rolls to hit, and to damage, with adjustments of hit point totals, and none of that anchored in any shared fiction.

how would you even know what to describe about the character, without imagining yourself to be the character and figuring it out from that perspective?

There does seem to be something of a chicken-and-egg problem here.

 

[Coroc]

G3 it is prolly for me.

I Need a good Story but otoh i want to have fitting mechanics, which if i dm may Change a bit depending on the campaign world.

 

[Maxperson]

Not really. "You as a player determining how your character thinks, acts, and talks" is synonymous with "You as a player determine how your character thinks, and how your character acts, and how your character talks." And the latter clearly leaves an implicit "if at all" open in each conjunct. Writing it with or - "You as a player determine how your character thinks, or how your character acts, or how your character talks" - generates at least a weak implication that the disjuncts are exclusive, whereas using "and" allows for the fact that it might be one, some or all of the alternatives that a player determines.

The syntax and semantics of "and" and "or" in English is not the same as that of the formal logical operators that go under those labels.

Also, I think 5e is a bit equivocal over what counts as roleplaying. Eg p 66 of the Basic PDF says, "Roleplaying is a part of every aspect of the game, and it comes to the fore during social interactions. Your character’s quirks, mannerisms, and personality influence how interactions resolve." And p 35 says that "if you have inspiration, you can reward another player for good roleplaying".

This is closer towards roleplaying as characterisation than roleplaying as making decisions for one's character, I think. Which is to say that I think the D&D rules might reflect the same tension/ambiguity that we see in the community of players.

Here's the thing, though, if [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] was correct and roleplaying is all equal, there couldn't be such a thing as good roleplaying to reward with inspiration. Roleplaying can only be good, average, bad, etc. if there are grades of roleplay, such as in the examples that I gave to him.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't really agree with this, though. Who a character chooses to kill, or to save, or to spare, may tell us a great deal about that character.

And even if the combat is not so high-stakes as that, it can still involve establishing the character within the fiction just as much as other sorts of action declaration. To the extent that many D&D players perceive this as not so, I think it's because D&D combat easily defaults to being "fiction free" - ie rolls to hit, and to damage, with adjustments of hit point totals, and none of that anchored in any shared fiction.

[MENTION=6703052]SA[/MENTION]elorn didn't say that you couldn't observe it through combat, only that it was easier to observe through say, the social pillar. I agree with him. How one interacts with others and through moral dilemmas makes it easier to see the persona than in who he kills and saves in combat. Most combats tend to be against evil creatures trying to kill you, so there are far fewer opportunities to encounter the moral dillemmas and other cues to reveal depth of personality.

 

[Hriston]

Here's the thing, though, if @Hriston was correct and roleplaying is all equal, there couldn't be such a thing as good roleplaying to reward with inspiration. Roleplaying can only be good, average, bad, etc. if there are grades of roleplay, such as in the examples that I gave to him.

"Good roleplaying", in this case, is clearly in the eyes of the player doing the rewarding, so it's a matter of preference just as the examples you provided reflect your own preferences, rather than any objective standard of roleplaying.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Unless I've misunderstood, here you're agreeing with [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] (as well as with the 5e rules).

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. It just so happens that this is a case where that other guy is in agreement with reality. Choosing who to attack, and how, is an RP decision because you make it from the perspective of the character within the game world rather than from the perspective of a player looking down at the table.

I'm generally sympathetic to this also. I'd probably want to flesh it out a bit - roleplaying means deciding what your character does, thinks, says, etc - where this means not just deciding those things in mechanical terms bu establishing some shared fiction in respect of them.

From what I recall, this "shared fiction" of which you speak is the same thing which I call "the reality of the game world". That goes back to the rules of the game reflecting the reality of the game world, though. You don't make a decision to "use the Investigation skill" or "take the Attack action"; you make the decision to investigate, or to attack. Characters don't interact with the rules; characters interact with the reality which those rules reflect. You decide what the character wants to do within the world, based on who they are and what they know, and that's what role-playing is.

I don't really agree with this, though. Who a character chooses to kill, or to save, or to spare, may tell us a great deal about that character.

It can, certainly, in some situations. For any given choice in combat, though, there are a lot of other people who would make that exact same decision for that exact same reason. That's less true in a social situation, where there many more and varied ways to express yourself that all make sense in that context.

And even if the combat is not so high-stakes as that, it can still involve establishing the character within the fiction just as much as other sorts of action declaration. To the extent that many D&D players perceive this as not so, I think it's because D&D combat easily defaults to being "fiction free" - ie rolls to hit, and to damage, with adjustments of hit point totals, and none of that anchored in any shared fiction.

Unnecessary abstraction has always been the enemy of meaningful (i.e. "fiction-based") mechanics. I know that Gygax was a fan of abstractions, but I can forgive him because he was basically making it all up as he went along. I can even understand (but not forgive) the unnecessary abstraction in 4E, since it was clear that they cared way more about balancing the mechanics than anything else.

Fifth edition states very clearly that it's up to the DM to narrate what HP and damage mean within the game world, if anything. It doesn't really help that they leave it up to the DM to make sense of things, and it definitely doesn't help that their ambiguous default is irreconcilable with the descriptions of half of the healing mechanics, but they could have done worse.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=6703052]How one interacts with others and through moral dilemmas makes it easier to see the persona than in who he kills and saves in combat.

I don't follow your contrast between moral dilemssas and who I kill and save in combat.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't follow your contrast between moral dilemssas and who I kill and save in combat.

Meh. I spoke poorly and shouldn't have limited it to moral dilemmas. You are going to have many more situations outside of combat to explore your character than you do inside of combat, whether they are moral dilemmas or not. Those out of combat situations will generally have more depth as well. It's easier to see the persona of a PC outside of combat, because of the above reasons.

Sure a PC can let you know how he hates orcs, because they killed his parents as he cuts one down, but that part of his character will generally be explored more fully in a conversation with other PCs and NPCs, as will many areas of that PCs persona that don't have anything to do with combat.