We're back to AD&D1

[SuperGnome]

They are not defined as characters by their role. The role defines their, get this, role in combat.

You missed the point right there. The rogue class, as all imformation I've found attests, is presented exclusively by their combat role. Look at Wizards Presents Races and Classes (if you have it) and it's entirely about combat role.

I don't mind that there is a combat role. What I mind is that's all Wizard's talks about. I'm not asking for role playing tips, or pages of info on this and that, which I hoped was clear this time around.

*I'm not trying to jump all over you, but almost everyone derails over this on similar posts. Try this... all I read about is vanilla vanilla vanilla, and you're saying I'm to assume there is chocolate in there somewhere? All I'm reading is combat combat combat, and I HOPE there is some color and life in tehre somewhere.

 

[IanArgent]

Since this has happened to every single RPG that ever produced books beyond it's basic line, why do you think this will not apply to 4E?

I know SR4 is a strong counter-example, and the previous versions are weak counterexamples; and I'm reaosnably sure GURPS is a weak counterexample.

(to the statement that all RPGs suffer rules bloat - SR has generally released sourcebooks rather than rulebooks, and I believe that's the same for GURPS)

 

[phloog]

I don't think we ever need to know how good at farming a PC is. Seriously, Baron von Evil isn't going to murder the princess unless the PCs can do some really good crop rotation.

Stuff like that is fluff, not crunch, it doesn't need to be part of the system at all.

Counterfeiting should be evaluated because it can be a useful skill in urban adventures. Woodcarving, not so much.

The farming was a bit of a goof but someone had mentioned turnips....my point was simply that I think that there HAS to be some rules basis to adjudicate MOST actions, including those that are based on 'background skills' - - I don't necessarily need to have a number that says his background was a 33 on the tough-life-as-street-urchin scale, but for skills I need some way to deal with them, and often a stat leads to less issues than DMing with what might often seem to be arbitrary rulings.

The issue with the second part of your reply is the 'Woodcarving not so much'...the character I created is not only good at forging someone's handwriting, but realized early on that a lot of documents contain seals and such, so he has become highly skilled at doing detailed carvings of things like the images on signet rings. So Forgery CURRENTLY seems to be defined as primarily handwriting and 'official-sounding language' - my character is SO focused on deception that he has developed incredible skill at woodcarving...is it ridiculous? Probably to most, but it's what we enjoy, and I prefer to have a mechanic/roll to determine the success or failure of his forgery than have the DM say "Yeah, you didn't do well enough carving that signet so they're attacking you to subdue and jail you"

As always, this is not an indictment of those who would enjoy a game where all stats have a combat application...but without such mechanics there are often issues...as a DM (my role 99% of the time - - DM/Controller, I guess) I realize that while I am comfortable deciding from a story standpoint whether or not something succeeds, the players like to roll the dice in this game and have that degree of 'control' over their destiny.

Also, I might be the weirdest DM ever, but if I had a big Orc Chieftain and his troops set up as the BBEG climax, and the players did something so unexpected that my whole delightful story was derailed....hurray for them...I'm a DM and as such I LIKE it when the story doesn't end as planned....it's not fun for me personally for the story to always roll out as I planned, with the only surprises being the particular stick that they chose to pummel the orc with.

At one point, I had a group hit a lich - a lich, for goodness sake, with a powder that they had found that had as its only effect that it put you in a clown suit...I rolled a 1 for his save....Evil Clown. The party ran away rather than fight, leaving the lich to stew until he could dispell the clown garb and plot his revenge. No fight...just fun.

 

[Mallus]

But D&D4 just offers me The Malazan Book of the Fallen.

Odd example... the Malazan books contain a multitude of different kinds of stories that vary a lot in terms plot, style, and local genre fidelity ("Hey, it's a Conan parody", "Look, now it's G.K. Chesterson novel", "Wait, is this satire about economics and colonialism?").

And that's just Midnight Tides.

 

[AllisterH]

In my opinion, the core books emphasize too much one kind of adventure, forgetting many other options, and you can notice it from the text and the pictures. If 95% of the powers (I don't say it's the right amount) are combat-oriented, then you are leading the readers to play in a certain way..

This is handled more elegantly with the ritual system and skill system than ever before. When "out of combat" magic was only the purview of the wizard, it didn't ENCOURAGE roleplaying. In fact, it did the reverse. Let's say you have two players, one a 3E fighter and the other a 3E wizard. The fighter LITERALLY was useless out of combat not only because of the lack of skills/spells but the fact that the other classes basically capitalized on them. If you're the DM for this group, how much roleplaying can you do when *mechanically* the fighter offers nothing?

Compare this with the 4E fighter. He gets access to the non-combat stuff along with everyone else. He's no loner punished in social situations (his social skills like Bluff and Diplomacy automatically scale) and he can actually take part in those non-combat spells like "hallucinatory creature" (yes Virginia, there are illusion rituals)

The ritual system by divorcing itself from the magic user has actually ENABLED roleplaying mechanically. If a wizard can't simply "I'll use this TRUMP spell to solve X" it actually encourages the players to come up with actual plans that don't involve "Scenario X, Solution: Spell Y".

You always played the wizard didn't you

The DMG says it clearly: "The rules and story elements in the D&D game are built around a set of core assumptions about the world" (it's ancient; monsters are everywhere; magic is natural; civilized races band together). Other options are briefly discussed, but the whole text pushes you in a certain direction.

I read once a core book (I don't remember which one!) where 10 pages or so where a discussion about the fantasy genre, its sub-genres (urban, high fantasy, gritty fantasy...), the type of histories you could play and many literary references..

That's nice but a list of "books to read" do diddly to help with actually running said sub-genres. Please show how previous editions did it better because I'm looking at the DMG and the use of the skill challenge mechanics and how they can be used for an "investigation" style campaign and I'm hoenstly wondering which edition of D&D focused more on roleplaying than 4E.

If I buy three expensive books, I want to be aple to play Freeport, Midnight, Dark Sun, Conan and Perdido Street Station. But D&D4 just offers me The Malazan Book of the Fallen.

You do realize that the ritual system and the skill system actually allow for more variants easily than the 3E system right?

 

[Blackeagle]

The farming was a bit of a goof but someone had mentioned turnips....my point was simply that I think that there HAS to be some rules basis to adjudicate MOST actions, including those that are based on 'background skills' - - I don't necessarily need to have a number that says his background was a 33 on the tough-life-as-street-urchin scale, but for skills I need some way to deal with them, and often a stat leads to less issues than DMing with what might often seem to be arbitrary rulings.

I think it's pretty easy to handle this in 4e, thanks to the simplified skill system. If a character has some sort of background skill that doesn't fall under an existing skill (woodcarving, sailing, etc.), the DM can just treat it as a trained skill and let them make a check. Ridiculously focused on that skill? Give them skill focus as well.

 

[drjones]

And other people will look at the rules and say "You mean there's dice involved in talking to someone? There's no way this is roleplaying!"

This is literally a battlefield upon which there can be no winner, as nobody will even agree they're standing on the same one.

Exactly, I am still uneasy about the Diplomacy skill. And that is what, 8 years old?

The problem all over the internets is peeps projecting their dislike of everything under the sun onto the 4e rules. There are plenty of things to be nerd-upset with wotc about: DDI, Dungeon cancellation etc. etc. but if you take the rules away from all that mess and sit down at a table to play it it is not bad at all.

 

[Counterspin]

I don't understand why anyone who wanted to play a roleplay centric campaign would use any of the versions of D&D that I've seen (2,3,4). D&D has always been a tactics RPG. If you don't want the tactics, there's lots of systems with vastly simpler combat systems out there that would give you what you want(I'd go with Unknown Armies if I were you). This is not a change from prior editions.

 

[Henry]

As always, this is not an indictment of those who would enjoy a game where all stats have a combat application...but without such mechanics there are often issues...as a DM (my role 99% of the time - - DM/Controller, I guess) I realize that while I am comfortable deciding from a story standpoint whether or not something succeeds, the players like to roll the dice in this game and have that degree of 'control' over their destiny.

Also, I might be the weirdest DM ever, but if I had a big Orc Chieftain and his troops set up as the BBEG climax, and the players did something so unexpected that my whole delightful story was derailed....hurray for them...I'm a DM and as such I LIKE it when the story doesn't end as planned....it's not fun for me personally for the story to always roll out as I planned, with the only surprises being the particular stick that they chose to pummel the orc with.

I don't see where the first and second concepts are necessarily in conflict, though. You can have both combat and roleplaying applications to most things, without them being exclusive. Maybe you want to use that "SUPER-DUPER FIGHTER STRIKE" to smash through the support beam that brings down the tent canopy, trapping the thief runnign away with the crown jewels; or you want the Thievery skill to represent the time that Jodo the Rogue spent forging Dean's Letters in the College of Magic before he was expelled. I've used a Crusader's Divine Surge in a Book of 9 Swords game to burst through a wall before to impress a rival. No combat, just intimidation.

I don't know what magic items the 4e books will have, but we may well have a return of some interesting items, if the Magic Item Compendium was any judge, instead of just "plus items, all the time" - maybe even some magic powders that turn people into clowns...

 

[billd91]

That's not entirely true. When the rules tell you "You can make a Diplomacy check and if you get 35, someone will do whatever you want them to no matter how dangerous or stupid it is for them." then a player faced with that ruleset can simply say, "I tell him to shoot himself. I made a 40, he'll do it."

If there are no rules for convincing someone to something, then you'll be forced to have your character say whatever you think is most convincing and let the DM decide if it works or not. In one aspect, it encourages roleplaying. If the words your character says has a direct effect on the game in some ways, it makes you reach into yourself and try harder to come up with better words.
<snip>

Now, there are good things and bad things about both ways of doing it. I'm not saying that one is completely better than the other(in fact, I believe a mix of the 2 is the best way to go). However, the less rules there are the more you have to "make stuff up", which in most cases tends to be called roleplaying by a lot of people.

Then it sounds like 4e is hardly different from 3e in this regard since it has rules of this sort as well, written up a bit differently, but present nonetheless.
Ultimately, the deciding factor is how the table approaches the rules and how it wants to handle role-playing. At my table, we can role-play the heck out of the situation and still fully use the rules to decide the outcome. We'd be able to do the same with a minimal rule system as well. As GM, I'd just be making more of it up... which isn't necessarily role-playing either, particularly when the stuff I'm making up has little or nothing to do with behaving the way a particular NPC would behave.