D&D 5E What is the "role" in roleplaying

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[I'm A Banana]

That's why portraying a personality, alone, is not the 'role' in RPG. The ability to impact the narrative if a question of function within that narrative, and is also arguably not enough, alone.

This distinction is part of what feels artificial to me.

By performing a personality in an RPG, you do impact the narrative, regardless of the "function" of your character abilities on the "game" side of things.

Like, your party comes to an end of the path they're following and they need to choose to go Left or Right. So they negotiate: Falstaff wants to go Left because the last time they went Right, they found a trap. Falstaff's player is performing Falstaff's personality: he's cautious, and anxious about what he doesn't know. Lidda wants to go Right because she still thinks the MacGuffin is in that direction. Lidda's player is performing Lidda's personality: she's goal-oriented and confident. Rath wants to toss a coin. Rath's player is performing Rath's personality: he's indecisive, a little flighty.

Rath gets the tie-breaking vote, flips a coin, and the party goes Left, much to Lidda's consternation. Thus, their personalities have affected the narrative: they've gone Left as a consequence of each character's unique personality.

None of them needed a specific function within the narrative to be able to impact the narrative with their personality-driven choices.

 

[Tony Vargas]

This distinction is part of what feels artificial to me.

By performing a personality in an RPG, you do impact the narrative, regardless of the "function" of your character abilities on the "game" side of things.

I don't think 'function' /is/ entirely on the game side of things, that's an artificial distinction hearkening back to the old role vs roll thing.

 

[Faenor]

This distinction is part of what feels artificial to me.

By performing a personality in an RPG, you do impact the narrative, regardless of the "function" of your character abilities on the "game" side of things.

Like, your party comes to an end of the path they're following and they need to choose to go Left or Right. So they negotiate: Falstaff wants to go Left because the last time they went Right, they found a trap. Falstaff's player is performing Falstaff's personality: he's cautious, and anxious about what he doesn't know. Lidda wants to go Right because she still thinks the MacGuffin is in that direction. Lidda's player is performing Lidda's personality: she's goal-oriented and confident. Rath wants to toss a coin. Rath's player is performing Rath's personality: he's indecisive, a little flighty.

Rath gets the tie-breaking vote, flips a coin, and the party goes Left, much to Lidda's consternation. Thus, their personalities have affected the narrative: they've gone Left as a consequence of each character's unique personality.

None of them needed a specific function within the narrative to be able to impact the narrative with their personality-driven choices.

Your contrived example is premised on game rules don't matter. In your example, the party wizard is proficient in insight and makes a check and gets some information that leads to a better decision. Or the high wisdom druids makes a perception check. Or the ranger does a survival check and sees sign of a bbeg. If there is a choice in game where the players' class choices don't impact the outcome, then that's poor game design.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I don't think 'function' /is/ entirely on the game side of things, that's an artificial distinction hearkening back to the old role vs roll thing.

Yeah, I think being "a protector" (for instance) is as much a personality thing as a mechanical thing, sure. And Rath's flightiness might be exemplified in him also being a wild mage. The main thrust there was just that personality impacts fiction without needing an appeal to function. Rath can be a flighty front-line defender as much as he is a flighty thief or a flighty cleric. Maybe his flightiness affects his choice of party role, maybe it doesn't, but either way it can affect the fiction.

Your contrived example is premised on game rules don't matter. In your example, the party wizard is proficient in insight and makes a check and gets some information that leads to a better decision. Or the high wisdom druids makes a perception check. Or the ranger does a survival check and sees sign of a bbeg. If there is a choice in game where the players' class choices don't impact the outcome, then that's poor game design.

This counterpoint seems weird to me for a few reasons.

The first is that you call the example "contrived," but there's lots of examples every time I play in group decisions being made like this. The party needs to choose an option, and the "correct" choice isn't clear, or there may be trade-offs no matter what the party decides.

The second is that you use Insight, Survival and Perception as examples of "class choices," but these things haven't been class choices in D&D for decades at this point - it's not like it matters if you're a wizard or a druid or a ranger for those skills. They also aren't assured of revealing any new information - those checks could fail, or simply be irrelevant. The same is true for actual class features that might give more information - they can fail or be irrelevant. Even if they do reveal new information, it might not help the decision at all.

The third is that you say that if a player's class choice doesn't impact the outcome that it's poor game design, but this would mean that any classless game is, automatically, "poor game design." It would also mean that any mechanic that diminished niche protection (such as 5e's "everyone is minimally competent" design or 4e's +1/2 level mechanic) would be "poor game design." I don't think you've shown that to conclusively be the case yet, so your strident declaration that this is the case doesn't seem very well supported.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Yeah, I think being "a protector" (for instance) is as much a personality thing as a mechanical thing, sure.

By the same token, personality is not necessarily independent of mechanics.


Going back at least to the role v roll controversy, there's been this tendency to want to isolate mechanics from something they're integral to: the game, itself. That impulse is problematic and counter-productive.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Tony Vargas]

In fairness, as we just recently saw, there is also a tendency to make the mechanics everything, which is also problematic and counter-productive.

Every false dichotomy has two sides, yes.

...both of them wrong, obviously.

 

[Faenor]

This is a 5e forum.

The point about skills aren't class is like discounting my points because I used you're instead of your. The point is they are player choices. They are somewhat related to class by stats and by availability to the class- obviously you can get skills other ways.

Yes. When outcomes are random and the player choices have no way to improve the outcome, that is poor design for an rpg. If I'm at a table and the dm says 'left or right?' And I say ok, I cast divination. No info. Ok perception. Nothing. Ok Insight. Nothing. Ok, left. You fall into a pit trap and die. Then the dm is going to playing with the tumble weeds and crickets.