D&D 4E The "We Can't Roleplay" in 4E Argument

[Hussar]

I think others have nailed it, but here are the problems I have:

1. 4e largely dropped the idea of simulation. Things are a lot more abstract (from square fireballs to fighter powers that just make no sense to warlords being able to talk people up from unconscious). This can harm immersion.
2. The "completely heal after a night's sleep thing" is difficult on a massive number of levels. First the loss of simulation. Second it makes encounter design very restricted. A "simple" fight in 3e could actually matter. Real resources could be drained and people had to actually think and take the challenge seriously. Now it doesn't matter much (use encounter powers, do what you can to get surgeless healing) and it just drags. Try to adapt a 1e or 2e module to 4e. It's a lot of work as a number of encounters just can't do the same thing they did before. Third it just hoses the trope of "you're down to your last bit behind enemy lines, but it's do or die" over more than just a single day. Down and out just doesn't exist unless you strip items.
3. Also, why in the whole world, can only the PCs get up from dropping? Should the NPCs know to finish off the downed characters? This PC/NPC thing is really tricky to deal with. If you are playing "the PCs are ultra-special cool folks blessed by the gods" then it works just fine in the RP. But otherwise you keep hitting all these points of cognitive dissonance.

Is 4e a good game? Certainly. Is it a good RPG? Yes, but it takes either a very good group or very good DM. Us average folks struggle. It's basically the cognitive dissonance.

This, of course, all presumes that simulationism is the be all and end all of role play. That stripping out simulation (which I totally agree 4e does) somehow makes role play more difficult.

There are a whole boatload of games out there that would like to have a word with you.

Simulation of the game world is one way to approach role play. And it is certainly valid. But, presuming that it is the only way to approach role play, and that it is even required for immersion, is false. And it's pretty easily disprovable as well. All you have to do is look at RPG's that aren't heavily leaning on sim play - Spirit of the Century leaps to mind here.

Is anyone going to claim that SotC inhibits role play?

I don't think I could disagree more with this statement.

Why? Note, he included combat and conflict. When 90% of the rules in the book revolve around either combat or conflict, making a character that shies away from both is probably not the best approach to the game.

Heck, even the "pacifist" examples in 2e are from very late 2e books that pretty much only hard core collectors have even read.

Or, put it another way, what part of "game of heroic fantasy" includes a character which doesn't embrace combat and/or conflict?

 

[Imaro]

This, of course, all presumes that simulationism is the be all and end all of role play. That stripping out simulation (which I totally agree 4e does) somehow makes role play more difficult.

There are a whole boatload of games out there that would like to have a word with you.

Simulation of the game world is one way to approach role play. And it is certainly valid. But, presuming that it is the only way to approach role play, and that it is even required for immersion, is false. And it's pretty easily disprovable as well. All you have to do is look at RPG's that aren't heavily leaning on sim play - Spirit of the Century leaps to mind here.

Is anyone going to claim that SotC inhibits role play?

I think there is a reason that simulation based rpg's tend to be the major players in the hobby... because yes, games like SotC do inhibit roleplaying, through immersion in character, for many people.

SotC tends to force players at times to concentrate on shaping a good collaborative story as opposed to immersing oneself totally in the persona of their character. Anytime you have to step out of seeing the world through your character's eyes... like when you use a plot point to fabricate part of the world in Fate games... it causes a disonance in the roleplaying of some/many people's characters. Here's a thread on rpg.net where this issue with narrativist games is brought up and (after some back and forth) eventually discussed... Though it isn't a universal thing, there is evidence that some/many people find the narrativist mechanics of games like Fate do intrude upon their immersion and roleplaying...

The contradictory nature of supposedly "narrativist" games

 

[Crazy Jerome]

At this point, it is clear that Crazy Jerome isn't arguing that 4e doesn't interfere with role-playing (as I define it), he is merely critical of my definition. Well, so be it. But my criticizism is based upon what I mean by "role-playing".

Likewise, the gents arguing about whether the sky is red or blue are in agreement about the colour of the sky....just not what to call that colour.

Sure, but before we dart too far into Humpty Dumpty territority, my semantic (definitional) argument is not sky red or blue--just to be clear. Rather, my argument is that to conflate immersion with roleplay is to declare, say, the western sky as "the sky". We both look west as the sun goes down in the clouds, and agree that "the sky" is somewhat purple. But if you mean that the "western sky" is "all the sky," then we will need to disagree. I'm thinking more along the lines of, "the part of the sky we happen to be discussing at the moment."

So I have no problem whatsoever with a statement along the lines of: "For roleplaying to meaningfully occur for me, there must be immersion. 4E interferes with immersion the way I want to do it. Thus, with 4E there is less roleplay." You want to be absolutely safe, there really ought to be another, "for me" at the end of that quote, but it is implicit enough.

OTOH, if you want to say that "immersion is roleplay" in the context of a broader discussion of whether 4E supports roleplay or not, then I'm sorry, that is simply wrong. At best, it is accidentally implying that a narrow definition of roleplay is universal.

You might note the "some" qualifier on complainers in my first comment. It is my contention that they have assumed that "immersion is roleplay" with considerably less self-awareness than you possess.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I am not at all sure how sustainable that would be as a long-term business model, however!

I'm on record already that I think business concerns will necessarily compromise a good RPG design. At least until someone comes up with a new business method that does not--for which, I'm not holding my breath.

So you'll get no argument from me on that score.

 

[Imaro]

Sure, but before we dart too far into Humpty Dumpty territority, my semantic (definitional) argument is not sky red or blue--just to be clear. Rather, my argument is that to conflate immersion with roleplay is to declare, say, the western sky as "the sky". We both look west as the sun goes down in the clouds, and agree that "the sky" is somewhat purple. But if you mean that the "western sky" is "all the sky," then we will need to disagree. I'm thinking more along the lines of, "the part of the sky we happen to be discussing at the moment."

So I have no problem whatsoever with a statement along the lines of: "For roleplaying to meaningfully occur for me, there must be immersion. 4E interferes with immersion the way I want to do it. Thus, with 4E there is less roleplay." You want to be absolutely safe, there really ought to be another, "for me" at the end of that quote, but it is implicit enough.

OTOH, if you want to say that "immersion is roleplay" in the context of a broader discussion of whether 4E supports roleplay or not, then I'm sorry, that is simply wrong. At best, it is accidentally implying that a narrow definition of roleplay is universal.

You might note the "some" qualifier on complainers in my first comment. It is my contention that they have assumed that "immersion is roleplay" with considerably less self-awareness than you possess.

Personally I would argue that immersion (like the western sky) is a fundamental, if not all encompassing, aspect of roleplaying (the total sky)... and with that said, if a system does impede immersion... it thus does impede roleplaying since even if it only impedes a smaller part of the whole, the whole is affected. Now I think the question may be how big of a part immersion is to roleplaying both objectively (if such a thing is even quantifiable) and subjectively which would be personal in nature. But to claim immersion is something wholly seperate from roleplaying, IMO, is erroneous.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

IThough it isn't a universal thing, there is evidence that some/many people find the narrativist mechanics of games like Fate do intrude upon their immersion and roleplaying...

The interesting thing for me is that narrativist mechanics don't interfere with my roleplaying, but coarse granularity often can and will. 4E's granularity pushes right up to my limit (e.g. skill list coarse scope of each skill).

I've hardly done an exhaustive survey, but I get the impression that many narrativist mechanics are managed via coarse mechanics. So either I'm a strange outlier, or there is more to the question than simply "narrativist mechanic".

I like something more akin to the granularity of Burning Wheel, though its hodge-podge, unorganized approach isn't really my cup of tea, either. There is a picky middle ground there that so far seems to be explored mainly in traditional games.

 

[Dausuul]

Frankly, it seems as though the distaste of the bard come from the labels on the powers, and little else. If VM were instead called "Psychic Assault" and had the same mechanics, I think that the argument of "Words can't hurt" goes out the window.

Sure. That power would be fine with me (though I might wonder what it was doing in the bard power list). It's all about the names. Names matter; they are the single most powerful link between the fiction and the mechanics.

If you don't like the name, just relabel it.

I have no desire to go through the entire list of bard powers and reskin them all, given that I myself don't particularly want to play a bard. A player who is willing to undertake the work of relabeling and reskinning all of the bard's powers is welcome to play one. So far, I have not met a player who is.

I will add that I tried allowing artificers once, on the condition that the guy playing one had to reskin all of the silly powers (Booming Armor, et cetera). He agreed. Then he showed up on game day and started using all his powers with names and descriptions straight from the book. I don't see that the bard class is such a precious flower that I should do a pile of editing, or stand over my players to make sure they do it, just so I can stomach them in the game. There are almost 40 classes in 4E. The world will not end if I cut a couple of them.

 

[Hussar]

I disagree Imaro. I think immersion is simply one form of role play.

Heck, back in the day, when the distinction between my character and me was a whole lot blurrier, we were still role playing. Despite acting in pretty much entirely meta-game fashion where every decision was based, not on what my fictional character would do when presented with the fictional situation, but what do I think is the best possible action for my character, we were still role playing.

Avatar play is about as far from immersion as you can get really. It's almost purely meta-game.

I'd also point out that you are conflating immersion with simulation. You can certainly have immersion without simulation. Just because I get to take an author stance once in a while doesn't suddenly mean that I'm no longer immersed in the fiction. It might be true for you, but, now we're down to dueling anecdotes.

How many is some? How many is many?

And, additionally, where does it stop? Does adding an Action Point Mechanic destroy immersion? It's pretty far from a simulationist mechanic - the point of action points is to direct the game in a specific direction that is chosen by the player, not the simulation. How about the various information gathering spells which allow you to question the DM directly? Does that destroy immersion?

On and on.

I'll agree that immersion is a big part of role play for me. I'm not a big fan of avatar style play. It seems to work for other people.

But, conflating immersion with simulation is wrong IMO.

 

[Gryph]

I have been playing 4e for a little over 2 years now for the most part with the same group of players. For most of the first 2 years I used to complain that my players were very poor at roleplaying and I constantly struggled to adjust the game and my DMing style to encourage the party to take more control of their actions and be more active in their roleplay. I never reached a point where I blamed the system and I still don't, but...

My players were new to table top games when we started. All had played various CRPGs, WoW being most common but also a lot of single player games. I think this is still the likeliest cause of the party being sort of passive about making plot decisions on their own. Their expectation from computer games was to be railroaded through an adventure. They also had no experience from those games of free form social interactions.

I have finally decided though, that the complexity of the combat system was a partial contributor. 4e combat is richly detailed and engrossing. I know, because they have told me in after game wrap-ups, that most of my players had some decision paralysis problems because they felt a need to do the optimum set of actions every turn. With their thoughts tuned to that type of in game analysis it didn't leave them much mind-share for roleplaying.

Interestingly, our last few sessions have been quite a bit different and much more loose and flowing in feel with some good roleplay. I think for a few reasons.

First and probably most important is experience, they are a lot more comfortable with the system.

Second, they have a regular and strong examplar. We had a player join about 6 months ago who is very interested in the rp aspects of gaming (and never played CRPGs) who has gotten his feet under him with the system and really blossomed as a roleplayer. He's started dragging the rest a long and helping them feel more comfortable "playing a part".

Lastly, I tried a little experiment and ran them through an old school 1e dungeon to give them a taste of the roots of the game. They did not like the rule system, but it did give them a taste of what approaching encounters and scenarios from a naturalistic rather than a strictly mechanical mindset was like. They did say they liked that part and it seems to have carried over.

The one knock I will make against 4e when it comes to non-combat situations though is the skill system. Not the typical negative comparisons to 3.X, I prefer the streamlined skill list and always hated crafting/professional skills. My complaint is more fundemental. Starting with the introduction of the original thief, D&D has had some skill monkey classes where their access to a broad range of skills was balanced by diminished combat effectiveness. That pattern held true through 3.5. The 4e designers did a great job balancing all classes for in combat effectivenes but they held onto the legacy of differing access to skills by class and I don't feel it holds up anymore from a play balance sense.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Sure, but before we dart too far into Humpty Dumpty territority, my semantic (definitional) argument is not sky red or blue--just to be clear. Rather, my argument is that to conflate immersion with roleplay is to declare, say, the western sky as "the sky". We both look west as the sun goes down in the clouds, and agree that "the sky" is somewhat purple. But if you mean that the "western sky" is "all the sky," then we will need to disagree. I'm thinking more along the lines of, "the part of the sky we happen to be discussing at the moment."

Also to be clear, I am not claiming that role-playing is immersion, but rather that role-playing is the action within the game that is taken while immersed. Thus, immersion =/= role-playing, but role-playing requires immersion.

As I have said elsewhere, should you state "X is not impeded by game Y", so long as X is defined in such a way that the statement is true, I won't argue with you. BUT, if the discussion is about why some people believe that X is imeded by game Y, then the way those people define X is, IMHO, the critical one, and the one that should be adopted (for purposes of discussion only).

There should be no cognitive dissonance in our agreeing that what I mean by X is impeded by game Y, and also that what you mean by X is not.

Personally I would argue that immersion (like the western sky) is a fundamental, if not all encompassing, aspect of roleplaying (the total sky)... and with that said, if a system does impede immersion... it thus does impede roleplaying since even if it only impedes a smaller part of the whole, the whole is affected.

Agree.

But to claim immersion is something wholly seperate from roleplaying, IMO, is erroneous.

Sort of agree. I think a person could define "roleplaying" to mean "colourful description", "pithy sayings", "trash talking the opposition", or even "petting cats while playing".

But I would agree that, IMHO, for most people, "role-playing" is not something wholly seperate from immersion.

I'm on record already that I think business concerns will necessarily compromise a good RPG design. At least until someone comes up with a new business method that does not--for which, I'm not holding my breath.

So you'll get no argument from me on that score.

Well, a little agreement is spice for the soup, right?





RC