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

[I'm A Banana]

Nothing in the description of Falstaff the fighter gives any indication that a character with the same stats, alignment and class would engage the game differently.

I think this is a misreading that verges on a deliberate misinterpretation.

"You become Falstaff the Fighter," means that you become a fighter whose fictional characteristics include a unique personality - that of Falstaff.

He makes a deliberate and explicit comparison to theatrical acting, hoping that the players become "artful thespians." There is no artful thespian who is not playing a personality.

But at this point I think we've run into "folks will believe what they want to believe." If you can read those words and come to the conclusion that Gygax meant class role when talking about role-playing, then we are simply not sharing a language.

 

[Faenor]

Im concerned that the premise of this is not being interpreted the same by all reading and posting here. Does play a personality mean play acting, or does playing a personality just mean choosing actions based on the personality - in addition to the chosen class? I.e., what would a fighter with these personality traits do in this situation? Would he take the dash action to intetpose himself between the cleric and the monster, or would he finish off the monster he's wounded and let the other party members take care of themselves?

The 'play' in role play and the 'play' in play acting causes a lot of confusion. In a surgery, each person in the room has a role to play - surgeon, nurse, anesthesiologist, etc. It's only when you are pretending to do a surgery, like in a tv medical drama, that play acting happens. So, play acting may make a pretend role playing scene more interesting, but they are definitely two much different things. In d&d, Dice and rules are for resolving a situation without play acting. Hamming it up may be fun and memorable to some but annoying to others.

 

[Jester David]

I continue to think that the most distinctive thing about a RPG is that the fiction matters to the resolution. This is what differentiates it from miniatures skirmishing, board games, etc.

I'm not going to argue against that. I agree that the narrative and ability to influence the narrative are a big part of RPGs.
However, that's more important in tabletop (or pen and paper) RPGs. Video game RPGs can have far more rigid and linear plots, but are still called "RPGs".

As far as the other games you mention are concerned, this relates to @TwoSix's question upthread about more indie-style RPGs. I can't comment on all the games you mention, but in Marvel Heroic RP (which I've been running a bit recently) I think the mechanics are intended to make personality/colour part of the character's function. (Hence mechanics like Distinctions, Milestones, etc.) So performing the character's function will inevitably bring the character's personality to the fore, and perhaps lead to it changing (eg in my MHRP game, Nightcrawler ended up forsaking his Catholicism under Wolverine's more cynical influence, taking Mental trauma in the process). The colour of the characters is not mere colour; and it is not a factor primarily just in free roleplaying or in choosing what action to declare. It matters to resolution.

I suspect Fate might have a comparable dynamic, but I've never played it, just read it.

Having individual mechanics is a far cry from having a function or role at the table.

Sorry Pemerton, I think you're just outright wrong in this discussion. I don't say that often. I typically think we're entitled to our opinions. But your hypothesis that the "role" in "role-playing games" equates with "filling a role at the table" just doesn't work with the totally of role-playing games. Role as "function" is not an adequate description. Your hypothesis is invalid and doesn't conform to observations of reality. Time to redefine.

That may have been the definition when D&D was first introduced and that may have been the intention of Gygax but even if that's so the definition was very instantly altered and changed when it came into contact with other games and ideas. Even Gary himself was thinking about moving away from hard classes and more skills and skill packages. And we'll never know for sure because the dude is dead and all we have are his attempts to describe things to the uninitiated.

Some of those games might make it quite hard to establish clear functions for PCs. That would tend to suggest that they're more enjoyable for those who think the 2nd ed AD&D description of roleplaying is more apt than Gyagx's.

We owe Gygax a lot, but he's not the best DM/ RPGer in history. He had his quirks and flaws in his worldview. His definition is very likely skewed by his perspective at the very, very start of the hobby, and the influence and conventions of other hobby games. And he very likely lacked the words and parlance we now use to define RPGs - the common frames of reference.
Very likely pioneers in video games would coin a definition of video games that would exclude large swaths of modern video games. Because the scope is beyond them. Someone needs to be

 

[Mercule]

Im concerned that the premise of this is not being interpreted the same by all reading and posting here. Does play a personality mean play acting, or does playing a personality just mean choosing actions based on the personality - in addition to the chosen class? I.e., what would a fighter with these personality traits do in this situation? Would he take the dash action to intetpose himself between the cleric and the monster, or would he finish off the monster he's wounded and let the other party members take care of themselves?

The 'play' in role play and the 'play' in play acting causes a lot of confusion. In a surgery, each person in the room has a role to play - surgeon, nurse, anesthesiologist, etc. It's only when you are pretending to do a surgery, like in a tv medical drama, that play acting happens. So, play acting may make a pretend role playing scene more interesting, but they are definitely two much different things. In d&d, Dice and rules are for resolving a situation without play acting. Hamming it up may be fun and memorable to some but annoying to others.

Maybe part of the confusion is that I only see two words: "roleplay" and "game". You aren't "playing a role", you're "roleplaying". It's a mighty fine hair to split, but it seems that it may be important to the conversation. My actual preferred spelling is "roleplaying" (like it is on the back of the PHB and in the poll question), not "role-playing" (as Gygax often wrote it) or "role playing". I sometimes use one of the other spellings due to differences in spell-checkers and red squigglies.

Regardless of how it's spelled, it's a single unit. The combination of the words carries a slightly different meaning that each on its own. To roleplay is to pretend to be another person. It implies getting inside the head of the fictional person and making decisions based on that person's goals.

When I play a Fighter character, I'm not "playing the role" of a Fighter. I'm roleplaying a character who happens to be a Fighter, in addition to his other characteristics. If he plays the functional role of "meat shield", it's because his personality drives him to do so.

A gaming group or individual player can go through the character creation process starting with a personality and then deciding what functional niche the character plays or they can start with the function and build a personality around it. The personality can be deep and intricately constructed or it can be shallow, relying on cliches and genre archetypes. Likewise, the functional niche can be broad (I'm a Fighter) or highly optimized for certain sub-functions. I've done both, and it doesn't matter. What matters is that the character is a fictional persona and you are roleplaying the persona and that's what makes it a roleplaying game instead of a minis quest game like HeroQuest or Arcadia Quest.

As a note, no one is saying that PCs don't fill a functional role. The player is roleplaying the persona. The persona is filling a functional niche.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm not going to argue against that. I agree that the narrative and ability to influence the narrative are a big part of RPGs.
However, that's more important in tabletop (or pen and paper) RPGs. Video game RPGs can have far more rigid and linear plots, but are still called "RPGs".

That a video game is called an RPG doesn't make it one in the same sense as a TT RPG. Heck, a rocket propelled grenade is called an "RPG."

Having individual mechanics is a far cry from having a function or role at the table.

It's not a far cry, at all, it's directly supportive of it. Not only that, but having some function (the OP used function, rather than 'role' IIRC, role having both the baggage of the R in RPG, which is in question, and of 4e formal roles), is prettymuch inevitable. Unless your character is utterly passive (even then it might have some sort of observer or victim function in the story) and/or utterly useless, neither of which is typical.

your hypothesis that the "role" in "role-playing games" equates with "filling a role at the table" just doesn't work with the totally of role-playing games. Role as "function" is not an adequate description.

Not by itself, but it is an indispensable aspect of the role in RPG, just as embodying a personality is. You can completely avoid having a meaningful function (any sort of 'player agency'), if you're portraying a personality in a scripted exercise, like an actual play (not an improvised one, either), and, at that point, you're not playing an RPG.

By the same token, you can completely avoid having any sort of personality for the pawn you're using in a game, as in a boardgame.

Both cases are too extreme and limiting to be legitimate characterizations of the R in RPG, and would end up excluding legitimate styles as "not really RPing."

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Which edition are you referring to?

My earlier comments covered all of them. In which either there are rules for setting things on fire so it is no different from a board game that has rules for setting things on fire, or in which there are no rules for setting things on fire so the players of the game are left to implement their own rules for that, or choose not to allow that action, just like can be done with a board game.

The range of possible moves in a boardgame is set by the rules. The range of possible action declarations in a RPG is set primarily by the shared fiction.

I find that the range of possible moves in both are set by a mixture of the rules of the game and the rules applied by the people playing. The "shared fiction" being a thing that occurs as a result of play taking its course by the rules chosen to be used, not a thing which determines what the rules are - and it's also a thing which exists in board games, though people tend to focus less upon it while playing a board game than they would while playing an RPG.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Not by itself, but it is an indispensable aspect of the role in RPG, just as embodying a personality is. You can completely avoid having a meaningful function (any sort of 'player agency'), if you're portraying a personality in a scripted exercise, like an actual play (not an improvised one, either), and, at that point, you're not playing an RPG.

FWIW, I don't think that's an accurate characterization of what acting does. Much like when performing a musical piece (and in some ways more), performing a scripted role involves the performer making choices about that performance, each time the performance happens, that give each performance subtly different nuances and in some cases can change the meaning dramatically.

Not to mention improvisational pieces that don't rely on scripts but still have an authenticity to them, especially as they gather elements.

Or to maybe translate it a bit to jargon: the performer always has agency over their performance.

I could imagine a TTRPG that was tightly scripted, where the "game" part happened in the performance of that script to create different meanings from it. Perhaps you could realize different goals for the characters or create and resolve different conflicts from the same bits of dialogue and setting.

I don't know that it'd be very interesting aside from a thought experiment, but there's a lot of actor's exercises that use that as a "mechanic" to get one to explore how deeply performance can affect meaning.

 

[Tony Vargas]

FWIW, I don't think that's an accurate characterization of what acting does.

I'm not an actor, so I'll take your word for it.

Not to mention improvisational pieces that don't rely on scripts but still have an authenticity to them, especially as they gather elements.

Actually, I /did/ mention improvisation as an exception to the example. I'd think (from my outsider perspective) that improv theatre would have more in common with an RPG than scripted. But then the improvised character will also have to create a function for itself within the story.

 

[Satyrn]

I rather read the poll's question as asking us if we consider our PCs as pawns in a game or as characters in a fiction. I mostly play in what some people here call Pawn Stance, so I chose the first option. But I also always mix that in with the Actor Stance, what the second option seems to refer to.

The poll really seems to me to be asking us, through implication, "can an rpg played solely in pawn stance?" And to that I say: Theoretically, yes, but I doubt anyone does.

 

[pemerton]

I understand the persona role to be the fiction.

As I read Gygax's AD&D rulebooks, the key elements of the fiction are "You're in a narrow dungeon corridor", "You're in a dark room with a stream flowing through it", "You see a corroded tube in the stream", etc. Not "You're wearing yellow and are afraid of spiders".

"Moves" in the game then become things like "I walk down the corridor", "I light a torch to better get a look at the stream", "I poke the corrodied tube with my staff", etc. If you look at the example of play in Gygax's DMG, the closet we get to an expression of personality is the (unnamed) cleric describinb a giant spider as "nasty". I think that's a pretty generic personality.

But we get a lot of interaction with the shared fiction - poking things, climbing things, looking at things, trying to grab the spider and hurl it to the ground, etc - it's just that all that interaction is defined in functional terms: activities to which the players turn their characters.

I understand the functional role, so far as it is separable from the persona, to be the "gamey" element.

But in D&D the game doesn't contrast with the fiction. Playing the game is engaging the fiction. If you can define your game moves in purely mechanical terms, without reference to the fiction at all, then it's not RPGing. D&D combat sometimes comes close to this (attack, damage, AC, etc are all defined in purely mechanical terms) but its terrain and movement/positioning rules involve adjudicating the fiction.

The core question of the poll and original post pretty much demands that we pick one. Basically, the only meaningful way I can read the question is, "What is role playing: a) focus on the fiction or b) focus on the game mechanics?"

The poll doesn't ask "What is role playing?" It asks "How do you primarily think of roleplaying?"

I'm not arguing that anyone is wrong to think of roleplaying in terms of personality. I'm explaining how it might also be thought of in terms of function/capability, and how that would nevertheless be RPGing as opposed to boardgaming, because it still means engaging with the fiction via a defined persona. It's not about who is right, because it can be true for me that I think of RPing primarily as X, and for you that you think of RPing primarily as Y, and provided that X and Y aren't things that bear no connection to RPing, we might both make perfect sense.

The OP even went into some detail to elaborate the two ways of thinking about roleplaying, and to posit some ways in which the functional approach might bleed into the personality approach.

Building on those conjectures about "bleeding" in the OP, I'm also - but this is somewhat secondary - arguing that "function" is how "role" was presented in some early game texts, but that there is a change in that presentation somewhere in the mid-80s. That historical argument is interesting to me, but secondary to the premise and question of the thread.