D&D General Has the meaning of "roleplaying" changed since 1e?

[The-Magic-Sword]

Let's not get bogged down in the single example though. The point of the example is that there are a pretty broad swath of games that we wouldn't call role playing games - Magic The Gathering, Warhammer 40K (the tabletop wargame, not the RPG obviously), Halo, PUBG, etc. If our definition is so broad that it sweeps up all these games that no one would ever call RPG's, then the definition is too broad.

It's like an old user here used to claim that RPG's were all puzzle games and nothing but puzzle games. It really doesn't work, even though you can make a pretty good argument about why some puzzle games are RPG's.

Again, it's got nothing to do with gatekeeping. It's about having a useful definition. If I pull up to an RPG night at the FLGS and everyone is playing Catan, I might have a great time because Catan is a great game, but, not exactly what I would classify as an RPG.

Look, honestly, I really am a big tent kind of guy. I do believe that there are a huge variety of games that fit under the umbrella of RPG and will argue until my face falls off that 4e D&D is an RPG. But, at the same time, I don't consider basketball to be an RPG. I get that genre definitions are porous. Sure, that's true. But, not so porous that they become meaningless.

I think the problem is that you could be said to be roleplaying during all of those activities because a roleplaying game is in the business of emulating experiences through play, and those all involve emulating roles through play. The fact that we wouldn't call them roleplaying games isn't really abrogating that, in fact most video game histories I've taken in have primarily classified the video game RPG as the lineage of games based off Dungeons and Dragons and spun off from there, so its somewhat circular-- in the end I wouldn't consider that to be a commentary on some essential truth of the thing its discussing, and even if it were, its probably isn't the substance of roleplaying that its referring to, but a historical lineage.

When you play Halo, you take on the role of Master Chief, and the ways the game allows you to interact with the world are ways appropriate to Master Chief, when you play the game well its by playing your Master Chief more like the ideal of Master Chief set up by the game-- a certified super soldier skillfully blasting their way through alien hordes, you are roleplaying, although with a very different emphasis than might be around the table.

Sure enough I've seen plenty of 'our kind' of roleplaying in video games too, especially in MMOs and tacticool military shooters like Planetside or Arma, as well as survival games like Conan Exiles where people pour thousands of hours into the roleplaying. Similarly, you brought up Catan... but RPing is a major way people enjoy the entire 4x strategy genre like in Stellaris or Crusader Kings, and it would not be hard to start RPing in Catan, though you'd probably want to inform the other players, I've done it! I'm actually very prone to roleplaying in games that have thematics. I actually play Magic for the fantasy of dueling super powered magic users, and to me the metagame and the strategy enhances that. I play competitive pokemon to feel immersed in the experience of being a trainer, because its the level of the game that best captures that narrative sense of striving, and the rivalry, and the feeling of making your own way.

I think that this definition is useful because it lets us understand the essential act of roleplaying as it exists in all the different things it appears, the purpose of the definition isn't to delineate what is and is not a roleplaying game, but to understand the act of roleplaying itself wherever it appears, and then bring that back to learn lessons that enhance our play of the games. Its a definition that explores the concept of roleplaying rather than constraining it, it shows me that I roleplay through by embracing the game's mechanics, rather than by fighting them. There's a harmony to be had and richness of immersion if you don't see the metagame as separate from the roleplaying.

 

[Hussar]

So maybe my conclusion is that I disagree with your definition: roleplaying isn't when you filter your decisions through what you think your imaginary character would do. Roleplaying is when you feel like you are that character. Even if that character is just Blue Fighter.

I think our points aren't all that far apart to be honest. I think we're more getting tripped up on the details and ignoring the forest. "Feel like you are that character" is certainly a good enough definition for me. Because, in a non-rpg, I never feel like the Shoe in Monopoly or Mario driving a Kart. It's a bit touchy feelie and nebulous, sure, but, I'd certainly be able to live with your definition.

 

[Hussar]

it would not be hard to start RPing in Catan, though you'd probably want to inform the other players, I've done it!

I agree. I mean, heck, you can role play in Chess if you wanted to. But, my point is that the game certainly doesn't expect it. And, like you said, nobody at the table expects it either. There's a very good reason you'd want to inform the other players.

But, from the game's perspective, the game certainly doesn't reward you or give a slightest fig if you role play or not. It's not part of that game. Same with Magic. There is zero expectation from the game that you are going to try to role play. There's nothing stopping you, of course, but, the game certainly doesn't care one way or the other.

This is why I look at things like AD&D or Basic/Expert and barely consider them to be role playing games. Sure, there is the opening description, but, beyond that, there's practically nothing in the game that promotes any sort of role play. You have your character, rolled randomly, you typically don't even bother naming it before about third level, because, well, why bother? Backstory is barely even mentioned. There's no reward and no punishment for not role playing because the game frankly couldn't care less how involved you are with your character because, back then, role playing meant what @Ovinomancer is talking about - sitting down and playing D&D is good enough.

If I sat down with my Fytor character, no back story, zero personality, absolutely no engagement with the setting, and during play, I barely interact with NPC's or even the other characters, am I actually role playing? I don't think so. Back then, that was the norm of play. Now? Now you are rewarded in the mechanics for having backstory, personality, ideals and bonds. It's rudimentary compared to other games, but, at least it's there. You are rewarded with Inspiration for playing your character.

And, once we move beyond D&D, we see that role play is a key element in pretty much any non-D&D based game. Could you imagine playing Call of Cthulu with zero back story and zero engagement with NPC's or the setting?

 

[Hussar]

So another fundamental difference here might be in how developed our starting characters are. I usually start with a build* that interests me, then come up with a one or two sentence story that both makes sense with the build and sounds fun to me. Everything else about the character I "discover" in play.

*And by "build" I usually just mean a race/class combination, with an intended sub-class, and maybe some signature spells or a feat I want.

Potato, potahto. I mean, on the flip side, you have games like Traveller with their Life Path character creation system. Or the chargen system in Fate as another example. Depends on the game.

Either way though, the goal is developing a character. Whether you start with one that's largely fleshed out, or start with one that's barely an outline, by the end of the campaign, one would expect that character to be a pretty distinctive individual.

And if it's not. if that outline character is still just the same outline 10, 15 levels later, are you really role playing?

 

[Bird Of Play]

My two cents: I see the acting part and the hack-and-slash part to be two opposites of a line; on any given rpg the indicator on the line can be placed anywhere from the middle to one of the two extremes. It depends both on the rpg itself and on what the players want.

Now let's say that 0% means full hack-n-slash experience, and 100% means complete acting without even a battle or a dice roll.
My personal preference is, let's say, around 70%-ish, more or less. A full acting without battles just doesn't feel like an rpg, and dice rolls make everything so deliciously impredictable.

As for the meaning of "role-play"..... well, technically it literally means playing a role, but I guess even a silent token without personality that casts spells can still count as roleplaying as wizard?

 

[Aldarc]

And unless the PCs were in a situation where they could reasonably have been given such advice in the fiction (e.g. recruited by an established Adventuring Company who could have given some basic pointers) I would agree. Once they've learned by trial and error, all is good.

Which is creating a different metagame for your table where everyone has to go through a farcical song and dance routine before they can actually know anything.

However, if some versions of (1) are defined as being (2), then what?

Then we toss out those versions because (1) and (2) are not the same thing, and nothing good is gained by falsely holding to the idea that they are the same thing.

 

[Lyxen]

No, they are your definitions, because you're bringing in something that isn't actually there and insisting this is the only way it can be. Like how you added "improvise" when I pointed out that actors have lines and directors. This isn't there -- you added it as special pleading to defend against the point I made.

"This is a role-playing game. That means that you will be like an actor, imagining that you are someone else, and pretending to be that character. You won’t need a stage, though, and you won’t need costumes or scripts. You only need to imagine."

What does an actor when there is no script and he is told to imagine ? Imagination comes twice in that paragraph. I'm not trying to get you to do anything, It's not a trick question. Like everything in the game, you do what you want, it's only limited by your imagination.

My take on roleplaying is 100% coherent with the quote you've posted. An actor takes on a role, and I'm taking on a role like that when I pick my class and play as such in an imaginary world. There's nothing in there that requires my playacting, or using a silly voice, or even setting goals for my character (and, honestly, if the player is picking these, we are we reifying them as character goals instead of still being player goals for the character?).

So fo you roleplaying is taking on the role of the wizard in a party of adventurers on an imaginary world, right ? I'm not betraying your words here ?

 

[Bill Zebub]

And if it's not. if that outline character is still just the same outline 10, 15 levels later, are you really role playing?

Well, like I said, that's pretty much what my first character was. And, yes, it was roleplaying.

As for today, if I played a long-term game with somebody who seemed to do the same thing, and their character never had any discernible depth or any personality, and just seemed like Blue Fighter or Red Wizard, but I still got the sense that they were emotionally invested in their character....yes, I'd still call it roleplaying.

 

[Mannahnin]

"This is a role-playing game. That means that you will be like an actor, imagining that you are someone else, and pretending to be that character. You won’t need a stage, though, and you won’t need costumes or scripts. You only need to imagine."

What does an actor when there is no script and he is told to imagine ? Imagination comes twice in that paragraph. I'm not trying to get you to do anything, It's not a trick question. Like everything in the game, you do what you want, it's only limited by your imagination.

Roleplaying encompasses a range of activities, most essential of which is making decisions for a character who has a role in a game. This could be Falstaff the Fighter, referenced by Gary in the 1E books, or it could be The Mighty Thor, if I'm playing a Marvel Superheroes game. Or it could be Bjorn Honeycakes, a largely stick-figure character with a single ability score (Strength!) if I'm playing TWERPS: Vikings and Beekeepers. If I'm playing The Mighty Thor I will likely adopt a deeper voice and a faux-Jacobean/Shakespearian diction and vocabulary per the classic comics, but I'm probably not going to do a lot of in-depth examinations of Thor's internal motivations and conflicts.

The level of characterization, the vividness of the personality, the degree of "you are there" immersion, whether your portrayal includes any kind of hand gestures, different voices or accents or diction or vocabulary, are widely variable. The 5E (and older) books describe speaking in the first person, for example, as entirely optional. Describing what your character does in the third person is a valid play style, and still roleplaying.

I think the imagining we do as roleplayers is substantially different from the imagining an actor does. An actor's imagination is focused principally on the character and his internal life, his motivations and relationships to the other characters. It spends virtually no energy on the setting and world- they have costumes and sets for that. Their priority is to entertain an audience and convey the themes of the story to that audience. Whereas as roleplayers our imagination is principally occupied with entertaining ourselves (and to some extent our fellow players) envisioning a whole world, and immaterial NPCs who exist in the DM's description and our mind, not as a bunch of other actors on a stage with us. We likely also spend time imagining our character's motivations and feelings, but to what extent is highly variable.

 

[Lyxen]

Roleplaying encompasses a range of activities, most essential of which is making decisions for a character who has a role in a game. This could be Falstaff the Fighter, referenced by Gary in the 1E books, or it could be The Mighty Thor, if I'm playing a Marvel Superheroes game. Or it could be Bjorn Honeycakes, a largely stick-figure character with a single ability score (Strength!) if I'm playing TWERPS: Vikings and Beekeepers.

The level of characterization, the vividness of the personality, the degree of "you are there" immersion, whether your portrayal includes any kind of hand gestures, different voices or accepts or diction or vocabulary, are widely variable. The 5E (and older) books describe speaking in the first person, for example, as entirely optional. Describing what your character does in the third person is a valid play style, and still roleplaying. If I'm playing The Mighty Thor I will likely adopt a deeper voice and a faux-Jacobean/Shakespearian diction and vocabulary per the classic comics, but I'm probably not going to do a lot of in-depth examinations of Thor's internal motivations and conflicts.

I think the imagining we do as roleplayers is substantially different from the imagining an actor does. An actor's imagination is focused principally on the character and his internal life, his motivations and relationships to the other characters. It spends virtually no energy on the setting and world- they have costumes and sets for that. Whereas as roleplayers our imagination is principally occupied with envisioning a whole world, and immaterial NPCs who exist in the DM's description and our mind, not as a bunch of other actors on a stage with us. We likely also spend time imagining our character's motivations and feelings, but to what extent is highly variable.

Once more, I'm not here to judge, and I feel it a bit sad that some people find themselves judged by what are only definitions from published books. My problem is certainly not whether people are roleplaying or not at their table (I could not care less, unless for people wanting to discuss how they do it and discuss the feelings or the benefits), but people attacking the definitions themselves, taking words out of context, ignoring anything but single words and in general rules lawyering the poor text to death, all in the hope of what ?

I'm not even saying that these are good definitions, it's just what we had at the time to guide us, especially us overseas from the US where we only had the text and absolutely zero culture to rely on.

Of course, there are tons of things that you can deduce from these definitions, and ways to portray your character. Things that some people enjoy or not, that they are good at or not. I'm not even a good voice actor, although I did try, when I was in the UK to change my French accent to a german one for some NPC and it sort of worked, these days, I'm even using a voice changer over discord for some of my devils/demons/undead for example. So it's not even about this.

My only intent was to show, in accordance with the subject of this thread, that I don't think that the meaning has substantially changed from 40 years ago. There have been refinements, corrections, better formulation, a lot of advice, but I don't think that the core concept has changed a lot.

And as an example, I spoke of our groups who started with these very few paragraphs, deduced a way of playing that seemed to reflect the intent of the books, certainly changed a bit over the years, but actually not that much, and still find that, when looking at the current definitions, not only did they not change that much, but our way of playing has not change significantly either, and it still matches more or less all the definitions found throughout the editions. So no, not much change.