D&D General Styles of Roleplaying and Characters

[pemerton]

I never answered this: I hadn't really thought about it, but maybe it's because I've DM'd that adventure? Or the DM slipped up with his layering in our VTT? Or I noticed that every square with a Fibonacci number is trapped but my 7 Int barbarian wouldn't know that? Does it matter?

But that got me thinking. Let's say it's the math answer: I, the player, have realized there's a pattern to the traps, and with two squares to choose from, I'm pretty sure one is trapped, but my thick-skulled barbarian probably wouldn't know that. How does one handle it? (Note: I really don't want to make this about which option is "true roleplaying" I just think it's interesting to discuss how different people would do it.)

Here are some options I can think of:
- Act on it or announce it because...why not? What's the problem here? 7 Int isn't a vegetable, and sometimes not-bright people have flashes of insight.
- Say nothing and let the rest of the party decide what to do.
- Let the dice decide for you with an ability check
- Choose the correct path, but give a roleplaying reason, e.g. mysterious sixth sense for traps, "damn the torpedoes", etc. (Note: this doesn't necessarily mean you are deceiving the rest of the table; they may be ok with this style of play.)
- Intentionally make the wrong choice

What else?

Oh, and the follow-up question is: let's say the player is right and there is a trap on square 55...or at least the DM has previously decided there is one there...but the DM has their own ideas about how this should unfold. Is it ok to change the location of the trap after the player has made their decision? With or without saying anything aloud?

To me, this post seems to bring out some of the fundamental issues with this idea of suboptimality - ie the relationship between portraying one's character and the goals of play.

If a goal of play is to solve a puzzle - be that doing a crossword with friends, or playing Cluedo, or even something a bit more open-ended like working out how to get down the frictionless corridor with the super-tetanus-spiked pits in White Plume Mountain - then suggesting that, as a player, I have to refrain from solving the puzzle or keep my solution secret is just silly. I mean of course we get corner cases - if we're playing a back-and-forth riddle game and you use one of the riddles from The Hobbit and I remember it, then that's an unfair advantage; and if we put that into a group context, then it makes sense for me to tell everyone else "I know this one, so I'll sit out unless you all get stumped." But it would be a sign of things having gone wrong if all or even most of the play was like that. It was precisely to avoid such degenerate play that early D&D was so prolific in coming up with new tricks, traps and monsters.

I honestly don't know how Gygax, or Lewis Pulsipher, or anyone else from the early era approached INT scores in the context of Fibonacci puzzles like the one you describe. But speaking as an experienced game player and role player, in my view it would be ridiculous to include that sort of puzzle in your game but then insist that players mediate their solving of it via imaging themselves to be not very good at solving puzzles! So I doubt that they did it in that way.

In other words, the idea that RPGing means pretending to solve, or alternatively be stumped by, puzzles to which everyone already actually knows the answer strikes me as just silly. It's a byproduct of reuse of the early games tricks and traps, an of treating the goal of play not being to solve them, but to imagine what it might be like for someone to be confronted by them. That's typically not terribly interesting to imagine even as an audience - eg in LotR, when we come to the Moria door riddle, our focus as readers is on the solution to the riddle, not Gandalf's extended mental struggle trying to solve it - and it's doubly not that interesting to portray as a RPGer.

When I think about sitting down to portray my innumerate PC in a RPG, portraying his/her inability to solve a Fibonacci trap that has to be overcome to progress the game is not at the top of my list of anticipated gripping moments! (In one of our RM games, the scout PC was innumerate. So when he scouted a group larger than about three I would tell the player some or lots and he would duly report that back to the other players. It was a recurring joke, but not the highlight of the campaign.)

 

[prabe]

Easy: the character's going along on adventures x y and z only because they'll help advance her own stories a b and c, and has no interest in any story that might make x y and z relevant in any other way and-or to anyone else.

And after z, she'll leave to pursue her own interests elsewhere.

I would say that's a character who's not invested in the larger story, but I think they're still connected to it. That is, however, a difference in viewpoint and word choice, and I see your larger point--and I agree the player has the last word on how connected their character is, maybe past a minimum to make the game work. And, yes, I know we have different ideas of what "work" would mean in that context.

 

[Campbell]

@Manbearcat

Not sure my answers will be all that instructive. All that follows are personal aesthetic judgements and not indications of how roleplaying games should be played on a general basis (unless you want to play with me).

I prefer decent amount of research and prep go into player characters before play. I like thinking about in much the same way I would look at preparing for a role when I did amateur theater. The intent is to have enough meat to hang my creative decisions off of and get a feel for a character.

This is pretty indicative of the amount of preparation I go through for most games (although most lack the formal process L5R has) :


I think prep or research is the right word for it. At least in the early stages I try not to get too invested or locked down by these decisions. We might need to work together as a group to make adjustments until the alchemy of play feels right. Character concepts as a thing feels somewhat off to me personally. Being emotionally invested before play or even being invested in the status quo of any character means I cannot really focus on playing the character in the moment in the way I feel I should.

I think ownership is largely immaterial. Even if we own our characters they are like money we bet in poker. We might not get them back the same way. For it to be a game where our decisions matter we have to be willing to risk what we have.

I personally place a much larger priority on character than scenario. The entire purpose of a scenario should be to expose some form of disruption of the status quo that lets us find out more about these characters, what they value, and the risks they are willing to take. Scenarios should be fictional scenarios not paths to walk down.

I won't attempt to answer your final question except to say for me personally play challenging my conception of who my character is is like the entire damn point.

 

[pemerton]

There can be a lot of friction in dnd between the motivations of an individual character, the motivations of the party, and the "motivations" in a sense, of the adventure. So you can make a character in 3d, but there will also be advice to make that character someone who gets along with the party, has a reason to be friendly towards them (no pvp), and has a reason to go on adventures. There are further moments when the motivations of the group might misalign with the adventure--maybe the party doesn't want to help stop the hobgoblin army, they want to go to the plane of water, etc.

<snip>

What if one of your 3-d characters feels the need to travel back home to make sure their family was safe, while other members of the party want to continue on to the adventure site. Dnd doesn't have a good way of handling this kind of split-screening in general, but Colvile's soft railroading is probably the worst way of doing it? He's basically taking the character's dimensionality and saying no, you can't do that here. When this happens more than a few times, players stop trying, because they find themselves as 3d characters in a 1d world..

Here, again, we see the tension between the goal of play is to complete the mission and the goal of play is to portray one's character. As I posted in reply to @Umbran, there are RPG designs that tackle this tension more successfully than standard D&D does, like MHRP. Although even in MHRP it's not just the XP rules that are different - those rules also assume that the players have a degree of authority over backstory that is different from typical D&D (eg deciding how their PC knows a newly-introduced NPC) and also that intra-party conflict isn't inimical to resolving the mission (this is achieved in at least two ways: non-attrition resolution of conflict; and PC capabilities rated (in part) as Team, Buddy or Solo meaning that splitting the party isn't always a recipe for disadvantage).

But I think the most fundamental solution is to drop the mission as the goal of play. Christopher Kubasik wrote about this nearly 30 years ago (don't be fooled by the date on the webpage - it's a reprint); I've s-blocked for length:

Spoiler

The basic plot form of a story is this: A central character wants something, goes after it despite opposition, and arrives at a win, lose or draw. All roleplaying games involve this basic plot in one form or another.

Dungeon & Dragons fulfilled this requirement brilliantly and simply. Characters wanted experience points and wanted to gain levels. Any other want they might have had – social, political or personal – was subsumed within the acquisition of levels. Did you want social recognition? A greater understanding of the ways of magic? Influence over people as a religious leader? Pretty much anything your character might have wanted was acquired by gaining levels.

Dungeon modules worked for this very reason. A D&D character who wanted to become a lord didn’t go off and court a princess. He became a lord by wandering around dungeons, killing monsters and overcoming traps. The game offered no rules for courting a princess, but did provide rules for becoming a lord at 10th level, after looting enough arbitrarily placed holes in the ground.

Modules disintegrated the moment a player got the bright idea of having his character become a lord by courting a princess. Suddenly the world opened up. Instead of getting what they wanted by pursuing a single activity – namely, overcoming traps and monsters characters now wanted to interact with people, gaining what they wanted through individual action and detailed plots.

The motivation behind hitting on the princess rather than crawling through a series of traps is obvious. First, and perhaps most importantly for some, the idea of wooing a princess was more fun than hanging out in a dungeon. Second, just because the rules didn’t say anything about wooing didn’t mean you couldn’t do it. As we all know, the minute an idea pops into a player’s head, he’s going to try it. Third, the goofiness of acquiring the title of lord by looting holes grated against the sensibilities of many players. They wanted to become lords in ways that made sense.

Games released since the advent of D&D have wildly opened up the narrative possibilities of adventures. The dungeon vanished, replaced by the settings of AD&D’s Forgotten Realms, Traveller’s Imperium, Star Wars’ Empire and Vampire’s World of Darkness.

Unfortunately, characters in many games still have to stick it out as a group. Since dungeon crawling no longer provides a focus for group activity, characters are often hired, as in Traveller or Shadowrun, or wait around for something bad to happen that they can put an end to, as in most super-hero games. . . .

Remember the adventurer who left the dungeon to woo a princess? Before he did that he assumed that if he trashed enough dungeons, a princess would be his once he got to 10th level. His motivations and desires were subsumed within the group activity of exploring dungeons.

Let’s say this guy – Charise d’Amor, a lovable rake who’s trying to marry a rich princess – is your character. You arrive at the gaming table and see the GM crack open a new pre-generated adventure, “The Quest of Tallian’s Orb.”

A busy wizard hires your group of adventurers to steal back a magical orb that keeps the fair land of Tallian safe from terrible monsters. He tells you what he knows about the theft of the orb. You’re on the doorstep of a scene-based module. You know the goal, the clues and the options of what to do next.

Let’s assume the author has done a good job. The clues presented are intriguing, not obvious. The characters encountered are amusing and full of life. The scene descriptions help the GM evoke the proper mood. Every, thing is going fine.

And then the princess shows up. The module’s author just put the princess in because she was a fun character who would have some information about the orb’s location. You see, the guy who wrote the module didn’t know your character is Charise d’Amor.

Suddenly your character doesn’t care about finding the orb. The only reason he’s out searching for an orb in the first place is to pull together enough cash for a suitable set of clothes and an introduction to royalty. But now he’s got a princess right in front of him. You could play “out hours of flirting with the princess. The story suddenly fractures into tiny pieces.

Does everybody wait around for Charise to woo the princess? Do the others leave your character behind? Do you blow the princess off to stay with the group, even though your character’s motivation is right in front of him?

It could be worse. Could the module’s author have known that one of the players’ characters, Bombim the Barbarian, believes that wizards are the scourge of the planet and he’ll never take a job from one? Nope. The whole adventure would end before it begins. Sure, the GM can change the module, refitting circumstances and character choices to match the party. But then why buy it in the first place? . . .

In most roleplaying stories, the plot is indifferent to the characters. You can drop any character in, and it works fine. This phenomenon goes back to roleplaying’s heritage in wargaming. It didn’t matter why armies fought. All that mattered were choices during battle and the battle’s outcome. The same can be said for a dungeon crawl or mercenary adventure story.

But as you build more sophisticated characters, characters with more detailed dreams, desires and quirks, stories much change correspondingly. If not, they remain clunky, leaving players and GMs with a vague dissatisfaction: “How come we did all that work on our characters if it didn’t matter?” . . .

Changing the nature of adventure modules to suit these more sophisticated games doesn’t help. The problem is with the structure and format of the adventures themselves. We keep stapling new ideas on top of old ones, putting more interesting characters into formats designed for dungeon crawls. If you want more interesting characters, you have to take the risk of having more interesting stories.

 

[Hussar]

Heh, this looks a lot like that "Has the definition of roleplaying changed" thread. Funny. I said pretty much exactly the same thing Matt Collville said - and got pilloried and accused of badwrongfun. But, I guess when you're a popular personality, it's easier to get your message across.

 

[Maxperson]

If people are playing a game with the goal of succeeding at the mission, and they have a miserable time playing, then don't they need to revisit their choice of game?

I don't see that RPGs are very different from other games in this respect.

Why would the DM's failure to provide a good time playing the game mean that they need to change games?

 

[Malmuria]

Heh, this looks a lot like that "Has the definition of roleplaying changed" thread. Funny. I said pretty much exactly the same thing Matt Collville said - and got pilloried and accused of badwrongfun. But, I guess when you're a popular personality, it's easier to get your message across.

Look, I'm trying my hardest to pillory Matt Colville here!

 

[Ovinomancer]

Heh, this looks a lot like that "Has the definition of roleplaying changed" thread. Funny. I said pretty much exactly the same thing Matt Collville said - and got pilloried and accused of badwrongfun. But, I guess when you're a popular personality, it's easier to get your message across.

Not to relitigate, but I wouldn't call your characterization of early D&D editions as "not even roleplaying games" as being aligned what Colville is saying in his video. YMMV.

 

[Blue]

Here, again, we see the tension between the goal of play is to complete the mission and the goal of play is to portray one's character.

Except that the goal of play is neither of those. The goal of play is to have fun and bring fun to everyone at the table. Period, indisputable. If you are playing and not having fun, you are not accomplishing the primary goal of the hobby. If you are having fun by making other people miserable, you are also not accomplishing the goal of a social hobby like D&D.

What brings you personally fun, or fun to other people at the table, might be having your character accomplish things, or portraying your character, or figuring out puzzles, or crunchy tactical combat, or whatever - and likely a combination of all of them. But it is flat wrong to say that the goal of the hobby is to do anything but for the group to enjoy themselves - that's why you play/run, and that is the only way to "win" D&D.

A task like "solving the adventure" might be at one table a big pursuit of fun, and at another table halving a session where inter-party drama bubbles up and there's hefty arguments, making up, PC secrets unveiled, and a romance" without any progress on an adventure might be great fun for another table that session.

Heck, pursuit of fun might be "I get to spend more time with my significant other, meet their friends, and get to understand more about this time-sink hobby they engage in" for a player.

A discussion that puts forth a goal other than "this is how I pursuit enjoyment" is really talking at a remove from the real goal of the hobby, and is pretty sure is not universal as different folks like different parts of the hobby. It's not a steady foundation to have a debate on.

 

[Malmuria]

Except that the goal of play is neither of those. The goal of play is to have fun and bring fun to everyone at the table. Period, indisputable. If you are playing and not having fun, you are not accomplishing the primary goal of the hobby. If you are having fun by making other people miserable, you are also not accomplishing the goal of a social hobby like D&D.

What brings you personally fun, or fun to other people at the table, might be having your character accomplish things, or portraying your character, or figuring out puzzles, or crunchy tactical combat, or whatever - and likely a combination of all of them. But it is flat wrong to say that the goal of the hobby is to do anything but for the group to enjoy themselves - that's why you play/run, and that is the only way to "win" D&D.

A task like "solving the adventure" might be at one table a big pursuit of fun, and at another table halving a session where inter-party drama bubbles up and there's hefty arguments, making up, PC secrets unveiled, and a romance" without any progress on an adventure might be great fun for another table that session.

Heck, pursuit of fun might be "I get to spend more time with my significant other, meet their friends, and get to understand more about this time-sink hobby they engage in" for a player.

A discussion that puts forth a goal other than "this is how I pursuit enjoyment" is really talking at a remove from the real goal of the hobby, and is pretty sure is not universal as different folks like different parts of the hobby. It's not a steady foundation to have a debate on.

Certainly the goal is to have fun. I think what @pemerton is referencing is the possibility that "3D Roleplaying" and dungeons and dragons specifically (and not the ttrpg hobby more generally) might be misaligned. This is part system, part play culture, part genre emulation. So for example basic dnd does dungeon crawling very well, the culture of people interested in that game support that play style, and together a pulp sword and sorcery genre is emulated. Fun! Does the same game do romance well? I'm sure it's possible and has been done, but mostly because the open-endedness of ttrpgs makes so that invested players can bend a system or abandon it to do something for which it was not designed.