D&D General Styles of Roleplaying and Characters

[Bill Zebub]

I don't know if "less sophisticated" is right. It's just bad play.

If we're thinking about White Plume Mountain as performance for an audience, then - at the point where we have to cross over the hanging discs - it might be amusing for me to suddenly lean into my PCs fear of heights. But if we're playing to win the tournament (and before I get dogpiled, yes I know S2 was never actually a tournament module but it would be well-suited to being one) then the player on our team who does that is just a spoiler. They've misunderstood the context of the activity we're all engaged in.

I don't think that discussion of tactical play in a RPG has to use the same analytic and evaluative vocabulary as the discussion of the portrayal of characters - where notions like shallow, sophisticated and the like do have purchase because we're engaged in aesthetic judgement. When it comes to tactics, I think relevant notions are more like clever, bold, overly cautious, etc.

Not sure I agree with that. I do think that complex tactical play is a more "sophisticated" approach.

Ok, I did just look up the definition, and found two:
"having, revealing, or proceeding from a great deal of worldly experience and knowledge of fashion and culture."
and
"(of a machine, system, or technique) developed to a high degree of complexity."

Seems to me that the former applies to roleplaying, and the latter to mechanics/tactics.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Problem: not all roleplaying games have "improvement" in the classic D&D sense.



So, this is a misuse of "method acting". Method acting is a technical approach to acting (called "the method"). It is when the actor literally works themselves into the emotional state their character has, in order to have a "true" performance. If the character is enraged, the actor is enraged. If the character is sobbing in misery, the actor is in misery. Typically, this is achieved by the actor reaching back into their own past for things that made them feel rage, or misery, and re-living them to re-induce the emotional state.^*

Colville simply talks about doing something your character would that you wouldn't. Like, I am basically a law-abiding person, but my dwarf character may be a thieving jackhole who regularly and literally stabs innocent people in the back to get their valuables. If so, I am choosing actions for the character that I personally would not, but I'm not personally living the emotion behind that choice in the process.





*There's some evidence that, in the long term, method acting causes psychological damage to the actor. By repeatedly reliving their own traumas to act, they do not resolve those traumas, and instead deepen their psychological wounds. The practice isn't very common any more, for that reason.

This is interesting given the fairly robust findings about exposure and other therapies for trauma.

much of what we find is that avoidance keeps folks from habituation as well as restructuring cognitions about trauma.

 

[overgeeked]

This is interesting given the fairly robust findings about exposure and other therapies for trauma.

much of what we find is that avoidance keeps folks from habituation as well as restructuring cognitions about trauma.

Maybe the goal is the middle ground between obsessively avoiding and obsessively focusing on trauma.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Maybe in your games lack romance, personal commitments and things other than the "mission". That's not the fault, nor responsibility of the game rules. My games have plenty.

We play a reasonably heavy RP game. That means relationships and personal interactions of all sorts happen organically based on what the player believes their PC would think and do. Having rules that dictate what a PC thinks or feels is the last thing I would want.

So. Again. What would so called "support" look like?

You've mistaken what you do as not having rules when, in fact, you do. You've replaced any mechanics involving dice with mechanics that involve authorities, GM-says, or consensus story building. If a player says their character falls in love, they do, and that's authority standing in place of mechanics. Whatever the GM does in response to that is GM-says in the place of mechanics, and if there's an arrangement where everyone gets a bit of input, then you have consensus story building in the place of mechanics.

You're elevating the idea of consensus or GM-led storytelling as somehow mechanics free and pure vs systems that add some random element to the process to simulate the fact that none of us are truly masters of ourselves.

 

[pemerton]

Maybe in your games lack romance, personal commitments and things other than the "mission". That's not the fault, nor responsibility of the game rules. My games have plenty.

I don't know what your criterion for plenty is. Or how you reconcile that with the GM-authored combat encounters that a part of your game (as per other posts of yours that I read).

I know what techniques I use in my RPGing (which is not D&D, and not "mission" based).

Having rules that dictate what a PC thinks or feels is the last thing I would want.

OK.

What would so called "support" look like?

Marvel Heroic RP - in particular, its Milestone rules.

Burning Wheel - the whole of the systems for relationships, reputations, affiliations, Circles checks, and Duels of Wits.

Apocalypse World - the carrot and/or stick consequence for one player (in the play of their PC) when another player (via their PC) succeeds on Seduce/Manipulate vs them.

Also Apocalypse World - having the bonus on a check made to help or hinder another PC depend on the degree to which the first character knows the other; with that being something that is kept track of as part of the course of play (via the Hx stat).

Prince Valiant - having a NPC use an Incite Lust effect on a PC.

In my old RM campaigns - rolling a Depression crit for a PC when something terrible happened to someone the PC really cared about.

Any approach to the setting of goals that doesn't mandate, in advance, what is "central" to play and what is "peripheral" - so (eg) abandoning the whole notion of the sidequest.

Those are just some examples.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Only in this context, with people who take their RPGs very seriously indeed, is “fun” somehow not self evident.

Take two other group activities. Comedy and sex. We can all agree that, by and large, fun is the goal. And we mysteriously have no trouble understanding that what is fun depends entirely on the people involved. I like slapstick, you like surrealism. You like Kevin Spade, I like Jimmy Carr. What’s fun for me isn’t necessarily fun for you. But fun is still the goal.

Family place dude, so enough about sex -- talk about the comedy.

But importantly, in those activities we start with the shared interest in particular types of fun and separating into groups based on those preferences. You don’t get together with anyone who enjoys comedy or sex (generally speaking), you get together with people who enjoy the same types of comedy and sex as you do. We’re weird in RPG circles in that we group up first based on shared hobby, then complain and argue about how certain groups do or don’t work together based on preferences. Well, yeah. If you want pawn stance play, open with that when finding a group. If you want deep RP, open with that. We won’t be able to do any better than flail about until we can actually talk about these things without it descending into arguments.

The real problem is that people don't even know how to talk about these things. The actual impact of preference, or even finding what you do prefer, is largely obfuscated by dismissal of open discussion and constant barrages of people claiming that this is "good" roleplaying and that is "bad" rollplaying. You've accidentally hit on a reasonable comparison -- we don't really know how to talk about sex, either. I don't think this is the place to start that conversation, but I'm ever hopeful one about roleplaying might suddenly break out. Instead we're treading the same tired circles as some try to enforce their preferences as the norm and others just try to shut down the conversation. Huh, again, kinda like talking about sex. Maybe there's a good point there, some kind of Puritanical obsession about roleplaying?

 

[pemerton]

You've mistaken what you do as not having rules when, in fact, you do. You've replaced any mechanics involving dice with mechanics that involve authorities, GM-says, or consensus story building.

Yes. Free roleplaying, in this sort of context, is just a form of "saying yes".

 

[pemerton]

On "fun":

I play RPGs because they're fun. I play backgammon because it's fun. I play five hundred, and up-and-down-the-river, and The Crew, because they're fun.

That doesn't mean there's not better or worse play. That doesn't mean that I won even if I lost because I still had fun playing.

 

[pemerton]

Elaborating on the "free roleplay" / "say 'yes'" point (and a tag for @Ovinomancer):

This sort of play runs the risk of being insipid, or "easy". But it doesn't have to be. Eg suppose the GM frames an encounter between a PC and a NPC, and it's clear to everyone that what is at stake in the encounter is X. (Maybe the NPC wants the PC to relinquish leadership of the warband. Maybe the NPC wants the PC to pay through the nose for the resurrection spell. X can range pretty widely, given the variety of RPGs that get played.)

If the player's opening move, for his/her PC, is to offer X to the NPC, then is there any need for a check? Or does the GM just say 'yes'? In a lot of cases I think the answer is the second - the player has, in effect, conceded the encounter. It's analogous to surrendering in a combat encounter. In both cases of course there's follow-up, downstream consequences, etc. But not every encounter with something real at stake has to involve rolling the dice.

That said, if a player keeps yielding then I think the GM should probably be trying to find some sort of terrain or context which will capture the player's interest/desire enough to spark some resistance! Otherwise there won't really be a game being played.

 

[Oofta]

I don't know what your criterion for plenty is. Or how you reconcile that with the GM-authored combat encounters that a part of your game (as per other posts of yours that I read).

I know what techniques I use in my RPGing (which is not D&D, and not "mission" based).


OK.


Marvel Heroic RP - in particular, its Milestone rules.

Burning Wheel - the whole of the systems for relationships, reputations, affiliations, Circles checks, and Duels of Wits.

Apocalypse World - the carrot and/or stick consequence for one player (in the play of their PC) when another player (via their PC) succeeds on Seduce/Manipulate vs them.

Also Apocalypse World - having the bonus on a check made to help or hinder another PC depend on the degree to which the first character knows the other; with that being something that is kept track of as part of the course of play (via the Hx stat).

Prince Valiant - having a NPC use an Incite Lust effect on a PC.

In my old RM campaigns - rolling a Depression crit for a PC when something terrible happened to someone the PC really cared about.

Any approach to the setting of goals that doesn't mandate, in advance, what is "central" to play and what is "peripheral" - so (eg) abandoning the whole notion of the sidequest.

Those are just some examples.

Believe it or not, displaying your broad knowledge of games does no good if others have not played them.

In any case, I don't want or need a carrot or stick to influence or reward how people run their PCs. I make options available to the players for adventure, romance, personal relationships and heartbreak. Whether they do anything with it is totally up to them.

I don't want rules that directly influence what a PC thinks or feels. To me, it would taint those in character moments.

So I'm happy D&D doesn't "support" romance. I want the story to support it, not the rules.