D&D General Styles of Roleplaying and Characters

[Aldarc]

I don't see it as being the same.

There's a lot we don't see eye-to-eye on.

In combat, the rules are (usually) pretty clear about what mechanics are used to determine outcomes. Why? Because we can't physically roleplay out the combats at the table and something has to step in and take over.

We can, however, roleplay out social interactions and-or our own characters' emotions at the table without recourse to rules (in which case, rules for such things become unnecessary); and if a character's emotional state is such that he both wants to assassinate someone and is in a positon to do so the game should not IMO attempt to interrupt that by arbitrarily challenging the character's emotional state. Ditto if the character falls in love with someone or feels any other strong emotion; that's the player's choice to make* and the game should not be able to arbitrarily interfere.

Once we get to the actual putting of knife to throat, of course, we're into combat; and all the associated rules of abstraction come into play.

* - in all cases I'm assuming the absence of mind-control magics or similar.

This has been rehashed time and time again. Think that this is the magic time that your old school perspective will convince me or anyone else otherwise that this isn't much of a distinction without a difference?

 

[Lanefan]

So you're an adherent of telling isn't teaching?

I'm an adherent of your character is, absent controlling magics, yours to play as you see fit; and this includes unfettered-by-the-game determination of its emotional state.

I play the character I want to play. If the game can sometimes force my character into a different emotional state than I feel is right for the situation, then at least for the rest of that scene I'm then stuck playing a character I don't want to play. And, as your cowardice example shows, this might have possible long-term ramifications to how the character is portrayed: if I don't want to play a coward yet the game ends up telling me my character's a coward, that character's getting retired right quick.

 

[Lanefan]

You never have PC's surprised? Never use a pit trap in a hallway? No ambushes? That seems a bit doubtful.

Unless, your saying that just by sitting down, there is a tacit agreement that the DM can do bad things to your character, but, that's not what I think you mean.

Actually that is exactly what I mean. Thanks for putting it so clearly.

I also have to thank you, indirectly, for causing me to notice something else: I went to quote the page on my game's website where this is mentioned and that page seems to be missing. Most likely it got overlooked when I transitioned from paper some years back. Will fix.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Hmm... You've obviously filled in a number of blanks about me (incorrectly) that are making this more difficult than it should be. Let's try and address some of this in turn.

Not at all. Those other mechanics suck too, and if there were any other reasonable way to resolve them other than rolling dice and engaging with (hopefully unobtrusive and fade into the background) mechanics, then I'd obviously prefer them. (Assuming, of course, that you want to introduce an element of risk that can't be modeled any other way. I suppose you could always just talk through action scenes, but few people would find that entertaining in the same way that rolling dice to see if you succeed or fail on various elements is.)

In terms of character exploration and development and (many) social interactions: THERE IS another and superior way to handle it, so I have little interest in a mechanical solution to something that doesn't need a mechanical solution. I'm neither making gross caricatures (or even pleasant caricatures) nor bad assumptions, I just have a very strong preference for non-mechanical solutions whenever reasonably possible. You, I presume, see it as a double standard because you don't have that preference, and like to engage with clever mechanics, so clever mechanics that do something interesting to you in a scenario in which I have no preference for ANY mechanics, especially not overly precious ones seems like fun. I don't think that it is, and it's not because I have a double standard. I just have a different standard than you do.

I also take exception to the egregiously untrue assertion that you've repeatedly made that you can't explore character, or learn anything about character without having mechanics to introduce a random element into the equation, because without the random element giving you results that you don't expect, you can't actually learn anything.

Ahem... that is, in fact, a statement that requires a bad assumption and is therefore a gross caricature. In fact, it's that bad assumption and gross caricature that I believe is almost solely responsible for this tangent being dragged on as long as it has been. That's the kind of thing that people DO take exception to; being told that they're not even doing what they claim to be doing, because if they're not doing it the way you proscribe, then they better come up with a different label for it.


Wow, I'm... not doing that at all. I honestly have no idea what you're talking about now. I don't even play 5e. I've never even read 5e. I'm not at all protecting my playstyle against some perceived attack. I am, however, taking exception to your characterization that certain things can only be done if you do them the specific way that you think that they should be done, and everyone else who says that they're doing exactly what you're claiming that they can't be doing just fine without those mechanics should probably be taken at face value.

I don't play D&D. I've been dissatisfied with D&D since 1985, a least, if not earlier. I leaned heavily into White Wolf in the 90s, and eventually lost interest in them because the games were written and played more like D&D than they pretended to; they were just more smug and pretentious about it. I was heavily exposed to competing approaches to play long before 3e was even released or I discovered ENWorld in its earliest incarnation several usernames ago.

I just take exception to the fact that in your advocacy for PbtA (or Dogs in the Vinyard, or Fiasco, or whatever other Forge-esque game you care to refer to) type games you're making claims that people aren't actually doing what they think that they are doing, because without PbtA type mechanics, they aren't doing jack squat with character. That's patently untrue AND insulting, which is why you're getting so much pushback for making that assertion from so many people.

See, even that you mischaracterize. I made a throwaway reference to the fact that maybe if a bunch of people are telling you that they're doing something just fine without your mechanics that it is, in fact, possible to do so without your mechanics, and all you see from that is a gross appeal to popularity?

Actually, I pegged you as less extreme. Now I am aware of some of your opinions, this makes lots more sense. You appear to be very locked into a particular viewpoint as superior to all others, and that particular view is strongly against the ideas I'm putting forth. No big, you can do you, but any further discussion on the topic is doomed to fail because you've clearly indicated that you're absolutely against even considering these as an equally valid way to play -- that the concepts involved are already bunk. Why you feel the need to also appropriate the concept space so that your approach has everything at all times, though, I'm not sure. My personal approach to gaming isn't nearly as fragile -- I can easily accept that there are other ways to play that I don't like, but that are equally valid. My way is not superior, to use your parlance describing your preferences. It's different.

The Forge comment is especially illuminating.

And I never once said, or even implied, that you have to have mechanics to have interesting character stuff. I strongly disagree with that. You have to have some form of risk to character, which games usually operationalize as mechanics, to have a game where you actually learn things about your character rather than decide things for them. This is a very different thing to say. That you persist in defending a metaphor for the act of authoring a character as truth is weird to me, especially the way you've become so aggressive about it. People also have told me the world is flat, but that doesn't require me to accept this as truth. Similarly, being surprised by your own thinking doesn't mean a character did it.

Finally, on pushback: I've also gotten some good responses and good back and forths and even some good support for my arguments. Those don't mean I'm right, just as you and some others pushing back doesn't mean I'm wrong. It's quite ironic that you accuse me of an appeal to popularity while making one yourself -- that I must be wrong because so many people (what, 5?) have responded with pushback.

 

[Lanefan]

This is something I’ve talked about pretty regularly on ENWorld in the past.

This “agency-purifying idea” (not sure what else to call it) in D&Dville whereby humans suffer neither hijack nor undue influence by the endocrine system, cultural layer pressures, badly formed heuristics, and decision-tree work offloaded onto automaticity and unconscious process…

…well I certainly don’t see how it produces either more realism or more habitation of cognitive/emotional workspace (the phenomenon of capture…which is largely not opt-in/voluntary). It resembles nothing like what life is like. Taken to its ultimate conclusion it should wipe out a whole host of troubling human conditions that routinely haunt lives captured by them (like variations of Stockholm Syndrome, peer contagion, addiction, and plenty more).

Except it doesn't wipe those things out. One assumes those conditions (and many others) exist in the game world, thus it merely gives players the choice of whether or not to play a PC as being afflicted by one or more of them rather than having any of those conditions forced upon it by the game.

 

[Aldarc]

I'm an adherent of your character is, absent controlling magics, yours to play as you see fit; and this includes unfettered-by-the-game determination of its emotional state.

I play the character I want to play. If the game can sometimes force my character into a different emotional state than I feel is right for the situation, then at least for the rest of that scene I'm then stuck playing a character I don't want to play. And, as your cowardice example shows, this might have possible long-term ramifications to how the character is portrayed: if I don't want to play a coward yet the game ends up telling me my character's a coward, that character's getting retired right quick.

That sounds more like character concept protectionism that @Ovinomancer was talking about earlier.

 

[Manbearcat]

Except it doesn't wipe those things out. One assumes those conditions (and many others) exist in the game world, thus it merely gives players the choice of whether or not to play a PC as being afflicted by one or more of them rather than having any of those conditions forced upon it by the game.

The problem here is things like the fallout of affliction and the loss of volition due to your endocrine system hijacking your decision-tree (and the other things I mentioned) are not opt-in.

So opt-in/out authorship is fundamentally off the table if a player is looking for the experiential aspect or habitation of an individual who is dealing with (say) being smitten or struggling with addiction.

If someone says "I think I'll go ahead and alienate people close to me because I have an acute attachment disorder due to abandonment and neglect as a child", then they fundamentally are not dealing with anything resembling the experiential aspect of actually having an acute attachment disorder.

Having the option to opt-in/out is a non-starter.

 

[Lanefan]

I do not think you need any particular mechanics to have meaningful character exploration (although the right ones applied skillfully can help). In my experience you do need a genuine commitment to it and a strategy for dealing with a number of common pitfalls. First you have a strategy for avoiding becoming too attached to your personal conception of your character. Then you have to find a way to break past the what I call the improv wall - where we avoid meaningful conflict by utilizing improv comedy techniques like yes and. That's collaborative storytelling ,not character exploration, in my opinion. Finally we have to develop a way to set clear boundaries and expectations for each other. We all need to be socially free to play our characters with integrity and invested in each others' characters enough to let things play their course.

I think you touch on something here I'd like to dig into a bit - please forgive me if the following isn't very clear as my thoughts are still coalescing as I type.

There are, I think, two different things under discussion here that are both being called character exploration.

One is what you touch on above where you say you need a "strategy for avoiding becoming too attached to your personal conception of your character". This and some other bits tell me you're equating character exploration with character alteration as the campaign goes along; that the character is highly likely (or certain?) to end up being quite different than what you started with, even ignoring or absent mechanical changes e.g. level-ups etc.

The other type of character exploration doesn't require or expect a character concept to change over time (though, of course, it still can); and that's where a player has a concept and then as the campaign progresses the player explores (and maybe or maybe not exposes through roleplay) how and why that character came to be what it is. What are the underlying in-game reasons for it being what it is and thinking as it does? How id it get here - and, maybe, where's it going next? How has its backstory affected and shaped its current emotional state?

Some players might like to nail down the second type of exploration before the character ever enters play; and while that's fine for them, I see it as jumping the gun in that it's hard to know the in-game reasons behind your character's thought processes when you haven't yet experienced the DM's setting.

The rest of the above paragraph seems to be mostly about avoidance of PvP; which ceases to be an issue if PvP is allowed.

 

[Desdichado]

Actually, I pegged you as less extreme. Now I am aware of some of your opinions, this makes lots more sense. You appear to be very locked into a particular viewpoint as superior to all others, and that particular view is strongly against the ideas I'm putting forth. No big, you can do you, but any further discussion on the topic is doomed to fail because you've clearly indicated that you're absolutely against even considering these as an equally valid way to play -- that the concepts involved are already bunk. Why you feel the need to also appropriate the concept space so that your approach has everything at all times, though, I'm not sure. My personal approach to gaming isn't nearly as fragile -- I can easily accept that there are other ways to play that I don't like, but that are equally valid. My way is not superior, to use your parlance describing your preferences. It's different.

Uh... what? Again, filling in the blanks. Pointing out that I have preferences, and talking a bit about what they are hardly qualifies as saying that they're superior. Except with regards to a game that I PERSONALLY would enjoy, of course. This seems like projection to me, or at least some kind of assumptions being filled in that have little to do with anything that I think.

That said, I will absolutely own up to being at a point where I have little interest in experimenting with stuff that is beyond the ken of what I know that I like. I've never been the kind of gamer who liked system for its own sake, and I've tried a little bit of almost everything over the years. I can talk about stuff that's outside the orbit of my preferences from an academic standpoint, and I can recognize why people with different preferences than me would like them, but I have very little interest in doing anything other than that with them anymore. If you want to call that "locked in", well... OK.

The Forge comment is especially illuminating.

Only if you're in the habit of attempting to read too much into stuff. I'm an old school forum guy, and I still use Forge-esque to refer to this kind of stuff because twenty some odd years or so ago when I was spending more time at rpg.net than here, that's what we called it. I recognize that the reference is a bit dated, but I'm not aware of a general term that applies as well to "non-trad" story-mechanics type games, except maybe "storygames" which I refuse to use, because I think it's taken on a bit of a smug, deprecating connotation over the years.

And I never once said, or even implied, that you have to have mechanics to have interesting character stuff. I strongly disagree with that. You have to have some form of risk to character, which games usually operationalize as mechanics, to have a game where you actually learn things about your character rather than decide things for them. This is a very different thing to say. That you persist in defending a metaphor for the act of authoring a character as truth is weird to me, especially the way you've become so aggressive about it. People also have told me the world is flat, but that doesn't require me to accept this as truth. Similarly, being surprised by your own thinking doesn't mean a character did it.

Having a mechanic do it doesn't mean a character did it either. You called me out for supposedly wanting to have a double standard and have it both ways with regards to mechanics, I'm saying you're doing the same thing with regards to what you consider a "character" to have done, or your ability to learn about it. If it isn't done mechanically, you've said repeatedly that you're just "authoring" it, nothing happened that you didn't just think of. I'm not quite sure what to make of you strongly disagreeing that you've said something that you've said repeatedly, so I presume you mean that you don't like the way that I've paraphrased it, either because you think it sounds disparaging, or because I've not properly understood it after all. If the latter, I'd be interested in seeing exactly and specifically what I've misunderstood. Even now you're talking about learning about your character as opposed to deciding for them; what method of learning do you propose that isn't mechanical?

Finally, on pushback: I've also gotten some good responses and good back and forths and even some good support for my arguments. Those don't mean I'm right, just as you and some others pushing back doesn't mean I'm wrong. It's quite ironic that you accuse me of an appeal to popularity while making one yourself -- that I must be wrong because so many people (what, 5?) have responded with pushback.

I think you're in a little bit of denial about taking on a very OneTrueWayism tone, which is probably why you've projected that attitude on to me. And I probably come across as more OneTrueWayist than I actually feel, just because that's my tone generally (my wife tells me variations on that theme repeatedly when I'm just stating my opinion about something.) That said, if you don't think you're doing that, OK. I'll accept that and not continue to try and say that yes you are; you probably know better than me.

Maybe pushback is less accurate than a combination of pushback and complete confusion about your characterization of exploring, learning, discovering, etc. vs authoring. But I'll let that go; given that there doesn't really exist a solid vocabulary to talk about that kind of game play that everyone will follow and understand, perhaps some misunderstanding was inevitable. I think in order to talk about this without it turning into a Charlie Foxtrot, it probably needs a whole different glossary of terms that don't already mean something else in the minds of those who read them.

 

[Desdichado]

The rest of the above paragraph seems to be mostly about avoidance of PvP; which ceases to be an issue if PvP is allowed.

I'm interpreting, maybe, a difference between PvP and PCvPC here....