D&D General Styles of Roleplaying and Characters

[hawkeyefan]

unless precautions are taken we DMs have charts of pregnancy chances depending on what creature types are involved in the action.

 

[Campbell]

For me personally what I am often looking for is freedom from authorship. The power in part, but especially the responsibility. I basically want us to get the authoring out of the way so we can actually play. From either side of the screen I don't even want to think about where the story is going and strongly prefer I am playing with are not really concerned with it either. Character concept is kind of a dirty word to me. Do you, but I would rather have the people I choose to play with focus on playing a fluid, evolving character that we all can be invested in.

The things that really take me out of that zone where I really feel like my character are more metagame priorities like having to have a regard for where the story is going or what someone else wants it to be, having to manage spotlight balance (in terms of competency not narrative focus), having to navigate around issues related to not disrupting someone's conception of their character, having to bite artificial plot hooks, having to deal with set ideas of how we should engage with the scenario.

Basically I really only care about characters and scenarios. I'm a fan of everyone's characters and really cherish each PC, the setting, and the scenario. I am just not really fan of us putting up too many walls about how we are supposed to engage with each other.

 

[pemerton]

For me personally what I am often looking for is freedom from authorship. The power in part, but especially the responsibility. I basically want us to get the authoring out of the way so we can actually play.

<snip>

Basically I really only care about characters and scenarios. I'm a fan of everyone's characters and really cherish each PC, the setting, and the scenario. I am just not really fan of us putting up too many walls about how we are supposed to engage with each other.

That sounds like a set of preferences that the BW approach might be a reasonable fit for.

Not the only fit, of course. Apocalypse World is probably a good fit too!

 

[Xetheral]

Isn't there a saving throw against dragon fear in 5e? (There seems to be in the SRD.)

In his AD&D DMG, Gygax says the following about saving throw modifiers (p 81):

You may assign modifiers to any saving throws as you see fit, always keeping in mind game balance. . . if a character is standing in a pool of water holding a sword in his steel-gauntleted hand when the blue dragon breathes at him, you just might wish to slightly alter his chances of saving. In like manner, you might wish to give this same character one-half or NO damage from a red dragon's breath in the same circumstances. (In this same fashion you may feel no constraint with respect to allotting pluses to damage so meted out to players, adjusting the score of each die upwards or downwards as you see fit because of prevailing circumstances.)​

Page 57 of the 5e D&D Basic PFD says:

You usually gain advantage or disadvantage through the use of special abilities, actions, or spells. . . . The DM can also decide that circumstances influence a roll in one​

direction or the other and grant advantage or impose disadvantage as a result.​

In this respect, the approach of 5e seems broadly consistent with AD&D.

So if the GM thought that the parent's desire to save the child is a particularly strong motivation in the face of dragon fear, couldn't they grant the parent advantage on the saving throw?

Sure a DM could grant ad-hoc advantage on the saving throw (although I think ad-hoc adv/disadv is more common for ability checks than saving throws), but I don't see why the chance of success is pertinent? Even if there was a 95% chance to successfully save, when it does take effect the dragon fear is still both stronger than, and categorically different from, ordinary intimidation. A dragon can go up to a person it's never met and, without saying anything or knowing anything about them, have a chance (even if it's a small one) of inflicting terror strong enough to specifically stop someone from approaching (no matter how strong their motivation to do so) without actually incapacitating them or preventing them from doing anything else. Somewhere between 6 and 60 seconds later, the terror abruptly vanishes, and the person will not be afraid of that dragon again for 24 hours.

Given the differences from ordinary fear that one person can try to invoke in another, is it understandable how I think dragon fear meets the threshold I described earlier as "beyond the level of influence possible in the real world"? And that dragon fear therefore seems to me like an unrealistic "magic" ability even if it isn't technically magical enough to being stopped by an antimagic field?

 

[Umbran]

But if the underlying premise of the game is that you don't control your character...

It isn't the premise. It is a mechanical way to support the premise.

and the core mechanics are built around you not controlling your character, then I'm just not really interested. I don't want the premise of the game to be that I don't control my character.

Sure. But, have you ever agreed with the use of the words "realism" of "verisimilitude" in a gaming discussion to justify how things should work? If no, then ignore the rest...

If yes, well take a thought to that. Because, a person not being in full and rational control in stress-laden or traumatic circumstances... is pretty realistic. Way more realistic than fire-breathing dragons.

 

[Bill Zebub]

It isn't the premise. It is a mechanical way to support the premise.



Sure. But, have you ever agreed with the use of the words "realism" of "verisimilitude" in a gaming discussion to justify how things should work? If no, then ignore the rest...

If yes, well take a thought to that. Because, a person not being in full and rational control in stress-laden or traumatic circumstances... is pretty realistic. Way more realistic than fire-breathing dragons.

Maybe that explains it. I've never found any realism and verisimilitude arguments to be persuasive.

As I said upthread, if the goal is to model the intricacies of the brain, then, sure, the closest approximation would be RNG. But that's not my goal in RPGs.

 

[Xetheral]

Sure. But, have you ever agreed with the use of the words "realism" of "verisimilitude" in a gaming discussion to justify how things should work? If no, then ignore the rest...

If yes, well take a thought to that. Because, a person not being in full and rational control in stress-laden or traumatic circumstances... is pretty realistic. Way more realistic than fire-breathing dragons.

I can't speak for @Bill Zebub, but I definitely agree that it's realistic for the character to not be in full and rational control. Personally, however, absent magic or magic-like abilities, I have a preference for how/when/why the character is not in full and rational control to be up to the player of that character, rather than determined by a game mechanic.

From my standpoint the player knows more about the character than the game mechanics ever could, and thus can take into account nuance, context, and history in a way the mechanics can't when deciding how the character reacts to natural stress and trauma.

And I see how someone reacts to natural stress and trauma is part of what makes them who they are. I'd personally prefer not to abstract that part of a character's identity through the lossy filter of game mechanics.

 

[Lanefan]

For me personally what I am often looking for is freedom from authorship. The power in part, but especially the responsibility. I basically want us to get the authoring out of the way so we can actually play. From either side of the screen I don't even want to think about where the story is going and strongly prefer I am playing with are not really concerned with it either. Character concept is kind of a dirty word to me. Do you, but I would rather have the people I choose to play with focus on playing a fluid, evolving character that we all can be invested in.

I agree. There's still a use for a character concept, however, as a starting point from which that evolution can progress; and note that concept can be predetermined before roll-up, or randomly generated during it, or a bit of both.

I think where we might disagree is in how much control we as players want to have over that evolution and its process. Temporary control magics I'm fine with. Occasional curses e.g. a forced alignment change I can usually work with if I have to, but are sometimes very annoying if I still had ideas for the character in its old alignment. But systems where the character is forced to evolve on an ongoing basis I'm not fine with; barring these occasional external magics I-as-player want control over how my character evolves and develops.

 

[Umbran]

As I said upthread, if the goal is to model the intricacies of the brain

I think you are over-stating the case in a way that's rather obviously inaccurate.

If there is any such goal, it would probably be better stated as a goal to better model human behavior and/or emotional reactions. There's no need to invoke "intricacies of the brain". You can think in terms of shock, surprise, unconscious desire, limits on the will, and other rather more high-level things.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I think you are over-stating the case in a way that's rather obviously inaccurate.

I wrote and deleted about 8 different responses before realizing that I couldn't do it without snark.

Anyway, happy gaming.