D&D General Styles of Roleplaying and Characters

[Aldarc]

As a DM I want to at least occasionally tell evocative and emotionally impactful scenes. Some of my proudest moments are when I've gotten a player to get teary eyed because of what was going on in a story, or to say "OMG" as they walked away from the table to process a big reveal.

To me those moments feel, for lack of a better word, more authentic. If a player is never affected by any scenario thrown at them, that's also cool because I'm not going to dictate what's important for their game.

Do you think that social/mental mechanics would have produced non-authentic reactions or are somehow incapable of producing the "evocative and emotionally impactful scenes" that cause the sort of player reactions you described?

 

[Bill Zebub]

Doesn't sound like very deep or meaningful play.

As I started figuring out recently, and have alluded to a couple of times, this may be the underlying difference. Or one of them, anyway.

I'm not looking for deep or meaningful play.

I think I slid past this distinction previously because "deep" and "meaningful" seem on the surface to be more desirable than "shallow" and "meaningless", and of course I want to think of myself as the former not the latter. But, really, that's not why I play RPGs. When I'm playing a game, I'm more Robert E. Howard (without the bikinis) and less Faulkner.

Life is already deep and meaningful...and complicated...enough. I no more want to explore "who my character is" (in the way some people are describing) than I want to fill out my character's tax returns.

So, yeah, I think you're right. It might not be deep or meaningful play. But I think it's fun.

YMMV

 

[Maxperson]

No? Never?

I would say that examples of people doing things that are not in their own best interest and that others would call stupid are so plentiful that we don't even need to debate it.

Plentiful only because there are 7.6 billion people. The number of people who mouth off in situations where they will die if they do is a vanishingly small percentage, even if you can find many instances due to sheer numbers.

It should be my choice whether my PC engages in suicidal behavior.

So when it comes into play in an RPG in a scenario as you've described it, I think that simply ignoring the flaw when it's most risky is a great example of rendering characterization meaningless. Can my character keep his mouth shut when his life is on the line, despite a clear hatred for figures of authority? That's interesting and that's what I'd want to discover. Not simply decide.

A mechanic doesn't allow you to "discover" it, though. It's just a roll of the die or whatever. No real discovery involved. However, as the player who actually knows the character decides whether he would or not, therein lies true discovery. I might just mouth off anyway if with my superior knowledge of the character, I decide that's what he would do. Or maybe I decide that the threat of death is one of the few things that will result in him keeping silent. Either way I've discovered something about the character. I didn't know it before the situation, and now I do know it.

Allowing the player to simply decide is letting them off the hook easy.

I think you're selling players short. If the player is truly interested in discovering things about their character, they will make these hard decisions and often at the detriment of their PC. If they aren't interesting in discovering those things, why force it on them via a mechanic?

 

[Aldarc]

As I started figuring out recently, and have alluded to a couple of times, this may be the underlying difference. Or one of them, anyway.

I'm not looking for deep or meaningful play.

I think I slid past this distinction previously because "deep" and "meaningful" seem on the surface to be more desirable than "shallow" and "meaningless", and of course I want to think of myself as the former not the latter. But, really, that's not why I play RPGs. When I'm playing a game, I'm more Robert E. Howard (without the bikinis) and less Faulkner.

Life is already deep and meaningful...and complicated...enough. I no more want to explore "who my character is" (in the way some people are describing) than I want to fill out my character's tax returns.

So, yeah, I think you're right. It might not be deep or meaningful play. But I think it's fun.

YMMV

I'm curious though whether your preferences would really be all that greatly disturbed in practice by these other non-D&D games we have discussed with social/mental mechanics or whether it's mostly a theoretical problem. Because it's not as if people playing some of these games are necessarily also looking for "deep or meaningful play" either. I suspect they are mostly concerned with the question: "Am I having fun?"

 

[hawkeyefan]

As I started figuring out recently, and have alluded to a couple of times, this may be the underlying difference. Or one of them, anyway.

I'm not looking for deep or meaningful play.

I think I slid past this distinction previously because "deep" and "meaningful" seem on the surface to be more desirable than "shallow" and "meaningless", and of course I want to think of myself as the former not the latter. But, really, that's not why I play RPGs. When I'm playing a game, I'm more Robert E. Howard (without the bikinis) and less Faulkner.

Life is already deep and meaningful...and complicated...enough. I no more want to explore "who my character is" (in the way some people are describing) than I want to fill out my character's tax returns.

So, yeah, I think you're right. It might not be deep or meaningful play. But I think it's fun.

YMMV

No, I don't think one is better than the other. I play D&D 5E weekly. It's the game I've played the most since it came out. I enjoy it quite a bit.

But since the topic here is about styles of roleplaying characters, and the discussion has been about how games may or may not promote it, I think it's relevant to the topic.

If I'm looking for a game that is more about characters and how they may change, then I think a game other than D&D will result in a more satisfying game.

The same way how if I wanted a deeply tactical combat game, I might consider something like Warhammer or Dust to be superior to Stratego.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I'm curious though whether your preferences would really be all that greatly disturbed in practice by these other non-D&D games we have discussed with social/mental mechanics or whether it's mostly a theoretical problem. Because it's not as if people playing some of these games are necessarily also looking for "deep or meaningful play" either. I suspect they are mostly concerned with the question: "Am I having fun?"

Oh, right, I didn't answer your question from a few pages ago: I have not tried some of the other games mentioned in this thread. I certainly might enjoy them. I enjoy lots of games that aren't even RPGs. And just as I like puzzles on their own, but don't really like solving them in D&D, it's possible that I would enjoy the mechanics you describe in other contexts. I wouldn't be averse to playing those games (except that already there are so many games, so little time).

What I do know is:
- Mechanics which blur that line in D&D bother me. E.g., Inspiring Leader, and even a bunch of Bard abilities, which bug me even though that can easily be written off as magic (or 'maaaaaagic' as one might say more derisively.)
- I don't like it when my group decides that we should all pretend to not know something. (Which reminds me: I have used the term 'mind control' in this thread, but in the literal sense when I described a recent scenario where a monster mind controlled a member of the party.)
- I recoil in horror every time a poster describes how they, as DM, would be the arbiter of what "makes sense" for a PC.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Now, look at the other "pillars" of D&D and imagine if you could simply ignore the things that define your character in those areas. I mean, I know I have a level and an associated proficiency bonus, but I'll just ignore those in favor of what's easier, and declare that my character succeeds at his task!

Except the DM adjudicates actions in 5e so that... can't happen.

Doesn't sound like very deep or meaningful play.

Doesn't sound like D&D 5e either.

 

[Bill Zebub]

No, I don't think one is better than the other.

I agree! (In other words, you didn't need to preface that with "No,")

I only meant that I did a poor job of explaining my position because I subconsciously didn't want to admit that my preferred style of play is less sophisticated, in a literary sense.* But I think it is. And I'm embracing it.

*("sophisticated" is a tricky term because it could also apply to crunchiness, or other aspects. Here I only mean it as it applies to 'exploring character personalities' and the like.)

 

[Amrûnril]

It's certainly possible to do so in D&D, but the limitations of your preferred approach and the benefits of social mechanics have also been discussed in this thread before. To repeat myself again, resolution mechanics of a roleplaying game inherently place restrictions on the range of possible resulting fictions. This is true whether we are talking about mental mechanics or not.

I agree that resolution mechanics impose restrictions on possible outcomes. That's exactly why I want them to take a back seat when it comes to major, character-defining decisions. Because I think the mind of the person who created a character can create a more compelling fiction in those contexts than a pre-determined set of mechanics.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Plentiful only because there are 7.6 billion people. The number of people who mouth off in situations where they will die if they do is a vanishingly small percentage, even if you can find many instances due to sheer numbers.

So what? It happens often enough that it's possible.

It should be my choice whether my PC engages in suicidal behavior.

Did the trait say "Mouths off to authority" or did it say "Mouths off to authority unless there's actually some risk involved, in which case he shuts right up"? I mean, maybe the concept of the character isn't this rebellious dissident that I was imagining, but is instead a blowhard?

I mean.....the player opted to take that trait. That's an invitation for challenge. Allowing that to not matter at all seems pretty weak, honestly.

It's like an argument for how D&D doesn't require characterization to matter at all.

A mechanic doesn't allow you to "discover" it, though. It's just a roll of the die or whatever. No real discovery involved. However, as the player who actually knows the character decides whether he would or not, therein lies true discovery. I might just mouth off anyway if with my superior knowledge of the character, I decide that's what he would do. Or maybe I decide that the threat of death is one of the few things that will result in him keeping silent. Either way I've discovered something about the character. I didn't know it before the situation, and now I do know it.

Yes, rolling to find out.....that's discovery. I didn't know how it would go.....I know the character has issues with authority figures, but how deep are those issues? How important is it to him to challenge authority? Will he risk his life to do it? How much does this matter to the character?

If you've already decided the answers to those questions, then you aren't discovering.

I think you're selling players short. If the player is truly interested in discovering things about their character, they will make these hard decisions and often at the detriment of their PC. If they aren't interesting in discovering those things, why force it on them via a mechanic?

No, I don't think I am. I think any player who would have their PC mouth off to the emperor would be just as open to the idea of having to make a saving throw style roll to see if he does it or not. Because that player is playing the character with integrity.

They are risking their character's well being......or their conception of the character. They're not letting themselves off the hook.

So, to go to your example of the emperor and the mouths off to authority trait.....would your decision to have your character not mouth off to authority make you consider changing the trait? Did it in any way alter your perception of your character going forward? Or did he remain as the guy who mouths off to authority?