D&D General Styles of D&D Play

[Retros_x]

Roleplay is acting. Acting as the character's perspective.

Freeform Roleplay is essentially Method Acting. And everyone ain't good at that.

What, no. Method Acting has nothing to do with freeform roleplay. Its a special form of acting technique where every rehearsal is focused on bringing the actors own memories, experiences and feeling into the role they play. Thats why for example Robert DeNiro worked multiple 12h shifts as a real taxi driver for the movie Taxi Driver. He wanted to experience himself how it is to be a taxi driver in New York City, so his could built on his own experiences when acting in the movie.

I never heard of tabletop roleplayers doing similar methods for tabletop roleplaying. Heck I never heard of tabletop roleplayers doing just a normal rehearsal. Because its not acting. You might have better luck in LARP, when people are actually running through the woods with theatre swords and armor.

And no again, roleplaying is not acting. Otherwise we would call it acting, because actors act from their characters perspective. You can use acting as an expression in roleplaying, but you don't have to. Instead of acting out with a silly voice and accent, its perfectly fine roleplay to just describe in 3rd person in your normal player voice: "My paladin Aragorn tries to persuade the king to spare the lifes of them by appealing to his conscience as a noble man." Thats perfectly fine roleplaying, just stating an action with a method and/or intention. The 5e PHBs describes this sentiment on p. 185,186, and many other TTRPGs have similar statements in their rulebooks.

 

[hgjertsen]

I think a lot of the quibbles people have with guns in a system like 5E DnD vanish if you change your expectations a little bit. You can have a hunting rifle that deals 1d10 piercing damage and that's completely fine if you keep in mind that a Commoner has 4 hp. I tend to imagine that dumping dozens of bullets into a high CR orc is equivalent to riddling an elephant with 9 mm because I just don't let players hit the head even if they're aiming for it, I tell them their shot went a little low or whatnot.

Adding onto this, I have a few narrative tools in mind when dealing with guns and then a few mechanical ones, I'll lay them out.

1.) Players can't always hit headshots even if they're aiming for them, enemies in DnD combat are usually assumed to be moving even when it's not their turn, the turn order is an abstraction and it's tough to land shots on a gobling strafing towards you.

2.) Enemies can be grazed by bullets but still take a lot of damage (narratively over time, in reality at once) because they'll lose a lot of blood.

and mechanically:

The main benefit of guns is their range, not their damage. Bow doesn't shoot that far, hunting rifle with high pressure ammunition lets a PC snipe from 300 meters away.

 

[Minigiant]

I think that when evaluating other systems (whether they are rules-lite, rules-heavy, or even rules-absent), it is usually best to make two assumptions-

1. The people are all playing in good faith.
2. The players are not, in fact, kindergarteners.


Or, put another way-

It is rarely a winning move to choose to pit the idealized version of your game against the worst possible version you can imagine of a game you don't personally enjoy. And this is true for all values of "your game" and "a game you don't personally enjoy."

What wrong with being kingergardener? Me Grunk have trouble with number after eleven.

I was making a silly jest. It's not often you get to post about infinity plus one shields on topic.

Like i said I like both Freeform and Mechanical roleplay styles. I am just against the "mechanics in anything but combat is bad" wave that is popular in the community.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

What wrong with being kingergardener? Me Grunk have trouble with number after eleven.

I was making a silly jest. It's not often you get to post about infinity plus one shields on topic.

Like i said I like both Freeform and Mechanical roleplay styles. I am just against the "mechanics in anything but combat is bad" wave that is popular in the community.

Fair, but remember that while "mechanics in anything but combat is bad"* is a somewhat widespread opinion given the history of D&D, there is an entire spectrum of beliefs.

And just as you can (rightly) say that you can have social mechanics just like you do for combat, others can say that they can ditch the combat mechanics, just like they do for social encounters.

Luckily, there are a multitude of games out there to support all of our preferences, even though most of use argue about D&D.



*Which is really more of a "mechanics in social interactions is bad," given that there are mechanics for other things, but I understand your point.

 

[Lanefan]

Your statement here about rollplay is not only rude and deeply insulting to others, it also grossly misunderstands and mischaracterizes roleplaying other games that do not utilize freeform roleplaying as not true roleplaying or lesser roleplay.

Ignoring computer games and the like for these purposes as they can't handle unprogrammed improv, if a game that calls itself a roleplaying game doesn't utilize (or allow) freeform roleplaying or outside-the-lines improv then I have to ask, what's the point?

That's why we have - and always will have - live DMs rather than computers: they aren't programmed and can thus improv in response to the players' improv. In other words, freeform roleplay.

 

[Lanefan]

The point was that skill challenges were not for everything. They were for major situations that could be adjudicated and separated in many parts.

To which my immediate question is "instead of bundling a major situation into one catch-all pass/fail challenge, why not just separate them into those many parts and adjudicate those parts one by one in a more granular fashion?".

I found this when converting and running some 4e adventures - where the adventure says "run a skill challenge for [this bit of fiction]" I either have to tease out what the component parts of that challenge are supposed to be and resolve them piecemeal or accept that the high-level resolution is going to skip over various minor bits of the fiction.

 

[Aldarc]

Ignoring computer games and the like for these purposes as they can't handle unprogrammed improv, if a game that calls itself a roleplaying game doesn't utilize (or allow) freeform roleplaying or outside-the-lines improv then I have to ask, what's the point?

That's why we have - and always will have - live DMs rather than computers: they aren't programmed and can thus improv in response to the players' improv. In other words, freeform roleplay.

This argument here strikes me as a fallacy of extremes, as if our only options for roleplaying are either freeform roleplaying or a complete lack thereof, which is demonstrably false. It also evidences a tremendous lack of knowledge about roleplaying in other games. So maybe you want to dial that back or reconsider your argument here?

 

[Oofta]

Ignoring computer games and the like for these purposes as they can't handle unprogrammed improv, if a game that calls itself a roleplaying game doesn't utilize (or allow) freeform roleplaying or outside-the-lines improv then I have to ask, what's the point?

That's why we have - and always will have - live DMs rather than computers: they aren't programmed and can thus improv in response to the players' improv. In other words, freeform roleplay.

I agree but the "Always have a DM" may not be true based on the advances of LLM's/AI's especially for running things like modules. Even a more sandbox campaign may fall to the almighty machine learning. Or not. Improvised actions may be difficult to tune in even if they will likely to be able to do fully fledged NPCs sooner than you think.

Now, whether you want to have a computer DM is a whole other issue. But I think it's quite possible the dynamic responses in video games may surprise you in a few years. There's demoes out there you can try where you are in a city and can walk up to any random stranger and have a conversation by just talking to them.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Ignoring computer games and the like for these purposes as they can't handle unprogrammed improv, if a game that calls itself a roleplaying game doesn't utilize (or allow) freeform roleplaying or outside-the-lines improv then I have to ask, what's the point?

That's why we have - and always will have - live DMs rather than computers: they aren't programmed and can thus improv in response to the players' improv. In other words, freeform roleplay.

i'm of the opinion that just because you're in the social character roleplaying part of the game it doesn't mean the mechanics should all just fall away, down that path is ultimately the attitude of 'let me tell the story of my special character happening exactly how i say it does.'

why do the rules change when you're talking to that guard as opposed to when you're climbing that cliffside? i don't get to describe my guy climbing the cliff without a check just because i described it really well so why does yours get to skip the check because you were particularly eloquent? you're giving that speech and i'm climbing that cliff, now we've both got to put our dice where our mouths are for the action to succeed.

 

[Lanefan]

(1) I don't use "rollplay" at all when discussing roleplaying games due to the aforementioned connotative reasons.

(2) I don't discuss roleplaying games in way that would necessitate the use or creation of a derogatory word like "rollplay."

To my ears, you are asking "what slur would you prefer I use?" when I am saying to stop using such slurs at all or belittling language as part of discussions.

"Mechanics-based play" vs "freeform play"?

One thing I've found - and I'm probably not alone in this - is that in general once mechanics get involved, most of the roleplay goes out the window.

Sure, there's been some glorious exceptions - I fondly recall one combat I ran where the characters kept their pre-existing and rather humourous in-character discussion/argument* going right through the battle, yelling their points and counterpoints across the line to each other while they beat up their foes - but those are very much the exception. Usually, once initiative gets called there's little if any in-character speech until the combat is done.

* - point of discussion: should a Human-Halfling crossbreed be called a quarterling or three-quarterling?