D&D 4E 4E: The day the game ate the roleplayer?

[Hussar]

You do realize that this is also true in 3e right?
Back when 3e was first being showcased it was mentioned quite frequently.
It turns out that the majority of gamers prefer to just kill the monster. So regardless of how much some people want to roleplay, the overall perception of the game becomes "kill the monster, add XP".
So the fact that the option is there is a wash.

All that aside, the promise of a carrot at the end of roleplaying doesn't have anything to do with a conversation of whether or not the mechanics of gameplay itself provide support or obstacles to the actual roleplaying.

So, Bryon, if my 5th level paladin talks his way past two CR4 guards, how much xp should I get? If the rules support roleplay, that should be an easy question no? I can tell you exactly how much xp I get for defeating them.

The carrot absolutely does have everything to do with mechanics supporting roleplay. Monopoly has absolutely no mechanics to support roleplay. None. It's not even assumed that you will. Thus, no one roleplays Monopoly.

Every edition of D&D has given a slight nod towards roleplay, but, not very much. 1e had training rules, 2e had bonus xp tables, 3e has about three paragraphs appended to the six pages on combat xp. It's never, ever been an important aspect mechanically. It's always just been assumed that you'll just do it if you want to.

Other games very much support roleplay. The Dying Earth has mechanics where you gain mechanical benefits for using certain phrases from Vance's works in play. That's a huge incentive to roleplay. The old 007 RPG had a sort of Action Point mechanic where you could, as the player, change the scene in order to better get into the spirit of the movies. If you needed a martini, spend the point and you got one.

Look at things like Burning Wheel and you see all sorts of mechanics for promoting role play.

D&D promote roleplay? Really? Where?

 

[sinecure]

D&D promote roleplay? Really? Where?

I know in 2nd edition it came by having the concept first and the rules second. Not in terms of priority, but it terms of what coformed to what. If the rules didn't fit the concept, you changed the rules not the other way around. All rules were optional.

It's the same way now, it's just the OP is saying the game was not designed with the concept first, but with the rules balance first. That's great and all, but for those who like to think in character it is getting harder and harder to understand what is going on as the rules have fewer and fewer correlates in the game world.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Yummy... Roleplayers... Soft and sweet as Marhsmallows, but a lot better for your health. But be careful with the bitter and fiery ones...



Sorry, I needed to make some cheap humours post regarding the thread title - I wanted to do it since saw the thread the first time!

 

[BryonD]

So, Bryon, if my 5th level paladin talks his way past two CR4 guards, how much xp should I get? If the rules support roleplay, that should be an easy question no? I can tell you exactly how much xp I get for defeating them.

Insuffcient data. Oh, yeah I forgot. 3E requires thinking.
(And you don't know how much the XP reward for defeating them is either, because you don't know the circumstance bonuses or penalties).

The carrot absolutely does have everything to do with mechanics supporting roleplay. Monopoly has absolutely no mechanics to support roleplay. None. It's not even assumed that you will. Thus, no one roleplays Monopoly.

No, they are two different things. The carrot will certainly encourage the players to roleplay (as it does just as much in 3e with a decent DM) but the mechanics can support (a little) or disrupt (a lot) the process.
You can easily add a rule that every time a player has to pay a cost in Monopoly that price is reduced by 10% if the player roleplays the transaction. Now you have a carrot and some people will roleplay for that carrot. But the mechanics of Monopoly still suck for roleplaying because they fail terribly at producing a plausible scenario (they suck at simulation). If you land on Park Place you can express outrage over the high rent and demand that you will go stay on Virginia unless a more reasonable price is offered. But your effort to haggle will fall flat because the rules say you stay where you land. Carrot is one thing and game mechanics are another.

Every edition of D&D has given a slight nod towards roleplay, but, not very much. 1e had training rules, 2e had bonus xp tables, 3e has about three paragraphs appended to the six pages on combat xp. It's never, ever been an important aspect mechanically. It's always just been assumed that you'll just do it if you want to.

Other games very much support roleplay. The Dying Earth has mechanics where you gain mechanical benefits for using certain phrases from Vance's works in play. That's a huge incentive to roleplay. The old 007 RPG had a sort of Action Point mechanic where you could, as the player, change the scene in order to better get into the spirit of the movies. If you needed a martini, spend the point and you got one.

Look at things like Burning Wheel and you see all sorts of mechanics for promoting role play.

D&D promote roleplay? Really? Where?

By staying out of the way. 3E stays out of the way. What has been shown of 4e gets in the way. Maybe that is just for me and not for you but for me it more than just a little bit.
The claim that started this line of conversation was that RP rewards were a new addition in 4E. That is not true. Now it may be true that 4E tries to claim that RP rewards can now be looked up on a table. And if they have reduced the RP concept down to something that cut and dry, then that is just another strike against it for me.

 

[Hussar]

I know in 2nd edition it came by having the concept first and the rules second. Not in terms of priority, but it terms of what coformed to what. If the rules didn't fit the concept, you changed the rules not the other way around. All rules were optional.

It's the same way now, it's just the OP is saying the game was not designed with the concept first, but with the rules balance first. That's great and all, but for those who like to think in character it is getting harder and harder to understand what is going on as the rules have fewer and fewer correlates in the game world.

All rules were optional is NOT a strength of a game.

I know people take this stance WRT 2e, but, to me, it wasn't concept first, rules second, it was, "We'll do whatever the heck we want to, mechanics and balance be damned." And it meant that 2e became an unholy mess very, very quickly.

Heck, take the Fighters Handbook. The first splatbook (IIRC) for 2e broke the game. It made TWF the absolute king for all melee characters. There was no reason NOT to do TWF. It was so good that all other choices were clearly second best.

That's not putting concept ahead of mechanics, that's having no concept of how mechanics should work. And 2e was replete with examples like that. Take the Faiths and Avatars books. Hrm, let's take a cleric, give him access to all wizard spells, with no spellbook, and a cleric's casting list. All for the xp of a druid. And this was a good idea?

We've seen what happens when you put concept first and then try to shoehorn mechanics. D&D has been yoked with this for decades - all sorts of wonky crap that only survived because it became a sacred cow. Finally they're taking those holy bovines out into the pasture and putting a gun in their ear. It's about time.

 

[Will]

Bryon:

You're saying it's better for a game not to have a rule for something than to have a rule you can alter if you want?

Really?

 

[Valdrax]

But the previous versions of D&D were examples of a game being shaped around roleplaying. Why should a wizard be able to Meteor Swarm some guy for 50d8 damage while the warrior does 1d10+8? Well, clearly because the wizard is a wizard, and that's what wizards do.

Yeah, okay. Class imbalance == a focus on roleplaying. I think enough people have piled on you for this ridiculous argument, so I'm going to look at the worst other part of this post:

Say you want to be a Shifter. You want to be a druid who's never in his natural form, but always flying as a bird, sneaking as a goblin, fighting as a griffin. How's he going to fit into 4E? Well, let's see what he can do.

So, here it is -- solid evidence that 4e will completely invalidate a particular concept (that's hard enough to do in previous editions) in the form of class abilities that you made up. I mean, this is a total straw man! There's no indication that Druid abilities in 4e won't have at-will or utility forms.

Just a terrible post in all directions.

I know in 2nd edition it came by having the concept first and the rules second. Not in terms of priority, but it terms of what coformed to what. If the rules didn't fit the concept, you changed the rules not the other way around. All rules were optional.

That's absolute and complete bunk. In 2e, your rolls came first, and your concept came from how well you rolled. Wanted to play a Paladin? Oh, too bad. You rolled too low to meet the attribute requirements. Play a Fighter or a Rogue instead. 4e gets rid of that by making all classes have roughly the same dependence on attributes and letting you arrange your rolls freely (as well as reducing the probability of having an outright terrible set of stats). One set of dice rolls (or point buy) is equally good to play any class depending on how you arrange them. 2e didn't have that without house rules to fix this particular part of the many places in which 2e was broken.

 

[Fifth Element]

Sorry, I needed to make some cheap humours post regarding the thread title - I wanted to do it since saw the thread the first time!

Game: "Mmmm. I like the Doritos seasoning. And what's that aftertaste? Mountain Dew maybe? Grease content may be a little high, and the ego is a little hard to swallow. Not bad though."

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Insuffcient data. Oh, yeah I forgot. 3E requires thinking.
(And you don't know how much the XP reward for defeating them is either, because you don't know the circumstance bonuses or penalties).

Really? You can't even give me any type of guideline you'd follow? (Or did you just choose not to post anything, because it wasn't asked for specifically?)
But I tell you why I see it as hard to come up with anything:
What are the chances of success? Does the Paladin have Bluff or Diplomacy? What's the attitude of the warriors? What Sense Motive skill do they have? The rules tell me what theoretically might be possible. Anything from -2 to +20 for each of these skills seems to be reasonable in 3.x. In other words, I have no idea. It might work out fine if I know the Warrior stats (likely for any DM and/or module writer), and it's getting a lot easier if I also have the PCs stats (likely for a DM, impossible for a module writer).

And then, there is the thing with the "binary nature" of a 3rd edition social encounter. Roll a Bluff check to make a convincing lie, roll a Diplomacy check to change the opponent's attitude. Wow. Compare that to a combat - roll several attack rolls and damage rolls, make tactical maneuvers, use special abilities.
Should one single die roll be worth any XP? Should it come even close to the XP of a combat encounter?

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

All rules were optional is NOT a strength of a game.

I know people take this stance WRT 2e, but, to me, it wasn't concept first, rules second, it was, "We'll do whatever the heck we want to, mechanics and balance be damned." And it meant that 2e became an unholy mess very, very quickly.

Seerow had some nice things to say about this a while ago on the WotC boards.

To be honest, the main reason I wouldn't go back and play 2e isn't the ruleset -- it's that every time we have a rehash of the Edition Wars, I get reminded that the grognards who stuck with 2e tend to be arrogant control freaks.

Really, the "spirit" of 2e was *not* that the rules should be a kind of litmus test so only the smartest and most obsessive nerds were allowed to play; that the contradictory and confusing rules meant players were supposed to be constantly confused and the DM therefore had absolute power to do whatever he wanted without questions or backtalk; that class balance was purposely bad so that you could weed out the newbies by tricking them into taking the dumb classes while the smart players knew what the good classes were; or any of that crap.

Those were *mistakes*. A lot of the early designers *recognized* these mistakes and tried vainly to fix them (Player's Option was really for that purpose). But people are now taking those mistakes and actually peddling them as *positive qualities*, and that freaks me the hell out. It's like people *want* D&D to be a badly written game that only people who are veterans at it can enjoy -- like the idea that a bunch of snot-nosed kids being able to pick up the game right away and have fun without the help of their graybearded super-DM is somehow offensive.

*My* ideal hack-n-slash D&D-ish role-playing system would be one where you can pick up the rules in one day, where there are lots of options that are flavorful and interesting but no real bad choices or good choices, and where, ideally, there is no DM in the referee sense. There might be someone who sets up the scenarios and decides on the game structure, but no one whose job it is to design the system on the fly.

It should be a game where four or five people can just go out and buy it and *start playing that afternoon*, and where the decision of who gets to be the DM is as simple as "Who wants to do it?" "I have an interesting idea for a campaign!"

*Not* "Who wants to do it?" "I will, because I'm the only one who owns all the relevant books and who's been DMing for the past 20 years and is familiar with the secret spaghetti-ball of houserules that our game depends on." "Well... okay."

D&D 3e is not this system. But it's getting there. They're trying. They've been trying as far back as 2e, but 2e accomplished this goal extremely poorly.

And, like I said, it creeps me out that there are people who stick with 2e *because* it accomplishes the goal poorly *because their goal is the exact opposite* -- they want this game to be a game where you *can't* play unless you've been playing for 10 years since you were 15 (gotta keep those snot-nosed M:tG and WoW players out, right?) and where everyone is totally reliant on the graybearded godlike DM. It's BS. It's *bad*. Bad for the game, bad for the company and bad for the community. And yet I see it everywhere -- it's an attitude that pervades these boards, meetups, random D&D geeks you meet and hope to be able to play a good game with -- I *hate* it, and I think it should be exorcized. It's everything I dislike about geek culture as a whole in a nutshell.