TwoSix
Dirty, realism-hating munchkin powergamer
There's a fun little micro game called Warrior, Rogue, Mage where your 3 stats are literally Warrior, Rogue, Mage.
D&D General Alternate "Ability Scores"
G
Guest 6801328
Guest
That sounds....awesome.
jgsugden
Legend
D&D is an RPG, and what you're actually challenging here is not the mechanics of D&D, it is a core component of the concept of role playing - that you are filling a role.
Filing a role means pretending to be something YOU are NOT. To fill that role, you must pretend, ideally to the best of your ability, to be that other thing. This means trying to find ways to be better at things than you might be, and also restricting yourself in areas where you competency exceeds that of your character. That placement of yourself in other shoes is one of the reasons why it is used in therapy.
The rules of the game, as well as your storytelling during character creation (and that of the DM) define the character that you are pretending to be.
There are a lot of games where you do not play a role, but you still hack and slash. Gloomhaven, for example, is not a role playing game, but it has a mechanical base with parallels to D&D. It is a place to really get into optimization and using your own wiles.
Is it wrong to ignore the limitations of a role and just "be yourself" in the game? Yes and no. If you're having fun, you're doing something right ... but it isn't playing your role, generally, and thus it is not role playing 'right'. If I make a great lasagna, and enjoy it, it may be a wonderful thing - but it isn't pizza. If I call it a wonderful pizza, I am wrong - but that doesn't mean it wasn't good. If I have fun in a hack and slash fest with no character development and everyone is just going hack and slashing with no regards to personality or goals of the characters - it may be fun, but it is not, by definition, role playing.
Ah, but what if the character I design is intended to be me in a fantasy setting? Well, if that is the character you built with the DM, yes, that is you role playing you in a fantasy setting. I still think it misses the beauty of role playing in a game like D&D, but on a technicality, that is still role playing. In other games, it is the goal of the role playing game - like when I run a game of Dread and weave the players into a ghost/horror story, it is perfectly the goal of that game. It just generally is not the goal of D&D to play ourselves in another world.
Filing a role means pretending to be something YOU are NOT. To fill that role, you must pretend, ideally to the best of your ability, to be that other thing. This means trying to find ways to be better at things than you might be, and also restricting yourself in areas where you competency exceeds that of your character. That placement of yourself in other shoes is one of the reasons why it is used in therapy.
The rules of the game, as well as your storytelling during character creation (and that of the DM) define the character that you are pretending to be.
There are a lot of games where you do not play a role, but you still hack and slash. Gloomhaven, for example, is not a role playing game, but it has a mechanical base with parallels to D&D. It is a place to really get into optimization and using your own wiles.
Is it wrong to ignore the limitations of a role and just "be yourself" in the game? Yes and no. If you're having fun, you're doing something right ... but it isn't playing your role, generally, and thus it is not role playing 'right'. If I make a great lasagna, and enjoy it, it may be a wonderful thing - but it isn't pizza. If I call it a wonderful pizza, I am wrong - but that doesn't mean it wasn't good. If I have fun in a hack and slash fest with no character development and everyone is just going hack and slashing with no regards to personality or goals of the characters - it may be fun, but it is not, by definition, role playing.
Ah, but what if the character I design is intended to be me in a fantasy setting? Well, if that is the character you built with the DM, yes, that is you role playing you in a fantasy setting. I still think it misses the beauty of role playing in a game like D&D, but on a technicality, that is still role playing. In other games, it is the goal of the role playing game - like when I run a game of Dread and weave the players into a ghost/horror story, it is perfectly the goal of that game. It just generally is not the goal of D&D to play ourselves in another world.
TwoSix
Dirty, realism-hating munchkin powergamer
You can play an RPG, and role-play a character, without having ability scores or anything like them.
G
Guest 6801328
Guest
I agree with all of the above.
What that leaves open is the extent to which one believes the nature of the character should be determined by their six attributes. From other posts you have made, it seems you prioritize those numbers, and that you have strong opinions about what a given value for a given attribute might mean.
None of that has anything to do with ability scores. Is Fate Accelerated Edition not an RPG because it uses Approaches instead of abilities or skills?
jgsugden
Legend
You need a definition of a role. Attributes, ability scores, abilities, etc... are the definition in D&D. When the OP talked about not being "forced" by the game, he was talking about a role restricting him.
You can have definitions of a role that have no mechanics. However, unless the role has boundaries and characteristics (which should be limiting or else they are not really boundaries or characteristics), it is not a role.
Well, we do have definitions for what they mean, in the RAW, that tell us how we are intended to use them. There is some shift in the mechanics of how they are to be used through the editions, but the fundamental concept is simple and goes all the way back to the introduction of these 6 attributes (although wisdom, intelligence and charisma have all been refined through time more than the physical stats have been).
If I play a character with a high intelligence, he should be able to achieve things that require a high intelligence. If I play a character with low intelligence, they should not be able to achieve those same things. When role playing the low intelligence character, we should be doing our best to imagine and pretend that we're in those shoes.
And even if a role playing game does not provide any rules or mechanics for intelligence - when we define the character, it is something that has relevance and will likely need to be addressed when something challenges the intelligence of the character. If we decide they're just as smart as us - fine. However, even with no mechanics for it, someone might decide that their character is not the sharpest tool in the shed and not use their full capability solve problems that arise before their character. That is also a choice. Regardless, in D&D, we have mechanics for it - and they should be used, not ignored.
Jack Daniel
dice-universe.blogspot.com
In other words, if you're not method-acting, you're doing D&D wrong.
Did I miss something? Is it the 90s again?
jgsugden
Legend
See the 'Who Do You Want to Be?' section of their rules. That is their method for starting to define your character. What would happen if you decided your character was brilliant? You'd get a leg up on 'intelligence' based activities. Right? If you built that PC, and the other players all outshone you in the intelligence department because the players were brilliant, it would make you feel a bit frustrated to have built a brilliant character that receive no benefit from being brilliant because the other players used their own brilliance to outshine you (not saying anything bad about you - we all know people smarter than we are).
Regardless, as I discuss elsewhere, mechanics are not required to define a role. However, once defined, the role should be respected and used, not ignored when your capabilities exceed those that you have defined into the role.
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