Are D&D rulebooks stuck in the 70's?

[Bendris Noulg]

Not so much about "role-playing mechanics" (which sounds like it belongs on a list right next to "military intelligence).

Rather, more guidelines regarding play, showing the skills used to guide and/or resolve role-play, rather than being used to replace role-play (which, sadly, is even how some of the designers use them), tips on intergrating campaign environment qualities into game balance, and so forth.

I agree that the Core Rules having a minimized attitude towards RP; 2E's mechanics-countered-by-RP was unbalanced in many groups because many groups didn't RP enough for the counter-balance to have impact. However, as presented, the rules tend to present RP as something done between the application of rules, rather than the rules being something to apply in order to resolve role-play.

Not a problem for someone with enough experience and knows better, but definately a problem for new players that really don't have anything else to compare to (thanks to CRPGs) perceive that this is how the Skills are used. This, overall, lowers the quality of an RPG as an RPG. It's not a d20 problem, since the suggestions provided is SW, WoT and CoC are decidedly different and serve to promote just the opposite. Rather, it's simply a down-play of such concepts in D&D by the lack of promotion that is the problem.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

For those of you who want more "roleplaying mechanics", I'm curious what exactly you'd like to see.

Take a gander at Pendragon's Traits and Passions, or look at the Lord of the Rings RPG from Decipher. Both fit the bill, and would be fairly easy to translate over to d20 terms. Pendragon's system, especially, can be used as a source of adventure or roleplaying hooks, and really does help define a character. It's one of the few systems I've ever seen that actually does so. However, both games are very much high fantasy, with epic themes. I don't think their systems would work, necessarily, in other types of games.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Actually, Henry, a random background mechanic that gave me something like that would be hilarious! Not for every campaign, but I still think that could potentially be pretty darn funny.

You mean, like the random background mechanic from the original Traveller, where your character could die during the rolling-up process?

"Dang, died again!" *crumples page, reaches for dice*

 

[Henry]

Posted by Olgar Shiverstone:
You mean, like the random background mechanic from the original Traveller, where your character could die during the rolling-up process?

"Dang, died again!" *crumples page, reaches for dice*

I love the old stories about new players to the Traveller game who didn't understand that they weren't actually playing the game yet...

Posted by Azlan:
Does it irk you that in D&D, at least, you are required to take an alignment?

Nope - because alignments are sufficiently broad as to justify wide ranges of behavior under each branch, and these can also change during play without direct penalty to the player. The old system where you used to LOSE A LEVEL when you changed alignments, THAT irked me.

Well, la-di-da! Good for you!

And a tra, and a la, and a Hey, Nonny Nonny to boot!

I say: Rather than a supplement, it should be built into the system. It's too integral to roleplaying to be a supplement or an afterthought.

However, there is a vast belief in the D&D community that such a mandatory system of quirks and flaws is not important enough to be a part of the game. Even in GURPS, one of the most Flaw-heavy and Quirk-heavy games out there, they are not mandatory, but rather are based on the bonus/penalty system. However, the self-same system of bonus and minus points must be heavily DM supervised in many cases to avoid the maximum gain for minimum penalty that was discussed above.


To me, a player having as much or as little background as he wishes is one of the strengths of the D&D system - of all its versions.

It wouldn't force you which quirks and disadvantages to take, it would merely require you to choose a set number of them from a list thereof, and it would provide guidelines (if not hard, fast rules) on how to employ them within the framework of the game.

Which I wouldn't like, because by its nature it enforces a certain "minimum level of roleplaying" on the game system as a whole. While each DM is certainly free to modify it, as all the rules, the baseline as a "minimum roleplay level" does not set well with me as a player or a DM.

I will WHOLLY agree with a strong push for more helpful advice in the PHB on roleplaying characters, say in Chapter 6, or more advice in the DMG on encouraging the players in their roleplay pursuits, and examples both of how to work character info into your games and optional XP and story benefits systems used to encourage character detail.

However, itemizing it and reducing it to a minimum quirks selected list is not appealing to me.

 

[Azlan]

You mean, like the random background mechanic from the original Traveller, where your character could die during the rolling-up process?

No one here is advocating those kinds of heavy-handed rules for quirks, disadvantages, background options, etc.

Feh. You naysayers keep coming up with such lame examples to support your argument. Well, go ahead, then: Be narrowminded, and throw the baby out with bathwater.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

You naysayers keep coming up with such lame examples to support your argument.

Yeah, but you'll get used to it after awhile.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Better stuck in the 70/80's than in the 90's. We don't need no steenkin' angst in D&D!

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Yeah, but you'll get used to it after awhile.

Could you edit your sig or whatever that url link is? It causes the screen to be stretched out.

 

[Azlan]

...alignments are sufficiently broad as to justify wide ranges of behavior under each branch, and these can also change during play without direct penalty to the player. The old system where you used to LOSE A LEVEL when you changed alignments, THAT irked me.

Yes, well, what irks me is how broad and loose alignments are considered to be by players, nowadays; and how easily characters can slip from one alignment to another, on the whim of their players.

However, there is a vast belief in the D&D community that such a mandatory system of quirks and flaws is not important enough to be a part of the game.

Yes, well, there is a vast belief in the non-D&D community that D&D is basically a hack n' slash, dungeon-crawling roleplaying game -- and the lack of rules (or guidelines, at least) to help further define and flesh out player characters is one of the reasons for that belief.

This is the kind of "freestyle" roleplaying I've witnessed in most D&D campaigns...

DWARF FIGHTER: Bring me some ale!

ELF RANGER: Foolish dwarves, always looking for their next flagon-full.

DWARF FIGHTER: Bah, uppity elves!

HUMAN PALADIN: You must cease these petty inter-party quarrels, or I will be forced to disband.

DWARF FIGHTER: Go ahead, see if we care! You're the only lawful good person in this group.

ELF RANGER: Yes, you're just pissed off because we wouldn't help you rescue those prisoners. But, hey, even if they were being tortured; and even if their painful screams and desperate please were echoing toward us, down the hall; I don't have to answer to such calls -- I'm chaotic good.

HALF-ORC BARBARIAN/ROGUE/WIZARD (WHO'S CHAOTIC NEUTRAL): Let me roll my d6, here... If I roll a 6, I'll take sides with the paladin; otherwise, I'm taking sides with the dwarf and elf, again.

See? D&D provides lots of rules and guidelines for character races, classes, and alignments, but very little else in the way of further defining characters and fleshing them out. And so, those players who lack imagination, spontaneity, and/or acting abilities (and there are many, many such players, out there) simply gravitate to what is provided, in the rulebooks.

 

[Wormwood]

And so, those players who lack imagination, spontaneity, and/or acting abilities (and there are many, many such players, out there) simply gravitate to what is provided, in the rulebooks.

And there a many, *many* players who don't want more than what is provided in the rulebooks.

The fact that the non-D&D community may have 'progressed' past squad-level tactical RPGs is an interesting bit of trivia, but it doesn't render the classic D&D style obsolete.