Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4981406" data-attributes="member: 4937">This takes the conversation in a direction it hasn't gone in a while.  I was just setting out to prove that the skill roll could in fact be avoided.  I wasn't trying to suggest which was a better style of play.In point of fact, I lean toward 'player skill' over 'character skill' as well, however, its not as if leaning toward 'player skill' gets us out of all difficulties.  Again, as just the most obvious problem, if we do nothing with character skill, then no one can play a character smarter, wiser, or more charismatic than themselves.  And that, is more limiting than we are probably going to be happy with.It's not.  And one of the subthemes of what I've been talking about is that mental based skills don't fully inform character ability unless we render the game so mechanistic as to be 'unfun' (where 'unfun' means, unfun for most people).  I've been talking in great detail about what I think si more evocative.  I've done very little but talk about how to make the game more evocative and what role and responcibility the player has in doing exactly that.Both are acceptable propositions in most game systems (consider searching for secret doors in 1st edition).  The trick is to recognize how the two propositions interact and be able to adjudicate them both fairly.I don't consider these to be separatable things.  When Bob play's his int 5 fighter 'intelligently' (and we are going to need to define that better to understand each other), it is precisely because we lose depth in the imaginary space that it is a problem.It's the refusal to create a deep and interesting personality through characterization that is very much the heart of the problem I have here.  I've gone on at I think great length explaining how an intelligent player playing a dumb character can contribute to party success and interact in a way that is both under the surface success-oriented and in character.  Again, I can't help but think that there is a double standard.  All I'm advocating is that the player do the sort of things to bring his PC to life in interesting and entertaining ways, that the players expect the DM to do to bring to life interesting and entertaining NPC's.  I see no reason why this should make people squirm the way they have.  What is hard to understand about, "Roleplay your character."?  I'm certainly not advocating half the things I've been accused of here.</blockquote>

Verification