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Message: <blockquote data-quote="spinozajack" data-source="post: 6618117" data-attributes="member: 6794198">Interesting thread. Speaking about Gygax' 1st edition loot-and-play exploration gamestyle being encouraged (if not enforced) by the rules for XP rewards, based on getting gold, killing more monsters, casting spells, doing your classes' primary function well, is to my mind the definition of what a roleplaying game is.If you are given class advancement rewards for defeating challenges, irrespective of how you go about it (the ends justify the means type XP reward system), then that is an anti-roleplaying game. It means, do whatever action is expedient to get the most XP for the smallest time. Or, you do not have to play that way, but if you play this way or that way, you get the same rewards. No. XP is a cornerstone of D&D. People who ignore it, I believe, aren't playing the game properly. I really do believe this, after many years of the trends of D&D being to just level people up at fixed points. I thought back to a very long term campaign in 2nd edition I was involved in for many years, and remember at the end of each session, looking forward to justifying my actions and roleplaying decisions to the DM to get the most XP, and consequently, when I played my character better (according to the kit and background description that was written down at character creation), I was rewarded with more XP. When we had other players trying to pretend like they were lawful good but instead were more selfish or greedy or smash n grab style players, the DM wouldn't award them with as much XP, and that was incentive for them to try and improve, or possibly alter their alignment so that their preferred ideal of what their character was would be reflected in what was written.To reiterate, a roleplaying game should have rules for roleplaying. D&D no longer does, really. It has vague suggestions. It has an alignment system that is of no consequence. It has XP rewards that are undefined, even to the point of saying that XP itself can be completely ignored in the rules and levels awarded at plot chapter transitions. This to me makes the actual act of roleplaying one that is at best tangential to the game, one where roleplaying is not valued. They tried to add value to roleplaying well, with the inspiration, traits, bonds, flaws system, but who uses it? There is no benefit to doing so. My benefit for roleplaying my character well should be rewarded in terms of experience. If there's no competition between players or even with yourself, to improve your roleplaying, then there is no incentive to improve. At best it becomes "fluff" and the only important thing that determines if you level up this session is that you didn't die, and the group killed the BBEG in time for breakfast. That's not a roleplaying game, that's truly a hack and slash, and Gygax' D&D was so much more than that. You played a class, even in ways other than mechanics, the roleplaying itself was expected to be different. A chaotic neutral rogue was expected to play differently than a lawful good paladin. And that was supported by the rules by the alignment system, as well as the different ways that different classes were awarded experience. A wizard got XP by clever use of their spells, using mind over matter, researching new spells or finding scrolls and successfully acquiring them. A fighter gained XP by fighting. A rogue by stealing things, and acquiring gold. A paladin by being honorable and saving the children, not just by maximizing the number of orcs he killed. Those things are the core of what a roleplaying game is. It saddens me that D&D has stopped being a roleplaying game long ago. At best, roleplaying is something you do in between battles to give the dice a rest, it's not part of the actual game per se. If this was a roleplaying game, where are the rules for roleplaying? There are none. Except for inspiration and traits and bonds, but those things actually don't mean anything because few people actually award differential XP levels to different people in the group. I've never seen a group since 2nd ed where PCs gained levels at more than 1 session apart, or had more than 1 level of difference between them. This is negative reinforcement that playing your character well should allow you to progress faster than someone who doesn't play the game well. That's what a game is, to me. If you have individual XP values, and individual levels, why are they often if not always normalized among the group? Thanks for invalidating all that great roleplaying I did, dungeon master, you just leveled the guy who phoned it in and played his paladin like a greedy wandering murder hobo the same as you did my character who followed his character sheet's description to the letter and impressed everyone in the process. True creativity doesn't come when there are no limitations, instead it thrives when constraints are placed upon you. If you pick a character with a certain background, with certain traits and flaws and goals, you should be rewarded in this game of roleplaying, for actually roleplaying and not just killing stuff. It's ironic that people say Gygax' D&D was hack n slash, when it was that only for fighters, whereas rogues often avoided battle because they could rise in the ranks faster and easier by sneaking around and stealing gold from under the ogre's nose. Modern D&D is not really a roleplaying game, it's a game where you can roleplay in it, if you like to. Big difference.</blockquote>

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