Combat vs. Role-playing

[apoptosis]

One of the big concerns I've seen bandied about (mostly by gnay-sayers) is that D&D/4e (and 3e before it) moved the game off "role-playing" and toward "videogame/mmorpg/hacker/anime/boardgame" (or a game that focuses on combat). This leads me to a couple questions...

1.) Why are the two mutually exclusive? Why can a game that focuses on combat and dungeons NOT have role-playing?
2.) What SHOULD the game do to move toward being more role-playing oriented IN THE RULES (no campaign suggestions, just how should the RULES emphasize rping?

I'm interested to hear exactly how D&D could emphasize role-playing in the rules and what effect that would have on the massive amount of combat rules?

I think looking at the indy games is a good start.

Reward roleplaying and by this i dont mean reward thespianism.

Make XP tied to the development of character goals or narrative goals.

I would have characters get XP for initiating their flaws if the flaws can impact the narrative (flaw curious is always a good example).

have character get bonuses to actions based on RP. Have maybe a Pool of Bonuses that can be used by a character when they are involved in the development of the story, their characters goals or an interesting scene.

Though..i dont think D&D will be the best game for that. D&D is a good game for a dungeonlike (dungeon meaning most any contained environ) series of encounters that primarily use combat as a way to solve them. It is what D&D does very well.

WHile i think D&D could benefit from the above mentioned ideas, i think if it strays too far from its central focus it becomes less ideal than many other games.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think a problem with role-playing in D&D is that (at least in 3rd edition) that combat is detailed in the rules very well, but "role-playing" outside of combat is mostly free-form - or a single diplomacy check.

Inside a combat, it does matter whether you swing a sword and wear heavy armor or just protect yourself with a shield and spear. It matters whether you prefer to stay mobile or are the heavy hitter standing in front of the enemies and stopping their movement. It matters whether you focus on evocations or illusions. These are all part of your "role" in combat, and your "combat personality" is well defined.

But in a social encounter, how does your personality affect the outcome of a social encounter? You don't have a lot of tools - you can try bluffing, but you can't change the attitude of your opponent. You can use Intimidate, but that works only temporary. There are different tools you can use, but they also achieve different things.

The rules don't really support "designing" your characters social personality.
There is little in the rules telling you if you are more an aggressive person in a negotiation, if you take a back seat until you find a worthy argument that can persuade the other side. There is no sense of tactics inside the rules (unlike in combat, where you can flank, feint, trip, disarm). It doesn't involve whether you rely more on lying or more on telling the truth (perhaps bluntly so), or if you prefer subtle intimidation. Yes, skills for these parts exist, but they have totally different outcomes and not neccessarily the ones that serve your "end goal" (while regardless whether you use a Dagger, a sword, a maul or a fireball spell, in the end your enemy drops down)

I think the two lower degree of granularity hurts the D&D rules in this department. You need to have two different mindsets to cover both - free-form roleplaying social situations, but highly detailed tactical combat on the other side.

If the combat system was as free-form and abstract as the social encounter system, it would probably be easier - and if both systems were equally detailed, it would also be easier.

I am wondering how the social encounters rules in 4E will change this. (I am optimistic, but we'll have to way and see...)

 

[Lord Zardoz]

1.) Why are the two mutually exclusive? Why can a game that focuses on combat and dungeons NOT have role-playing?
2.) What SHOULD the game do to move toward being more role-playing oriented IN THE RULES (no campaign suggestions, just how should the RULES emphasize rping?

Responses:

1) Roleplaying and Combat are mutually exclusive when the focus of the role playing is an attempt to create a narrative experience. While a combat focused game can have role playing, certain things just wont work. Having someone hold a Dagger to the throat of a 15th level Fighter as a threat will not work unless the situation can be handled as a Coup-De-Grace. Outside of that, the player knows that even an automatic critical hit for 2d4 damage will not seriously harm him. Any attempt to create narrative that hinges on the players reacting in a fearful manner, or in putting the players in jeopardy, tends to fail.

2) I do not accept the premise of this question. I am not convinced that moving the game away from combat and towards Roleplay at a rules level is a good idea. I do think that making the rules simpler and faster to run in general is a good idea, and that easy to remember and use rules will help roleplay. The only thing that the rules are meant to do in this kind of game is determine the success or failure of attempted courses of action, and the consequences of that success or failure.

Dungeons and Dragons is not meant to be a means for someone to inflict bad fiction on a captive audience. It is meant to be a game system to allow players to create characters that go forth and fight evil with sword and spell, and their wits. Ultimately, it is up to the DMs and the players to determine how important non combat role play is meant to be to the process.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[JDJblatherings]

You are not making any sense. Are you saying that everyone can search but it took 1 turn to do it.

I only remember (geez its been a couple of years since 1st ed for me) characters being able to search for secret doors on a 1 in 6 elves could do this on a 2 in 6 or a 1 in 6 without searching and dwarves had a 3 in 6? when searching for traps made of stone or secret doors made of stone and finally thieves had a percentage chance based on their level to find traps anywhere but they searched for secret doors like anybody else.

It is like saying: EVERYONE could search. A round was 1 minute in the good old days and a segment was 10 seconds too.

I ws anwering who and how qucik in the same line, sorry if that was confusing.

I'm talking pre-segments here, and everyone could in fact search, there was nothing stopping people from having characters search. Thieves didn't even exsist in the rules until the first supplement. The 10' pole was a piece of standard equipment so anyone could search for pits and not have to be standing on them to note their presence.

3e's search rules work a heck of a lot better since they clearup why a 10th level fighter who has adventured in dungeons for years is better or no better at searching then a 1st level fighter (if the fighter spends skill points of course) and are very mechanical if played that way.

Roleplaying situations open a lot of opportunities (and even ad-hoc modifiers to chance of success) If any player ever told me "i search that square" my answer would be "square? what square?"

If they said "Ragnar crouches down low on the floor, he draws out ones of his tubs of talc-powder and puffs it out onto the floor in front of him, any cracks revelaed ort any spots that seem to collect more powder?" or "I tap the floor ahead of me carefully with my 10' pole as we move down the hall listening carefully in case it sounds hollow or different " and that fellow might in fact get themself a bonus, Of course they might attratc some attention.

 

[NewfieDave]

Combat will always be more prominent than roleplaying in D&D. Think about it from a developer's point of view: is it easier to design combat mechanics or roleplaying mechanics? Combat is much easier to design for because it asks very specific questions which place restrictions on your design process. Roleplaying has endless possible design outcomes limited only by your imagination.

This makes roleplaying's appeal highly subjective. I've met people who really put their heart and soul into roleplaying their character, but they were a pain in the backside to deal with at the gaming table. Rolling a dice to determine whether you hit something is a mechanic everybody can get behind. Trying to force any kind of roleplaying to be hard wired into the rules means telling your customers "This is how roleplaying is done", and many of them will be turned off by this.

So the best bet is to design around combat, an area where WotC excels. Let the individual gaming groups decide what kind of roleplaying is best for them, and give them a solid set of mechanics to represent the physics of the game.

 

[Mallus]

Reward roleplaying and by this i dont mean reward thespianism.

What's wrong with hamming it up? And why not reward whatever it is that the players enjoy?

Make XP tied to the development of character goals or narrative goals.

Or remove it entirely, and not have to deal with privileging certain modes of play.

 

[shilsen]

When there's a complex rule for every situation, role playing is deemphasized.

That's way too broad a brush you're painting with, IMNSHO. I've been and am in multiple groups where we're using all the D&D rules and then some, and simultaneously roleplaying very heavily. As far as I'm concerned, some people enjoy roleplaying and they do. Some people don't enjoy roleplaying and they don't. Trying to force people to do what they don't enjoy generally leads to grief. Find a group which roleplays as much as you like and the way you like to, and game with them. Simple.

Of course, there's also the whole question of defining roleplaying, since what you or I define as it is unlikely to be what everyone else individually defines as such, but that's a subject for another thread.

 

[Odhanan]

1.) Why are the two mutually exclusive? Why can a game that focuses on combat and dungeons NOT have role-playing?

They aren't.

2.) What SHOULD the game do to move toward being more role-playing oriented IN THE RULES (no campaign suggestions, just how should the RULES emphasize rping?

You can't emphasize role-playing through a hard rule. You can, however, inhibit role-playing through a rule by not taking it into consideration and/or making it unnecessary. Rolls for Diplomacy, Bluff and so on can potentially inhibit role-playing. Not automatically though. It all depends on how the rules are worded, and if RP is considered to have an impact on the action performed.

The problem if that such an impact (in the form of bonus to the roll for instance) has to be measured by the DM. Some designers understand this as being "bad design" because it relies on DM "fiat". I'm not of that school, personally.

For me, leaving room for DM adjudication is what makes a group able, short of house ruling, to make the game fit their own playing style (if to start with you have a problem with your DM making adjudications at the game table, maybe you're just better off playing another kind of game, IMO).

 

[ShinHakkaider]

BTW, my practical solution to the whole "role vs. roll", "we need/don't need social encounter rules" issue is simply to not adjudicate every social encounter the same way; sometimes you roll for success, sometimes you just talk, others times, you do a bit of both. That way, players with different preferences all get to have their fun.

The only people this doesn't work for are cranky continuity wonks, and frankly, they can take a hike. RPG's are built on compromise and successful negotiation. Rule 0.1 should be "don't begrudge other players their fun".

EXACTLY.

That's thinking outside of the box and adjusting for your own needs as a GM / Player. It's also pretty much what I do as well. If I have a player who's a role-player then I let him role-play. As long as it doenst impede the fun of the other players at the table. Also for me the dice only really come into play when the stakes are mid range to high. Trying to seduce a barmaid, you need to have some kind of verbal game. If you're good she'll fall for it. Trying to bluff your way past the Duke of Rensford's guards, just after an assassination attempt on his life the day before? You better have verbal game AND dice luck. What you say may lend a modifier to your roll and oft times to build tension (depending on the degree of success, once again adjudicated by the DM. Who alot of people seem to forget that his role is to ADJUDICATE these exact sort of things, no matter what edition it is) there will be more than one roll or a series of them to achieve success or to attempt to recover from a close failure. Of course these are things that you get a feel for at the actual table, for the particular situation at hand.

All tables / groups are different. One size (even if you're using the same rule set) does not cover all.

As an aside I like hearing about other peoples solutions to problems as opposed to the endless griping about how x is broken or you can't roleplay with D&D. It's part of the reason I started frequenting these boards. Despite the fact that I disagree with alot of the people here about any given number of things, there used to be a great deal of creative thinkers here and this board was a great resource.

 

[LostSoul]

I'm assuming you mean "acting in character" when you say role-playing.

1.) Why are the two mutually exclusive? Why can a game that focuses on combat and dungeons NOT have role-playing?
2.) What SHOULD the game do to move toward being more role-playing oriented IN THE RULES (no campaign suggestions, just how should the RULES emphasize rping?

I'm interested to hear exactly how D&D could emphasize role-playing in the rules and what effect that would have on the massive amount of combat rules?

1) They are not mutually exclusive.

However, if the game is about combat, don't expect to see people making poor tactical (or build) decisions based on role-playing their character. They will be penalized by it.

You can get around this by rewarding people for role-playing their character when they make poor combat choices. This could increase the depth of tactical choices in combat, if done right.

2) Have all sorts of rules that basically boil down to "you have to act in character in order to get this bonus/take this action/cast this spell/use this Feat/roll the dice." That would annoy people who don't like to act in-character, though.

Personally, I will role-play more in games where there is a resolution system beyond "the DM decides". That's one method, but not everyone agrees. (I personally find DM-only resolution is just playing to the DM, not actually playing out my PC. Do what the DM thinks would work, not what the PC would do.)

I think that if you had a resolution system that wasn't "DM decides" you would see a lot more non-combat encounters. Non-combat encounters tend to allow more room to role-play, so that might help. Wouldn't have anything to do with combat rules.