Combat vs. Role-playing

[Mallus]

Absolutely nothing wrong with hamming it up.

Cool.

My feeling is when people mention roleplaying they really just mean playing in character and I think that is a limited definition of roleplaying. I think roleplaying is actions/scenes in the game that advance the characters goals, intrinsic story, personality, development.

People mean a lot of things when they say roleplaying. Sometimes it means leather collars and safe words, other times it simply means act of playing in an RPG.

I dont want to limit the idea of roleplaying to just being an amateur actor.

Understood. I just to make sure that amateur acting, or even mere game-playing is excluded from the definition.

You can reward whatever the players want, but the OP specifically asked how to tie in Roleplaying with mechanics and that was my suggestion.

My suggestion was to use multiple resolution system for social challenges side by side, rather than trying to engineer a single comprehensive system capable of satisfying players with divergent notions of what roleplaying should be.

In other words, sometimes you roll, sometimes you just talk.

If you want mechanics tied to roleplaying (basically what the OP was asking for) then you will be rewarding some type of roleplaying by tying it to the mechanics.

Unless you use more than one set of mechanics.

In other words, sometimes you roll, sometimes you just talk.

Additionally I think games should reward the modes of play that the game emphasizes.

Now that's what I consider limiting; people have been doing all manner of fantastically interesting things with D&D, a game supposedly built around dungeon crawling.

I generally believe games are better off focusing on certain themes, genres and styles of play vs a game trying to be all things to all people.

While I think that can be true, it's not in the case of D&D. Thirty years of game history form a rather solid proof of that.

 

[Insight]

While I agree with you, I'll just play devil's advocate for a moment...

If you AREN'T into roleplaying, then why are you playing a roleplaying game? There are plenty of mini wargames out there that do not require roleplaying...

If you want to roleplay, but aren't as good as the guy next to you, shouldn't you at least TRY? I mean, how do you get better at roleplaying w/o doing it over and over again? That's something a die roll will not help you with. And let's face it, all roleplaying is is thinking on your feet, improvising. The only way to get better, is keep trying, not rolling die in lieu of.

There are LOTS of players who are into the power gain / advancement aspects of the game and don't care to even attempt to roleplay. Even though I'm not that sort of player, I think there should be room for all sorts of players in D&D.

You could sort of extend that notion to the tactical players, but I don't want to imply that tacticians don't enjoy roleplay in their own way, because the majority of them make tactical decisions based on their character's goals and motivations and not pure gamism (although I'm sure there are those too).

What I DON'T like about how 3.x works is that you can gain a tactical advantage in combat by doing things you would NEVER do in a real fight, like running around your foe, or moving into a weird tactical position just so that your buddy gets a flanking bonus. I prefer to at least try to roleplay during combat and have my character act as I believe he or she would. I accept that not everyone can get past the rules and always go for the pure tactical advantage.

A lot of this applies to non-combat situations as well. Who hasn't seen a character that's taken every possible 5 ranks in a skill to get those +2 synergy bonuses to Diplomacy. Just about every party seems to have one of those guys (or gals). These same characters tend to speak for the group in all social situations, even when unwarranted. I don't really want to get into the "is optimization counter to roleplaying?" argument here, but you have to sometimes wonder how some of these characters would even exist outside of the gamist vaccuum.

 

[Insight]

Wait, you say it's a problem with the rules (because it emulates everything and codify them in easier-to-use instruction to resolve them) yet it's a good thing?

I don't know which side you're on.

I'm not trying to take a side here. These are the facts as to the state of D&D as I see it. I meant no moral judgment on anyones' style of play. However, I don't believe forcing someone to use rules (in the place of roleplaying) for every situation is a good thing.

While I don't force my players to roleplay, I do encourage it, and it is the responsibility of the DM to set the example.

As for the content-heavy combat rules, they're just aids. Like condoms. They're there but it doesn't mean you should have sex when you're not ready to raise a baby.

Exactly. Rule 0 exists for a reason, but many DMs and players seem to forget it exists and want to grind through the rules in every situation.

 

[Umbran]

That's what I'm talking about! That's good stuff!

Yes, it is good stuff.

Now, keep it up for 20 combat rounds in a row, and see how that goes. I think you'll find that it gets a bit difficult and/or tedious and time consuming. Highly-descriptive combat is cool for short sprints, but it gets to be a drag if it goes on for too long.

 

[apoptosis]

Unless you use more than one set of mechanics.

In other words, sometimes you roll, sometimes you just talk.

True and I would do that with combat and any other potential conflict (climbing a tree, punching someone in the face etc.) as well. Sometimes you roll sometimes the player (and DM) just states what happens.

Now that's what I consider limiting; people have been doing all manner of fantastically interesting things with D&D, a game supposedly built around dungeon crawling.


While I think that can be true, it's not in the case of D&D. Thirty years of game history form a rather solid proof of that.

Sure people have done many things with D&D though that doesn't mean it was a particularly good tool to do it with(IMHO).

I think games have strengths and Weaknesses and you should emphasize those. D&D is particularly good at breaking down the door, killing things and taking their stuff. Can you do other things, absolutely, it it a particularly good system for other things, IMO not necessarily.

I have actually changed my mind on the development of 4E since it has come out and think that it should be better at what it does best, which is the dungeoncrawl (used in a very very loose sense). It looks like 4E is being designed to better play through this type of story with the balancing of magic vs non-magic classes, preventing certain issues like the 15-minute workday etc.

Apop

 

[Mallus]

Frankly I would do the same for combat. Shadow of Yesterday has a great rule called "bringing down the pain" (this is for all conflicts in the game)

SoY is a free download, right? I've been meaning to check it out.

The GIST (sp?) of the system is that if there are no real stakes involved don't roll just say "Yes" as the DM to whatever the player wanted (this really came from Sorcerer)

The DM game I run and an M&M game I play in essentially work like this.

If the player loses a die roll they can "bring down the pain"... snip...

That's really interesting. This is done to shift the game's focus from low-level task resolution to the higher-level reasons and conflicts behind them?

 

[Mallus]

True and I would do that with combat and any other potential conflict (climbing a tree, punching someone in the face etc.) as well. Sometimes you roll sometimes the player (and DM) just states what happens.

Words to DM by.

Sure people have done many things with D&D though that doesn't mean it was a particularly good tool to do it with(IMHO).

But they keep doing it! And by 'they' I mean 'me'. That means something, I'm sure of it.

 

[apoptosis]

Words to DM by.


But they keep doing it! And by 'they' I mean 'me'. That means something, I'm sure of it.

Oh absolutely. I am not dissing on D&D by any means. I just mean no game can generally do all things well and that you should use a game that empasizes stuff that is important to you. So sometimes you use the game that gives you what you want most and then you deal with it being subpar on other issues (frankly every game is that way).

I tend to use different games to emphasize what I want out of the game. I really love SOY (my favorite fantasy RPG at the moment) but it will not do well things that D&D does do well.

 

[AncientSpirits]

Responses and thoughts. This topic has become an issue for the way I run games.

Clavis wrote:

Simplify the combat system so that it doesn't require miniatures. Eliminate AoO's first. The battlemat draws attention towards the center of the table, and away from the faces of the other players. In that way, it encourages players to disconnect from each other, and only think in a tactical manner. Without the subtle cues provided by body language and facial expression, communication suffers. That's one of the reasons why internet communications so often leads to angry misunderstandings: we can't hear the tone of each other's voices and see the expressions on each other's faces.

Really well said. When I recall 1st and 2nd edition adventures, my mind's eye is filled with the fantastic images that the DM was trying to paint for us (and that I made up). When I recall 3rd edition adventures, my mind's eye is filled with a miniature board and minis. Ugh. Realizing this, I'm strongly thinking of banning minis.

Outsider wrote:

1.) They aren't mutually exclusive. At all. Dungeons and Dragons is a game focused on going into dungeons and fighting the dragons within. That clearly involves a lot of combat. The roleplaying should be intertwined with that playstyle. It should focus on why exactly you are going into that dungeon and fighting that dragon, and showing some personality as you do it.

I agree this is how it's often played. But I'd rather the game rewarded r'ping the encounter to negotiate with the dragon. The whole kill-kill-kill focus gets juvenile.

Merlin wrote:

"But how you choose to hack up the orcs certainly involves a fair chunk of roleplaying."

Hard to agree. This sounds like tactics. I've noticed that a lot of role-play intense folks actually hate tactical optimization.

Insight wrote:

There are LOTS of players who are into the power gain / advancement aspects of the game and don't care to even attempt to roleplay. Even though I'm not that sort of player, I think there should be room for all sorts of players in D&D.

All too true. I had a player who was a min-max and tactics nut; he seemed incapable of role-playing himself out of a paper-haversack. So I told players, from now on, I award anywhere from +0% to +20% extra XP for good role-playing. After a session, we'd list together all the RP notable moments. Because it was a group "round up" it didn't feel arbitrary. All of a sudden, the munchkin player "discovered" his role-playing skills and the whole game (and other players) were immensely relieved.

4th edition:
I really hope 4E delivers on its promise of streamlined combat!
In my experience, the rules-heavy focus on combat shifts a huge chunk of real-world game hours to combat resolution (several hours to resolve a minute of fighting) and leaves insufficient real-world game hours for court intrigue, etc.

It would be really nice to have MORE quick skirmishes mixed/woven in with role-playing scenes; rather than the long stretches of either/or activity that we (I) have now.

 

[apoptosis]

SoY is a free download, right? I've been meaning to check it out.


The DM game I run and an M&M game I play in essentially work like this.


That's really interesting. This is done to shift the game's focus from low-level task resolution to the higher-level reasons and conflicts behind them?

I am a bit of a SOY fanboy right now. I really like the game. It actually stole the feats idea from D&D (the designer pretty much said so).

It takes a bit to get used to, as conflict resolution is universal (for everything) and damaging someone socially can impact them physically. But in some ways the system really balances characters very well without them necessarily being of equal power.

Yes you have the reasoning down exactly, the shift is to really gloss over unimportatant conflicts and while elongating and dramatizing the important ones. The nice thing about it is that players get to choose which conflicts are the important ones as only they can "Bring down the Pain"

Yes SOY is free. It is lighter on crunch but it definitely does have enough crunch to make things interesting.

It is great for a fantasy game but delivers a very different type game than D&D (which is good/bad depending on your needs)