Do RPGs' Wargaming Aspects Overshadow RPing?

[Umbran]

The balance between wargame and roleplaying is, in my experience, more a question of adventure design than anything else. If you design such that there's a whole lot of heavy combat the that players will have to pay careful attention to details for the characters to survive, then you'll either have dead characters, or a wargame-heavy experience. If you provide more opportunities for the characters to express themselves by means other than optimized use of the combat system, then you'll generally see more roleplay.

 

[Blue]

Do RPGs' Wargaming Aspects Overshadow RPing?

ONLY correct answer: depends on the system and the game.

Sorry, the question is meaningless. Did you mean to ask this in the D&D forum? That at least would have a focus.

 

[happyhermit]

ONLY correct answer: depends on the system and the game.

Sorry, the question is meaningless. Did you mean to ask this in the D&D forum? That at least would have a focus.

Was there a "D&D" forum in 2006?

 

[Blue]

Was there a "D&D" forum in 2006?

Gah, you are correct. Saw a whole bunch of Mark posts and assumed they were current.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I would say that the answer is yes, by my definitions of wargaming and roleplaying. And also that there's nothing wrong with that.

Wargaming is tactical combat. The players are thinking in terms of game systems and trying to make choices within that system that will make victory more likely.

Roleplaying is acting. The player's goal is to portray character and to entertain the other participants.

They're quite different activities so if you're doing one you're not doing the other, though they can be interwoven. You could shout a battlecry in the middle of combat for example.

It is entirely possible to approach combat in roleplaying games from an in character perspective making only decisions that are appropriate to the character even if they wouldn't be what the player perceives to be the best tactical option. I wouldn't regard this as wargaming though.