D&D 5E (2014) Do you let PC's just *break* objects?

[Lanefan]

By what measure? And remember, harder to kill =/= hit points.

All other things being equal (i.e. no change in armour worn etc.) then harder to kill in the fiction maps directly to more hit points at the table.

 

[Lanefan]

If the PC doesn’t know something but the player does and the player acts as they imagine the PC would without that knowledge, what they’re doing is the Meisner technique. The Meisner technique is an evolution of Stanislavsky’s system, but it’s distinctly different, in that it involves drawing from analogous experiences to the character’s to approximate the character’s reaction, as opposed to the original Stanislavskyian method of trying to actually reproduce the character’s experience.

As the professor I learned the Meisner technique from put it: Stanislavsky would have said you can’t effectively portray a prostitute if you’ve never turned a trick, whereas Meisner would advise you to think back to a time when you felt like a w**** to inform your portrayal of a prostitute. Translating that to D&D, Stanislavsky would say you can’t act like you’ve never fought a troll before if you have in fact fought a troll, whereas Meisner would advise you to think back to the first time you fought a troll to inform your roleplaying when your character is fighting a troll for their first time.

The end result, though, in either case is that you're trying your best to think from "inside" the character you're portraying.

 

[Maxperson]

All those and more - i.e. whatever it takes to, on average, stay upright longer than the other guy.

Right, which is why hit points are unfathomable to the PC. No way to truly know what's making you better able to survive.

 

[Maxperson]

All other things being equal (i.e. no change in armour worn etc.) then harder to kill in the fiction maps directly to more hit points at the table.

All other things are rarely equal, and you don't fight enough to realize the difference even if you pay very close attention, which adventures don't really do. You get more skilled in other areas and gain abilities as you level.

 

[Charlaquin]

Well, if full immersion to the point of thinking as your character rather than yourself isn't method acting (albeit unscripted), then what is it?

That degree of immersion would be comparable to method acting, but that does not seem to be what Oofta was describing.

 

[Charlaquin]

The end result, though, in either case is that you're trying your best to think from "inside" the character you're portraying.

Yes, but that’s just acting. “The method” is a specific way of trying to achieve that goal.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes, but that’s just acting. “The method” is a specific way of trying to achieve that goal.

Your two examples were good, but those are the only ways to method act.

From the Nashville Film Institute..

"What is Method Acting? Method acting is a technique that performers employ to empathize with the characters they are portraying emotionally. In this technique, the actor “becomes” the character and frequently remains in the role for long periods."

From Backstage.com

"Method acting is a system in which actors attempt to inhabit the psyche of their character, sometimes for long periods, to facilitate realistic behavior under imaginary circumstances."

Stanislovky actually agrees with that by the way.

"In order for actors to create natural performances, Stanislavski believed that they needed to use personal experiences in order to imagine how their characters are feeling. They would use their own memories and relate these emotions to their portrayal of a character.

Scenario: An actor has been given the role of a murderer. Of course, in their own life they have never killed anybody, but they draw from their own experiences of feeling anger, or anything else they feel is relevant, and to inform how they might behave if they found themselves in a similar situation to their character. They regularly inhabit the mind of their character, even sometimes during their day-to-day life off-set, and use this preparation to feed into their performances on-camera."

Using personal experiences does not mean that they have to have done the thing, only that they use personal experiences to inform the actor. You clearly don't have to have murdered someone to method act a murderer.

When the players are inhabiting their character and doing what the character would do, then that is method acting.

 

[greg kaye]

And the 2nd level fighter will also often have better armor and will have better abilities, which also makes them harder to kill. No way for the PC to differentiate between types of harder to kill. Hit points are undetectable as such since there's no way to determine why the PC is harder to kill other than skill, items, etc., which don't equate to hit points.

A 2nd-level champion or battlemaster will regularly be able to put and take off that better armour (which they may or may not have been able to acquire) but one thing that would remain constant would be a 60% increase in base hit points. I doubt that this would typically go without notice. Surely, for, say, a "fighter"

If there was one thing that might be measured it would be fighting/survivability potentials. These are things that someone such as a boxing coach could give special attention to. A character with 11 HP is, one way or another, measurably harder to down than one with 10.

On what basis do you claim that experts and those interested in fighting would not be able to assess the craft?
Sure, there may be some fighters that may be so dumb or ~brain-damaged, if it's that character that's being played, that they might not have noticed a 60% increase in their potential to take damage and a doubling in the hit dice they could trade per short rest.
But many fighters might be considered to be thoughtfully competitive. They fight, and there may be every reason to consider that your average champion and battlemaster will consider, assess (and potentially claim bragging rights about) every advantage that they manage to gain.
Remember, all I'm saying is that..

Characters immersed in the worlds of D&D may be very familiar with things like level jumps, acquisition of hit points, and the trading of hit dice over a short rest. These are the things that they live with and with which they may have become very familiar.

In these worlds it could be common knowledge that, say, falling out of a window might spell likely death for a commoner and a risk for a rookie fighter and yet might leave barely a scratch on a veteran. I find it difficult to believe, in a world that followed the rules of d&d, that these kinds of things would not become common knowledge in the "lore of my people".

 

[Oofta]

So let me get this straight

The end result, though, in either case is that you're trying your best to think from "inside" the character you're portraying.

gets the response

That degree of immersion would be comparable to method acting, but that does not seem to be what Oofta was describing.

Because this is really starting to sound like you just have an issue with me, personally, not what I'm saying. I've repeatedly explained that I try to approach the game from the perspective, with knowledge of, motivations of my PC. Think about what it would actually be like to be that PC. In other words "...think from 'inside' the character".

As Wikipedia would describe method acting, I try to play my character "...identifying with, understanding, and experiencing a character's inner motivation and emotions." But somehow, that's not good enough for you because you go off into tangents about Meisner and Stanislavsky, somehow getting around to [emphasis added]

If the PC doesn’t know something but the player does and the player acts as they imagine the PC would without that knowledge, what they’re doing is the Meisner technique. The Meisner technique is an evolution of Stanislavsky’s system, but it’s distinctly different, in that it involves drawing from analogous experiences to the character’s to approximate the character’s reaction, as opposed to the original Stanislavskyian method of trying to actually reproduce the character’s experience.

As the professor I learned the Meisner technique put it: Stanislavsky would have said you can’t effectively portray a prostitute if you’ve never turned a trick, whereas Meisner would advise you to think back to a time when you felt like a w**** to inform your portrayal of a prostitute. Translating that to D&D, Stanislavsky would say you can’t act like you’ve never fought a troll before if you have in fact fought a troll, whereas Meisner would advise you to think back to the first time you fought a troll to inform your roleplaying when your character is fighting a troll for their first time.

Which seems to mean that I would have to think of the first time I fought a troll which is of course impossible. I seriously doubt that Heath Ledger thought back to when he became a sociopathic anarchist mass murderer in order to play the Joker. Yet he was still considered a method actor.

If you're insisting that I think back to the time that as a player I played a PC that fought a troll ... that isn't relevant at all. Even if I did remember, they were completely different PCs coming from completely different mindsets

If you're defining method acting as thinking about some situation I tried something and it didn't work for reasons I didn't understand? That's something I can do. I also take into consideration the personality of the PC when I do that. We're playing Curse of Strahd where we were invited to dinner. So I imagined what my PC would feel based on situations where I've been in a position where someone else had all the power and was potentially a threat to some goal of mine (in D&D, of course, the stakes are a bit higher). Then I try to put myself in their frame of thought. How my PC would respond to that emotion and context to role play accordingly.

If that isn't similar to the approach used by method actors, I don't know what else would qualify. No, I don't care about Stanislavsky or Meisner. As you said above, the definition of method acting is too vague and [edit to add: most] people don't care or know about specific subtypes of method acting.

Last, but not least, I never said I was a consummate method actor when I role play. I just attempt to use some of the techniques associated with the style. That includes occasionally imagining what it would be like if a troll kept coming back from the dead because we didn't burn it with fire. It has nothing to do with solving the puzzle of why the troll doesn't die, it's about that moment of "Why the f*** didn't that work!" panic or "Huh. Guess it's time to try somethin' else." pragmatism or "Can we just leave now?" fear. All based on how the PC approaches the world and how they think. In other words, trying to get into the mind of the character I'm portraying. AKA something like method acting.

 

[pemerton]

@Charlaquin For what it's worth I 100% agree that identifying all authorship based on "thinking as the character" as method acting, or to identify all attempts to perform a character based on imagining what they would think or feel as method acting, is simple misdescription.

"The Method" is a particular technique (or, perhaps, a range of techniques).

And of course it's not normally used to decide what choices a character will make - in the typical case those will have been scripted, or at least plotted in some general sense. It's a technique for portraying a character, not deciding whether or not they use fire to fight a troll!