Do you "roleplay" in non-TTRPG Games?

[Agamon]

I play a lot of city builder/colony sims. A lot of these games don't really have a definitive end game and the environments are procedurally generated, so role playing as the leader or even making decisions for inhabitants based on their personality is where some of the fun comes from.

 

[TwoSix]

In terms of creating an avatar persona, and then making decisions in the game based on my interpretation of how the created persona would choose?

No, I don't do that in other games. I will sometimes make decisions based on objectives other than winning. Like "I want to keep the game interesting but will ultimately let her win" when playing with my 10-year-old, or "I'm going to try to see how well I do without playing any science cards" in 7 Wonders. But that's not based on any sort of roleplaying persona.

 

[aramis erak]

To be fair, talking in funny voices does not have any impact on game resolution in D&D either.

I've played at tables where it does. Maintaining a consistent faux accent in play was rewarded by that GM with a +1 on your to-hits. Another GM, in AL play, gave inspiration for voices and costumes...
I give extra XP for non-organized-play for good RP, which can include picking an accent or vocal mannerism and sticking with it.

It's not overly common, but there are some who reward those funny voices. And in 5e-14, it falls within the purview of GM giving inpiration as seen fit..

 

[Fifinjir]

When playing strategy games like Total Warhammer, Stelaris, or Conquest of Elysium, I imagine what the commanders are saying to each other as the campaign plays out. Of course this assumes they have some form of quick long distance correspondence, but I can generally assume magic or super technology.

 

[haakon1]

make decisions based on your role, otherwise do that "play pretend" thing? If so, how far away, thematically and mechanically, can a game be before you don't? Do you roleplay with Candyland? Monopoly? Chess?

Oh yes.

In Lord of the Rings Risk, I choose green and proceeded to collect the Elven lands with no interest in actual winning conditions. My friend Mat guessed what I was up to.

In Game of Thrones Risk, I add the Valar Morgulis card to a deck that’s used a lot. When it comes up, game over. Count territories and determine the winner. Best Risk rule ever!

In regular Risk, I pick Red and choose only the British Empire. Paint the world red, as they used to say. The sun never sweats. Or blue and be Napoleon.

In Ticket to Ride, I choose red and build the Santa Fe, green and build Burlington Northern, etc.

 

[corwyn77]

I think Polygon is 100% correct. An aggregate of D&D and Pathfinder games shows that the overwhelming majority of games are just combat events and combat discussion and combat rules. Which means that per-minute of D&D gaming time, the majority of players are engaging with its combat rules, not roleplay.

Interesting. In our GURPS Swashbucklers game, we've had one combat in about 10 sessions.

 

[corwyn77]

So back in the TCG gold rush of the late 90s, there was a Call of Cthulhu card game called "Mythos." What was interesting was that your deck was in a sense an adventure with characters trying to complete goals. So when we played it, we played narratively, where when you played a card, you wove it into the narrative of either your story or someone else's if your card was affecting their board. It was a lot of fun. It also almost sunk Chaosium.

Loved that game; wish it was more popular.

 

[Aldarc]

In terms of creating an avatar persona, and then making decisions in the game based on my interpretation of how the created persona would choose?

No, I don't do that in other games.

When I played WoW, I would customize my play experience for the character. You don't really get any control over what your character does when it comes to story. Zones are linear experiences. Choices are limited. Nevertheless, I would want certain characters to do certain zones based on their sketched-out backstories. I would pick certain class specializations, professions, weapons, cosmetics, mounts, reputations (before account wide), etc. based on my feel for the character. It's all fairly surface level since the story is linear. But this would be one way that I would vary my play experience as an altoholic.

 

[A_Carrington]

I recently got into XCOM a few months back, and my first comment on it to my friend was "this is a better roleplaying game than any roleplaying game".

It's hard to communicate with precision what I mean, but it's something like, the combination of clear systems that are immediately understandable, and the ability to make reasonable predictions about the effects of your choices, and the way every decision you make really does matter. In short, you genuinely have agency in the game in a way that I rarely see in video games (outside of, for example, strategy games where you're competing against one or more players, but I consider these to be a separate sort of experience).

Here's an example that will hopefully help illustrate :

In the very first mission, the objective was to break into a facility and perform a task like steal an object or blow something up (it's been a while and I forget the specifics, and this part isn't that important). Anyway long story short, after several skirmishes and achieving the objective, my squad was down to literally one guy. He just barely made it out to the extraction point while under fire from alien overwatch teams, and with more reinforcements arriving shortly.

In a lesser game, what I described above would sound like something that would happen in a cutscene. It was like something straight out of an action movie. But in this game, it was entirely the result of systems in the game that worked no differently during this situation than in any other, and the result of my decisions interacting with those systems. There wasn't a GM arbitrarily deciding to kill off players because "it would be cool and dramatic". They died as a result of my own decisions. There weren't overwatch teams positioned along the extraction route because the GM poofed them into existence to make the encounter more challenging or dramatic. They were there because the aliens who were already in the location actively decided to take up those positions.

No opponents ever arbitrarily received more health because they were dying too fast, and no BS happened to save my guys from dying. I was never granted new capabilities or weapons in violation of the rules because it would be more cool. Whatever the math and the enemy AI and the randomizer and my decisions determined, is what happened.

This is, basically, what I want from a roleplaying game, and it is what I aspire to when I run them. Things shouldn't happen because of or in service to a story. They should just happen, because of either the laws of physics, the system rules, or decision making. The story is this post. It's what we tell each other about what happened. It's not the act of playing itself.