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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6822260" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think that 2nd ed AD&D is a high watermark for this (or low watermark, depending on how one wants to frame the metaphor).From p 18 of the PHB:Suppose you decide to name your character "Rath" and you rolled the following ability scores for him: STR 8 DEX 14 CON 13 INT 13 WIS 7 CHA 6 Rath has strengths and weaknesses, but it up to you to interpret what the numbers mean . . . Obviously, Rath's ability scores . . . are not the greatest in the world. Yet it is possible to turn these "disappointing" stats into a character who is both interesting and fun to play. Too often players become obsessed with "good" stats. . . . In truth, Rath's survivability has a lot less to do with his ability scores that with your desire to role-play him. If you give up on him, of course he won't survive! But if you take an interest in the character and role-play him well, then even a character with the lowest possible scores can present a fun, challenging and all-around exciting time. Does he have a Charisma of 5? Why? Maybe he's got an ugly scar. His table manners could be atrocious. He might mean well but always manage to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. He could be bluntly honest to the point of rudeness . . . His Dexterity is 3? Why? Is he naturally clumsy or blind as a bat? Don't give up on a character just because he [sic] has a low score. Instead view it as an opportunity to role-play, to create a unique and entertaining personality in the game. Not only will you have fun creating that personality, but other players and the DM will have fun reacting to him.To me, this is wrong in so many ways it's hard to set them all out.First, we have the mandatory attack upon players who want good stats - as if there is something objectionable about players wanting to impact the shared fiction via action resolution (which is what stat bonuses let you do).Following on from that, we have a depiction of "role-playing" which is entirely about the players passively providing colour ("My guy is rude", "My guy burps at the table", "My guy has a quirky accent and wears a funny hat") rather than the players actually providing goals for play and driving the narrative of the game.There is a different manifestation of the same perspective on the players' role when the only success-condition flagged for play is that one's character survives. There is nothing to suggest that Rath's player might establish other goals for Rath in play, and try to achieve them by engaging the game's system.And then there is the complete disregard of system in the suggested colouring of stats. For instance, if a character with DEX 3 is "blind as a bat", why does s/he not suffer a penalty to finding secret doors, or to climbing (neither of these mechanics is linked, in the rule book, to DEX).In one of his <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/10/" target="_blank">reviews of so-called "fantasy heartbreakers"</a>, Ron Edwards made the following observation:The key assumption throughout all these games is that if a gaming experience is to be intelligent (and all Fantasy Heartbreakers make this claim), then the most players can be relied upon to provide is kind of the "Id" of play - strategizing, killing, and conniving throughout the session. They are the raw energy, the driving "go," and the GM's role is to say, "You just scrap, strive, and kill, and I'll show ya, with this book, how it's all a brilliant evocative fantasy." It's not Illusionism - there's no illusion at all, just movement across the landscape and the willingness to fight as the baseline player things to do. At worst, the players are apparently slathering kill-counters using simple alignment systems to set the bar for a given group . . . sometimes, they are encouraged to give characters "personality" like "hates fish" or "likes fancy clothes"; and most of the time, they're just absent from the text, "Player who? Character who?" . . . The Explorative, imaginative pleasure experienced by a player - and most importantly, communicated among players - simply doesn't factor into play at all, even in the more Simulationist Fantasy Heartbreakers, which are universally centered on Setting. I think this is a serious problem for fantasy role-playing design. It's very, very hard to break out of D&D Fantasy assumptions for many people, and the first step, I think, is to generate the idea that protagonism . . . can mean more than energy and ego.The D&D assumptions that Edwards refers to have their roots more in 1st than 2nd ed AD&D - but the difference beween Edwards's characterisation and the passage from the 2nd ed PHB that I quoted is simply that the 2nd ed passage is trying to beat even the "id" out of the players - so all they are is "personality", with even the id of play generated by the GM. The beating out of the "id" is reinforced by the Combat chapter. This is the second-longest chapter in the book, after the chapter on classes and not counting the spell appendices; but it begins with an admonition thatAs important as fighting is to the AD&D game, it isn't the be-all and end-all of play. It's just one way for characters to deal with situations. If characters could do nothing but fight, the game would quickly get boring - every encounter would be the same. Because there is more to the game than fighting, we'll cover much more than simple hack-and-slash combat in this chapter.(Reviewing the chapter, that last line is mostly an empty promise - unless it is meant to refer to the rules for unarmed combat, or the fact that the chapter also includes the rules for saving throws and turning undead. Though the example of play on p 93 does manage to reintroduce a bit of "id" by way of "personality", in the following line of the example: "Harry (playing Rath, a dwarf who hates orcs): "Orcs? - CHARGE!")There is nothing to suggest that the way characters deal with "situations" might be shaped by goals that the players bring to the table; or that the relationship between the "situation" and those goals might mean that two fights are very different experiences in play, even if the base mechanics used to resolve them are the same.In Part 3 of his <a href="http://www.rpg.net/oracle/essays/itoolkit3.html" target="_blank">Interactive Toolkit</a> essays, Christopher Kubasik makes the following point:Characters drive the narrative of all stories. However, many people mistake character for characterization. Characterization is the look of a character, the description of his voice, the quirks of habit. Characterization creates the concrete detail of a character through the use of sensory detail and exposition. By "seeing" how a character looks, how he picks up his wine glass, by knowing he has a love of fine tobacco, the character becomes concrete to our imagination, even while remaining nothing more than black ink upon a white page. But a person thus described is not a character. A character must do. Character is action. That's a rule of thumb for plays and movies, and is valid as well for roleplaying games and story entertainments. This means that the best way to reveal your character is not through on an esoteric monologue about pipe and tobacco delivered by your character, but through your character's actions. But what actions? Not every action is true to a character; it is not enough to haphazardly do things in the name of action. Instead, actions must grow from the roots of Goals. A characterization imbued with a Goal that leads to action is a character.I think that recognising this, and then integrating it into the system and the play of an RPG (whether formally or informally) is key to the move from "old" to "new" RPGs.</blockquote>

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