Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 4723513" data-attributes="member: 3192">That's what alignment and attitude were for.  The first denoted a status of worldly alliance while the other was a more specific relationship to individuals.  The forces of good were allies to other forces of good and enemies to the forces of evil.  Stuff like that.  Attitudes were mostly broken down by race, elves and dwarves both being "Indifferent" to each other (IIRC), but each NPC's relationship could change towards the PCs.  They could change according to each other too, NPC to NPC, but that was always a determination resulting from PC/Player actions.  Moreover, tactics and strategies used by NPCs did not remain at their default (typically set by race).  NPCs could learn as well and include new strategies (and all other kinds of information) as they encountered their use.   So I have to agree with what you're saying.  At least in old D&D campaigns.  The morality of those around the PCs changed, for better or worse, depending upon the players'/characters' actions. This makes a kind of sense in the real world too, at least in one iteration of the Golden Rule: others will treat you as you treat others.  And from that belief we get both the proscriptive "treat others as you wish to be treated" and the behavioral reinforcement "treat others as you are treated", both turn the other cheek and an eye for an eye. To thoroughly clarify the answer to your questions I would need to deeply get into what the nature of roleplaying is.  I'll try and keep things simple, but the scope of the answer really requires more of an essay. Another person or place positions the roleplayer in their role.  Not only does this require an outside agency for the roleplaying to be a challenge, but it requires an objective agent for this to be a legitimate game (as we went over above).  Without a GM (or a referee with a ruleset) the other players are the ones who are determining another's roleplaying.  This would mean they are acting as both audience to and authors of the roleplayer's role.   If their judgment of the roleplayer's performance is not objective, then the judgment is not objective.  It is a result of whatever bias that person is under from the person they are judging. For instance, from the point of view of a "GM-less RPG" the roleplayer has influence over those judging his performance.  This influence is not solely his performance of the role, but the influence of his being able to in turn judge his judges at the same time.  Such an exercise cannot be objective.  It does not make a difference whether or not the one making the judgment is acting as a fellow protagonist with the roleplayer in the same situation or will later be judged by that same person in a different situation.  Neither person's judgment can be held as valid as neither is any longer in an objective position to the other.As we went over before, a person cannot win a game where they, the player, sets the benchmark for success after the fact.  A GM-less game means each player manipulates each other to set those benchmarks after the fact in order to have their own benchmarks also set afterward.  Is this a game? Sure, but not one where the objective is roleplaying.  It is a judge manipulation game.All games are technically roleplaying games, but to be considered an RPG a game's objective must be to roleplay.</blockquote>

Verification