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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jim pinto" data-source="post: 4723735" data-attributes="member: 17619">Interesting analysis.If I had to classify myself, I'm a storytelling-roleplayer. I think what is happening is just as important as how I react to it. Deadwood strikes me as the best kind of TV show because it's about both things at the same time. Sometimes slow, the episodes are almost artful, taking on more than just the sum of their parts.But I digress.I have played very little as a PC in games, but when I have, I've often-times made decisions as a player that would have a stronger impact on the story rather than a pragmatic impact on my character's life. I've even had a character commit suicide in a game before because I knew the impact it would have overall (there's too much background to explain here, but trust me when I say it was a meaningful decision).Obviously, the values of the player (am I here to kill orcs or to explore the realms of the king?) impact the kind of gaming that person wants to or CAN engage in. I played a miniature-heavy session of D&D at a con with some wargamers once, and none of them could rap their heads around the actions of my dwarf who was eager to get some vengeance on the ogres inside the keep… all the while, they wanted to strategize every single act of minutia they could, dragging out the planning of the siege for one hour of real time.Neither of us was in that game for the same reason.Remove the GM from the equation and that game is very different. Add a chess clock and you change the process again. Put objective cards in the PCs hands and the game changes again. Hand out massive XP bonuses for roleplaying their weaknesses and you're back to where you started.You analysis states that a game like IaWA (which I love) is about judge manipulation (certainly this true of something like Mountain Witch), when this is a smaller portion of a tool for storytelling.And in my opinion, that's all any game really is… a tool. But D&D is hardly a tool for roleplaying. Certainly 1st and 4th edition aren't. And 2nd and 3rd barely even cover things like diplomacy except in passing on a skill chart somewhere.The expectation that D&D is about roleplaying is endemic to the process. We all know what we're doing because we've done it before OR we explored the process enough that we are not comfortable with our game group and our play styles… but find me a page in any D&D book that actually teaches you how to roleplay and GM and storytell and do anything other than "overcome challenges" and I'll eat my dice (safely my dice were lost recently, so no fear there).<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> To be honest, short of us sitting down and exploring the process out of our comfort zone (as we do such much in playtesting) or writing an entirely new book on "HOW TO" there's no real way to get some of these ideas out on the open road.Earlier, I stated that we should all hang out at gencon and explore some of these concepts. And I was serious. I'd love to spend 3-5 hours bantering and playing through some new ways of doing all of this. I do it with my group (when I can) and I know people that have been looking for that NEW THING enjoy the chance to try something without worrying about being "flat-footed" or suffering an AOO.ASIDE: As to your alignment argument, I'm not a fan of the stiff alignment system. There are times when people will make decisions out of necessity, pragmatism, and/or opportunity… not out of adherence to a rigid and archaic system. If anything, all of the absolutes tend toward neutral anyway, only adhering to their ideology when it's convenient. A truly LG person could not exist during a famine for instance. And if he did, he's probably not human.</blockquote>

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