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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 489144" data-attributes="member: 151">That doesn't necessarily encourage role-playing, just die rolling.  "We go to town.  Gor uses Gather Information.  I'll try Intimidating a drunk at the bar.  Bob will haggle at store with his appraise skill."Remember that different people enjoy different playstyles.  The inherent assumption that has run through this thread is that 'more roleplaying=good'.  I tend to agree, but not everyone enjoys that style, and there's nothing wrong with that.  Some players see town as a place to get more stuff for the dungeon.  Others see it as a way to advance their political schemes.  But the setting is generally irrelevant to role-playing.I knew a computer programmer once who was working on his own computer game.  He said something to me that has always stuck with me:  "In the computer game, Ultima, there are a lot of orcs.  There are orcs with clubs.  There are orcs with no skin or flesh, and they're called skeletons.  There are big orcs with one eyeball, and they're called Cyclopses.  There are huge orcs with wings that breathe fire, and they're called Dragons.  But they all act the same, and they're all really just orcs."  His point was that the game made no real differentation between the different monsters, other than physical appearance, and slightly different combat abilities.  They didn't behave differently, and they were indistinguishalbe, mostly.  The same thing applies with city or town adventures.  They're still just dungeons, but with no ceiling.  An encounter in a bar, city square or mountain top is no different from one in a dungeon, combat or otherwise.For example, I consider Sunless Citadel to have more role-playing opportunities than Speaker in Dreams, despite their respective locations.to the greater issue of game balance, I agree that balance generally refers to combat.  It can refer to more, of course, but D&D rules balance and character creation mostly deals with combat.  However, having played GURPS for almost two decades, I can assure you that having more potential for role-playing doesn't translate INTO more role-playing.  Some mentioned the Storyteller system as an example of a system that encourages role-playing...my personal experience has been directly coutner to that assertion.  If anything, it encourages 'Blade'-like vampire punch-outs.  Conversely, some of the best RPing that I've seen was in a 1st edition game, where we had no real rules to dictate the kind of game we were running.  And we were all fine with it.Besides which, combat is one of the most popular parts of RPGing, whether it be slaying the Dragon, engaging in a John Woo ballet of bullets, or yelling 'Avengers Assemble!' and striking against Count Nefaria's agents of Evil.  I don't want to play Strider riding north for Bree, and finding things to do while waiting for the hobbits....I want to play Aragorn at Weathertop or Helm's Deep.  YMMV.But, as hong has pointed out, the d20 system is more than capable of handling more in-depth role-playing.</blockquote>

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