Game Mecahnics Versus Role Playing Focus

[jbear]

To the OP
I think the player dropping was best for both you and him.

I'm playing with all new players pretty much so no one has come to the table with pre-conceived conceptions and noone knows the rules well enough to have any problems with power gaming

What I do notice is that some players LOVE the roleplaying, others just freeze when put on the spot until it comes time to draw swords and their characters fearlessly wade into battle.

I enjoy both dynamics. One helps the game move along when it reaches a null point or fear of the shadows strangles the roleplayers actions, and the other adds the spices to the dice rolling.

So I encourage and reward both as best I can. I try and encourage roleplay with mechanical rewards. "Nice I like it, +2 on your Diplomacy check". And when too much talk has bogged down the flow of the game then I find an appropriate way to move the action along. Often a good solution is to asked the bored hack and slashers what they do... and suddenly its all on!

As everyone was new to the game I created 20 characters and everyone chose the one they liked the sound of without looking at its mechanical capabilities at all.

I made each of them a back story which they may or may not develop as they see fit. It's in their hands. I have placed some hooks into their past along the way, who knows where that will take us if they follow them up, but I think its important they feel they make important decisions in a world that they can choose to go in any direction.

Actually, the first background story hook I will throw in their path is from the past of the player that seems most lost when it comes to roleplaying, or imagining what to do out of combat. I wonder if this will draw him deeper into the game or not. Time will tell.

In short, good luck finding gamers with the style you enjoy DMing. I think its important for everyone. If you're not enjoying it as DM, how will anyone else be able to. From my own experiences to date I haven't found 4e limiting to role play in anyway. But I've got some great players in my group, which I think is pretty darn important!

 

[Treebore]

I don't know. We all have been playing for a while. Years? Decades?

What about new people? Ones who have never played RPG's before? How long will it take them to realize what "role playing" is with how the rules so overwhelmingly concern themselves with the mechanics? Especially if they remain only players of this one RPG? Especially if they never run into other RPG players who understand the role play elements?

Thats what I would like to find out.

 

[Scribble]

I don't know. We all have been playing for a while. Years? Decades?

What about new people? Ones who have never played RPG's before? How long will it take them to realize what "role playing" is with how the rules so overwhelmingly concern themselves with the mechanics? Especially if they remain only players of this one RPG? Especially if they never run into other RPG players who understand the role play elements?

Thats what I would like to find out.

Like all gamers before them I'm sure they'll be just fine. Picked on, and socially ostrasized... but fine none the less.

They'll probably end up better... as they're not ful of preconceived notions about what a RPG is or isn't.

 

[Spatula]

You have a point here too. It's too bad that poor DMs making lame calls ruined the concept of game judging for a lot of players. ... With a good DM an old school game is awesome, but I have been in enough bad games to know how much it can suck.

The rigorous rules approach has its own downsides, too - I'm not advocating one over the other. And I think one of the problems in the old days was that there was no good DM advice. 1e holds a bit of a DM-vs-player stance, and I think some new DMs picked up on that but ultimately missed the point by taking it to extremes. This resulted in bad DMing, arguments at the table, and disgruntled players. But there was no guide to being a good DM at the time, nor any guidance at all on how to adjucate situations not covered by the rules.

I don't know. We all have been playing for a while. Years? Decades?

What about new people? Ones who have never played RPG's before? How long will it take them to realize what "role playing" is with how the rules so overwhelmingly concern themselves with the mechanics? Especially if they remain only players of this one RPG? Especially if they never run into other RPG players who understand the role play elements?

Thats what I would like to find out.

Take a look at the 1e PHB. It's overwhelmingly concerned with the mechanics. Seriously, the rules & options for constructing a character are 99% of the book, with about a page and a half describing what a RPG is (and a page in the back for a summary of the cosmology). Somehow we muddled through.

I think the kids are alright.

 

[Treebore]

The rigorous rules approach has its own downsides, too - I'm not advocating one over the other. And I think one of the problems in the old days was that there was no good DM advice. 1e holds a bit of a DM-vs-player stance, and I think some new DMs picked up on that but ultimately missed the point by taking it to extremes. This resulted in bad DMing, arguments at the table, and disgruntled players. But there was no guide to being a good DM at the time, nor any guidance at all on how to adjucate situations not covered by the rules.

Take a look at the 1e PHB. It's overwhelmingly concerned with the mechanics. Seriously, the rules & options for constructing a character are 99% of the book, with about a page and a half describing what a RPG is (and a page in the back for a summary of the cosmology). Somehow we muddled through.

I think the kids are alright.

Likely true. I mean all you need to realize is that your playing a role, that is like a real living person, and that you can/should play that role like you would in any play or movie.

 

[roguerouge]

At the beginning of a campaign, how do you know that you will be playing this one person for months or years? Characters can die and new ones can join the party.

Because that's why they call it a campaign and not a one-shot? Even a single module takes several week night sessions.

Unless a PC enjoys plot protection from death, the odds are its going to happen sooner or later. Adventuring is dangerous work. Paranoia of this kind is senseless. If the DM is a habitual PC killer then he/she will be without players soon enough. Agonizing over every build element in some kind of attempt to make the character "death proof" is kind of silly. Either the DM has it in for your character and will kill him if he/she wants , or the character enjoys some sort of plot protection and won't die anyway.

I think that this is a false dichotomy. Clearly there's a middle ground between PCs can never die and Killer DM.

Moreover, you ignore my larger point. Character builds aren't just about maximization. Skills, martial ability, and spell casting are a proxy for your ability to accomplish various tasks in the world: rescue the princess, slay the dragon with a spell, or charm the court. If you don't pay attention to your build, you find yourself increasingly unable to accomplish role playing objectives the closer you find yourself to the narrative climax. There's nothing worse that being committed to a story yet be running a character who has 1 skill point/level, can't cast spells, and is a speed bump in combat. Achieving your narrative goals as a result of DM pity rather than your skills as a player is hardly satisfying. Attending to your build and pre-empting obvious problems that will inevitably crop up down the road is your responsibility as a player.

There's the additional factor that, as a team game, your other players depend on you to help them achieve their narrative goals. Trust me, it stinks to realize that your PC is dead weight.

From the character's point of view it stinks to die at any time.A character dying in the heat of the action doesn't mean the player "failed" him. Bad things happen to good adventurers.

Yes, they do. And it's a bad player that doesn't do what he can to minimize the chances of those bad things killing his character and derailing the story. I agree that just because your PC died doesn't necessarily mean that it's your fault. But it certainly could be your fault. Ask any player who had his character do something after the DM said, "Are you sure you want to do that?" Or you could ask any player whose Fighter 3/Rogue 1/Cleric 1/Bard 1/Ranger 1 PC died in a published module. Those choices might be flavorful, but they also got the PC killed.

Lets look at the example Joe G. gave us. Here we have a player who is so obsessed with optimization that he won't create a character and participate in what might be a great game because the options for building the most mathematically advantageous character are not being used by the DM at this time. That mentality makes me wonder if certain players shouldn't just stick to wargames.

Refusing to play because of these issues is clearly not the best solution to the problem. Clearly, the player should bring up his concerns to the DM. Which, in fact, he did. The player did exactly the right thing: express his wishes to the DM and abided by the ruling. The DM ruled against him, several times, indicating that there is a style mismatch between player and DM. This is hardly the end of the world or an enormously significant data point in game design. It happens literally all the time in all systems. I understand where the DM is coming from and I understand where the player's coming from.

 

[Burrito Al Pastor]

There's nothing worse that being committed to a story yet be running a character who has 1 skill point/level, can't cast spells, and is a speed bump in combat. Achieving your narrative goals as a result of DM pity rather than your skills as a player is hardly satisfying. Attending to your build and pre-empting obvious problems that will inevitably crop up down the road is your responsibility as a player.

There's the additional factor that, as a team game, your other players depend on you to help them achieve their narrative goals. Trust me, it stinks to realize that your PC is dead weight.

This. People complain about concepts like "game balance" a lot, but I think they usually fail to realize that this is exactly why "game balance" exists, and in many regards 4e is the most balanced D&D ever. Your class and ability scores are just about the only things you cannot change about your character at a later time, which means that if your class is balanced (and they all are, pretty much) and your stats are appropriate for your class (which they will be if you have a theorycrafting DM like me), you cannot irreversibly become dead weight.

I once had a character who I created in theory and then implemented in mechanics. Because of this, he was a bard. This story ends with him having no ability whatsoever to take any actions in combat aside from throwing daggers. He was subsequently retired to NPC status.

Having one deadweight character is a drag for that player, but having two can be a drag for the whole party. Of course, not even one player shouldn't be stuck with a deadweight character.


As far as gaming losing its "soul", Robin Laws noted that when an RPG is over its page count (and it will be), the chapters on how to run a game are the first things to be cut.

 

[Lanefan]

The rigorous rules approach has its own downsides, too - I'm not advocating one over the other. And I think one of the problems in the old days was that there was no good DM advice.

To a point, I disagree; there's enough DM advice in the 1e DMG to have got me started. After that, it's all just a matter of gaining experience at it.

Take a look at the 1e PHB. It's overwhelmingly concerned with the mechanics. Seriously, the rules & options for constructing a character are 99% of the book, with about a page and a half describing what a RPG is (and a page in the back for a summary of the cosmology). Somehow we muddled through.

The PHB could have used some of the random-character-trait tables found in the DMG's section on generating NPCs; even that would have been a nudge toward personality generation.

Still, at its core, the PHB is a mechanics-based book...it's the "rulebook" for the game. The DMG is where the advice is; and well-hidden though it be, it *is* there.

Lanefan

 

[Impeesa]

I am an unapologetic gearhead, I love 3E, so there's my bias. I've spent a lot of time hanging around the WotC Char Op boards, I've played a monstrous multiclassed powerhouse from 1 to 22. The thing I've found is, the more complex my build, the more hooks I have for building a personality and background on top. Every skill or style choice that needs to be justified is one more aspect to work in somehow. For those who work in the other direction and don't understand how this works, I find there's sort of a middle step where I look at all the mechanical aspects, the distinct classes and so on, and try to envision what sort of unified whole it implies. A character with three classes isn't three people, after all. The character I played long term, for example, was a frenzied berserker with a splash into the CG paladin variant (UA) to shore up his mental defenses, a monstrous race for the physical abilities, etc. The big picture is a lonely outcast from his tribe, whose only purpose is now to serve as an instrument of divine wrath. I'll spare the additional details, but suffice to say that now, several years later, I could fill this space with more background-oriented details than mechanical - and it wasn't even a roleplaying-heavy campaign.

So how do I relate to a situation such as that described in the OP? Well, a character build arises from a ruleset just like a unified character emerges from a set of mechanical hooks. The thing that player forgot is that the ruleset for a given game is not only that described in the books, it also includes things like a book list, a set of house rules, and a set of guidelines for the type of campaign to be played (heroic? espionage-oriented?). If, at the most basic level, he is unwilling to play the same game as you, it's probably for the best that he dropped. One aspect he may have found frustrating is the promise of possibly opening up the book list down the road. There is a certain appeal to having a long-term plan - to someone who places importance on the mechanical capabilities of their character, it gives tangible rewards to look forward to. Adding in books midway through the game leads to either retcons that are disruptive to their sense of who their character is, or frustration with having 'missed out' on options that are now available.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Because that's why they call it a campaign and not a one-shot? Even a single module takes several week night sessions.

I wasn't suggesting that the player wasn't planning to play this character for long period, just that stuff happens.

I think that this is a false dichotomy. Clearly there's a middle ground between PCs can never die and Killer DM.

Sure there is. My point was that if optimization becomes the #1 priority in character development just to survive then options are merely an illusion.

Moreover, you ignore my larger point. Character builds aren't just about maximization. Skills, martial ability, and spell casting are a proxy for your ability to accomplish various tasks in the world: rescue the princess, slay the dragon with a spell, or charm the court. If you don't pay attention to your build, you find yourself increasingly unable to accomplish role playing objectives the closer you find yourself to the narrative climax. There's nothing worse that being committed to a story yet be running a character who has 1 skill point/level, can't cast spells, and is a speed bump in combat. Achieving your narrative goals as a result of DM pity rather than your skills as a player is hardly satisfying. Attending to your build and pre-empting obvious problems that will inevitably crop up down the road is your responsibility as a player.

There's the additional factor that, as a team game, your other players depend on you to help them achieve their narrative goals. Trust me, it stinks to realize that your PC is dead weight.

Published modules are not the players problem. Modifying such material to suit personal campaigns is the DM's job. If published adventures require certain benchmarks for PCs then the DM should let the players know up front that certain choices are invalid.

As an aside, player skill has nothing to do with whats on a character sheet. It cannot be selected as an option in any system.

Yes, they do. And it's a bad player that doesn't do what he can to minimize the chances of those bad things killing his character and derailing the story. I agree that just because your PC died doesn't necessarily mean that it's your fault. But it certainly could be your fault. Ask any player who had his character do something after the DM said, "Are you sure you want to do that?" Or you could ask any player whose Fighter 3/Rogue 1/Cleric 1/Bard 1/Ranger 1 PC died in a published module. Those choices might be flavorful, but they also got the PC killed.

A good player will take precautions to minimize the chances of his/her character getting killed but nothing will save a character from a bad DM that ensures that those precautions are worthless unless selected as build options.

A campaign story cannot be derailed. The story is a retelling of the events that transpired. The campaign can go in unplanned directions but never derailed unless it was scripted in the first place.