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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 6550689" data-attributes="member: 27160">I think Umbran's (eventual) answer nails it, but I think you may have chosen your initial example poorly. How else might we imagine this scenario given playing out? As far as I can see, the problem is that the gelatinous cube used in "gotcha" mode relies almost completely on character actions and perceptions that cannot possibly be "roleplayed". How do you "roleplay" failing a Spot roll? The player (as opposed to the character) seems to me to have an almost completely passive role, here.Now, if you were talking about skills like 'open lock' or 'disable trap', I can see a particular sort of minutiae-focussed game where the exact how and why of lockpicking and trap disarming might be delved into. Given that this is an area where it seems to me that the characters ought to be way more knowledgeable and experienced than the players, I find such play generally very unsatisfying, but I can see how it would work as a concept.The most common area assumed ripe for "roleplaying as opposed to rollplaying" is, of course, social or interpersonal skill use. Here, too, I can see the concept but generally find substitution of player skill for character skill highly unsatisfactory for two main reasons. Firstly, I like to allow players to play characters who have skills they personally lack, even if those skills are psychological manipulation skills. Secondly, I find that even players who are very skilled at general manipulation or persuasion can have problems with RPG interaction due to the lack of genuine in-world feedback (which skilled interpersonal actors tend to rely upon) and/or personality clashes with the GM. The first of these is because the only feedback that there is comes from the player of the "target" of the skill - who is most often the GM - and they will only describe the feedback that they think is important, not what the skilled practitioner finds important. The second is because the GM will often play the "target" using a mental model that the skilled practitioner finds implausible; very few people have any really accurate model of how humans behave in terms of decision making.Overall, then, to answer your original question in a broader sense, I find the very best place for roleplaying to be, as Umbran said, in the realm of decision making. It's not how you do things that speaks to character so much as what you (try to) do and why.</blockquote>

Verification