Gray's 1st Question(s)

[Arrowhawk]

****** your skills and proficiencies, from bladework to spell casting to stealth to everything else, and you mix and match as you choose. No classes.

Yet, somehow, they're still role-playing games.

Scroll back about six or seven posts where I realized it's called a roleplaying game mainly because you play a "character" in a story, as opposed to a vehicle or an inanimate object in a story.

Ask yourself, Is "Myst" a roleplaying game...and if not...why? Don't you play a character in a story?

 

[Jackinthegreen]

Scroll back about six or seven posts where I realized it's called a roleplaying game mainly because you play a "character" in a story, as opposed to a vehicle or an inanimate object in a story.

Ask yourself, Is "Myst" a roleplaying game...and if not...why? Don't you play a character in a story?

Playing a character on its own, even with a good story, does not make a roleplay. Various shooters will attest to this, in particular I'm thinking of Quake 2 and 4. Admittedly though, one could sort of combine the two into the "adventure" category.

And there are "generic class" options in D&D: Generic Classes :: d20srd.org

 

[Greenfield]

Yeah, I commented that you'd reversed field and agreed with me.

Then you went back to arguing about how the game could be played devoid of personality, but that character classes were the building blocks of the game.

As for Myst? It's a railroad. You have to walk all the worlds, and each world has a a puzzle, and each puzzle has a solution. One world, one puzzle, one solution. There's a preferred order to the worlds, as the clues are daisy chained together, and each world has a single solution, leading to the final solution.

It's visually stimulating, richly graphic and wonderfully done, but it's not roleplaying. You don't "play a character" you more or less pilot a camera.

 

[Jackinthegreen]

The definition(s) of roleplay, at least according to dictionary.com, is:

verb

(used with object) 1. to assume the attitudes, actions, and discourse of (another), especially in a make-believe situation in an effort to understand a differing point of view or social interaction: Management trainees were given a chance to role-play labor negotiators.


2. to experiment with or experience (a situation or viewpoint) by playing a role: trainees role-playing management positions.

Under those, technically Myst could be a roleplay since one does assume the actions, et cetera, of another, but the issue is there's hardly any choice in how the character goes through the story. It might as well be called an interactive movie or slideshow. Last I checked (which was just a few seconds ago) a slideshow does not constitute roleplaying in any way.

Edit: Been trying to cut the definition into one quote, but apparently the site doesn't like that.

 

[Arrowhawk]

Yeah, I commented that you'd reversed field and agreed with me.

No. Insofar as you believe "roleplaying" referred to having a character being "colorful and interesting" to use your exact words...I did not agree. As I already stated, your rationale seemed to based on this idea that you're "acting" and that's what makes it roleplaying. It's role playing because you play a "character," as oppose to something else, in a game that is supposed to represent a "story." Playing a "personality" has nothing to do with it.

We seem to be debating something entirely different. You seem to think "personality" is crucial both to the term and the game. In the strict sense, it is not. 1e does not recquire you play the game with any personality. It does require that you choose a class. That you pick skills...that you serve a function. D&D 1e was not designed for PC's to play functionless adventurers. To put it bluntly, D&D is a game. Games require that you do something just being a personality doesn't do anything to advance the story.

And to Jackinthegreen, the world has different contextual meanings. The word has a different meaning in the field of psychiatry than the field of acting or game playing.

 

[Dandu]

Or in bed.

 

[Jackinthegreen]

And to Jackinthegreen, the world has different contextual meanings. The word has a different meaning in the field of psychiatry than the field of acting or game playing.

Then enlighten us to which specific one you're using, as well as the exact definition and your interpretation of it.

 

[Arrowhawk]

Then enlighten us to which specific one you're using, as well as the exact definition and your interpretation of it.

I've been doing that in the last bit of posts. If you aren't interested in reading them, I'm not going to waste more time repeating it.

 

[Greenfield]

Well, first you insisted that the "role" in role-playing was a character class.

Then you said it was the character, as if in a story.

Then you argued for the character class again.

Then, when I called you on it, you referred back to your post about it referring to the character in the story.

Now, when pressed, you insist that that's not what you meant.

And someplace in there, you brought in first-person shooters (in which you play a collection of guns and bombs), and Myst.

Tell me again, what was the character's name in Myst?

The "role" in "role-playing" is the character, the persona you take on in the game. The name and the personality, their style and way of doing things. You're not an axe with legs, you're not a collection of guns and grenades, you're not a nameless ambulatory camera, nor are you playing a profession or an arbitrary label wrapped around some skills. You're playing a person, like a character in a play or a book.

But the game isn't a pre-written story or a scripted play. You write your own dialogue, make your own choices, and those choices affect what comes next. The future of the game world, the future of the character, the outcome of the adventure are not yet determined, and if you want a "happily ever after", you have to earn it.

That's the "play" part of "role-playing".

 

[Jackinthegreen]

I've been doing that in the last bit of posts. If you aren't interested in reading them, I'm not going to waste more time repeating it.

As Greenfield mentioned, you haven't exactly done a good job of clarifying your position. So I'll say again: Tell us which specific definition you're using, as well as your interpretation of it.

While we're at it, here's a bit of debate advice: If you can't be bothered to restate the facts and your interpretation of those facts, especially to clarify your position when it's in question, then it can be pretty well assumed you're actually not sure where you stand on what you're talking about.