D&D General Has the meaning of "roleplaying" changed since 1e?

[Bill Zebub]

Here's an example:

The party is moving down the corridor. Suddenly player A announces, "I'm going to stop and search for secret doors." The DM calls for a roll (or just grants autosuccess) and a secret door is found.

Player B thinks, "What luck! Frizbo the Gnome must have a 6th sense for these things!"

Player C thinks, "Harumph. That seems too lucky. Bill somehow knew there was a secret door there. He must have read the module and now he's cheating to win. This is just like the time he was playing his ranger and used fire on trolls."

Who is more in character? Who is more "immersed"?

(By the way, exactly this happened a few weeks ago. We were in a published adventure, and I was suddenly suspicious there was a trap. I investigated...with my -1 Perception modifier...and got a lucky roll. Turns out it was a secret door. We have one player who is a part-time member of the Auxiliary Metagame Police, and I chuckled to myself thinking, "He's probably suspicious that I've read the adventure. But if I try to explain that I was just lucky he'll just be even more suspicious, so I won't say anything.")

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

IMHO, acceptance comes with analyzing and understanding the fundamental issues around metagaming.


IME, especially in discussions here, is that the people who have the biggest problems with the idea of metagaming as cheating* are those that do approach this game as play-to-win rather than those that approach this game as play-for-fun.

* I think that there is a movement away from equating "metagaming" with "cheating," where the former is acceptable but the latter is not.

This naturally raises the question though: why is play-to-win and play-for-fun, being treated as intrinsically different things? Like if a player who is enjoying the exercise of being faced with problems and overcoming them isn't having 'fun' what semantic understanding of fun are we slipping into and why? I'm trying to avoid the semantic argument in favor of what lies at the core of that-- having fun is nebulous, and I think everyone is playing for 'fun.' So the question is more about what kind of fun we should be having right?

Doing my best to overcome challenges is fun.
Giggling over funny stuff with my friends is fun.
Losing myself in the moment is fun.
Creating something new and exploring its ramifications is fun.
Seeing an interesting story play out is fun.
Being part of a team and feeling like I have 'place' on that team is fun.
Practicing hard and seeing my efforts pay off is fun.

Not an exhaustive list, but the point is, what defining not-fun would be a losing proposition, because we're really just all bickering over different kinds of fun and which we're trying to have at the table and how to best create it, and what fun can fit together in the same experience without diminishing the others.

 

[overgeeked]

So, as I've mentioned before, I fall heavily into that OC/Neo-Trad background from the six cultures of play post, down to the canonical origin story mentioned about play by post forum roleplaying. My understanding of roleplaying has actually broken down in a different way recently, at one time I would have been gung ho about the idea of acting as your character 'would' independently of good decision making with the outcomes of those 'bad decisions' being the trigger to have drama between characters and be faced with exciting scenes, but I've started feeling like that actually damages the game, at least DND, and a lot of other games too. See, the rules of the game and the kinds of content that make up an adventure of any kind revolve around problem solving, and the interplay of choice and consequence-- you can fail forward, but only to an extent, and often you feel like you have a goal, and failure is a setback to achieving that goal, in other words failure still triggers a fail-state even while we're discussing how failures can make the story just as interesting.

It is about 'winning' in the sense that the incentives of the game create a framework where its very natural to set goals ("Slay the Princess to save the Dragon" or "Destroy the Macguffin") and then pit your ability to manage your resources, come up with clever solutions, explore diligently, build characters, against the obstacles that stand in your way. There's a fun kind of immersion that happens when the player lets themselves get into that headspace of exploring the game world and problem solving, that sort of starts breaking down when you demand that there ought to be a tension between that and 'what my character would do' suddenly part of the group is taking the challenges seriously as challenges, while other members of the party aren't in favor of TV show style plot twists, and even if everyone feels the same, the mechanics of the game seem to sort of get in the way as the GM has to 'handle' the logical consequences of those actions in a way to keep the story moving.

I think we take for granted too much that what makes for an interesting film/tv show or whatever is what makes for an interesting game, but in my eyes participation and chance of failure can make things that aren't that interesting in mediums that are just telling you a story much more interesting to actually play out. You don't need characters to introduce drama in the same way because the characters confronting the world around them is plenty of fodder for emotional growth, they don't need to act in ways that run counter to the goals of the adventure.

I was thinking about modern discourses about why traditional RPGs focus so much on the minutiae of simulating a game world, and especially combat mechanics, while re-watching Revenge of the Sith, and about other stuff I usually watch and comparing it-- the fight scenes involve a lot of spectacle, and there's some subtlety about what's tactically occurring if you really pay attention, but the primary thing you're getting out of the scene is the flashy spectacle and the question of how it ultimately resolves.

Meanwhile I think about the shonen anime I watch, and whether its a showy magic fight or realistic baseball, the emphasis is on blowing up the moment and getting the viewer invested in the problem solving inherent in the metagame of whatever the characters are engaged in-- like the logistics of hitting the pitches of a highly technical pitcher, or how to unravel a certain seemingly invincible technique. These anime have deep emotional frameworks and character relationships as well, but they aren't at all in conflict with the character making their best attempt to succeed (or at least, that isn't as big a part of it, the character might have to confront their ego to do what's necessary, or learn about why they actually failed to take responsibility and change it.) Its as much about the journey of every blow and by blow leading up to the resolution, as it is about the resolution, the minutia is constantly presenting interesting questions in the form of problems to be solved, and the dramatic tension is about whether the character, doing their best, can solve it, and then the character stuff is layered on top, rather than having the character's own flaws introducing new problems in the middle of the action.

I think that 'anime' model is much more fitting for games like Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder, where everyone does their best and then tells the story accordingly, along with disagreements over goal setting, and emotive reactions to story beats as character discussions and development, rather than moving away from the problem-solving nature of the game by moving character-acting into the problem solving space (don't take this as an overstatement, how characters prefer to solve problems still plays into it, but their build probably reflects that anyway-- so if they want to solve things with a hammer, its probably in tandem with the idea that they mostly have hammers, and that their hammers are good at solving problems... and then when the hammers don't happen to pay off, even when that was a good faith attempt by the player, maybe they can deal with the fallout from that and grow.)

I think where this analogy fails is that it assumes the game player and the player character are the same and have the same goals. They're not. In your anime example, the game player would be some combination of the writer penning the script and the voice actor playing the role with the anime character being the player character.

The game player wants to win. They make decisions based on player knowledge to avoid, minimize, or circumvent obstacles, i.e. what they see as the win condition. The writer/actor also wants to win, however, their win condition is literally the opposite of the game player's, so the writer/actor does literally the opposite. They want to have good scenes to show off their writing/acting talents. Drama, earned growth, difficult obstacles, story beats, etc.

There's an obvious tension between these two sides. What makes for a good game (risk-reward, challenges, discovery, immersive fantasy, etc) and what makes for a good story (tension and release, rising stakes, etc) vs what most gamers seem to want (easy tensionless wins that make them and/or their character look good).

If the game player "wins" and scenes are "written" to their liking they would be the flattest, dullest scenes they can possibly be. "Gee, we won again with practically zero effort, no real risk, and no appreciable loss of resources. Huzzah." It would be literally the most boring anime you've ever watched. In fan fiction the term for this is Mary Sue or Marty Stu. Pure, bland as can be power fantasy. "I am the best, I am awesome. Praise me."

The writer/actor wants there to be drama and tension, obstacles and betrayals, all so they have something interesting to do. The game player wants none of that.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Metagaming is all the people screaming at their TVs while watching the first season of The Walking Dead or Fear The Walking Dead, over the characters not going straight for head shots on the zombies, when part of the premise of the show is that the whole zombie movie and story craze never happened and it is not default knowledge in that setting that only destroying the brain will stop the zombie. Which means all those characters have to learn about that first, even though the actors know it is a standard trope of zombie fiction.

 

[Maxperson]

I hadn’t thought of that but I think you are right: it takes a mindset of winning and losing to analyze other players’ actions that way.

There’s a parallel to the observation that it requires metagaming to accuse other people of metagaming: if you are in the mindset of your character then all you know is your companion saved the day by burning the trolls. You have to be thinking as a player to worry about what their motivation was for choosing that action, or to claim that it “spoils your immersion”.

Irony abounds.

No, there isn't such a parallel. You do have to understand what metagaming is, but there is no requirement to be metagaming to see it in others. All it takes is the ability to look at a PC, his skills, backgrounds and experiences and decide as a DM, does he know this fact, not know this fact, or is the outcome in doubt and a roll is required. It's no different than if a PC is looking at something old and wanting to know if there's any historical significance to it.

 

[Bill Zebub]

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I think where this analogy fails is that it assumes the game player and the player character are the same and have the same goals. They're not. In your anime example, the game player would be some combination of the writer penning the script and the voice actor playing the role with the anime character being the player character.

But maybe they are the same. Maybe another player doesn't really want to create an inhabit a totally different persona, and their idea of roleplaying is, "I'm in Groo the Wanderer's body, but otherwise I'm basically me." And that's what they think is fun.

Does that bother you, or prevent you from playing in the way you prefer?

 

[overgeeked]

But maybe they are the same. Maybe another player doesn't really want to create an inhabit a totally different persona, and their idea of roleplaying is, "I'm in Groo the Wanderer's body, but otherwise I'm basically me." And that's what they think is fun.

Does that bother you, or prevent you from playing in the way you prefer?

Yes. It does...if we're at the same table trying to play together.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Yes. It does...if we're at the same table trying to play together.

I genuinely don't understand why it bothers you, or even why it's "trying" to play together. You play your character, he plays his. What's the problem? Why does he have to play your way? (As Yoda would say, "There is no try...")

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

This is a complex post, and (if I understand it correctly), there are a number of things that I agree with:

• Although it's similar to a book or movie of the genre (and there are already many genres covered by D&D, so it's even more complicated), everything that makes a show interesting does not translate straight into D&D.
• What is fun in a show in terms of being counter to the goal in particular is more delicate in D&D because, contrary to a show, there are real people playing the characters, and they might not agree that failure is the best way forward for their own story.

So while I still think that failure can be good for the story and he drama in a D&D game, it must be taken with a grain of salt and taking into consideration the feeling of all the other players. It might be great for your character development to fail a goal, but if it's really bad for other characters around the table, the feelings of the players must be considered as well.

I think that whats interesting is that our use of the word 'story' often invokes an expectation that the goal of RPGs is interrelated with the goal of writing conventional stories (novels, serials, etc) and that we enjoy the same qualities and structures in those stories. In reality I think RPGs are better thought of as 'experiences' and the stories arise out of that. So I think of my favorite system (Pathfinder) as a game that gives me the experience of casting spells, fighting dragons, finding treasure, exploring interesting worlds, being a wandering adventurer, and I play it to have that experience.

As I do those things and express myself while doing them, a story emerges but that's almost incidental, I'm enjoying it as it unfolds as a set of experiences that I'm having, other kinds of storytelling are in the game too (like lore and stuff) but those are tools for giving me certain experiences (mysteries to solve, or to deepen my sense of history, and etc.) I am the one, by proxy, having those experiences, although I also don a mask to have the experience of being someone a bit different, but they have to be someone whose decision making I can understand and relate to, so it feels natural.

Contrast with those other works of fiction, where the experiences are happening to someone else, and the question of how they build into a plot is more central to the activity because the activity isn't presented with the same level of depth and... ludonarrative texture and tension? Since the plot isn't guaranteed, the resolution of the events is naturally more interesting when played straight.

 

[overgeeked]

This naturally raises the question though: why is play-to-win and play-for-fun, being treated as intrinsically different things?

Because different people have different win conditions and find different things fun. There's no one "win" and there's no one "fun". So, in a hobby like this, with many different kinds of games and playstyles, there's a very real chance that when you sit down with any random group of people your win/fun will be different than the win/fun of someone else at the table, and quite likely that they will be diametrically opposed. You win/fun ruins my win/fun. So you playing to win spoils my fun, and vice versa.

Like if a player who is enjoying the exercise of being faced with problems and overcoming them isn't having 'fun' what semantic understanding of fun are we slipping into and why? I'm trying to avoid the semantic argument in favor of what lies at the core of that-- having fun is nebulous, and I think everyone is playing for 'fun.' So the question is more about what kind of fun we should be having right?

Yes, but there's no one answer. Again, what's fun for you can absolutely ruin what I think is fun.

Doing my best to overcome challenges is fun.
Giggling over funny stuff with my friends is fun.
Losing myself in the moment is fun.
Creating something new and exploring its ramifications is fun.
Seeing an interesting story play out is fun.
Being part of a team and feeling like I have 'place' on that team is fun.
Practicing hard and seeing my efforts pay off is fun.

For some, yes. For everyone, no. It depends on where the effort is placed and how it's done.

Not an exhaustive list, but the point is, what defining not-fun would be a losing proposition, because we're really just all bickering over different kinds of fun and which we're trying to have at the table and how to best create it, and what fun can fit together in the same experience without diminishing the others.

Right. What you find fun might spoil my fun. So we talk past each other. X is fun for me, Y destroys your fun. So we argue about how girls just wanna have fun.