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

[Ovinomancer]

Then, you won't be playing your role like an actor. Sorry. And even the worst hollywood actors (which, of course, you have to take as example to show how far you are willing to go), doesn't come on stage just standing there and saying "I am a wizard". sigh

How do you play like an actor? Actors have lines, and scenes to perform, and a director to tell them how to do it. Is this what you mean? I doubt it, which immediately calls into question your assertions because now you have to engage in special pleading to salvage it.

 

[Lyxen]

The PHB pg. 185 says,

"Roleplaying is, literally, the act of playing out a role."

The first portion states what roleplaying is. "...playing out a role." That's all it takes. The section then gets more involved and tries to teach the roleplay that you describe, but you don't need to engage in that to be roleplaying. As it says at the very beginning, as long as you are playing a role, you are roleplaying. And that level of RP is satisfied as soon as you make a fighter and enter the game world to adventure.

It's interesting because you have to take out a single sentence, in isolation, and cutting out all the rest to try and make a point. Unfortunately, every single edition of the game ahs proven you wrong, and I've given you tons of examples. If it says that you are like an actor, then it requires a least a bit of acting.

Because you forget all the sentences that come after: "Roleplaying is, literally, the act of playing out a role. In this case, it’s you as a player determining how your character thinks, acts, and talks.
Roleplaying is a part of every aspect of the game, and it comes to the fore during social interactions. Your character’s quirks, mannerisms, and personality influence how interactions resolve."

And then there is the entire "Results of Roleplaying" section, have you even read it ?

Again, and again, and again, biased and incomplete reading.

And after that, you cry "but I'm a true roleplayer" when I speak of thin veneer on a powergamer's build ? sigh

 

[Lyxen]

How do you play like an actor? Actors have lines, and scenes to perform, and a director to tell them how to do it. Is this what you mean? I doubt it, which immediately calls into question your assertions because now you have to engage in special pleading to salvage it.

And again, biased and imcomplete reading: "That means that you will be like an actor, imagining that you are someone else, and pretending
to be that character. You won’t need a stage, though, and you won’t need costumes or scripts. You only need to imagine."

Here are all your answers in a single paragraph of text. sigh

And that has only been posted 5 times so far, maybe this time you can read a complete sentence ?

 

[Ovinomancer]

It's interesting because you have to take out a single sentence, in isolation, and cutting out all the rest to try and make a point. Unfortunately, every single edition of the game ahs proven you wrong, and I've given you tons of examples. If it says that you are like an actor, then it requires a least a bit of acting.

Because you forget all the sentences that come after: "Roleplaying is, literally, the act of playing out a role. In this case, it’s you as a player determining how your character thinks, acts, and talks.
Roleplaying is a part of every aspect of the game, and it comes to the fore during social interactions. Your character’s quirks, mannerisms, and personality influence how interactions resolve."

And then there is the entire "Results of Roleplaying" section, have you even read it ?

Again, and again, and again, biased and incomplete reading.

And after that, you cry "but I'm a true roleplayer" when I speak of thin veneer on a powergamer's build ? sigh

Here's that section of the PHB:

The GM uses your character's actions and attitudes to determine how an NPC reacts. A cowardly NPC buckles under threats of violence. A stubborn dwarf refuses to let anyone badger her. A vain dragon laps up flattery.

When interacting with an NPC, pay close attention to the GM's portrayal of the NPC's mood, dialogue, and personality. You might be able to determine an NPC's personality traits, ideals, flaws, and bonds, then play on them to influence the NPC's attitude.

Interaction in D&D are much like interactions in real life. If you can offer NPCs something they want, threaten them with something they fear, or play on their sympathies and goals, you can use words to et almost anything you want. On the other hand, if you insult a proud warrior or speak ill of a nobles' allies, your efforts to convince or deceive will fall short.

What @Lyxen might not want you to notice, though, are the preceding sections, which include a descriptive approach to roleplaying -- you describe what your character does and do no playacting or 1st person at all.

 

[Ovinomancer]

And again, biased and imcomplete reading: "That means that you will be like an actor, imagining that you are someone else, and pretending
to be that character. You won’t need a stage, though, and you won’t need costumes or scripts. You only need to imagine."

I don't have to be an actor to do this. So the claims about being an actor are superfluous, good. All I need to do is imagine I'm a wizard in a fantasy world and say what my wizard does.

Here are all your answers in a single paragraph of text. sigh

And that has only been posted 5 times so far, maybe this time you can read a complete sentence ?

Oh, yes, my answers are absolutely right there -- you're just denying them in favor of your preferences.

 

[Maxperson]

It's interesting because you have to take out a single sentence, in isolation, and cutting out all the rest to try and make a point.

Yeah, I totally didn't reference the rest of it in my post in order to take that in isolation. Oh.............wait. No, I did reference the rest and not take it in isolation. You're just inventing stuff now.

Unfortunately, every single edition of the game ahs proven you wrong, and I've given you tons of examples. If it says that you are like an actor, then it requires a least a bit of acting.

Because you forget all the sentences that come after: "Roleplaying is, literally, the act of playing out a role. In this case, it’s you as a player determining how your character thinks, acts, and talks.
Roleplaying is a part of every aspect of the game, and it comes to the fore during social interactions. Your character’s quirks, mannerisms, and personality influence how interactions resolve."

And then there is the entire "Results of Roleplaying" section, have you even read it ?

As I pointed out in my post. That other stuff is just help in understanding how to roleplay the way you want. You can choose to hide your head in the sand and pretend that, "Roleplaying is, literally, the act of playing out a role." doesn't exist, but it does. It tells you exactly what roleplaying is before going into a few types of roleplaying.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I find it fascinating that somebody can take a text that clearly has multiple interpretations and insist that it only means one thing. For me, the purpose of engaging in discussion is to explore how it can mean multiple things, and understand the points of view that lead to those interpretations. (And I've learned boatloads in this thread...some of it quite surprising.)

 

[Lyxen]

OK guys, at this stage, I think I have clearly shown that all editions of the game since BECMI expected you to roleplay your character as if you were an actor improvising your role. I think it has also shown the length to which some people will go to pretend that they are "roleplaying", including making words blink in and out of sentences and ignoring all the rest of the text, since apparently it's cool to have the label even if you are not doing it. And anyway, it's fine as long as you are having fun. As for myself, I'll continue actual roleplaying in character like I've done for more than 40 years with my friends. Have fun gaming (I won't say to have fun roleplaying to a number of you, obviously).

 

[Lyxen]

It's a lot more than .02% of the DMG, though. There's tons of advice in there about making the game hard on your players. Whether in hiring henchmen, trading for spells with NPC casters, making treasure hard to identify and transport, taxing the hell out of characters and having local nobles outright confiscate wealth, making magic items difficult and expensive (and sometimes dangerous!) to identify, making it hard and dangerous to listen at doors, emphasizing the disadvantages as hard as possible if they want to play a monster PC, etc. Or dungeons with teleporters and other tricks meant to frustrate the person mapping...

FOr me, adversarial means a bit more than just making the adventures difficult, but on that point, I completely agree, and it's not only Tomb of Horrors, but many modules which encourage the DM to have the character have a tough time.

I'm not saying Gary really ran a super adversarial game, and in other parts of the DMG he outright endorses fudging dice (in the section on random encounters, for example) to keep the game more fun if the players are making good choices and happen to get "screwed" by bad luck.

But adversarial play DEFINITELY didn't start with 3rd edition, or from my perspective become much worse than in that regard it had been in any prior edition. 70s D&D had plenty of examples, and Gary certainly wrote enough stuff for folks to feel encouraged by him in that style.

I agree, but you have to remember the timing. I think Gary was capable of being adversarial, at least it shows in a number of his writing, but that had mostly faded even by the time 2e came out, and this started to be post Gygax and not adversarial at all.

Finally, my take on 3e is that the adversariality was not the intention, it was generated from the two phenomenons that I explained earlier, but neither of these was even remotely adversarial in nature.

 

[Umbran]

And after that, you cry "but I'm a true roleplayer" when I speak of thin veneer on a powergamer's build ? sigh

So, just a moment ago, I noted someone was engaging in OneTrueWayism. You are too.

The effort to define "role playing" to be something specific is, in effect and like it or not, an effort to define In-groups and Out-groups. We are doing it Right, and They are doing it Wrong!

This does not engender discussion about what methods of play generate what results - it creates arguments of one group trying to shove another out of the territory, and the resistance to that shove - it becomes about social positioning and ego more than it is about gaming. And that's a problem.

We've seen it again and again - pick any dichotomy in gaming you like, there's been such an argument. The "Edition Wars" being the most notable example (though, admittedly, while you style yourself as "Great Old One", your account is not old enough to have witnessed the conflicts around 4E).