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

[Minigiant]

Well
If your first 5 PCs were just "you", you might get bored of it and make your 6th character "not you".

Modern video games tend to have different personality/alignment runs because players tend to get bored playing the game again the same way over and over. An idea more or less taken FROM D&D by Bioware went they made D&D games.

 

[Lanefan]

I've seen (and heard) the argument that "it's called a roleplaying game, therefore it is primarily about roleplaying".

However, I don't think the word "roleplaying" means what it used to mean. When I first started playing (my first games were a mish-mash of 1e and 2e) our characters didn't have personalities. Or, at least, we didn't think of the way we played as being driven by the character's personality. Adam played his rogue Porthos as a jerk, for example, but really I think it was just an excuse for him to be a jerk. Also, he was only a jerk toward the rest of us: we also didn't really interact with NPCs very often, and we certainly didn't explore who our characters were, or show any interest in who the NPCs were. They had information we wanted, or goods to trade, or stuff to steal (Adam...) and that was it. And even that was the exception, not the rule. Mostly we killed monsters and took their stuff. We "played a role" by pretending to be a fighter or a magic-user or a rogue. End of story.

I'm curious what others' experience was.

My experience was and remains pretty much the opposite of yours, I think. Sure, we killed monsters and took their stuff, and still do; but right from day one - inspired by the quote in the 1e PHB that includes the line "... you become Falstaff the Fighter ..." - we also gave our characters character and personality and life, and played to those*. And yes, this includes playing to characters and personalities that might have been a bit less than co-operative; and this too is fine.

* - which is why when people sometimes complain that there's not enough game-mechanical representation of differences between characters, I maintain that two mechanically-identical characters can, through their character and personalities, still be as different as night and day once they get played.

AD&D expanded on these ideas a bit, and defines your character as being a combination of your attributes, your backstory, and your alignment.

Perhaps I was lucky, then, to have started with 1e AD&D rather than 0e or Basic.

 

[Lyxen]

My experience was and remains pretty much the opposite of yours, I think. Sure, we killed monsters and took their stuff, and still do; but right from day one - inspired by the quote in the 1e PHB that includes the line "... you become Falstaff the Fighter ..." - we also gave our characters character and personality and life, and played to those*. And yes, this includes playing to characters and personalities that might have been a bit less than co-operative; and this too is fine.

Indeed, it just takes players mature enough to roleplay the conflict between characters while still playing cooperatively as friends as players.

* - which is why when people sometimes complain that there's not enough game-mechanical representation of differences between characters, I maintain that two mechanically-identical characters can, through their character and personalities, still be as different as night and day once they get played.

Perhaps I was lucky, then, to have started with 1e AD&D rather than 0e or Basic.

I have looked at OD&D, and you are right, there is not much roleplay there, but it was right there in basic including some of the modules, which is where I started.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This is a spin-off from another thread (kind of like Laverne and Shirley) and I'm curious if others have opinions about this question.

I've seen (and heard) the argument that "it's called a roleplaying game, therefore it is primarily about roleplaying".

However, I don't think the word "roleplaying" means what it used to mean. When I first started playing (my first games were a mish-mash of 1e and 2e) our characters didn't have personalities. Or, at least, we didn't think of the way we played as being driven by the character's personality. Adam played his rogue Porthos as a jerk, for example, but really I think it was just an excuse for him to be a jerk. Also, he was only a jerk toward the rest of us: we also didn't really interact with NPCs very often, and we certainly didn't explore who our characters were, or show any interest in who the NPCs were. They had information we wanted, or goods to trade, or stuff to steal (Adam...) and that was it. And even that was the exception, not the rule. Mostly we killed monsters and took their stuff. We "played a role" by pretending to be a fighter or a magic-user or a rogue. End of story.

I'm curious what others' experience was.

But I'm also wondering what the folks over at TSR intended. What did they originally mean by "roleplaying," and has that meaning changed?

I just skimmed through the Red Book and could not find a single passage that had a whiff of anything we would consider "roleplaying" today. In fact, I did find this passage on page 3 or so:


In other words, your "role" was determined by your class. Which is how I remember it.

In the other thread another poster offered this passage from an early edition (that I couldn't find in Moldvay; not sure which edition it was in):

Although that doesn't really explain very much. That also fits with the "you are a fighter" version of roleplaying. It says nothing about the motivation and goals and backstory and relationships that we think of with modern roleplaying.

AD&D expanded on these ideas a bit, and defines your character as being a combination of your attributes, your backstory, and your alignment. That's beginning to sound more like modern roleplaying, but still pretty flat. Some modules had NPCs to interact with, and even advice to the DM on how to portray that, but other modules were pure hack and slash, and the pregenerated characters had nothing about their personality. But overall the percentage of text that suggested this form of roleplaying was very, very low.

Now of course the books are chock full of roleplaying content. In the PHB we have backgrounds and Traits/Bonds/Flaws/Ideals and many pages of fluff on the various races, etc. etc. etc. The published adventures include as much storytelling, NPC personality profiles, and social interaction content as they do fighting and looting. Clearly the content of the published material has changed.

But has the game? Has 'roleplaying' always meant the same thing, and the published game has just (officially) embraced more and more of it, or has the meaning of the word itself evolved?

Were we playing it wrong?(wrong question)

Thoughts?

So you presumably started playing after me or around the same time, if your games were a mish-mash of 1E and 2E? I started basically exactly when 2E came out, in 1989.

I was taught roleplaying by a older female cousin who was a DM, and who had been playing for several years.

Her definition of roleplaying and approach to roleplaying was absolutely the same as modern roleplaying.

Further, if you look at late '80s and early '90s RPGs which aren't D&D, you can see they are certainly closer to her approach, than to what you're describing (c.f. Shadowrun from 1989, or GURPS, or numerous other games).

So I think we can conclude that, no, the actual meaning of "roleplaying" definitely hasn't changed, but that D&D/AD&D was an outlier-game in that it didn't really address RP much until later on (but even in 2E, the various Handbooks/Complete books are chock-full of RP info, as is stuff like Taladas from 1989, which doesn't even make sense w/o heavy RP being expected).

Further to this, in fact, when I got online in the early 1990s, I was surprised that whilst people who primarily discussed or played Shadowrun or VtM or GURPS or whatever tended to have similar attitudes to roleplaying, there was this weird subset of D&D players who didn't. I don't think that's because the definition was actually any different at all - I think it's because D&D's lack of discussion of RP lead to groups who "self-taught" D&D sometimes just not getting it - but others did.

Indeed, it just takes players mature enough to roleplay the conflict between characters while still playing cooperatively as friends as players.

I don't think the players even really have to be mature - the DM just has to explain that the conflict is dumb and hurts the game, and most players will get it, or find a way to play out the conflict that doesn't actually hurt the game.

 

[R_J_K75]

You could easily make the opposite argument.

That for years, the trend was for RPGs to become increasingly tactical and gamey. Both in ever more involved char-gen, and in combat and other in game systems at the table. And that all this came at the cost of the more open and role-playful approach of the past years.

I was thinking the same thing when I read your post. As other people have stated Im not the same person I was when I started playing so the way I play now has also changed. But I've noticed the same that our game seems more combat orientated, or goal based so roleplaying while not discouraged isnt necessarily encouraged either. Thats not to say it doesnt happen but its a lot less than in years past and when it does its short lived. Most scenarios are usually ultimately resolved by a dice roll. There's 6 players in our group including the DM, we play once a week for 3-4 hours and we switch DMs between three of us every few sessions. Our play style has evolved more to accomplish what we set out to do rather than spend an hour roleplaying a random encounter. Finally three of our players have only played 5E so I think theres a direct correlation to the amount of time spent roleplaying in game. As character creation adds more mechanics its only natural that newer players would look to their PC sheet or a dice roll for a quick situation resolution, instead of earlier editions where a character was less fleshed out mechanically and players had to roleplay to fill in the blanks. I think D&D as a whole has changed and not just the roleplaying aspect, still fun, just different.

 

[Doug McCrae]

My experience, starting in 1982 in the UK, was the same as @GuyBoy's and @Lyxen's. We always roleplayed, in the sense of developing and portraying a distinct character for our PCs. I wonder if there was a difference in rpg culture between Europe and the US in this respect.

In fact I have the distinction of being criticised for my bad roleplaying by the DM in my very first session! I was playing a character with Chaotic alignment and hadn't done anything evil. My excuse was to say that the other two PCs would've killed me if I'd done anything.

 

[Dragonsbane]

Has the meaning of roleplay changed over the years? I think so. My pet-theory is that the background of the player-base changed.

As an example, I play three campaigns:

• One with old-school players with 20+ years experience in the game, who have played at least 3 different versions of D&D as well as other RPGs. These may best be described as nerds who love to power play, optimize their characters and roll the dice. They are able to quickly digest the mountain of info that is in all the D&D books and use that try to find loopholes to trick the DM. Typically combat heavy campaigns.
• Two campaigns with newbies. These are people who jumped into the game as they are already in their mid-thirties. They can't be bothered to read the whole PHB let alone other books, and can't be bothered to build an optimized character. But they love to sit down with friends and create a story together. These players prefer interaction with NPC's rather than a dungeon crawl.

With the rise in popularity of the fantasy genre, maybe the game has opened up to new types of people who play the game differently?

This is very interesting, as my older 30 year vets from the 80s (myself included) are more into RP and story now and my younger players are the optimizers/rules lawyers. In my last game which took place in the green elven lands, the older players were all wood elven rangers/druids/wizards (as per my list of suggestions) and the younger players were an optimized out of place Warforged artificer (who got some awesome RP with "is that your golem?" to anti-machine racism) and an optimized paladin/warlock who was far from LG. Still good RP, but I had to work around the PC with an AC like Orcus lol

 

[commandercrud]

I consider your hypothesis entirely incorrect. Back then some people role played and some didn't. Today some people role play and some don't.

 

[Lyxen]

This is very interesting, as my older 30 year vets from the 80s (myself included) are more into RP and story now and my younger players are the optimizers/rules lawyers. In my last game which took place in the green elven lands, the older players were all wood elven rangers/druids/wizards (as per my list of suggestions) and the younger players were an optimized out of place Warforged artificer (who got some awesome RP with "is that your golem?" to anti-machine racism) and an optimized paladin/warlock who was far from LG. Still good RP, but I had to work around the PC with an AC like Orcus lol

This is really interesting, and in line with many observations made in this thread. And then, the player base has expanded a lot with 5e - which is certainly a good thing, so it's really difficult to generalise, but on the forums that I've been on, there is a very strong powergamer/optimiser base with extremely rules-orientated comments and request for more RAW...

 

[Lyxen]

I don't think the players even really have to be mature - the DM just has to explain that the conflict is dumb and hurts the game, and most players will get it, or find a way to play out the conflict that doesn't actually hurt the game.

In my view, it's a bit more complicated than this. The conflict is not necessarily dumb, actually if there is conflict between PCs it's probably because of roleplaying reasons, and IMHO this is also what makes the game great, different opinions, varying viewpoints being confronted. That being said, my wording was probably not the best, it's not a question of maturity of the players themselves, but of understanding of the game and of the difference between the players and the characters, and being able to contain the conflict to the characters and at a level that does not hurt the game.

In another post, I mentioned a very old friend of mine whom I still play with now and then, and he has a history of playing with another circle of friends from a famous club in Paris, where they were really obnoxious to each other, PvP and in-party murders were common, etc. but because it was all the game, they were still really good friends after that. I must say that it's not really my cup of tea - too much conflict, I like it but I like it "lighter" - but it's exactly the kind of decorrelation that you should be looking for to avoid problems.

P.S.: Really like your avatar.