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

[Ovinomancer]

No, once more biased reading, it says "That means that you will be like an actor". Are there many actors just saying "I am a wizard" and no more caracterisation than this ? sigh

Yes, when I'm an actor playing a wizard on a stage, I will be fufilling a role in that story assigned to the wizard. I don't have to do any actual acting, though, I can be myself just fine. We need only look to some very successful acting careers where the character portrayed is really just the actor (Owen Wilson is always Owen Wilson as the role). So, I can be almost entirely myself and just have some role related things and I am doing it like an actor. Once we dispense with the play analogy, then what I'm doing is roleplaying if I'm in the role of the wizard. Acting as someone else outside the role is unnecessary -- again, see Owen Wilson.

 

[Aldarc]

No, once more biased reading, it says "That means that you will be like an actor". Are there many actors just saying "I am a wizard" and no more caracterisation than this ? sigh

The very nature of "like" suggests a semantic difference between the items rather than an equating of the two.

 

[Oofta]

What?

In this thread. In the post I originally responded to, was a claim that the original books did not have a DM vs player feel.

That was the whole point of my response. That somehow 3e added in the notion of DM vs player that wasn't there before.

I'm honestly rather confused now.

There is advice in the books both about becoming the character, becoming Falstaff the fighter and that Falstaff interacts with their fellow players not as Bob and Mary but as Angar and Filmar*. There is stuff that can be interpreted as adversarial, but if the only thing you can quote is a line about ear seekers, there's not a lot there. There is wording in the DMG about ignoring things like wandering monsters if they're too deadly or not fun for the group. Even the ear worm thing, to me, comes across as a joke not actual advice.

I mean, seriously. In the intro to the DMG there's a sentence "As this book is the exclusive precinct of the DM, you must view any non-DM player possessing it as something less than worthy of honorable death." You don't seriously believe that Gygax was saying you should murder a player that read the DMG, do you? It's obviously a joke, just like the ear worm thing is a joke IMHO.

To a certain degree we're talking past each other. I read the book and saw "You are Falstaff". You read the book and seemed to have interpreted it as "You have the capabilities of Falstaff". I read "As the dungeon master you create the world" and tried to make a world similar to the fantasy novels I read. You read it and cherry picked the occasional adversarial bits.

Same source materials, different people focusing on different aspects. We didn't ignore the rules. I just went back and scanned through some old books. I don't see any hard coded DM vs PC vibe outside of some wording intended to be humorous. Some modules were absolutely DM vs PC and I'm sure a lot of people played that way and some people still do. The core books? I just don't see it.

*Oh, and also, reading through my AD&D PHB intro section, a whole lot of Gygax patting himself on the back about how awesome he is and how great these new AD&D rules are.

 

[FrogReaver]

I still don't see how it creates more conflict than other rules. It never says, in particular, that the players are playing against the DM or the other way around.

Conflict comes about because the players are expecting a different ruling than the DM provides. 1 way out of that is for the players not to expect the DM will rule any particular way. Another way out of that is for the DM and players to always be on the same page about what will be ruled. Outside of that there will be conflict or at least the seeds for potential conflict.

It's true that A&D was hard to read, but I distinctly remember that, in our club in Lyon, all the DMs (and there were at least 12 of them) and all the players really knew the rules well, and these were French people reading english rules...

This doesn't show that the rules were clear, only that one group of DM's/players were able to get on the same page about how they would read the rules. Which tends to happen especially at the small group level because it's important to avoid conflict (while people avoid conflict much more in person than they do online) and it is much easier to reach a consensus in a relatively small in person group setting - or at least for those that might disagree to keep their mouth shut so as to not rock the boat and make enemies or get kicked out of such a small group.

I mean imagine someone in your group as DM making a ruling that would be unexpected and deterimental to your PC. Are you telling me that you or someone else in your group wouldn't have potentially argued about that?

 

[Mannahnin]

I mean, seriously. In the intro to the DMG there's a sentence "As this book is the exclusive precinct of the DM, you must view any non-DM player possessing it as something less than worthy of honorable death." You don't seriously believe that Gygax was saying you should murder a player that read the DMG, do you? It's obviously a joke, just like the ear worm thing is a joke IMHO.

To my read (which is much the same today as when I first read that passage as a teenager, though I have much more knowledge and perspective now), it's obviously both a joke and a statement of sincere intent as part of the play style Gary was endorsing, which is adversarial in many parts of the DMG. That a player transgressing on knowledge he's not supposed to have has committed an offense against the game, the group, and the DM's authority and deserves punishment. It's meant with good humor, and of course he didn't mean kill the player, but I don't think he meant it to be entirely ironic, no.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Fair enough I suppose. I don't consider Pawn Stance or "Avatar" play to be role playing. It's certainly playing the game. But, it's not recognizably role playing. Like I said earlier, I barely consider AD&D to be an RPG by today's standards. Which, I suppose, explains a lot about why I seem to not be able to get my point across.

And this gets to the heart of my original question in the thread. It's clear people mean a lot of different things with the word, and I was wondering how much that had changed or remained the same. Since I was in junior high in a small town and didn't have internet and didn't go to cons, my experience was limited to my friends and the college kids who owned the FLGS.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I roll a 15 for my initiative. That's pure meta-game right there.

Actually, I'll disagree. That's the game. You're not making a character decision based on the rules.

It would be metagaming if you used the initiative order to decide what to do: "well, the cleric's turn is before mine, so if I hit zero HP he'll get me up and I won't miss a turn" or "none of my allies are have turns between mine and the lizard man, so I guess shoving him prone with my bonus action won't accomplish anything." (Not that I think there's anything wrong with that, by the way.)

At least, that's what I mean by the term. Since it's not formally defined, others may have other definitions.

 

[Oofta]

I'm not constructing a strawman. Please try to understand that we're talking about two (maybe three) different meanings of the word "metagame" here, and only one is pejorative.

Metagame also refers to "the game outside the game". If I ever have a thought like "DM Melissa and I are experienced old hands, but everyone else at the table tonight is a newbie, so this session will probably be pretty easy and light." that's a metagame thought, and any decisions I make in the game based on that information are functionally metagaming, but that's not the same kind of metagaming as reading the module ahead of time and knowing that these trolls are actually immune to fire, but acid affects them normally.

As others have pointed out earlier in the thread, if I think (or say) "Wow, Joe seemed to know exactly where to search for that secret door! He must be cheating and metagaming by having read the module*" that is itself metagaming. That's me NOT inhabiting my character, but instead engaging in out of character speculation about how someone else is playing the game, at the cost of my own fun!

(*ironic in the initial example, of course, because in the real example the player actually suspected a trap, guessed where one might be, Investigated, and turned up a secret door he wasn't expecting.)

Has anyone other than you labeled "knowing initiative order" as metagaming? We have to have rules to play the game, Brog the Enforcer doesn't know what a D20 is, obviously as a player I do need to. But that, to me, is not metagaming.

Then again, much like role playing, obviously some people have a different definition of what it means than I do or that I assumed was the generally accepted definition. Playing a PC with no personality, that never makes decisions or does anything because that's what the person you're playing would think or do is not, to me role playing. Then again, you don't have to speak with a funny accent or even consistently speak in person to role play.

So metagaming, role playing and so on exist in a spectrum. At a certain point certain knowledge about what your PC acts on becomes metagaming, initiative doesn't cross that line for me. Using the capabilities of a PC alone does not qualify as role playing to me any more than knowing what a Sherman tank's capabilities in a war game means you're role playing a tank.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Yes, when I'm an actor playing a wizard on a stage, I will be fufilling a role in that story assigned to the wizard. I don't have to do any actual acting, though, I can be myself just fine. We need only look to some very successful acting careers where the character portrayed is really just the actor (Owen Wilson is always Owen Wilson as the role). So, I can be almost entirely myself and just have some role related things and I am doing it like an actor. Once we dispense with the play analogy, then what I'm doing is roleplaying if I'm in the role of the wizard. Acting as someone else outside the role is unnecessary -- again, see Owen Wilson.

And Keanu Reaves.

 

[Mannahnin]

Actually, I'll disagree. That's the game. You're not making a character decision based on the rules.

It would be metagaming if you used the initiative order to decide what to do: "well, the cleric's turn is before mine, so if I hit zero HP he'll get me up and I won't miss a turn" or "none of my allies are have turns between mine and the lizard man, so I guess shoving him prone with my bonus action won't accomplish anything." (Not that I think there's anything wrong with that, by the way.)

At least, that's what I mean by the term. Since it's not formally defined, others may have other definitions.

Very much this. This kind of tactical thinking based on the rules is good play but is ALSO metagaming. The character can't know the initiative order, but it is good play and indeed expected to think like this about combat. At least for most groups I've been in.