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

[AbdulAlhazred]

I understand the argument. I just don't agree.

If your definition of role playing does not actually include playing a role - as in making decisions based on the in game fiction based on the character concepts created for play - then it's not role playing. It's certainly play. And it's fun for those who enjoy it. But, it's not role playing. Which is why I thing older versions of D&D barely qualify. Sure, they pay lip service to the notion of playing a role, but, there's nothing in the game that actually addresses it. There's no benefit in 1e D&D to being more than Fytor, which is just a pawn I'm using as a place marker while I, Hussar, engage with the game without any filter of a character.

To me, that's where the definition of role playing has changed. Back in the day, that style of play was pretty much it. That's how you played an RPG. Now, it's generally not. And the game now actually has elements that directly reward you for engaging with the game through the lens of your character. The whole Inspiration mechanic in 5e is a (minimal) expression of this.

However, I do realize that my own definition of RPG's is my own. I am certainly not trying to claim that it is universal. But, it does go a long ways towards explaining why I don't agree.

You have to admit though, there's a WIDE range of variations here!

I mean, @Gilladian can easily tell you that we were RPing back in the early early days of 1e (and before, though honestly I would be hard pressed to relate to you a character from before about 1978 or so). Typically we had the dumb dwarf (Gilladian), the dumb 'half-ogre', Grog (my brother), the smartass wizard- Triborb VII (note most of Triborb's I-VI were tragically ganked at an early age) (Mike), the mechanically adept rogue(?) (David, I think it was a halfling), the silly wizard that fireballed the party (Brent), and etc. All of these were CHARACTERS (some not for very long, but others came along, Triborb retired and Dudley the Paladin appeared in his place, along with Fern the Halfling, and a Druid who's name I am not remembering now).

None of these was 'just a pog'. OTOH I don't really think ANY of those players, at least in a classic D&D campaign, tried to go whole hog on their character's persona to the exclusion of success. There were a few minor, and famous, exceptions, but they were FUN exceptions and didn't create some huge inconvenience in our play of basically something fairly close to Gygaxian D&D.

Later on, around the Dudley/Fern stage we were playing 2e and a lot older and that campaign had a lot more theme and kind of a driving story that shaped it more, and gave the PCs a bit more dimension. They still pretty much played to survive and find loot! There was just a bit more plot to it.

So, then many of the same players were in a couple of 4e campaigns I ran, 20 MORE years down the road, almost. The RP was palpably more a material element of the game, but now it was very much in alignment with the mechanics of the game. So there was never any tension between fun and RP, or 'playing to win' and RP. That seems to me to be the story of RPGs, the R part was, for some, less significant at the start, and it meant a couple different things to different groups, but modern games have largely made the G part ABOUT the R part, which is pretty cool!

 

[Bill Zebub]

It's not very useful to say that being the Blue Wizard isn't roleplaying, either.

But, hey, welcome to the muddy and murky edges of game concepts! Next up on the roster: define game.

I think a general principle might be that people who don't expect to learn anything new offer extreme examples ("Metagaming is secretly reading the module", "Mario Kart is not roleplaying") and people who think there might be something to learn explore the messy, gray-area examples in between.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Call it what you like. In order for something to be actually roleplaying, you have to play a role. If the definition of role play includes Mario Kart, it is not a useful definition.

hmm, it occurs to me that the fact that it could include Mario Kart could simply be ignored, and that would only be a meaningful quality if the 'use' is exclusion, Mario Kart being included makes sense if the purpose of roleplaying is to play a role and have your experience of that role be immersive-- Mario Kart certainly makes you feel like you're racing, albeit in a zany world, it goes out of its way to make you feel that role acutely with all of its mechanics where you make decisions as a racer might-- e.g. how to take corners, when to try to pass someone, rewards you for practicing and knowing the course.

 

[Oofta]

I don't know. I'll ask my son, who was an extra on Stranger Things season 3, what he thinks. He'll probably tell me he got robbed at the Oscars for "best 1/2 second on screen". That sounds pretty actorlike to me.

The real question is: did he meet someone who knows someone that knows Kevin Bacon?

 

[Ovinomancer]

The real question is: did he meet someone who knows someone that knows Kevin Bacon?

Yup. He's 2 degrees away. Although... I had to explain this to him. He's in college now. Do you feel old yet?

 

[Bill Zebub]

Yup. He's 2 degrees away. Although... I had to explain this to him. He's in college now. Do you feel old yet?

No. If Kevin Bacon is in college then I have traveled back in time and am young again.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

On the other hand, Tomb of Horrors was absolutely all about player skilled play. /snip

This has been rather thoroughly debunked in the past: WIR S1 Tomb of Horrors [SPOILERS!! SPOILERS EVERYWHERE!!]‏

No, it really, really isn't.

 

[Hussar]

What does behaving like an actor entail. You've dismissed having lines, or following directions, but you haven't established what it does mean. How do you act without playacting, or how is playacting not acting? There appears to be some form of elevation of the word "actor" to mean a specific thing that you're not explaining to others, and that is, somehow, far too serious a concept to allow for "playacting."

Well, at it's most basic, I would say that behaving like an actor in a role (yes I added that bit for clarity), means that all of the actions that your character takes are filtered through the lens of that role. If your character is cowardly, then you act cowardly, regardless of how you, the person, feel or think. If your actions during the game ignore that lens, then you are no longer acting out that role.

 

[Hussar]

Now that I have caught upon the last three pages of this discussion and some people's narrow definitions of what roleplaying is...

I guess I have to break the news to my shy players, that are more comfortable describing from a third-person what their character is doing, thinking, that they're not roleplaying.

I guess I also have to break the news to my other group, that are choosing good feats that complements their character well and putting their ASI where it has the best impact, that they're dirty optimizers and are playing for winning and thus not really playing the game as they should.

No, see, this is the interpretation that people have invented/assumed that is being made. That speaking in first person, amateur thespian is role playing. It's not. I don't care at all about that.

But, I would assume that your shy players who are describing from the third person, are still committed to taking actions and making decisions that make sense for that character, and not just pure pawn play where the character is just a place holder and a set of statistics. If your players are playing through the lens of their character, they are role playing. If they are not, then they aren't.

Otherwise, Magic The Gathering is a Role Playing Game. After all, I'm taking the role of a Planeswalker when we sit down to play. My experience in the game will be very different depending on the type of deck I create. I do not have to make any decisions, take any actions, or even have anything like an actual character or persona to play. So, by the definitions put forward in this thread, MtG is a role playing game.

 

[Hussar]

Sure. If you consider your driver to be part of a fictional world and your selection of driver affects how you interact with that world, you're good to go in my book. I don't play Mario Kart that way, but I'm not going to yuk someone else's yum on that either.

To me, I'd rather argue something like roleplaying is very broad so it encompasses quite a lot of things rather than see it become a term used to say what "real" roleplaying is. To me, both are largely not very useful, but one is permissive and the other is just gatekeeping. Now, if you'd like to talk about various approaches to roleplaying, there's plenty of room for discussion. I'm just not going to support moving a preference for approach to roleplaying into the definition of roleplaying so we can all point at how other people might play and say they are outgroup and to be shunned.

It's all fine and good to talk about "gatekeeping" but, come on here. Saying that a role playing game requires role playing isn't gate keeping any more than saying having a heartbeat is gatekeeping sports. It's right there in the name after all. It's what differentiates role playing games from other types of games. Can you play an RPG without any role playing? Sure. We've probably all done it or seen it done. But, as a definition, it's not terribly useful if it includes everything and in no way functions to define what it is that is happening at the table.

Yes, I could play soccer on a field with four bases, use a pitcher and a catcher and a batter, but, at a certain point, it's really not soccer any more.