D&D 4E How Will 4e Encourage Role Playing?

[Thornir Alekeg]

I think there is more pressure on the DM in terms of roleplaying. The DM needs to provide situations where roleplaying is fun and interesting. If the DM grinds the party from fight to fight, what chances are there for some good roleplaying? I always found my groups best roleplaying came when I as DM was in the right frame of mind to get some great spontaneous back and forth going between PCs and NPCs. On days I was not able to execute NPC roleplaying as well, everyone else's roleplaying fell off as a result.

Another area where they can improve roleplaying is by providing guidelines for how to handle XP awards for non-combat situations. Reward the players, not by giving "roleplaying bonuses" as such, but by helping build situations where the players have to accomplish something more through talking and doing things that add depth to the characters more just than rolling dice, and then awarding XP for succeeding. It is a much harder thing to balance in terms of XP awards. How challenging is it, and how do you figure out how much experience it is worth? Does it scale with PC level? Non-combat situations don't necessarily burn through any resources whatsoever, should they be worth as much as a combat encounter? You don't usually die as the result of a roleplaying encounter, but you can fail - how do you keep it from derailing your adventure and frustrating your players? The books helping to answer some of these questions might help new DMs run things other than combat.

 

[Cadfan]

I'd put an attempt at encouraging role playing in the DMG.

Specifically, I'd put in encouragement for the DM to opt to create a campaign that has a set goal, a set context in which the characters exist, and with a restriction that all characters must fit both.

I know a lot of people see that as railroading, but part of the reasoning roleplaying never seems to go anywhere is because we're all playing parties of random wandering adventurers, sans context. Creating a context out of the starting gate gives the characters something to roleplay about. And players rarely have a problem with "railroading" if its fully disclosed at the beginning of the game. If you randomly draft already existing characters into the military and force them to follow orders, they will resent you. If you tell your players to design characters who are officers in the Crimson Guard, then tell them that the King has ordered them to the front lines of the war with Artuark to represent his banner and report intelligence to him bypassing his generals, and that the Queen has a secret set of orders she does not want you to mention to the King, they will love you for it. Railroading is only railroading if it is perceived that way. Otherwise its advice on how to create a campaign world in which meaningful goals are possible, and meaningful relationships with NPCs can occur. I think the DMG needs to give advice on how to accomplish this.

Players will roleplay if you give them the chance. It doesn't matter how good they are at it in a vacuum, they have to be given the chance. And the random wanderer archetype doesn't give much chance.

 

[Umbran]

How so?

How is a person new to role playing going to pick up a smoothly run system and know how to role play?

Note that the question was, "How will it encourage role playing?" not, "How will it teach role playing?" Those are not the same question.

The top way to encourage a desired behavior or activity is to remove barriers to it. A player who spends all of his time outside his characters head (doing game math, looking up rules, and such) is distracted from playing the role by playing the game, so to speak. Interested players, when given an opening, will tend to take it.

If the player is not already interested, I don't believe book content really helps. That's just in my experience, of course. I see people mentioning sections of things like the DMG II and the PHB II as examples of encouraging role play - but all those people are the sort who are already very interested, so that they need very little encouragement. I don't see lots of reports of "roll-players" picking up those books and going, "Wait a minute, there's a whole aspect of this that I've missed!" These sections seem to be preaching to the choir. Again, YMMV.

 

[Khairn]

The latest design philosophy of applying ever stronger definitions of a characters "role" within a a group, takes D&D further away from its "role-playing" roots. So no I do not think that 4E will really do anything that will encourage role playing.

This is not a recent trend, and limited to 4E. This trend picked up steam (IMHO) with 3E, and can be seen in many of the gaming elements that have been introduced over the last number of years.

One of the more obvious examples have been the move towards mapping out an encounter in ever greater and minute detail. By mapping out the full encounter from where the monsters start and what they do each round, it end up taking away the creativity and imagination job from the GM. Modules become RaW ( Run as Written), and players (and GM's) play their characters more by tactical rote than by immersion.



Recently I was running through an adventure at the FLGS, and a by-stander came to me at the break. He expressed his dismay that I hadn't run the encounter he witnessed as it was written. His complaint was that I was taking something away from my players.

I asked him if my players were happy with how I ran the adventure, even if it wasn't "as written". He replied yes, but still thought it was wrong because I didn't follow the rules. This is someone who wants his RPG to be run like a computer game.

Not wanting to throw flame on a fire, but he's also very excited about 4E and thinks the changes are perfect for his gaming group. I completely agreed with him.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

The latest design philosophy of applying ever stronger definitions of a characters "role" within a a group, takes D&D further away from its "role-playing" roots. So no I do not think that 4E will really do anything that will encourage role playing.

I must not be getting what you mean here. I can undertand a stronger definition of character "roles" with the group would not encourage a broader range of creative concepts that can be role-played, but how does it discourage roleplaying? If 4e gives strong definitions of roles to play might it not encourage roleplaying, albeit with many (probably less-experienced) players role-playing the same character type in very similar ways? Is that still not roleplaying? Creative people will find ways to break out of the official definition and roleplay their characters differently than what the books might say. Less creative people might be helped by the definitions to understand how they can think about roleplaying and try it, rather than not being able to come up with a concept beyond the numbers and not bothering to try roleplaying at all.

 

[Khairn]

I must not be getting what you mean here. I can undertand a stronger definition of character "roles" with the group would not encourage a broader range of creative concepts that can be role-played, but how does it discourage roleplaying? If 4e gives strong definitions of roles to play might it not encourage roleplaying, albeit with many (probably less-experienced) players role-playing the same character type in very similar ways? Is that still not roleplaying? Creative people will find ways to break out of the official definition and roleplay their characters differently than what the books might say. Less creative people might be helped by the definitions to understand how they can think about roleplaying and try it, rather than not being able to come up with a concept beyond the numbers and not bothering to try roleplaying at all.

I agree whole-heartedly that creative people will always find a way to RP no matter what the rules.

My comments (probably needed to do a beter job on them) were very much along the line of thinking that stronger definitions and specific functions encourage just that, a player performing a specific role. These types of rules do not encourage a player thinking creatively, outside the box, and immersing himself in the character. Since it encourages a limited approach to your character, by default it discourages the more creative side of gaming which includes RPing.

A "Definition" of how to think "outside the box or how to be creative", has always seemed counter productive to me. Now a GM or really good group of RP'ers, that can show a non-creative player how to RP is what's really needed. I just think that a lot of the current adventures and GM support are not designed with that type of goal in mind, making it even more difficult.

 

[Henry]

I can see your point.

But if you're all new players with a new GM, where is the game-group culture coming from? Online play? Completely different beast no?

Keep in mind that in the early days, roleplaying behaviors developed spontaneously in many groups just from either reading Gary Gygax's intro to the PHB, or from people who first played the game in a "hard mechanics" style and then got bored with that style of play and tried something new. The basics of the game itself, as well as just a general statement in the opening paragraphs, will get people's minds moving towards this style of play.

Beyond even that, adventure modules themselves steer people towards roleplaying -- undoubtedly, these hypothetical novice groups are going to pick up a copy of Slaughtergarde, or whatever the new intro adventure is, because the DM is going to want to get an idea of what he's supposed to do, and get the idea that they sould do at least some "in-character" talking.

 

[Frostmarrow]

Role-playing needs an analogue system. Please bare with me. Combat is best governed by a digital system. -Numbers, charts, die rolls, and results. Role-playing, in 3ed is governed by a digital system with skill rolls of diplomacy and bluff to work. And it doesn't work properly anyway.

An analogue system could be akin to Vampire: Mind's Eye Theatre where you have different hand signals to show what social skills you are employing; like pointing at you temple to read minds or pointing at you chin to awe people.

You could use different hats but that would be too silly. Cards is another option as are once per day-abilities.

Giving players XP for good role-playing is too arbitrary to grant any benefits in my experience.

 

[(contact)]

I can see your point.

But if you're all new players with a new GM, where is the game-group culture coming from? Online play? Completely different beast no?

Absolutely, and all new players will probably do what we did when we were all-new players. Of course, I was like 9 at the time, and thought the solution to every monster encounter was to run away, that electrum pieces were the best possible treasure, and that a magic missle was an icbm made of magic.

A chapter on playing in character would be great, but there are a lot of different approaches to RP, and I tend to think it'll happen more organically.

I've got a game group right now with three brand-new gamers in it. Initially, they were well content to learn the tactical combat, figure out what they could do, when and why, and laugh at my NPCs. Over time, they've started to come out a little and role-play a bit.

What I'm seeing is that RP is an addendum to the game itself; something that happens after everyone has settled in to playing D&D and wants to add another layer.

 

[Cadfan]

I still think the most important part is teaching the DM how to roleplay. Interaction between characters can usually place even if the DM isn't so great at it. But all interaction with NPCs has to run through the DM. He's a bottleneck. You've got to teach him how to create not only memorable npcs, but also ones you actually want to interact with. And then you've got to teach him how to roleplay them.

If you've got a good roleplaying DM, 3 good roleplaying players, and 1 bad player, you can do just fine. If you've got 4 good roleplaying players and a bad DM, you're screwed much of the time.