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

[Thornir Alekeg]

QFT. The DM is absolutely the bottleneck, because a poor RP DM will make you not bother with your own RP.

Absolutely. I noticed it when I was DMing. I had days where the players would engage my NPCs in conversation and I was able to come up with great responses and kept the conversation rolling in character. When I asked later, those days were the ones that the players remembered as being some of the most fun. Other days, I was distracted and just couldn't respond well for the NPCs. The players got bored and went looking for a fight instead.

 

[BryonD]

Between the covers of a book is a bad place to look for roleplaying.

I agree with Umbran. Give me a system that supports my ideas and stays out of the way and I'll do the RP.

Some stuff to spark ideas is fine. But really, that is separate from an RPG. A collection of stories or a movie can do that.

 

[Simia Saturnalia]

The white elephant in the room is that the majority of gamers aren't there to role-play; they're there to play the game, and the role-playing gets in the way of actually playing the game. Furthermore, there is a minority of gamers that actively hate role-playing; it's rare to see them speak up in a forum like this one, but you'll see them in the store and in MMORPG forums. When time is limited, and sessions infrequent, time spent yapping about stuff is time spent not running through encounters, gaining XP, upgrading gear or leveling- i.e. not playing the game. That 4.0 will be focusing far, far more on playing the game is a good thing; those that want RP don't need rules to do it and those that don't aren't forced to deal with it. (And, thanks to the online gaming support, can get their game on far more often than they used to; like that won't have an impact.)

This is, ultimately, true.

And as a role-play heavy DM and player with a group composed largely of the same, with limited time to play once a week, I'm looking forward to 4e's rules focus on the encounter. If it does all that work for me, and statting up an entire adventure's expected encounters takes an hour or two, I can spend a lot more time on the setting and NPCs.

 

[Plane Sailing]

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.

Unfortunately I've seen situations like the first one where even 1 poor roleplayer drags everything down to his level

 

[DonTadow]

Part of the problem is rules and role playing can often be at odds with one another. What takes priority a crappy die roll on a PCs diplomacy check or some very smooth talking by the player? If its the die roll your diminishing role playing, if its the smooth talking then your diminishing the rules or the significance of skills etc.

I don't buy that. The role playing is never deminished. You give the bonus for the good role playing and if the role fails then that particular NPC just won't stand for it.

Plus there is no such thing as "bad" role playing if the person is making an effort to seperate himself from his character. I think the problem we make is to try to "rate " role players. I got two theater actors in my group and i don't give them any more preferencial treatment than the others.

 

[Shadeydm]

Plus there is no such thing as "bad" role playing if the person is making an effort to seperate himself from his character. I think the problem we make is to try to "rate " role players. I got two theater actors in my group and i don't give them any more preferencial treatment than the others.

It has nothing to do with acting skill, it can be as simple as making a convincing argument.

 

[frankthedm]

I do not think the 4e ruleset will encourage that much roleplay. Just not the goal of the revision.

A lot of potentially lethal encounters that the PCs can roleplay thier way out of could encourage roleplay. Though it just might be a TPK recipe when someone who had a bad week mouths off to the out of his league encounter..

 

[DonTadow]

It has nothing to do with acting skill, it can be as simple as making a convincing argument.

Its not up to the pcs to make a "convincing" argument no more than it is for a pc to swing a sword (oh my did i just make that analogy that i hate). It's only up to the pcs to try to make any argument.

dc 30 on diplomacy beating the will save of the npc
"pc says he needs access to the city to give his grandmother a massage"

The pc is trying to roleplay, in't great at it but gets a plus 1 because he tried and references the oils he is carrying.

 

[buzz]

No, serously, the Player's Handbook is a terrible book when it comes to showcasing role playing and encouraging it. The Hero Builder's Handbook, D&D Dummies book, and Player's Handbook II are all far better.

I'm not saying the book needs relationship charts or needs players to come up with complex backstories that tie into the root of the campaign or anything, but I'd like to see something that provides reasons for role playing and rewards for doing it well.

The hints that there will be social conflict rules in 4e is a step in the right direction, assuming you're using "roleplaying" to mean "stuff that is not combat." There's inklings that Alignment might have some cool changes, too, which would be neat.

FWIW, I don't think PHB2's section on playing your PC was of any help in this area. Dedicating 60 pages to what basically boiled down to, "Be sure to talk with an accent, and writing a background would be cool, too," was a waste of space, IMO.

The section that did help was stuff like the affiliation rules. Those are awesome.

 

[Clavis]

I think the amount of roleplaying done in a group is function of the quality of the DM and the character of players drawn to a particular rules set.

There are three ways to market a RPG: to the Drama Cub, to the Physics/Chess Club, or to the counter culture (metalheads/punks/goths. etc). If you think about it, most of us here were probably part of one of those social scenes in High School.

The Drama Club people just want to role-play, and often view the rules as an impediment. Sometimes, they don't even bother to learn the rules, and just ask the DM to determine if something they want to do works. They will role-play their character under any condition, and their different characters are often completely unlike each other. Most of these people end up LARPing anyway, so no edition of D&D was ever aimed at them.

The Physics Club people want intricate rules with many options, so that they feel intellectually challenged by the possibility of creating an mechanically optimal character, and solving tactical problems in play. They are often hostile to too much "acting" taking place at the game table. 3.5 Ed seems aimed mostly at this group.

The Counter Culture people want to engage in their fantasies. They want a rule set that allows them to imagine a world were they are dominant and special. They want to play Vampires, Evil Clerics with armies of Undead, Half-Demon destroyers of worlds and the like. To them, the rules matter if they allow the player to act out their fantasies, and don't if they get in the way of the fantasy. They love to role-play their characters, as long as those characters are fulfilling their fantasies. They tend to create variations on a single character that they run over and over again.

4 Ed seems to be shifting from a focus on the physics Club to the Counter Culture. It seems the new rules will support more role-playing, as long as your role-playing is of a particular sort. If you always wanted to pretend to be the misunderstood son of a demon, who just happens to to be able to kill everything around him, you're in luck. If you want to play out a long romance (with no fangs, Drow magic, or scales involved), nothing I've seen about 4 ed indicates that the rules set will encourage that sort of thing.