Impact of mechanics on roleplay

[I'm A Banana]

Good examples. And I would favor a INT supporting Rogue build, too. I think it might not set up this way because they wanted to avoid classes relying on a secondary ability that affects the same defense as the primary statistics. But I might be wrong, and they just didn't want a third possible statistics.
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I like the idea of "siloing" various abilities. So you have a silo for stuff like weapon skills, one for social skills, one for technical skills, and so on. That no longer forces you to choose between Craft (Basket Weaving) and Disable Device. Of course, if the point of your character was to be all Basket Weaving, no Weapon Skills, a system like this will make this difficult.

IMO, this kind of looses sight of why I play the game in the first place. The idea is that the rules should support the character you envision (and do so in a way that doesn't make them weak). The "siloing" helps with that extensively, but there are always going to be points where one or the other has to give. And, as you point out, if the game "weights" certain silos as more important than others, it's going to encourage a certain style of character. In the 4e rogue's case, it encourages ninjae and tricksters, while in the 3e rogue's case, it encourages careful preparation, teamwork, and diverse skill selection. 3e was "siloed," but 4e has a different weight on the combat silos than 3e did.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

What do you think? How important are the mechanics of the game to your roleplay

Like several of the other posters, I use the rules to help realize a PC concept as opposed to using the rules to make Übermen.

The only way in which mechanics affect my roleplay is when they bar or severely cripple a particular concept.

For example, I've yet to play a spellcaster who was mute from birth in D&D. Yes, there is the Still Spell feat, but that just helps beg the question of how a mute would even enter the spellcasting professions- even Read Magic has Verbal components.

 

[Mallus]

If you strip the mechanical support for personality traits, goals, motivations, etc, out of a P&P game, though, you're playing an online game with crappy graphics and a server that needs a constant supply of pizza to keep running.

All the 'mechanical support' for personality, goals, motivations -- let's say all the things that make a player character a character -- I get from my interaction with the DM (and my fellow players). The shared imaginative space the game takes place in doesn't arise out of a rule system alone. It also comes from --wait for it -- the participant's shared imaginations.

For me, having the DM -- and your fellow players -- on board helping you characterize your PC is more important than direct rules support. Because in the end it's the game-during-play that matters, where the rules are being filtered/implemented through the DM, where the all-important reaction to your PC's actions come from the other PC's (and NPC's).

I like having flexible rules support for defining my character's abilities. But a lot of my PC's are, well, kinda ineffable. Part of their respective shticks/charms always lie outside the rules, in part their defined by the groups shared perception of them. This is also why I like rules systems that know when to get out of the way. That don't attempt to atomize/define every aspect of the character, particularly the details that are hard to weight/balance against the genre-defined 'standard adventurer' abilities.

 

[Lizard]

All the 'mechanical support' for personality, goals, motivations -- let's say all the things that make a player character a character -- I get from my interaction with the DM (and my fellow players). The shared imaginative space the game takes place in doesn't arise out of a rule system alone. It also comes from --wait for it -- the participant's shared imaginations.

For me, having the DM -- and your fellow players -- on board helping you characterize your PC is more important than direct rules support. Because in the end it's the game-during-play that matters, where the rules are being filtered/implemented through the DM, where the all-important reaction to your PC's actions come from the other PC's (and NPC's).

I like having flexible rules support for defining my character's abilities. But a lot of my PC's are, well, kinda ineffable. Part of their respective shticks/charms always lie outside the rules, in part their defined by the groups shared perception of them. This is also why I like rules systems that know when to get out of the way. That don't attempt to atomize/define every aspect of the character, particularly the details that are hard to weight/balance against the genre-defined 'standard adventurer' abilities.

There's a difference between "Getting out of the way" and "Taking the first bus to the airport and hopping a red-eye to Argentina". No rules system can define all character traits, but defining NONE is too much -- or, rather, too little. My current PC has Int 20 (26 w/Tiara) and Wis 16, but he is constantly walking glassy eyed towards the Big Glowy Dangerous Thing, because he's obsessed with Forbidden Knowledge TM. There is no system in 3e for what Hero would call Psych Lims, so this has to be roleplayed by me basically ignoring the character's attributes. (I consider this a flaw in D&D). However, I *can* at least partially reflect his nature by having him put points in EVERY knowledge skill -- even though this makes him (disdainful sniff) "sub optimal" because not all of his skills are maxed out for his level. To the extent the rules DO allow me to model his personality, I let them. He's a shameless lech with no social graces whatsoever, and his Charisma of 8 DOES reflect that. (Last game, there was a joke that "We'll aid the Diplomacy check." "How?" "We'll keep Kolgrim (my character) out of the room.")

In a 4e game, or any game with no personality/roleplaying mechanics, any check my character would make for diplomacy would be as good as anyone else's who didn't specialize in it. In 4e, he'd have a +8 to all social skills by now, just because. In 3e, he has a -1. Period. He put no points in them (he doesn't care), and so, he sucks at social interaction, and likely always will without magical aid, even if he lives to be an epic level archmage.

I like that this is reflected in the mechanics. If he is put in a situation where he has to try to be diplomatic, he will very likely fail, doing worse than a random shmuck off the street. If there were no mechanical support for this, it would make his personality less "real" -- when it *mattered* (when the dice are rolled), he would be just as good as anyone else.

 

[buzz]

If something is an important aspect of my character, I want it to have mechanical support. If I'm supposed to be a smooth talker, I want social skills, and if his gift of gab is more important to him than his swordsmanship, I want to the ability to reflect this by choosing improvements to his social skills over his combat ones. I don't want to be stuck arguing with the DM over whether or not my rules-independant background flavor text does or does not matter in a given situation -- I want a skill/feat/power/option/whatever that says if it does, how much it does, and how often it does. .

It depends on the game, really. If I buy a game that the author says is specifically about societial washouts being offered a chance at salvation in return for hunting demons, I expect something other than a completely generic task resolution mechanic. I expect a mechanic that supports the specifically promised premise.

I don't care how great a game concept is if the system that it ships with is so generic that I could ultimately achieve the exact same results with Risus, GURPS, HERO, and other already available generic systems. Such a game shouldn't be committed to paper, IMO. That is, while the concept of the game may be great, if the system produces the same results as dozens of other systems already out there, those pages are wasted.

It's not often that I nod my head in agreement with Lizard and jdrakeh, but...

:nods head in agreement:

Two comments:

First, I think a really great example of characterization-supporting mechanics that are also not complex in any way are Aspects from FATE/Spirit of the Century. I.e., it's not about a choice between GURPS/HERO-level complexity and BD&D simplicity. There are plenty of ways to mechanically support the "flavor" of a PC without mind-deadening crunch.

Second, to talk specifically about 4e, I think that we're going to start seeing a lot of "unsupported flavor" see support in the form of feats. E.g., look at the Alchemy feat in the newly-released Adventurer's Vault. Obviously, 4e's focus is on dungeon-bashing (as it should be). Still, I think feats will eventually fill out those non-combat niches that the shortened skill list seems to have overly-condensed (to some; I have no issue with it).

 

[Cadfan]

I greatly prefer mechanical support for roleplaying, or more generally, non-combat abilities. To me, any variant on "If you want to be the blacksmith's son, just write it down on the character sheet and get on with the game" is basically dismissing roleplaying as secondary, or utterly irrelevant, to "what matters". It's saying "This is so unimportant that no character resources need to be allocated to it".

Its not dismissing roleplaying as secondary, its dismissing mechanical advantages gleaned from being a blacksmith as secondary.

At least get the premise correct before you critique it.

Anyways, if you are charging character resources for an ability, you are doing so because you think that ability matters. And presumably you are charging an amount of resources that reflects some estimate of the ability's value.

This is (relatively) easy to do for combat abilities, and doing so for combat abilities is necessary for the overall balance of the game.

I used to think it was a good idea to do this for non combat abilities. I have since changed my mind on this subject. I think there are too many possible non combat abilities or backgrounds for one system to cover all of them, or even reasonably many of them. I think that any system which purports to define and measure the relative in-game value of the wealth of non combat/confrontation/challenge options that exist in real (hypothetical) life will, by necessity, be incomplete and ultimately disappointing.

And given all these things, I think its best to assign that job to the DM. No list of rules is going to cover things like exactly what advantages one should gain from being the ninth son of a king sent out as a knight errant, or how much that should be worth in comparison to spending one's childhood on the banks of the Nile dodging crocodiles and collecting reeds to craft and sell papyrus. Fortunately, we have an excellent decision-making device available in pen and paper RPGs, one that's designed and optimized to make judgments about fairness and equity and social relations, and one that isn't even available in computer RPGs. We have human brains.

And those human brains, while not 100% consistent or precise, are, in my opinion, always going to be miles and miles ahead of any prewritten system when it comes to considering the complex multivariate questions of social relationships and worth that are necessary to balance characters non adventuring related skills.

The only flaw I see in 4e's approach to these matters is not spelling it out even more clearly.

 

[Mallus]

There's a difference between "Getting out of the way" and "Taking the first bus to the airport and hopping a red-eye to Argentina".

Oh sure... I don't mean to suggest otherwise.

To use my current M&M2e character as example... I'm glad there aren't any rules for his devout Catholicism (he's also a fake Egyptian god from the future). It's a very important part of the character. It has direct bearing on play. But it's not a something I or my group need rules for.

My current PC has Int 20 (26 w/Tiara) and Wis 16, but he is constantly walking glassy eyed towards the Big Glowy Dangerous Thing, because he's obsessed with Forbidden Knowledge TM. There is no system in 3e for what Hero would call Psych Lims, so this has to be roleplayed by me basically ignoring the character's attributes. (I consider this a flaw in D&D).

In 3.5 this trait would exist in that space that's essentially unmediated by the rules I was talking about. It could be important, but it's impact on play would result solely from the interplay between the player, DM (and fellow players).

However, I *can* at least partially reflect his nature by having him put points in EVERY knowledge skill -- even though this makes him (disdainful sniff) "sub optimal" because not all of his skills are maxed out for his level.

Do you mean 'partially reflect his nature' in a way that satisfies you when you look down at your character sheet, or in a way that has bearing on the game-during-play? Because the 3.5 skill system doesn't smile on non-specialists, nor does it particularly well-support Knowledge skills in general, I can't see this as more than an aesthetic choice -- it doesn't effect play much, does it? How are you defining 'support'?

To the extent the rules DO allow me to model his personality, I let them.

Where there's the thing: no edition of D&D offers much in the way of support for this.

In a 4e game, or any game with no personality/roleplaying mechanics...

How is 4e different from 3e in this regard?

In 4e, he'd have a +8 to all social skills by now, just because. In 3e, he has a -1. Period. He put no points in them (he doesn't care), and so, he sucks at social interaction, and likely always will without magical aid, even if he lives to be an epic level archmage.

Oh, like this... frankly I think this is an improvement. Skills now work like HP. You just get better at them -- except, of course, for Trained-only uses. I mean, if a D&D player can accept than an wizened, sickly old mage can take a greatsword blow better than a young strapping army veteran, why quibble about the relative benefits of experience vis-a-vis Diplomacy?

Isn't this really a call for a cafeteria-style point-buy system like HERO or M&M, where there isn't the same kind of bundling of abilities?

If there were no mechanical support for this, it would make his personality less "real" -- when it *mattered* (when the dice are rolled), he would be just as good as anyone else.

Then don't roll. Saying something uncouth and let the DM mediate events without involving the rule system.

If that bothers you, consider that it's no less silly that having a PC that's mechanically capable of being diplomatic to everything under the sun, regardless of context or situation. For example, you might define your 3.5 rogue as a smooth-talking street level fixer, a mafia mouthpiece. He has a high CHR and maxed Diplomacy. And he'd do just as well in an interview with the Pope as he would talking to a bunch of local bookies (okay, he might take a -2 situational modifier w/the Pope, as per the RAW). In fact, he would be more effective -- again, in mechanical terms-- than some poor stumble-tongued bishop with no ranks in Diplomacy.

Now you could see this as an invalidation of the character concept. Or you could just roleplay your way around it.

 

[Fenes]

And given all these things, I think its best to assign that job to the DM. No list of rules is going to cover things like exactly what advantages one should gain from being the ninth son of a king sent out as a knight errant, or how much that should be worth in comparison to spending one's childhood on the banks of the Nile dodging crocodiles and collecting reeds to craft and sell papyrus. Fortunately, we have an excellent decision-making device available in pen and paper RPGs, one that's designed and optimized to make judgments about fairness and equity and social relations, and one that isn't even available in computer RPGs. We have human brains.

And those human brains, while not 100% consistent or precise, are, in my opinion, always going to be miles and miles ahead of any prewritten system when it comes to considering the complex multivariate questions of social relationships and worth that are necessary to balance characters non adventuring related skills.

The only flaw I see in 4e's approach to these matters is not spelling it out even more clearly.

So, why have combat rules then? Wouldn't it be better to leave all those delicate decisions how to value some power or spell to the human brain? If combat is not as complicated as social interaction it should be easy to handle. And if combat is more complicated than social itneraction, why can't one handle the later with rules if one can handle the former with rules?

The flaw I see here is dismissing non-combat mechanics.

 

[Mallus]

So, why have combat rules then?

It's nice to have rules for some things.

Wouldn't it be better to leave all those delicate decisions how to value some power or spell to the human brain?

Not entirely.

The flaw I see here is dismissing non-combat mechanics.

Some people don't need them. Some people prefer them, but are happy with them being less detailed than the combat rules.

 

[BeauNiddle]

The flaw I see here is dismissing non-combat mechanics.

No, it's dismissing scenery to where scenery should come from - the interplay of DM and players.

If you want to Bluff there are rules for it. If you want to Intimidate there are rules for it. There are rules for jumping and climbing and athletics and acrobatics.

All of which are non-combat.

If your DM wants to have blacksmithing play an important part in the campaign then it is up to the DM to come up with some rules for said activity. If the DM doesn't want to come up with the rules and instead he wishes to run the campaign as standard then it's up to the DM and players to narrate whether they "hand over money to the towns blacksmith for a new item" or if Player X "works over the hot coals day and night. Never flinching, never waivering he beats the lump iron into ..." (which costs him the same as just buying it but in rent / provisions / supplies as opposed to simple lump sum)