Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="BryonD" data-source="post: 1288076" data-attributes="member: 957">My answer to this question is absolutely 100% NO.You are missing (either truly or in a mildly trollish manner, not certain) the significance of the entire term "role-playing game".  You are trying to make it be a general role-playing exercise instead of specifically a game.  When kids play cowboys and indians, cops and robbers, soldier, whatever, they are role-playing.  But they are not playing a game.  Instead they are role-playing a collaborative drama of sorts.  One kid yells "Bang, You're dead!" and the second kid either complies or does not.  There are little, or frequently NO rules.  A gaming group could easily sit around a table doing the same thing in a fantasy setting.  Each player takes on a persona and the describe their actions to each other.  They can either have a game master as an arbitrary resolver of disputes, or they can just work it out for themselves.  The wizard guys says he throws an exploding ball of flame at the enemy and either the rest of the people acknowledge the effect or they dispute it.  They may say it is only slightly effective, or they may say that the wizard is simply not powerful enough to do such.  With no rules, it would depend completely on group agreement.  I suppose that might be fun.  It would certainly be less expensive than D&D.  It would be role-playing. It would not be a game.  On the opposite extreme is the old choose-your-own-adventure books or true board games like Dungeon Quest or Talisman.  While you technically COULD role-play these things, there is not expectation or demand for role assumption.  You just take on a simple mechanical model of abilities and win or lose.  Neither of these items match D&D or other role-playing games.  A role-playing games includes BOTH a mechanical model for conflict resolution and an expectation of some degree of role assumption.  Yes, you can just say "I persuade the guy." *roll d20* "Does a 28 work?".  You can also play baseball without outfielders and just call all hits that get past the infield a double.  Just because a free individual can elect to modify a game away from its expectations does not mean that the game does not deliver as promised.If D&D could NOT handle social interactions mechanically then it would NOT be a role-playing game when it came to those instances.  It would go back to simply being collaborative drama.  Role-playing – yes.  Roll-playing GAME – no.Certainly many people do play D&D in a manner that reduces or eliminates the mechanics for social interaction.  I am not saying that there is anything bad about that or that it is in any way inferior.  Whatever makes the game fun for the group is key.  But if you just act it out and the DM makes a call, then you are not truly playing a game at that point.  You are back to collaborative drama.  And I think most cases where people play this way, it is more a shade of gray.  A player makes his best dramatic pitch.  The DM is impressed but says “Nice, but your character only has a +6 diplomacy, so he just can’t convince the king.  The player replies, “No! You are thinking of my old character.  I have a +17 diplomacy.”  And the DM goes “Oh, well then you do convince him after all.”  There is a mechanical adjustment to account for the character, rather than a static assessment of the player’s personal effectiveness.  But it is still an arbitrary and subjective assessment of drama in place of a game mechanic of rolling a die.</blockquote>

Verification