Is there a social obligation?

[Mr. Wilson]

People have a social obligation not to be a jerk at the table.

This.

Really? I've always seen the 'ideal' party as cleric, fighter, magic user, and thief. healer, Meat shield, blaster, and traps guy. And that's from way back in the day. Shows different levels of exposure to the game I guess.

And this.

4E has shifted primary focus to combat, however. Some people have issues with that (from personal experience, 2 of my good friends dislike the emphasis placed on cohesive parties).

As long as you're not a jerk, or screw with the other players fun to much by being obtuse, we'll let you slide. We've had PC's leave parties of their own volation and others get kicked. The player just rerolls to fit what the majority wants.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Really? I've always seen the 'ideal' party as cleric, fighter, magic user, and thief. healer, Meat shield, blaster, and traps guy. And that's from way back in the day. Shows different levels of exposure to the game I guess.

No, it's just that if one of those roles went unfilled in 1E/2E for whatever reason nobody had that much cause to complain. It was easy for one class to appropriate anothers schtick. So easy it could be problematic. No cleric? Use lots of potions. No fighter? The Cleric steps up. No thief? You just bash open locks or handle them the old-fashioned way by describing how they work and how they're going to be avoided or broken. Plus a higher PC mortality rate meant that such situations seldom stabilized that way for long.

 

[roguerouge]

It's very simple. To be effective, the PC has to bring something to the table. They can be good in combat. They can make others good in combat. They can be the party face and carry the RP burden for those who would rather not. They can be knowledge guy who figures stuff out, maps the dungeon, hits the in-game library for clues. They can generate plot, which is where characters like Elan shine. They can boost the PCs' or the players' morale, which is where your comic relief guys come in.

But if they don't contribute at all, they are not effective. I've been at two tables where there was a player who contributed nothing. It's eerie how quickly having someone watch you RP can squelch a game. That's what I mean by the deaf, dumb and blind kid: they don't do anything.

 

[Derren]

The last game of 4e I played was an RPGA event. I didn't enjoy the dirty looks & back handed comments I got because I apparently wasn't playing my pre-generated character to its maximum combat potential, but tried to roleplay out of tricky situations (like trying to talk to a Ogre guarding a sacred tree, to - "Oh, I'm just supposed to kill it.").

It has currently been my last game of 4e. Perhaps I just caught a bad game, or I just shouldn't attempt to play such.

I agree everyone should support each other in having fun. The important part is knowing what you all think you're signing up for, e.g. the interpersonal roleplay or the combat. As long as everyone does know what they've signed up for, it should all be good to go.

Thats pretty much the core of it. When you play D&D as a war game then your character should be able to participate in combat. If you play D&D as a role playing game, play an interesting character however you want.
And judging from the responses in here, most people do the former.

 

[Mort]

Thats pretty much the core of it. When you play D&D as a war game then your character should be able to participate in combat.

True as far as it goes. But the broader point is - play a character that can contribute to the game.

If you play D&D as a role playing game, play an interesting character however you want.

IMO that's what leads to the problem. D&D is a primarily a collaborative, interactive game - you should play your character in a way that contributes to the fun of everyone at the table. Playing the character "however you want" disregards the other people at the table.

And judging from the responses in here, most people do the former.

I don't get that at all - most of the responses boil down to "don't be a jerk to the others at the table."

 

[renau1g]

A bigger problem is if one player is intentially playing Joe the dumb wizard, 12 Int score, but 18 STR or something and then the other guy at the table is a fully twinked out elf bow ranger pumping out 200 DPR or something. Either the whole group suffers because the combat's over super quick if you have to balance it for the wizard, or the combat's insanely difficult because the DM had to balance it to counter the super effective ranger.

 

[Halivar]

I think that if there is a social contract concerning effectiveness, it should be between the characters, not the players. That is, if your character is not pulling his weight, the other characters may leave him in the middle of the night. In some of campaigns I've played, the other characters would kill him.

 

[outsider]

Thats pretty much the core of it. When you play D&D as a war game then your character should be able to participate in combat. If you play D&D as a role playing game, play an interesting character however you want.
And judging from the responses in here, most people do the former.

You are trying to create a false dichotomy there. Just because somebody embraces the mechanical aspects of the game doesn't mean they aren't also roleplaying.

I play D&D as a game where we pillage dungeons and fight dragons. This is the intended playstyle, I would imagine. Tell me how it makes RP sense for an incompetent character to partake in these activities. It doesn't, unless you come up with case by case justifications. Further, tell me how it makes RP sense for a group of competent characters to drag along an incompetent character through these activities. Again, it doesn't make RP sense unless you come up with case by case justifications.

Incompetent adventurers should be rare. Mostly because once they prove their incompetence, they should either be dead or the rest of the adventuring group should have the common sense to kick them out. Dragging around an incompetent character just because they are played by a real life friend is typically VERY poor RP. Sure, you can come up with an excuse to justify it, but frankly I don't think the rest of the group is obligated to do so if they don't want such a character in the group.

Contrary to what several people in the thread have said, I don't think this is something the DM should decide. It's something the players should decide, as they are the ones that are going to have to deal with the consequences and modify their character's RP to compensate.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Lets remember that D&D began as a game where the players generated the characters to be played and overall effectiveness of the character was largely a factor of the player during play rather than while prepping/ creating the character.

This whole notion of "building a character the right way" just shows how much playing skill has been removed from the action and put into the optimization minigame.

The social obligation is thus for optimization minigamers to play in campaigns with like minded other players.

And if the player generated a magic user with an Int of 9 back in the day? I find it odd that, oh, as early as Unearthed Arcana, there were ways to maximize characters starting with that chart to roll some odd 9 dice for primary attribute, continued in the pages of Dragon.

And I know I'm not real old school so suspect that well before Unearthed Arcana there were people min/maxing. To blame it on new editions as opposed to certain playstyles seems to be stating the min/maxing is the problem as opposed to a different playstyle and that no matter what character efficieny you build, as long as you 'bring it' to the table, your okay.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Contrary to what several people in the thread have said, I don't think this is something the DM should decide. It's something the players should decide, as they are the ones that are going to have to deal with the consequences and modify their character's RP to compensate.

Umm, the DM is a player, too. He's the one that has to deal with the in-game consequences to the campaign he's running, as well as (more importantly) any bad blood between the players at his table.

It is a group decision. A social contract, like any other, should be the result of compromise by everyone involved. In a group composed of friends who have been gaming together for years, this contract is implicit evolving naturally and unconsciously. However, among groups of people who aren't as familiar with each other, it's something that's best hashed out explicitly if not written down.

Because character limitations and expectations are often the biggest sources of dissatisfaction in a game (especially between gamers with differing play-styles, DM included), nothing is lost by simply clarifying it before the game starts, and revisiting it regularly over the course of the campaign.