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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Adso" data-source="post: 5298226" data-attributes="member: 6706">You know, I would love to do focus groups. Seems no one ever wants to float the bill for that. If you watch kids, you notice they will roleplay even with the most abstract pieces until some adult tells them to cut it out. Yesterday I played a game of <a href="http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/65244/forbidden-island" target="_blank">Forbidden Island</a> (a fun and faster paced version of Pandemic, BTW) with a group of students from my Game Theory and Mechanics class. They totally roleplayed during the game. One student, Ari even provided dramatic music from his phone each time we found a treasure, and is working on a story based on our success getting off the island. Nerd!<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />People roleplay naturally as longs as they are comfortable with their group. All mechanics in roleplaying games can potentially provide material for roleplaying. I lose hit points; there is a chance to roleplay. I miss with a spell; there is a chance for roleplaying. I lose sanity; I have a chance for roleplaying. Conversely, each one of these is also mechanical in nature and can be dealt with entirely on that level as well. You lose 40 hit points; I rolled a 1; how much sanity do I lose again? I’ve seen people play Vampire without a lick of roleplaying, and I’ve seen many roleplay heavy D&D games (including 4e). I'm sure there are heavily immersive roleplayers who play Rolemaster. Like any sort of entertainment genre, each audience (and by audience in an RPG I mean your current group) is going to gravitate toward there likes and dislikes. While I find that groups that focus on roleplaying over mechanics tend to gravitate to more rules lite systems, that's usually because they don’t want to spend their brain power on optimization and calculation. Even with a mechanical heavy system, as a group becomes more accustomed to its ebb and flow (or its math), they will roleplay more.If you are a roleplayer amongst a group of mechanic monkeys, you will have less opportunity to roleplay no matter what system you play. And when you do, you feel uncomfortable, because everyone looks at you like you’re crazy. I actually had this experience when, while playing the final of the D&D Championship, my warforged runepriest called Orcus a coward for hiding behind his lackeys and demanded that he face the judgment of Moradin. My teammates looked at me like I was crazy; there was a championship to win—no time for roleplaying. They were probably right, but it was fun to talk smack to the Prince of Undeath. If you like to roleplay, and you have people to roleplay with, you will do it no matter what system you use. Even Monopoly. I think that’s the thrust of my argument. My evidence? Nothing quantitative, just lots of observations, games played, and talks with all sorts of gamers. I think they call that qualitative research.</blockquote>

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