Legends & Lore: Roleplaying in D&D Next

[sheadunne]

The issue with the proposed system is that it's an arbitrary reward system, unlike most of the other systems. Other systems use a player initiated system. The player chooses to get the reward in exchange for something concrete, like taking a negative or a flaw. In this system, the player can play his role all he likes, it's entirely up to the DM if he gets his golden nugget. I don't really find anything similar between say Fate and the D&D Best Lead Actor in a Mini-Series Award.

If the mechanic is built into the system and becomes part of class abilities, feats, skills, spells, etc, it becomes a much more difficult mechanic to remove from the game if it doesn't interest you. If a character class needs the mechanic to use their abilities and the DM refuses to use it in the game, he may have unintentionally removed a class option from the game. I think that's a valid concern with any core mechanic.

I really enjoy well thought out RP mechanics in games that function to provide complications and interesting story possibilities. This isn't one of them (at least not in its current form of "dance for me puppet and gain a carrot").

I hope they spend some time rethinking the mechanic. There are lots of inspirational mechanic floating around in other games that can provide a better framework for RP support.

Keep working on it Mike.

 

[Derren]

I fail to see where giving Advantage on a (ability) check falls under the category of "combat".

Can you use it for saves and attacks too? Yes. But inspiration can affect ALL aspects of the game as per the choice of the players.

It can affect all aspects of the game which is covered by the game mechanic and requires rolls.
That this is discussed tells me that WotC themselves don't think that the majority of their customers are role players, because they do not benefit from this at all. What they need is a more open system to let them role play even outside the narrow definition of "adventurer going dungeon crawling". Instead they get a system which makes them better at dungeon crawling through role playing.

What this mechanic does is to get people who do not do/want to role play to pretend that they do to get mechanical bonuses. Thats all.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It's all very vague and nebulous -- it's hard to tell what this actually looks like aside from the DM saying "get Advantage on this roll because this guy is the guy who killed your mom" or whatever. Which, yeah, that's a codified thing that DMs all over the world are going to do, so good.

Banking it and passing it along both seem painfully metagame, but Mearls also used the word "scene" a few times, so clearly Mearls is clearly quite comfortable with playing the metagame. Which is odd in the context of talking about roleplaying, because roleplaying and metagame are kind of at different ends of an axis, and are potentially mutually exclusive (as [MENTION=4892]Vyvyan Basterd[/MENTION] 's anecdote seems to support). Which means that the more tactical and high-level the mechanic gets, the less effective it is at encouraging people to act as their characters (I suppose unless your character is into neuro-linguistic programming, or has Asperger's or something).

I'm fond of how scalable this seems to be: you never have to hand out advantage on a check, but maybe you hand it out ALL THE TIMES.

I do think linking it (or something like it) to a reward for doing something self-destructive or problematic for the adventure makes a lot of sense. That way, you're not getting rewarded for doing what you'd do anyway, you're getting incentivized to do something you know is a bad idea, but you're rewarded because it's going to make the game more fun, and it's going to encourage you to remain in character. Perhaps the "flaws" Mearls mentioned play into this.

It's an OK start, they just need to make sure that they remember that, as much as they all love the metagame, the best RP usually comes at the cost of losing the metagame context. And that if these things aren't explicitly rules you can use or not, folks with an intense hatred of RP-incentive rules will probably not be happy.

 

[Stalker0]

There was a tiny little book in 3e called the Stronghold Builder's guidebook. for the most part i found it a pretty useless book, with one amazing exception. There was a background generator at the back of the book, where you would roll on a charts to learn little aspects of your background.

I can't tell you how many amazing backgrounds came out of that book. What made it so much fun was rolling a background aspect one at a time, and then having to fill in the details to make the various points. One minute you are rolling something that seems so inline with your character its scary, and then another you roll up something so jarring that you must decision on key points in your past to explain them.

Put one of those in the core book. I don't need fancy mechanics, give me characters with a good background and roleplaying will come.

 

[GX.Sigma]

Based on a twiter conversation I had with Mike Mearls yesterday, apparently the point of the mechanic is that DMs can use it however they want to enforce their own playstyle. I said my playstyle would be to not use it at all, and he said "there you go."

So I guess the rule is now "give advantage to players' rolls whenever you feel like it, or don't." I wonder how long it'll last (hopefully not long).

 

[Kinak]

So I guess the rule is now "give advantage to players' rolls whenever you feel like it, or don't."

Which is kind of funny, because I'm pretty sure that was the rule before the article too.

Which I don't mean as a knock against the system. I like that it provides a large reward for me to arbitrarily hand out to my players when they do cool stuff.

But, aside from tokenizing the bonus for use later, I don't see how this is different from when advantage was first introduced.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[ShadowDenizen]

Based on a twiter conversation I had with Mike Mearls yesterday, apparently the point of the mechanic is that DMs can use it however they want to enforce their own playstyle. I said my playstyle would be to not use it at all, and he said "there you go."

Then I'm not quite sure why this is a mechanic that would be in the CORE rulebook? that above statement fairly screams "Modular Add-On for later."

A Core Rulebook should be something that should be universally applicable to all players/DM's, or at least as close to it as possible. (Not everyone will use everything from a book, that's a given.)

 

[GX.Sigma]

Then I'm not quite sure why this is a mechanic that would be in the CORE rulebook? that above statement fairly screams "Modular Add-On for later."

A Core Rulebook should be something that should be universally applicable to all players/DM's, or at least as close to it as possible. (Not everyone will use everything from a book, that's a given.)

This was basically my argument.

gx: Inspiration is a new subsystem that sits on top of the basic rules and supports a specific playstyle. Why should that be core?
Mearls: I'm confused - it supports the DM's or group's play style. I'm not sure how that's specific.
gx: example: my playstyle would be to not use them at all, since metagame choices work against an actor-stance adventure game.
Mearls: so there you go - that's how you (don't, in this case) use them.
gx: To what extent is it "baked in," though? And if it's not, then why call it a core mechanic, rather than a modular option?
Mearls: it's baked in in that we'd present it to a new DM, use it as a foundation for narrative options

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I still don't like it. It seems like too little effort with a side dish of player entitlement. Even if zero inspiration is "valid", those players not receiving it may feel cheated.

If they are going to codify roleplaying rules, I'd like to see something more akin to Marvel Heroic Roleplaying's Experience Charts*. Replace experience point award with something else (or keep XP if desired) fitting. And give guidelines on how to build charts that the player and DM work out ahead of time based on the character's background, goals, and flaws.

Using Mearls example:

For instance, in my current campaign, the rogue is a former member of the duke's secret police. He turned in evidence of a plot that resulted in the execution of his former comrades for treason. One member of the secret police escaped arrest and has sworn to kill the rogue. That gives me a ready-made villain to throw into my campaign. It also means that when the player characters visit towns or villages where the secret police installed a reign of terror, he had best watch his back.

INSPIRATION CHART**
[minor] - Each scene/encounter when the character interrogates an NPC/monster/fellow party member.
[large] - When the party meets major resistance from the secret police because of their association with the rogue.
[major] - When the rogue splits from the party to pursue evidence of his former secret police comrade.

Disclaimer: I didn't put much thought into this as the example was a bit limited. Would have personally made alot of what happened in the background be in-game material. Then I would have made the major inspiration be turning in his evidence against his fellow secret police.



*[For those unfamiliar, in MHRP the player chooses two XP charts for his character. A minor bonus is gained for playing to character once per scene/encounter. A larger bonus for doing something the player may not wish to do once per act/adventure. And a major bonus for a large sacrifice once.]

**For lack of a better name.

 

[ShadowDenizen]

Actually, having just played Marvel, I'd be OK with that in addition to "standard XP". It would give each player individual goals to work towards, and would ideally reward all the players equally and give the DM some guidance on what the players would like to see in the campaign, without overpowering the DM's authority.

And it seems much more "Baked-in" (to use Mearls' phrasing) than the seemingly arbitrary "Inspiration" idea that offers uneven rewards.