Legends & Lore: Roleplaying in D&D Next

[JasonZZ]

The day D&D becomes FATE is the day D&D dies.

What, too much oregano for you?

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[GX.Sigma]

If your game doesn't need Inspiration because your players already create glorious flaws for your PCs that impact your game and how they react and relate to everybody else, creating wonderful conflict and intriguing storylines... consider yourself lucky.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that Inspiration doesn't encourage player characters to have flaws and relationships. None of Mearls's article said inspiration would be related to either of those things.

Fate System does encourage player characters to have flaws and relationships. If that's what we want, why not go the full monty and use Fate System mechanics? And if that's not what we want, why have any storygame mechanics in core at all?

In other words, I think this should be a bigger, optional, system. I don't see how compromising helps.

 

[Warbringer]

The day D&D becomes FATE is the day D&D dies.

Well, I guess by definition it would be called FATE, wouldn't it.

 

[Dausuul]

The article says this:

The key lies in describing your action in an interesting way, acting out your character's dialogue, or otherwise helping to bring the game to life

To me, that says "doing something you normally do, but with a lame accent." That doesn't sound like something worthy of a weird, socially tricky reward. I, as a DM, don't understand how I'm supposed to use this system. Why would I give players rewards for doing what they normally do?

That isn't necessarily what Mearls is talking about. I have often had players say things like "I'm making a Diplomacy check to convince the king to fund our expedition."

Naturally, this does not fly at my table. My response is always, "Okay. What are you saying?" After this happens a few times, the player gets the idea and starts acting out dialogue without being told. But I have seen other DMs allow players to simply roll Diplomacy and move on. It's not something you can take for granted.

(Indeed, there is a certain logic to just making the skill check. You don't have to explain how you're manipulating the lock mechanism when you roll Open Locks, and you don't have to explain the sequence of motions in a back flip when you roll Acrobatics. Why should you have to explain what you're saying when you roll Diplomacy? I view speaking in character as an essential part of roleplaying, but not everyone feels that way.)

 

[GX.Sigma]

That isn't necessarily what Mearls is talking about. I have often had players say things like "I'm making a Diplomacy check to convince the king to fund our expedition."

Naturally, this does not fly at my table. My response is always, "Okay. What are you saying?" After this happens a few times, the player gets the idea and starts acting out dialogue without being told. But I have seen other DMs allow players to simply roll Diplomacy and move on. It's not something you can take for granted.

(Indeed, there is a certain logic to just making the skill check. You don't have to explain how you're manipulating the lock mechanism when you roll Open Locks, and you don't have to explain the sequence of motions in a back flip when you roll Acrobatics. Why should you have to explain what you're saying when you roll Diplomacy? I view speaking in character as an essential part of roleplaying, but not everyone feels that way.)

I agree, and I mostly feel the same way, but DMs who feel the same way are already doing this. DM's who don't feel the same way won't want a core mechanic telling them they're doing it wrong.

 

[howandwhy99]

To me this is a poison pill. It could be ignored, but how long will the community of D&D players last until everyone finally relents to a "comes with free dessert" rule? If you are not into story mechanics, their inclusion in core comes off as manipulative and more play style advertising.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

I disagree with the article's first sentence. D&D was not a role playing game from the first. It was an adventure game, with roleplaying as an option. (Yeah, yeah, semantics and all that...)

 

[howandwhy99]

Here is the core conceit of D&D and what Next is getting wrong:
In D&D the role you play is your Class. You get XP for each of your Classes for performing Class-related actions. The more XP received, the better the class abilities become. Sure you can get other resources, but those aren't related to your role playing.
To be clear, fictional personality performance is not a required element of D&D. Neither is it explicitly role playing.

Of course people pretended a different personality at times, but it wasn't necessary. And it definitely wasn't an excuse for playing the game in a derogatory manner towards others. Theater acting isn't necessary in any game or sport, but you can do it in any of them. You can do so in D&D, but that is not why it is an RPG. D&D is about excelling at role performance, like a chess player or star athlete.

The idea of role playing may have changed for many, but no game is an RPG because of strung in rules to entice players to act out a fictional persona. We're dealing with two fundamentally different definitions of game play and frankly, baking in the current "storification of all things game" divorces D&D Next from the first 20 years of the hobby.

 

[GX.Sigma]

Here is the core conceit of D&D and what Next is getting wrong:
In D&D the role you play is your Class. You get XP for each of your Classes for performing Class-related actions.

When was that a rule in D&D? 1e contains this:

Gaining experience points through the acquisition of gold pieces and by slaying monsters might be questioned by some individuals as non- representative of how an actual character would become more able in his or her class...While praying and religious-oriented acts are more properly the activities for which a cleric would gain experience points, this is not the stuff of exciting swords & sorcery adventure...It is, therefore, discarded and subsumed as taking place on a character's "off hours".

There is also this passage, which you may be referring to:

Finally, clerics' major aims are to use their spell abilities to aid during any given encounter, fighters aim to engage in combat, magic-users aim to cast spells, thieves aim to make gain by stealth, and monks aim to usetheir unusual talents to come to successful ends. If characters gain treasure by pursuit of their major aims, then they are generally entitled to a full share of earned experience points awarded by the DM.

...which just amounts to "you only get XP if your character actually helped."

Do the original 3 booklets have more on this?

 

[howandwhy99]

Do the original 3 booklets have more on this?

If you have the AD&D manuals on hand to quote, I think you likely have 3lbbs too. The game awarded classes with different XP totals. Your elven PC could be a 3rd level fighting-man for one session or adventure and then switch to another multiclass he already declared. For instance, 1st level magic-user. XP rewards were talked about all over the place in many different publications. We saw rewards for: gaining gold, overcoming others in combat, and by the Eighties rewards for attendance and acting in character, but not much else. These are suggestions for what XP is rewarded for, but always different classes required different amounts of XP to advance a class level. Each also excelled in very different means of engaging with the world at large. Balancing those challenges in the world to class level meant classes were expected to improve only after players demonstrated proficiency in them. You could take on challenges for other classes, but gaining XP for any and every class (like some later 80s games did) contradicted D&D's focus on role playing. As there already is a good deal of built in overlap for the classes such would confuse what XP was for after a complex event. So, one obvious interpretation of the XP charts was that they are based on the built in class challenges for each class. What each of those specifically were depended upon the design the DM used.

I'll grant you there are many interpretations of why OD&D and AD&D were designed the way they were, but Gygax was a much better game designer than he was a layout specialist. Regardless, I strongly suggest no one confused their designs with narrative resolution games.