D&D 4E No Roleplaying XP in 4e

[BlindOgre]

Wait, wait, wait. Obscure? The rules encyclopedia is/was obscure?

"As opposed to AD&D?" Have you noticed AD&D has been off the market since around 1999? There is nothing about RC D&D that makes it less "D&D" than 1e or 2e AD&D.

I just had to pick this nit, sorry.

Well picked

 

[Campbell]

My main beef with role playing experience is that awarding it tends to subvert a player's agency over his or her character. As a DM I don't feel like it's within my purview to judge how a given character should be played unless the role playing becomes disruptive to the overall game. Personally, I think the best way to encourage role playing is to work with players and actively engage with the material they provide. One of the ways to engage players is to work with them to develop personal quests that enhance a game's ongoing narrative.

Also: What hong said.

 

[Tervin]

In a way I have always given out roleplaying XP, as I have always given the same XP to players that used non combat ways to get through a problem as those who fought their way through. Individual RP XP awards though, I stopped doing 20 years ago. Why?

Because everyone wanted to roleplay well anyway. And some people, lets face it, are generally better at it than others. And, when the better players get more XP than the others, it means that their characters get to be higher levels - which means that they dominate the party even more than they already did.

I don't give bonus XP to the group when they have played better as a group either, only when they have accomplished more. My view here is that XP is the tool I have to pace their growth through the campaign, so that they will be at the right power level at the right time.

 

[BlindOgre]

The reason I don't like it, is well... It doesn't make sense. Why does a character suddenly gain more XP because a player is a better RPer?

I prefer giving out extra XP at the end of a session for monumental tasks, or revelations the characters have had in-game. Thus showing them learning/growing. This while does have a RP-edge isn't entirely dependent on who can RP the best since what happens in-game and how it is described out is two different things.

Or have things which give in-game bonuses because a choose a player made, not how well it was RPed, ie: the Virtue/Vice system from WoD and its Willpower regeneration.

I don't think not having RPing XP makes the game any less of a Roleplaying game, since well. It just doesn't, if your a good roleplayer your a good roleplayer if your not your not. Why punish those who aren't?

This begs the question: What do we consider roleplaying? Bad accents? Archaic and/or grandiose language? Waving one's hands about to cast a spell and in turn knock over soda? Only speaking in-character so consistently that you forget yourself and accidentally call your wife a troll?

While thespianism can add flavor, to me the roleplaying is a matter of what is spoken and done in-character (no accent or flourishes required). In fact, getting too thespian can be very uncomfortable when a 40+yo male DM is playing a young female NPC and a similarly aged male player attempts to woo the young female NPC all too effectively.

How we define effective role-playing is largely a subjective matter (as noted frequently in various rules and guidelines) that becomes more refined with experience.

Having RP XP does not in itself make the game more of a roleplaying game... but it can encourage the players to engage the primary aspect that separates RPGs from other sorts of games.

 

[hong]

How we define effective role-playing is largely a subjective matter (as noted frequently in various rules and guidelines) that becomes more refined with experience.

Which is why rules for giving out XP for it are a bad idea.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

For me, while communicating your character thoughts/speech is good, and it is nice to have a person RP out say a diplomacy scene, it isn't required to RP.

RPing to me comes down to its core, of simply stating (or acting out) the actions that make sense for that character and progression of that character throughout the story. So it is still RPing if you simply declare "my character collapses at the site of his dead wife, and begins to moan and cry" with a response from another player being "I talk to him and try to get him to understand why she died".

The actual dialogue doesn't need to be acted out or said to get the characters intent across. Thus why more shy players can simply dictate a characters action but still be just a fine of a RPer.

So yeah for me it is less what the players do, more what the players decide the characters do/react.

 

[Minicol]

WotC posted an excerpt about quest XP... in the middle of it, there's this:

"The Roleplaying Reward



I've been using Roleplaying XP awards for over 20 years and it works very well on many levels.

I was holding out a faint glimmer of hope for 4e, but this just snuffed that out.

Thoughts?

I find giving xps for roleplaying actually much more interesting than giving xps for killing monsters. In fact, I believe there should be only story-driven xps for accopmlishing the goals of the mission, and roleplaying xps for contributing to the mood and general enjoyment of the table.

This comes probably from the fact that I have long grown out of the dungeon/monster/battlemap triad, and am more interested in the development and storyline of the game world than in pushing the minis on the board.

 

[FadedC]

Indeed, could it be that everyone (other than myself and the 2 you mentioned) missed the point of D&D being a roleplaying game to begin with?

Well I'm fairly sure the point of a roleplaying game is not to pass judgement on the method acting skills of your friends.

 

[FadedC]

Wait, wait, wait. Obscure? The rules encyclopedia is/was obscure?

"As opposed to AD&D?" Have you noticed AD&D has been off the market since around 1999? There is nothing about RC D&D that makes it less "D&D" than 1e or 2e AD&D.

I just had to pick this nit, sorry.

I guess everyone has their own defintion of obscure. Certainly I had never heard of it, and I started playing with the red boxed set. I might argue that any OD&D supplement produced after AD&D had already taken over the market is by it's nature somewhat obscure.

As for the D&D thing, the original challenge was to look for examples in 1e, 2e, 3e or 3.5. So your nit pickng missed the point. Consdier yourself nit picked back

 

[Dragonblade]

I am glad to not play in groups that award "roleplaying" XP at all. I consider games that have explicitely written how to award advancement points for "roleplaying" to be inferior and making the game experience poorer for everybody. That was so in The Dark Eye 3rd edition, and it's still so in Shadowrun. The players can roleplay and have fun as much as they want. Also, there is even less logical reasons why a character who acts like the player (the one guy or gal who created the character by the way, you know?) wanted anyway suddenly gets better when he gains a level-up, just for being himself.

The only way roleplaying XP-awards could be justified would be if the GM handed out prepared character-sheets with detailled behaviours of the character to the players, and the players have to act "correctly". Only then would judging "roleplay" performance make sense.

But such games I wouldn't even touch with a ten-foot pole. If one really wants to perform before an audience, learning to be a stage-actor or making a movie would be a far sensible choice.

I am glad to know that D&D 4th edition will not support the dumb idea of "roleplaying XP"-awards.

This. I'm also glad role-play awards are gone. Another bad idea better left on the trash heap of gaming history.