Optimized and Non-Optimized in the same group.

[ForeverSlayer]

Then you're playing the game wrong.

Actually if I was playing the game wrong then they would eliminate about 95% of the material and just have about 10 builds in total because they are the most optimized in the whole game.

So what is 4th edition D&D? Is it a wargame or a role playing game? Apparently it can't be both in your opinion.

 

[Kzach]

So what is 4th edition D&D? Is it a wargame or a role playing game? Apparently it can't be both in your opinion.

As long as you accept that everything I say is right and true, we won't have an argument.

 

[CancR]

Dungeons and Dragons is a Role Playing Game first and foremost even though its roots and some aspects have War and Strategy games, I feel that the Role playing community as a whole lost sight of RPGS as a role playing game and view it with as much role playing as you get out of a video game. No, I'm not talking about Mechanics being like video games but the mind set of dms and players of only doing enough of the role playing to a) get another quest and B) get the supplies to go on the quest.

The romance of role playing I grew up that got me hooked seems to be gone. Interesting recurring npcs both good guys and bad guys, deep story driven character development have been missing from the Role playing aspect of the role play games.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Dungeons and Dragons is a Role Playing Game first and foremost even though its roots and some aspects have War and Strategy games, I feel that the Role playing community as a whole lost sight of RPGS as a role playing game and view it with as much role playing as you get out of a video game. No, I'm not talking about Mechanics being like video games but the mind set of dms and players of only doing enough of the role playing to a) get another quest and B) get the supplies to go on the quest.

The romance of role playing I grew up that got me hooked seems to be gone. Interesting recurring npcs both good guys and bad guys, deep story driven character development have been missing from the Role playing aspect of the role play games.

I think you're painting modern players with a very broad brush there!

I don't think younger people are any less taken with the romance of RPing than we were in the 1970's. They may be a bit less able to focus for 8 hours (some of them) but they SURE aren't all just hack-n-slashers.

 

[malraux]

Dungeons and Dragons is a Role Playing Game first and foremost even though its roots and some aspects have War and Strategy games, I feel that the Role playing community as a whole lost sight of RPGS as a role playing game and view it with as much role playing as you get out of a video game. No, I'm not talking about Mechanics being like video games but the mind set of dms and players of only doing enough of the role playing to a) get another quest and B) get the supplies to go on the quest.

The romance of role playing I grew up that got me hooked seems to be gone. Interesting recurring npcs both good guys and bad guys, deep story driven character development have been missing from the Role playing aspect of the role play games.

Nostalgia really was better in the olden days. I'm not saying that you're wrong, just that its really hard to compare feelings for the first time you experience something to having done it for decades.

 

[Kzach]

I think you're painting modern players with a very broad brush there!

I don't think younger people are any less taken with the romance of RPing than we were in the 1970's. They may be a bit less able to focus for 8 hours (some of them) but they SURE aren't all just hack-n-slashers.

ADHD isn't a recent development, it's simply recently 'discovered'. Even then, there were theories about it back in the 70's.

IME, people are what they're exposed to and choose to latch on to. I've had too many experiences where I've shown new (whether young or old) players roleplaying, as opposed to rollplaying, and they've CHOSEN to latch onto it. In almost all cases, these people didn't understand what roleplaying was until they were exposed to it. If I'd asked them before showing them what real roleplaying is like, if they were playing a roleplaying game (using D&D), then they would've answered yes, despite not really knowing what roleplaying was.

Yet I've also experienced the opposite, where new players (young or old), balk at roleplaying and for whatever reason (I suspect usually embarrassment or social stigma) ran away from it screaming (or it could've been running away screaming from ME, but for the sake of argument let's say that's not the case).

Point being is that I don't think it has anything to do with generational attitudes or capabilities, I think it's more about what people know and are exposed to and what social pressures there are on the particular individual. The fact is that it's simply more popular and far more widespread to be a number cruncher and optimiser than it is to roleplay.

There's also the factor that I think D&D is reaching a far wider audience than it ever has in the past. In the past the exposure of the game was limited to a specific sub-set of, mostly American, culture. Now it's exposed to multiple cultures that all share a common sub-culture: the internet. People are then influenced by this common element and not exposed to other elements of the game, such as roleplaying.

Ask anyone who started playing RPG's twenty-plus years ago what roleplaying is and I can almost guarantee the most common responses will be wholly different to what someone who just started playing RPG's five years ago answer.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

ADHD isn't a recent development, it's simply recently 'discovered'. Even then, there were theories about it back in the 70's.

IME, people are what they're exposed to and choose to latch on to. I've had too many experiences where I've shown new (whether young or old) players roleplaying, as opposed to rollplaying, and they've CHOSEN to latch onto it. In almost all cases, these people didn't understand what roleplaying was until they were exposed to it. If I'd asked them before showing them what real roleplaying is like, if they were playing a roleplaying game (using D&D), then they would've answered yes, despite not really knowing what roleplaying was.

Yet I've also experienced the opposite, where new players (young or old), balk at roleplaying and for whatever reason (I suspect usually embarrassment or social stigma) ran away from it screaming (or it could've been running away screaming from ME, but for the sake of argument let's say that's not the case).

Point being is that I don't think it has anything to do with generational attitudes or capabilities, I think it's more about what people know and are exposed to and what social pressures there are on the particular individual. The fact is that it's simply more popular and far more widespread to be a number cruncher and optimiser than it is to roleplay.

There's also the factor that I think D&D is reaching a far wider audience than it ever has in the past. In the past the exposure of the game was limited to a specific sub-set of, mostly American, culture. Now it's exposed to multiple cultures that all share a common sub-culture: the internet. People are then influenced by this common element and not exposed to other elements of the game, such as roleplaying.

Ask anyone who started playing RPG's twenty-plus years ago what roleplaying is and I can almost guarantee the most common responses will be wholly different to what someone who just started playing RPG's five years ago answer.

I'm just going to say that my experience is very different from yours.

I've found that there are certainly people who can/will play RPGs, and people who can't/won't and there are people who like them but lack the patience to play a lot. That may be a result of 'ADHD' or just lack of interest or short attention span or whatever.

I don't know if the demographic is much different now than it was 10, 20, or 30 years ago, but anecdotally I would note that gamers nowadays tend to be quite a bit older and often have played for a long time. OTOH there are plenty of young people playing too.

I find that people take up RPGs very easily and quickly and all types of people 'get it' as soon as they are introduced to the concept. Most children love it, just like we did at their ages. I'm not really sure what 'not really RPing' is either. Some people may not do what YOU think is correct RP, and they may play their characters more like game pieces than pretend human beings, but that is still a vast step up from checkers. In fact most people when they start playing or at some point in their evolution as players, if they last long enough, go through that kind of phase. There are also all different levels of engagement amongst all different players. I know people who NEVER EVER act 'in character', and yet are excellent role players, and others that act out 'in character' all the time and are lousey RPers (by my standards of RP, maybe not yours).

Basically generalizing about people that RP is generally futile.

 

[CancR]

I think you're painting modern players with a very broad brush there!

I don't think younger people are any less taken with the romance of RPing than we were in the 1970's. They may be a bit less able to focus for 8 hours (some of them) but they SURE aren't all just hack-n-slashers.

I don't know about role playing in the 70's or even in the 80's. I was just a kid when I started playing AD&D 1st ed in the mid 90's Even though second ed was out then We didn't really have any game stores so we played what we had, books handed down from the dm's dad.

The problem lies in what is considered role playing. More and more of my generation are just now coming to Table top role playing games, the same generation that has as much exposed to video game what I would call loosely RPG in genre come in thinking that D&D is going to be much like that. It isn't that what I described isn't role playing, just that there is allot less of it and it has left me disfranchised.

 

[CancR]

Nostalgia really was better in the olden days. I'm not saying that you're wrong, just that its really hard to compare feelings for the first time you experience something to having done it for decades.

R.I.P Nostolgic Roleplaying 1995-2010. Why, oh why did they have to all move away.

 

[Kzach]

I find that people take up RPGs very easily and quickly and all types of people 'get it' as soon as they are introduced to the concept.

I don't quite think you're getting what I'm trying to say.

Who is more likely to be exposed to the concept of an RPG? A fifteen year old or a thirty year old? When they are exposed to the concept, how does it occur? Is it more likely that they walk into a hobby gaming store, pick up a D&D book, and go, "Ooh, I like this, I'll go home and play this with my friends!" or is it more likely that a guild-member in WoW said, "You know, there's a game like this you can play around a table, wanna try it?"

The thirty year old is far less likely to be exposed to the concept of the RPG. They hang in different circles, they've already established their tastes and habits and leisuretime activities. And if they were exposed to the concept of the RPG, how would they most likely be exposed to it? Isn't it more likely that they'll pick it up through a new acquaintance introduced to them through their established social network than it is through a video game?

Now the teenager is going to pick up the books and approach it from the way he knows how, which is the min-maxing WoW DPS'er raid-monkey/PVP pwner. The thirty year old is going to approach it from what he is taught at the table by someone his own age and who was exposed to RPG's twenty years earlier.

They will both approach gaming at the table in two different ways, because they don't know any better. They will also both claim to be roleplaying, because they picked up a roleplaying game and they're playing it.

Now I'm not saying that all teenagers are like this or that all thirty-year olds are like this, I'm just trying to point out that we act on what we know, ie. what we're exposed to, we are influenced by. So it's not that a teenager has a shorter attention span, it's simply that they haven't been exposed to a style of play that requires more attention, and when exposed to such styles, there is an initial resistance because it goes against what they've established in their minds as being a roleplaying game.

Again, however, IME when I roleplay with a group of min-maxing teenagers, I invariably find that once over this initial resistance, they latch onto it because they realise how much fun it is. The opposite goes for 'true' roleplayers who I help min-max their characters and show them that hitting stuff is fun too.

Without this exposure, depending on how the player has been introduced to RPG's will determine how they view roleplaying and min-maxing. The two are not exclusive and can be melded quite happily and successfully, it's just a matter of exposing people to a different style of play.