COMING SOON! -- Presents for Goblins: Festive Resources for 5E on Kickstarter! A festive softcover of holiday-themed D&D 5E resources, including the short adventure 'Presents for Goblins'.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7637407" data-attributes="member: 16814">I'm going with no.  Putting aside a theoretical possibility that you could, if everything was perfect, do so, I think that the incentives involved prevent any reasonable or even unreasonable assumption that this is possible.To explore this, look at how the Powered by the Apocalypse game Blades in the Dark does characters.  When you create a character in Blades, you have things you must have that are characterization related.  You must have a heritage and background.  These are similar to race and background in D&D.  You also have to pick a non-PC close friend and a non-PC rival, which don't have a close analog in D&D.  Also a vice, which could map to a flaw in 5e.  Finally, a Playbook and Crew, which are like a class and a class for the whole party.  Now, to go to the incentives, here's the only ways to earn XP in Blades:Here's how you earn XP in Blades:From this alone you can see how the things you make your character about are incentivized strongly to show up in play, especially if it causes problems for you and your crew.  I submit 5e lacks any of these things at all that are not GM rulings.  You traits, bonds, flaws don't matter to play unless your GM is offering XP awards for them or if they offer Inspiration, but that choice is the GM's, not the players'.  So, how well you roleplay your character is up to someone not you.  This is reversed in Blades.  Further, there's very little incentive in 5e to play up negative traits at all, as the rewards are usually paltry compared to the risks.  While, in Blades, doing so is strongly incentivized by the XP system.  Your choices of Score and the fallout are also very tightly integrated into the feedback mechanisms of Blades via the Faction Status and Crew Turf subsystems, so even there roleplay is tightly integrated into the system.  5e lacks any such incentivization outside of individual GM choices to judge you on your roleplay and offer rewards.This goes to your larger claim that systemization of roleplay elements causes a loss of roleplay.  This couldn't be further from the truth.  The Blades character is, by the system, very tightly woven into the fabric of both play and the setting by the player build choices and especially by the player roleplaying choices.  Including those choices that find things out about the character, like choosing to involve your close friend (who always has useful abilities) into a risky situation where the friend is at risk.  Are you the type of person that would risk/sacrifice your close friend for advantage?  If you succeed, then no, maybe you aren't, but if you fail and the friend pays the cost instead of you, then, well, you find out that your character is, indeed, that type of person.   This is fundamentally not something that exists in 5e -- this kind of opportunity to roleplay is not available in that system.Now, my best guess for your idiosyncratic definition of roleplay seems to include that it's only roleplay if the player chooses it -- nothing forced on the player is roleplaying, even if the force occurs after a failure on an action where the player explicitly risks an aspect of their character.  This is you defining the term as how you prefer things, and not what the term means.  This is adequately shown by your rather controversial claim that acting is not roleplaying.  You've lately been questioning how others can know if they aren't just projecting their preferences into reality.  I would say that defining terms so that what you do is included but widely accepted uses are not would be a strong indicator of your question being true.  I don't see [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] doing that, but I do see you doing it.  You should maybe drop the statements that appear to be more projection than argument.</blockquote>

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