D&D General Playstyle vs Mechanics

[Oofta]

So when you say rules, you mean metacurrency? In what way is that the end all and be all of non-combat mechanics?

Some kind of metacurrency or knowing that like with skill challenges you have to have X successes before Y failures. Perhaps some sort of influence or disregard points where you know what those points are like with many video games. Perhaps throw in knowing how many points you need for success or failure.

What kind of rules do you want?

 

[Oofta]

...

And of course, with a production like Critical Role, the performance element is paramount. They’re entertaining folks other than themselves and making money doing so.

According to them they're playing the game much like what they played before they ever started streaming. I don't see much difference between their earliest episodes when it was all just an experiment and later games. At least not outside of con event where they have an audience which would mess with anyone.

 

[hawkeyefan]

If it's gamified then I'm thinking of the metagame not how my character would handle the situation. I go into boardgame logic mode instead of RP mode. If I earn tokens or influence points for scoring certain political wins, if I know what my political standing is with every group because there's the equivalent of a scoreboard it's not nearly as engaging. It's the issue I had with some DMs that overused (and were not flexible with) skill challenges in 4E. Too many times it felt like there was no need for me to interact with the campaign world, I would just figure out what choice made the most sense mathematically.

I suppose I don’t look at the game elements as being meta. They’re the game. I think you’re talking about things that are not connected to the fiction or not representative of things in the fiction in some way… but I don’t know why you’d assume that.

If you don't get that I don't know how else to explain it.

I don’t know if you meant this to sound hostile or not, but it kind of seems that way to me… I don’t think there’s any need for that. I mean, I’m asking questions to try and understand.

If I’ve misread that, my apologies.

I know how people interact. I can model political intrigue and mysteries based on books I've read, movies or TV series I've enjoyed, not to mention real life politics. I would have no way of knowing how to resolve combat without rules.

Yeah but you’ve also seen plenty of action scenes. You know how those work just as much as you do scenes of high stakes diplomacy.

So to run with the idea of intrigue and diplomacy as being central to play… let’s imagine a game where that’s the focus, and there’s not any combat. If you’ve seen or are familiar with the Netflix show “The Diplomat”, I’m thinking of that.

There’s no reason that a game meant to deliver that kind of experience, to have that kind of fiction emerge, would be better served by the 5e rules set. If you wanted a game like that, you’d likely have to reconfigure the whole game… new classes with different roles and abilities, new processes for adjudicating social interactions, new statistics to represent relevant character traits (who cares about AC in such a game?), and so on.

 

[Oofta]

Yes, exactly.

However, while just about all DMs (IME) have no problem separating the physical attributes of the player from those of their character, way too many can't seem to separate the mental attributes (INT, WIS, CHA) and expect the player to be charming, intelligent, etc. as opposed to treating what they say/do through the Lense of the character's stats.

One of the things that is difficult to balance as a DM is an average intelligence (or even above average) player that is playing a genius. Occasionally I'll throw in intelligence checks or simply tell the player what I think the character should have figured out. On the flip side, if I'm playing a dumb character, it can be hard to actually do that when there's something at stake other than just RP.

 

[prabe]

I suppose I don’t look at the game elements as being meta. They’re the game. I think you’re talking about things that are not connected to the fiction or not representative of things in the fiction in some way… but I don’t know why you’d assume that.

Why would the rules of the game be metagame? This is a usage that I persistently fail to understand. The rules of the game seem pretty definitively to be game.

 

[Oofta]

I suppose I don’t look at the game elements as being meta. They’re the game. I think you’re talking about things that are not connected to the fiction or not representative of things in the fiction in some way… but I don’t know why you’d assume that.

Anything that the player does that is not done through the words and deeds of the character is to me metacurrency.

I don’t know if you meant this to sound hostile or not, but it kind of seems that way to me… I don’t think there’s any need for that. I mean, I’m asking questions to try and understand.

If I’ve misread that, my apologies.

Sorry if it came off wrong, there's no right way and even if we have completely different approaches that's perfectly okay. One of the strengths of D&D is that we can have significantly different playstyles. There are other games that take completely different approaches as well of course.

Yeah but you’ve also seen plenty of action scenes. You know how those work just as much as you do scenes of high stakes diplomacy.

So to run with the idea of intrigue and diplomacy as being central to play… let’s imagine a game where that’s the focus, and there’s not any combat. If you’ve seen or are familiar with the Netflix show “The Diplomat”, I’m thinking of that.

There’s no reason that a game meant to deliver that kind of experience, to have that kind of fiction emerge, would be better served by the 5e rules set. If you wanted a game like that, you’d likely have to reconfigure the whole game… new classes with different roles and abilities, new processes for adjudicating social interactions, new statistics to represent relevant character traits (who cares about AC in such a game?), and so on.

It's a preference. Part of the reason a show like The Diplomat (good show by the way) is so fun is because we never know who we can really trust, who has ulterior motives. If the ruleset is too transparent we lose some of that. I also don't see a need to have rules beyond the tools we have to recreate that type of feeling. Half the fun is being the protagonist of a story and not knowing what the heck is going on.

But I'll ask the same question I just posed to @Micah Sweet, can you give examples of what kind of rules you want?

 

[bloodtide]

I think the Big Point is Role Playing vs Rules.

A lot of Gamers play a RPG just like any other game and use the mechanical rules. If you want to do any action in the game, you must have mechanical rules to do so.

Then there are the Other Gamers, the ones that put the Role, in Role Playing. The ones that leave the rule mechanics on the page, close the book, and role play. And you can Role Play anything.

A easy way to tell the two apart is any action that happens in the game play that has no mechanical rules attached to it. An NPC does a trick to deceive the PC, but with no rule mechanical effect the player will just sit there and say "whatever, um, guess my character is upset?" The same is for most lite effects. The orcs surprise the PCs, so the characters get a -1 on rolls just like page 11 says and the player just plays the game like they would with no "surprise".

Then you have the Role Players. When a NPC tricks and deceives the character, the player will role play their characters response to that. So the upset character might rush right into an obvious trap, that the player role players the character missing in the characters blind rage. Or a surprised character might drop their weapon and disarm themselves.

In a good game this is 50/50 between the DM and players. So players will take role playing actions and live with the effects willing, but also be subject to actions the DM does to the characters.

 

[pemerton]

As for the OP... I'm not sure if there's as strong a distinction between "playstyle" and what the mechanics produce. I would think that for the most part, the mechanics of a game are going to produce a playstyle. If they allow for multiple playstyles, it sounds like the mechanics are very loose.

But I suppose it depends on what we mean when we say "playstyle". I mean, it's a word I've used, but I don't know if I would divorce it from mechanics like this.

"Mechanics" is also a capacious phrase.

Changing from d100 to d20 is a change in mechanics. Changing from rolling under a stat, to rolling, adding a stat bonus and trying to beat a fixed number, likewise. Rolling d20 to hit and checking a look-up table is a different mechanic from (say) rolling d20, adding a to-hit bonus, adding the target's AC, and trying to beat 20. None of these, though, seems likely to affect playstyle much.

Procedures of play, goals and expectations of play, and similar non-mechanical aspects of a RPG seem just as important as mechanics - maybe more important. This is why there could be discussions about playstyle back in a time when there were far fewer RPGs designed and published.

Just as one example: in a D&D(esque) game where some characters need spellbooks to power up from time-to-time, is the GM at liberty to simply tell a player "When you wake up, you find your spellbook has been <stolen, burned, eaten by bookworms, etc>?" This is not in itself a question of mechanics - but the answer to it tells me a lot about the "playstyle" at a particular table!

 

[prabe]

I think the Big Point is Role Playing vs Rules.

A lot of Gamers play a RPG just like any other game and use the mechanical rules. If you want to do any action in the game, you must have mechanical rules to do so.

Then there are the Other Gamers, the ones that put the Role, in Role Playing. The ones that leave the rule mechanics on the page, close the book, and role play. And you can Role Play anything.

A easy way to tell the two apart is any action that happens in the game play that has no mechanical rules attached to it. An NPC does a trick to deceive the PC, but with no rule mechanical effect the player will just sit there and say "whatever, um, guess my character is upset?" The same is for most lite effects. The orcs surprise the PCs, so the characters get a -1 on rolls just like page 11 says and the player just plays the game like they would with no "surprise".

Then you have the Role Players. When a NPC tricks and deceives the character, the player will role play their characters response to that. So the upset character might rush right into an obvious trap, that the player role players the character missing in the characters blind rage. Or a surprised character might drop their weapon and disarm themselves.

In a good game this is 50/50 between the DM and players. So players will take role playing actions and live with the effects willing, but also be subject to actions the DM does to the characters.

Everyone, welcome False Dichotomy to the thread!

Welcome, False Dichotomy!

 

[bloodtide]

Everyone, welcome False Dichotomy to the thread!

Welcome, False Dichotomy!

I'm not sure if this is a personal insult or not? Could you explain what you disagree with about my post?