Mercurius
Legend
(First a pre-emptive apology: Pardon my lack of 4E rules knowledge...if I don't use the appropriate terminology, it is because I just haven't read the rules extensively enough...I'm talking in terms of generalities, not specifics.)
One of the common complaints I've noticed about 4E is the lack of non-combat rules and "role" (as opposed to "roll") playing focus. Yet I want to turn this around a bit by asking a question: By not having extensive rules and skill lists for every possible non-combat situation, isn't role-playing in a sense opened up by not being dictated rules and thus by excessive house-keeping? If, for example, a player doesn't define their background through various skills (carpenter, lute-player, etc), but instead through description ("My father was a carpenter, my mother a lute-player"), doesn't this offer a greater degree of not only freedom in character creation, but a more open-ended approach to non-combat situations?
(Now certainly some players might take advantage of this sort of open-endedness by Buckaroo Banzaing their character. But this is where good DMing and good (player) role-playing comes in. If role-playing is at all important to a player, they probably won't want a Buckaroo Banzai--they'll want to create a nuanced persona that is interesting to play, not because of how Uber Kewl they are, but because of their combination of aptitutes and limitations.)
So one point is that skills can be at least somewhat replaced by description (which is itself more of a role approach than a roll approach). The other point I want to bring up is that by not requiring appropriate skill checks for every possible situation the onus is back on the player to not only play the character they created, but to figure things out, to come up with appropriate solutions, and thus to actually ROLE-play their character as described, rather than merely saying "Do I know anything about carpentry? Let's see...here is my skill list, yep, I've got a 2 in carpentry."
Now certainly there are times when you need to make a roll; you need some sense of how good a carpenter the character is. But even then, couldn't the DM ask the player to make an ability check against a difficulty level? And thus my question: Does 4E really lose anything in terms of non-combat role-playing because of the rules emphasis on combat? It seems, in a sense, simply a proper differentiation: Keep the rules and rolling focused on combat and tactics, and keep everything else to role-playing. Or to put it another way, crunch and fluff.
I see nothing wrong with that.
One of the common complaints I've noticed about 4E is the lack of non-combat rules and "role" (as opposed to "roll") playing focus. Yet I want to turn this around a bit by asking a question: By not having extensive rules and skill lists for every possible non-combat situation, isn't role-playing in a sense opened up by not being dictated rules and thus by excessive house-keeping? If, for example, a player doesn't define their background through various skills (carpenter, lute-player, etc), but instead through description ("My father was a carpenter, my mother a lute-player"), doesn't this offer a greater degree of not only freedom in character creation, but a more open-ended approach to non-combat situations?
(Now certainly some players might take advantage of this sort of open-endedness by Buckaroo Banzaing their character. But this is where good DMing and good (player) role-playing comes in. If role-playing is at all important to a player, they probably won't want a Buckaroo Banzai--they'll want to create a nuanced persona that is interesting to play, not because of how Uber Kewl they are, but because of their combination of aptitutes and limitations.)
So one point is that skills can be at least somewhat replaced by description (which is itself more of a role approach than a roll approach). The other point I want to bring up is that by not requiring appropriate skill checks for every possible situation the onus is back on the player to not only play the character they created, but to figure things out, to come up with appropriate solutions, and thus to actually ROLE-play their character as described, rather than merely saying "Do I know anything about carpentry? Let's see...here is my skill list, yep, I've got a 2 in carpentry."
Now certainly there are times when you need to make a roll; you need some sense of how good a carpenter the character is. But even then, couldn't the DM ask the player to make an ability check against a difficulty level? And thus my question: Does 4E really lose anything in terms of non-combat role-playing because of the rules emphasis on combat? It seems, in a sense, simply a proper differentiation: Keep the rules and rolling focused on combat and tactics, and keep everything else to role-playing. Or to put it another way, crunch and fluff.
I see nothing wrong with that.
