Role/Roll Playing

[Eldritch_Lord]

Would you play a 1st level Fighter with just 1 HP? If "yes", then you're a roleplayer. If "no", then you're a rollplayer.

It really is the test that separates the men from the boys.

That's an absolutely terrible test.

First of all, I'm the most rules-savvy person in my gaming groups (three of them), I optimize all of my characters and help all of the new players optimize as well, and all of our games tend to be higher-powered than the norm. By your standards, I'm sure I'd qualify as a "dirty rotten powergamer" or whatever other derogatory term you want to use (not munchkin, though, that's just a cheater). Yet I have played a 1st-level barbarian with 3 HP before; I've also played a frontliner ranger with 6 Con, a kobold beguiler with many terrible stats the lowest of which was a 4 Wis, and several other characters that would fall under the True Roleplayer^TM umbrella, because those were the concepts I wanted to optimize. Taking a bunch of bad rolls, building a character with them, and not rerolling doesn't make you a "real roleplayer," it just means that (A) you're a good enough player to keep that character alive and (B) you're not the type of person to whine to the DM that explicitly random character generation isn't "fair."

Optimizing is not a bad thing. Optimizers are not bad players. Optimizers are not prevented from being roleplayers, and in fact I've found that the people most invested in the game tend to be equally good at both optimizing and roleplaying while the casual gamers tend to be equally bad at both. Deliberately handicapping your character because you think it makes you a better roleplayer, or refusing to improve the character if given the option, doesn't mean your Super Special Snowflake character is any more fleshed-out and real, it just means that statistically speaking you'll be roleplaying them for a shorter time before they kick the bucket.

Roleplaying and optimization are not opposites, and anyone who pits them against each other is really missing the point. They're two entirely separate axes. You can have a player who places number-crunching above all others and makes 8-Cha 10,000-damage barbarians named Bob with no personality for every game because he wants to "win." You can have a player who comes up with five-page-long backstories for every character but whose characters die halfway through the first session of every game. You can have a player who comes up with multiple fully-fleshed out characters complete with backstories and builds just for fun. You can have a player who forgets his character's name and his character's attack bonus with equal frequency.

Just because you run into the Bob the Barbarian players more often than the generally competent players doesn't mean that all optimizers are like that. Heck, there's one guy in my group who comes up with lots of interesting concepts and roleplays them to the hilt, but has practically no tactical acumen or mathematical aptitude...but I don't go onto the forums and say something like "Can you explain why sword-and-board is generally worse than two-handed fighting? If 'yes', then you're a competent gamer. If 'no', then you're a drama queen. It really is the test that separates the men from the boys." That's just offensive and shortsighted; your gaming style isn't the One True Way any more than mine is.

 

[Water Bob]

That's an absolutely terrible test.

It's only opinion, and mine is that only a rollplayer would think that's a terrible test.

That's a test that is right on the money. A roleplayer takes what he gets, and then he does the best with what he has.

Optimizing is not a bad thing.

I never said it was. In fact, I'm all for optimizing.

Re-rolling your 1st level Fighter's HP because you only rolled a "1" on your hit die the first time out isn't optimizing. It's changing the rules until you find something acceptible to you.





OTOH, if you take your 1HP 1st level, 2E AD&D fighter and make the best of him within the rules (i.e. optimize him), then play the heck out of him, giving him a fantastic, memorable personality, you're a roleplayer.

If you gripe and demand that you can't have any fun with your 1 HP character, you're a rollplayer.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

That's a test that is right on the money. A roleplayer takes what he gets, and then he does the best with what he has.

What's your test for people who use point buy? Or is point buy another test that proves a rollplayer?

 

[Jimlock]

Forget the stats. Play a character.

the entire post is great...and it all goes down to the above.

I would XP, but i can't at the moment...

Could someone XP WB for me please? [MENTION=98256]kitcik[/MENTION]!! you owe me!!!

 

[Vespucci]

What's your test for people who use point buy? Or is point buy another test that proves a rollplayer?

People who tell the ref, "I'm not rolling stats, I don't want to have something horrible, let's just do a point buy" are taking a certain mentality toward the game.

 

[Water Bob]

What's your test for people who use point buy? Or is point buy another test that proves a rollplayer?

Yeah, if you point buy when you could random roll, then you've already failed the test.



I'm just kidding.

Naw, there's a place for point buy. People have different tastes, and some can't stand the idea that one player may get lucky and roll a monster of a stat-wise character while another player may be victim to bad rolls and be "dice dead".

Many people argue that point buy is more geared towards the roleplayer because the system allows the player to create the hero he has in his head.

I call fooey on this. I have yet to see a point-buy player set up his character so that he has such a handicap equivalent to the 1st level Fighter with 1 HP. It just won't happen.

And, the problem with point-buy is the same as the system's main strength--that it puts all characters on a level playing field. It allows everyone to have a hero.

In some circles this is a good thing. With some games, this is a good thing. If you're playing a Supers rpg, then point buy is definitely the way to go. The James Bond RPG is an excellent game, and the default point-buy character generation system fits that game well.

Personally, if I'm not playing in a game that demands point buy (like James Bond or Supers or some such), then I get bored with point buy. Every character is "bad-arse" in one respect or another. It's like a model's convention. There are no ugly women.

And, many times, ugly is a lot more interesting than "perfect".

Does that make sense to anybody?

 

[Umbran]

It's only opinion, and mine is that only a rollplayer would think that's a terrible test.

Or a moderator, who thinks that the choice of phrasing implies that one form of play is superior to another. Any test that says, "Your way is for boys, and this other is for men," is insulting. That is what makes it a bad test.

You are free to prefer one way over another. However, insulting folks who don't like your way is is fast way to get into trouble, so I suggest everyone avoid that in the future.

 

[Umbran]

This is a false, and frankly slightly insulting to some people, dichotomy.

It isn't entirely false, though.

For one thing, for many folks, roleplaying calls for immersion, and detailed rules-discussion tends to break immersion. So, to that extent that optimization tends to call for dealing with rules in great detail during play, it can get in the way of role-playing for some.

There's a wide swath of character concepts for which being mechanically kick-ass doesn't fit well - and for them, mechanical optimization does get in the way of role-playing the concept.

 

[RedTonic]

As a player, I have a pretty low-key ego.

I like to design a character around my initial concept as far as I can; that means I sometimes make suboptimal choices--deliberately. I am also comfortable playing a character who can't go toe-to-toe with the hydra mentioned previously--everyone has a role to play (heh), and sometimes my role isn't to level drain the BBEG into submission.

Sometimes, my role is to take care of other types of encounters, and to keep the coast clear for the muscle (or the spellpower, as it were) to take down the biggun. If that means my PC isn't the star of the scene, I'm not sad. I try to keep that from being the case throughout the adventure, because that means my PC is a drag on the team rather than a contributor--but I find that's rarely the case.

As a GM, I dislike munchkins. I don't think of them as optimizers. To me, munchkins are players who are out to pull one over on me by getting me to agree with a mechanical choice which later becomes untenably overpowered, and then cry when I want to negotiate an adjustment--after all, I consented to this feat/template/what-have-you, right? So it's not their fault they're trashing each encounter and the rest of the players have nothing to do... Right?

On the other side of the coin, I also don't like players who are in the game to hijack it by making deliberately poor builds disguised as roleplaying. Roleplay isn't undercutting your own party (especially in a 'heroic' campaign) to see how far you can push everyone else at the table before they snap at you (and you then attempt to guilt trip those who lost their cool, or go 'lol, u mad?').

I also feel the distinction between rollplay and roleplay to be a weak one.

 

[Water Bob]

Mod Edit:

Perhaps you have not reviewed the Rules of EN World recently. If you want to discuss moderation, take it to e-mail or PM. Please don't distract the thread with this. Thank you.

~Umbran