D&D 5E Roleplaying in D&D 5E: It’s How You Play the Game

[Lanefan]

Yes, remove players agency and you cannot call it roleplay anymore, no matter how you twist it.

I disagree; in that a stage actor who is forced to follow a script and movement directions, etc. is still roleplaying, i.e. playing a role.

Being put on extremely hard rails by the DM doesn't stop or prevent roleplaying, it merely restricts where that roleplaying can go; in the same vein as the restrictions put on a stage actor who has to follow a script.

 

[iserith]

That's a shame. They cited text instructing players to invoke or enact rules.

Players can describe what they want to do and DMs can use those rules to determine the results. In practice, the player might even point out those rules to the DM, if it's helpful. But that's about it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Precisely!

That's the core mechanics in which Skill Challenges relied upon. The player choses a Skill to roll (among a selection of available skills in that particular Challenge) then, player and DM work together to create the fiction based on that roll's result.

Well... Is that the best way to look at it? I would say that an SC is just a 'valence establishing mechanism'. Either in or out of an SC the GM describes some fiction (the scene at this point) and then the player says something like "Well, I want to achieve X by doing Y." The GM then calls for a check of some sort (skill, attribute, I guess possibly he might rule that the player is using an item, a power, or even a ritual, though those kinds of things would PROBABLY be explicitly declared by the player). Once the check passes or fails the fiction evolves in such a way that either the character's intent is met, or not. In the case of an SC an overall success/failure end state of the encounter may also be achieved based on the current tally.

I think the above is a bit more explicit than your version and helps surface the major difference with 5e, which is that 5e has neither a rule that binds the GM to any particular result, nor a mechanical framework to establish valence. I mean, a childish example with 5e could be that the GM calls for a Charisma check to convince an NPC of something, and when the player succeeds, he could just call out "well, best 2 out of 3" and ask for another one! Obviously that's not cool, but it is exactly in keeping with the rules, and GMs are almost encouraged, certainly motivated, to carry out less explicit versions of basically that.

 

[Lanefan]

You are not role playing while your character is dead too.

You're not?

Hmmm...guess that means I was doing it wrong, then, the night my PC died and I wandered over to the couch for a nap, only to be awoken later by another player telling me my PC had been revived...

 

[Swarmkeeper]

You're not?

Hmmm...guess that means I was doing it wrong, then, the night my PC died and I wandered over to the couch for a nap, only to be awoken later by another player telling me my PC had been revived...

What did you see while you were asleep???

 

[Lanefan]

What did you see while you were asleep???

---shrug--- Hell if I remember now, this was decades ago!

 

[pemerton]

Great examples! How do you feel about this one?

I'm not sure about stat/skill checks in 5e. I think they are closer to being something like player-initiated suggestions that the GM might then have regard to when narrating consequences.

There's certainly a reason I didn't include them in my illustrative list!

EDIT: I think @AbdulAlhazred has been making similar points to what I've said in this post.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

---shrug--- Hell if I remember now, this was decades ago!

Dang - what a missed fully immersed roleplaying opportunity! Don't you keep a dream journal?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think if you can make an assertion that by playing tiddlywinks you are also playing D&D 5e, something has gone wrong somewhere in that chain of thinking.

In the chain of thinking, or in the theory which underlies the design of the game? lol.

 

[pemerton]

by the logic I keep hearing if I declair "I climb the tree to find the cow" there is no way to separate the climb that is uncertain from the find the cow that is certain (not up there) it is all or nothing

Why would a player declare that action unless something in the fiction (eg a strong wind?) made it conceivable that a cow was in the tree?