Roll-playing, is it utterly condemnatory?

[Kormydigar]

I just recently got Goodman Games's new product Power Gamer's 3.5 Warrior Strategy Guide, and I am very much floored by how great of a product it is. The book basically introduces no new material at all (0 new spells, magic items, PrCs, base classes, races, monsters, skills, feats, etc), and instead uses math and number-crunching to analyze everything in the PHB to determine what ability scores, races, classes, skills, feats, equipment, and combat tactics are used to make the deadliest possible character (within certain archetypes, such as archer, heavy infantry, etc).

I seriously enjoyed the book, as it has quite a few new insights to the PHB material I've been looking at for a while now, not to mention some great tips on what to do to prepare for combat, and when in combat. That said, when I mentioned the book to a friend of mine, his reaction was visceral, calling it "everything he hated about D&D" when I explained what the book was to him...apparently he felt that making a character for anything less than story reasons un-made it as part of a game.

I know that it's vogue to bash "roll-playing", but honestly, isn't that going a bit too far? There's no reason that you can't both roll-play and role-play; I don't see why you can't be very much in-character during a game, and still want feats and skills that'll maximize combat potential when designing your character out of game. Likewise, people say you should tailor your levels, feats, etc to your character concept...but doesn't the reverse work just as easily? If I have a character who is mostly a distance fighter, and then I chose Power Attack, it doesn't seem that hard to come up with an in-game reason for it. Likewise, if what I want is a character that's extremely good at melee combat, does it necessarily detract from the game if I look at the various feats in terms of which will let me deal out the most damage?

I think there's nothing with looking at things from a numerical/mechanical perspective sometimes (particularly when you do that out-of-game), the same way there's nothing wrong with doing something in-character that doesn't make the most sense from the persepctive of what'll get the highest numbers. Does this make me a bad gamer or what?

The only problem I see with a product like this one is that it will lead to multiple campaigns of identical characters. I have no objection to my players reading a book like this but a player creating essentially the same character for several campaigns running will get a bit irritating and more than a little boring. I try to create social situations in my campaigns that usually must be dealt with through roleplaying, with a bit of help from the use of non-combat skills. After a couple of campaigns ending suddenly due to a TPK because the party tried to overcome a thinking obstacle with combat, my players have learned to appreciate the value of characters who are not optimized purely for combat. It is possible to create a very effective combat machine yet not be utterly helpless outside of a fight.

 

[Dark Jezter]

Henry's thoughts on this matter mirror my own, especially this statement:

It's a little pretentious IMHO to assume that someone whose goal is NOT immersion is inferior, playing it wrong, stupid, call it what you will. Instead, the goal should be how well you get along with these people, and how much fun you have with them. Until people start Roleplaying for money, the goal should be fun, and more power to people who don't game with friendly faces, though I'll never understand 'em.

 

[ph0rk]

Roll-play does occasionally get in the way of role-play, however. Number crunching at the table takes up time, and tends to make combat take longer, and renders combat more mathematical and less cinematic.

If you have to slow down to figure out your damage, you're doing it wrong.

The game has numbers, though, combat is going to be inherently mathmatic; unless you do away with all that.

 

[Patman21967]

my 2 cents worth

If you want to strictly ROLEPLAY, the IMO the best option are LARPs. I play in 1 LARP a year, have an awesome weekend with friends I sometime see only on that weekend. We take over a wing of a whole hotel here in Delaware, and mostly all get rooms, even though many of us live no more than a half hour away. We game all day, then some of us party late into the night..this year is an awesome Star Trek one.

But Sunday's are reserved for my DnD group. We have been gaming together for 16 years, and have a blast. I am a 7th level cleric/ 5th level warpriest. We don't numbers crunch, min/max etc..as much as we take stuff that maximizes our characters usefulness to the group within our characters concept. There are only 3 players and 1 GM at a time, so most tend to Multi-Class, so we are not caught with our pants down, lacking for a certain skill. For example, I begin my new game next week. The road they are taking is as follows.

Barbarian/Rogue
Fighter/Mage/Eldritch Knight
Cleric/ Fighter/ Hammer of Moradin

A nice group, but chosen with both roll-playing and Role-playing reasons.

So there is room for both, I say having fun with friends, time away from the stresses of work, spouses, girl/boy friends, kids....etc...to hang with a group of guys on a Sunday night, eat pizza, drink a few beers and talk about that weeks football games are really really nice....kinda takes the edge off...and get in some fun playing to boot...the heck with people who pontificate as to what's right/wrong...and especially to those who denegrate our choice of hobbies.

All my best,
Patrick

 

[FireLance]

I think there's nothing with looking at things from a numerical/mechanical perspective sometimes (particularly when you do that out-of-game), the same way there's nothing wrong with doing something in-character that doesn't make the most sense from the persepctive of what'll get the highest numbers. Does this make me a bad gamer or what?

Nah, I'd say you're not a bad gamer. Problem is, D&D is such a multifaceted game, and different aspects of it appeal (and do not appeal) to different people. The two extremes that tend to get bandied about most are the "actors" who want to spend all their role-playing time living their characters' lives, and the "engineers" who want to spend all their role-playing time improving their characters. And of course, both types deeply resent it when their precious role-playing time gets used for something as hateful and worthless as what the other type feels is important.

Remember, if you're having fun, you're probably doing it right, regardless of what anyone else tells you.

 

[rushlight]

This book also seems a bit suspect to me...

Perhaps it's because it doesn't really mesh with my idea of what my RPG (as the DM) should be. If I'm spending all of my free time trying to build a living, breathing world - with "real" people who aren't perfect versions of an ideal - then I would be bothered by a player who insisted on using the perfect fighter build, without reguard to what a real person would be like. If you remove the game rules, then realistically there isn't a single "perfect" person. But when you do a simulation, there might be a single best way to do something. That's just gaming the rules too much for my tastes - it's just less "real" to me. Which is the opposite of everything I've tried to achieve.

I feel that my NPCs should represent real people, flaws and all. I also feel that my player's characters should represent real people, flaws and all. There should not be (in my game) a single "perfect" character ideal to which a player turns every time.

Granted, that's just the way I feel - YMMV. There are many people who want to play a CRPG without the computer. That's not the game I'm running though.

 

[Patman21967]

I'm lucky, I have both LARPed and gamed with guys like Ken Rolston, John Mina, John Corradin and Lee McCormick from wilmark Dynasty and others. I personally like the mix of the 2. I find the LARP daunting sometimes, not in the roleplaying, but in the amount of it in a day. We do like 12 hours " in character " which sometimes can be too much for me. I have missed important things in the past because I was plain burnt out and went back to the room to watch some baseball and have a beer to clear my head...You can take a minor character, but then you are not as central in the storyline, especially with 50 or more people, then you get bored because you are not that important to the story...it's a fine line..

 

[MerricB]

The book is fine, Roll-playing and role-playing are fine.

What must be considered is when you have a clash of playing styles. If a player turns up to play in Psion's campaign with this book, then it's likely there's a clash of playing styles.

That is the problem, not Roll-Playing.

Cheers!

 

[takyris]

For the numbers, I'd say "Have your computer buddy do a spreadsheet so that he can do it fast." Because frankly, an experienced fighter will know about how much harder he should swing to get the best result -- If you bought him Power Attack, and he's got average intelligence, he should know about how much to use it. A good chart won't tell you everything -- most of the time, it's a guesstimating tool, and there's always a question of "Well, it's not important that I do a lot of damage, just that I hit once" and such. It'd take a pretty impressive program to figure out your best attack option (Expertise, Power Attack, etc), and when it does, then some of the joy will go out of the game -- but until then, at least having a chart for "Okay, if my guy has no emotional stake in it at all, what's the best damage output per round at +8/+3 with a longsword if I'm shooting for AC20?"

 

[Alzrius]

This book sounds like it would suck all the fun out of the game; making it somehow robotic.

To be fair, I can see how my description would make it sound that way - in fact, it's not that way at all (there were several points where I was snickering out loud at parts of it, drawing quizzical looks from my non-RPG-playing family).

The book does use quite a bit of math (which translates into some tables that can seem somewhat daunting), but the thing to understand is that most of the number-crunching has been done, and you're just looking at the results; these guys have done the hard part, and are just presenting the conclusions.

That said, the tone of the book itself is rather humorous, the authors let a bit of personal voice shine through, and it comes out sounding rather grizzled, but in a tongue-in-cheek manner, regarding combat ("The only people who should ever, ever use a crossbow are 95-pound weaklings with a Strength of 9 or less.").

To address another point, while this book does obviously emphasize (nonmagical melee/ranged) combat above all other aspects of the game (mostly because that's what this books theme is), it does so in, as stated above, a humorous manner - no one should think that this is seriously denigrating the role-players, spellcasters, etc. Likewise, the book doesn't try to fit all the combatants into a single mold - there's a sidebar right on page 4 that says that's impossible. Rather, it says to think about the kind of warrior you want (distance fighter, up close and avoiding being hit, etc), and tells you various class combos, feat trees, skill sets, etc. that you can use to get that character archetype. You will never have a "perfect" combatant, because there are different ways to engage in combat.

Finally, I honestly don't see how this book could possibly bog down a game. The seven chapters cover ability scores, race, class, skills, feats, equipment, and combat tactics. Virtually all but the last one are things you do between games anyway. I can't recall a game where one person ground a game to a halt in mid-session because he was allocating skill points still. Even the combat section just breaks down the pros and cons of the PHB special combat actions (overrun, trip, sunder, etc.), which (from what I've seen) tend to get ignored somewhat, so in that regard it makes that portion of the game more interesting because it reminds the reader why it's good to use special maneuvers instead of standing there and whacking the monsters over and over.

Seriously, this product was a joy to read, and I'm glad to have gotten it. I'd encourage everyone to at least read it before deciding if it's for you or not. It caters to a specific aspect of the game (that aspect being: how to kill things better), but it does so very well.