Roll-playing, is it utterly condemnatory?

[Galethorn]

I have to disagree, and I see the example as a bit skewed...(etc)QUOTE]

I see what you mean, but that seems more like DM favoritism than anything.

(boy, people sure can post a lot in such a short time)

 

[Henry]

See...I have Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance and other such video games for this reason alone.

And if your weekend is the only free time you have, and you really want to play an RPG? In general, we try and I think succeed in meeting the middle ground when it comes to satisfying both the roleplayers in the group as well as the weekend warriors.

 

[Belen]

And if your weekend is the only free time you have, and you really want to play an RPG? In general, we try and I think succeed in meeting the middle ground when it comes to satisfying both the roleplayers in the group as well as the weekend warriors.

That's the rub. You have to find the right balance that will make the group happy, although sometimes that just may not be possible. I have nothing against weekend warriors and I find combat fun as well.

Personally, I have been blocked where it comes to gaming recently. Not that I am not enjoying it, but something..... probably makes no sense...

 

[Patman21967]

1 cool thing

We have always done Prestige classes and class mixing for campaign purposes, not to take the best abilities from those classes and skip through...eg...an Asimar Paladin taking 2 levels in Rogue just to get Evasion,,,just doesn't make sense, unless somewhere in the campaign, said character became a Rogue....Not picking on anyone, but what in the Blue Hell is this...

To top it off, Im a freaking evil Ferret Hengeyoki Iajitsu Master Swashbuckler Blackguard Dervish WarShaper WeaponMaster.

And how could you possibly justify going through that many changes....How old is this character? Not the player, but the character....like I said, I'm not one of those high horse guys, but why would a Swashbuckler ever go to Blackgaurd, then to Dervish, along with Eastern Classes, High Seas, Desert, and Leader of Armies type...They would have to be Evil armies, or Armies of Darkness....this is my boomstick, you primitive screw-heads....I said the words...sort of...hahahaha

I just like character progression to make sense in the context of the campaign, in light of that, I make my players ask me before choosing a PrC, and if it fits...sure, but if they are battling Giants and one wants to be a DragonSlayer.....welll....why...I'll tell you, to get the cool special abilities....jeez...I feel like Lewis Balck on a rant...sorry guys....

 

[Patman21967]

1 cool thing

We have always done Prestige classes and class mixing for campaign purposes, not to take the best abilities from those classes and skip through...eg...an Asimar Paladin taking 2 levels in Rogue just to get Evasion,,,just doesn't make sense, unless somewhere in the campaign, said character became a Rogue....Not picking on anyone, but what in the Blue Hell is this...

To top it off, Im a freaking evil Ferret Hengeyoki Iajitsu Master Swashbuckler Blackguard Dervish WarShaper WeaponMaster.

And how could you possibly justify going through that many changes....How old is this character? Not the player, but the character....like I said, I'm not one of those high horse guys, but why would a Swashbuckler ever go to Blackgaurd, then to Dervish, along with Eastern Classes, High Seas, Desert, and Leader of Armies type...They would have to be Evil armies, or Armies of Darkness....this is my boomstick, you primitive screw-heads....I said the words...sort of...hahahaha

I just like character progression to make sense in the context of the campaign, in light of that, I make my players ask me before choosing a PrC, and if it fits...sure, but if they are battling Giants and one wants to be a DragonSlayer.....welll....why...I'll tell you, to get the cool special abilities....jeez...I feel like Lewis Black on a rant...sorry guys....

 

[takyris]

I do not say this lightly, so I ask for everyone's polite attention: TAKYRIS WINS THIS THREAD.

Woohoo! Man, if I were intelligent enough to modify my .sig...

Quasquetron, you brought up the question of having a minmaxer make a character for a roleplayer. This is actually kind of how my group does it. Our group consists of:

- One player who is a great numbers-cruncher but often needs help with character traits that are memorable and interesting

- Two players who are good roleplayers, aren't bad with numbers, but don't have a deep enough knowledge of all the rules to really minmax a situation

- One guy who doesn't roleplay very well and doesn't build terribly effective characters (sigh)

- And one guy who is off the charts with roleplaying and number-crunching, and who now enjoys tricking out characters in obscure areas

So generally, when we build characters, here's what happens:

The Number-Cruncher and the All-Around both have their characters built well before the first session. I check with All-Around to see what he needs from the adventure, if anything ("Okay, you're maxed out in Handle Animal? Right. I'll make sure that the Dungeon of Shivering Terror has some, uh, scared wild animals for you to tame."). Then I chat with the Number-Cruncher ("Wow, that's a pretty sweet combo, there. So, what's this guy like? Is he an aggressive and angry dude? Is he like Legolas, or like Aragorn, or like Gimli?") to kind of get the character-seeds growing. Both of these guys are, in my mind, done.

When we get to the game (that was over e-mail), those guys take the two other guys in hand and start offering advice. This usually works like this:

Roleplayers: Okay, so this guy is supposed to be an acrobat who uses magic to make himself effectively untouchable in combat. Lighthearted trickster, I'm thinking half-elven, not much of a killer, probably good with traps and such, aims for subdual damage. How do I do that?

Number Crunchers: Right, here we go. How important is the magic aspect? We can do Bard, or Rogue, or even Rogue/Bard. Well, for subdual, a monk would work --

Roleplayers: Nah, that's Lawful. This guy's a free spirit.

Number Crunchers: Okay, so Bard it is...

The Number Crunchers are (in general) respectful of the Roleplayers' concept, and the Roleplayers generally appreciate having somebody help them make a person who is good at what they want their guy to be good at.

(And the guy who doesn't do either very well shows up, makes his character, doesn't take advice, and builds a character who is suboptimal and doesn't tell me what that character is so that I can tailor the adventure to his character -- and then he doesn't roleplay and doesn't contribute much in a numerical sense fo the game. But this ain't a fairy tale. He's a nice guy. Just seems wired a different way.)

This works in a similar way in-game. The Number Cruncher has got his character fleshed out by now, so he's good, and sometimes the Roleplayer will, in the middle of combat, say something like, "Okay, Thrag makes an attack that's pretty much only there to impress people. He wants to draw the attackers' fire and also be hard to hit. How do I make that work?" Then the Number Cruncher will pop in with "Power Attack +5 on a single attack, then move so that you get cover from this guy, and also turn Expertise on to +5 as well."

The number crunchers could dominate the game, but the fact that everyone in the game has different strengths helps mitigate this, as does the fact that, with proper design, the GM can make different skills necessary. In the d20 Modern campaign I'm running, I'm trying hard to make sure that everyone's strengths get a chance to shine. The Face-Man gets to use Diplomacy and Gather Information and Bluff, the Detective gets to Investigate the crime scene, Search for clues, and then double-tap the living daylights out of the bad guys when they resist arrest, the Geek gets to bring up obscure trivia and hack computer systems to find other clues, and the Tough Medic gets to unflinchingly soak damage that would flat-out kill ordinary folks, Treat Injury to help people who are hurting, and use Spot or Sense Motive to notice details that his more cerebral partners might miss.

The Tough Medic is the All-Around guy, by the way. He didn't want to outshine people, so he just built somebody who is pretty much impossible to kill (decent Defense, tons of hit points, remains conscious at negative hit points and will most likely automatically stabilize because of his +10 Fort save at 6th level) and can also trivially stabilize injured people (+14 to Treat Injury). And his guy (High Wis, low Int) is a hoot to listen to:

Detective/Gunman: (as evil bikers ride into the town the party has prepared against the assault) So, man, you think today is a good day to die?

Tough Medic: Don't be a dumbass. There's never a good day to die.

Detective/Gunman: Okay, point taken.

My game isn't perfect by any stretch, but I think that, after a bit of penduluming back and forth, we've gotten pretty good at making everyone happy, despite their different strengths and interests and gaming styles. Except the guy who doesn't do much of anything. But, eh, he still shows up.

 

[MDSnowman]

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 choose 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?

I am the friend in this story (I would have anwsered sooner, but I like to sleep late and watch Law and Order in the afternoons ). When Alzrius described this book to me it seemed like someone had suddenly entirely thrown out the very concept of playing a character, in favor of playing someone who will consistently do 2.4 points more damage while swingng a long sword.

When I create a character I start with the characterthen I go back and work from that. For example I play in a sunday night game, and anyone who plays it will tell you that when I first started my character, Gara, was very optimized... 12th level fighter, and if he was any more specialized with his fullblade the DM probablly wouldn't have felt bad revoking all his other weapon proficienies. Now after a few sessions I realized just how shallow he was as a character, he was utterly useless unless he was within five feet of a bad guy and swinging away. All this is to say that I understand the desire tio min/max your character... and that doesn't bother me, but I realized a crossed the line when I made Gara. He had less personality than the fullblade he was swinging. I started talking with my DM and we came to a decision. Gara was going to get possessed by a demon, and would go from being a Fighter 12 to being a Fighter 10/ Tainted Warrior 3 (thank god for level ups) I didn't do that because he might get a natural armor bonus to cover his somewhat lacking AC, or because I'll get to cast firestorm at level 8. No I did it because while making wisdom checks to retain his sanity may be a dangerous prospect, it's worth the effects in the story. Suddenly Gara finds his comrades in awe of his will, but now just waiting for the other shoe to drop and him to become homocidal. Meanwhile Gara gets to explore himself and question how his own ammorality may have caused this to happen to him.

Bottom line: I like rules, I've seen Role Playing without rules before and it always seems to degenerate into "I shot you!" followed by "Nuh uh!". D&D has rules.. and that's a great thing. But when you start making those rules more important than the story you're telling you've missed the point of role playing as opposed to Videogames and the like [Yes I love Final Fantasy games, but I play them for different reasons than I play D&D]. The reason that you see so many people up in arms about "roll playing" is because of products like this, or half-assed dicussions of a fighter's place in society next to 200+ pages of feats, prestige classes, and new equipment. Yet those half assed discussions and loads of feats and prestige classes are at the same time better than number crunching to make a more efficent character. At least with the feats and prestige classes there's more chance for your haracter to be one of a kind. If you're following a spread sheet through character generation however you're going to notice every character you play looking very very similar.

My reaction was half born of this fact, and half born of the fact that someone I respect as much as Alzrius thought this was a good thing.

 

[jmucchiello]

Haven't double posted in a while....

 

[jmucchiello]

i beg to differ.

rollplaying plays the G flat....and roleplaying plays the G sharp



you need some of both to play the G at the correct pitch.

All right, the musician in me won't let this lie. If you've got flatted Gs and sharpened Gs being played together, what you have is noise, not G at the correct pitch*. The flat and sharp concept works better when saying it doesn't matter if your group is in tune, only that your group all plays equally out of tune such that all your Gs are equally flat or sharp. The closer a group comes to this ideal, the more harmonious the sound of their playing.

* If the notes are equidistant away from perfect G, then the ear will hear a ghost G but the sound will also be plagued by warbling beats of noise. But this breaks the analogy wide open because it is not true that having a play group with "So rollish they're playing an E" and "So roleish they're playing a Bb" is not a group that is going to mesh well even with the ghost G playing under the ghastly diminished 5th of E and Bb. But that's enough with music theory, I suppose....

 

[Henry]

All right, the musician in me won't let this lie. If you've got flatted Gs and sharpened Gs being played together, what you have is noise, not G at the correct pitch*.

OK, how about, "You need bass, tenor, AND alto if you're going to make the best choir"?

You're the musician! Lay on with that perfect analogy, baby!