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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9200230" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, I spotted your post about role in original D&D, I think that was a fair analysis of what Gygax meant. 'Role Play' was, AFAIK, not a term at the time, though certainly 'playing a role' in the sense of 'being an actor and depicting a specific character' would be a potential interpretation of that phrase. Still, I believe you are correct in diagnosing that Gygax is discussing the role a given PC plays within the adventure, and not talking about players in some other sense separate from the character.D&D certainly didn't require, nor even especially actively promote RP in the modern sense. It could be motivated within the rules you cited which discuss things like the proper time to 'give full XP', but even there Gygax seems to mostly be concerned with substantive actions and not characterization. However I think that's a blurry line in many cases, so a player acting out being a leader when playing the Fighting Man, for instance, kind of falls in both kinds of 'role'. I do think there's a trajectory though, and the emergence of 2e's XP system, as well as OA, indicates that sometime after 1979 or so that the idea of role playing as a thing in and of itself became more and more important to game designers at TSR. Certainly when OA (1985 IIRC) was published it seemed to lean in that direction. While you pass off 2e as not addressing task resolution, it does do SOMETHING, NWPs are there, granting they're not the greatest mechanical implementation of a skill system. OA and DSG/WSG also had them, so the idea was there (and even the original PHB had to talk about secondary skills). There are other signs too, thieves get more abilities, and the right to decide which ones are important to them. So you can be a pick pocket, or a wall-climber, or a trapsmith, or a bit of all three (the totals actually sum to the same numbers as 1e thieves). The much-maligned UA thief/acrobat class similarly points to a desire to broaden the action resolution system. I think TSR simply was reluctant to really break with existing D&D in a more substantive way. Given the violent reaction to 4e I'm not sure I blame them!</blockquote>

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