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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 2697061" data-attributes="member: 2067">Well, you're obviously doing what's right for your group as a whole. So don't let us abstractionists stop ya. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />But:What, exactly, are you defining roleplaying as? Because I'm defining it as acting out a fictional character. You know, playing a role. In that case, combat enables them to play a role, to be a character who beats up bad guys and saves the day and makes evil cower, to be a star in their own way. Whether it's by blasting fireballs or by single duelist combat, it enables the playing of a role.Puzzles don't. Not when they're not testing the *role's* knowledge, but the player's. What the player knows about the situation doesn't matter. The player isn't in a fantasy world. The player can't fight orcs in real life. The player doesn't have to save princesses from dragons -- he has to act out a role that would. The player's ability to solve puzzles doesn't matter any more than the player's ability to run a race, bench press 150, or fight your dog. His character should still be able to run fast, be strong, beat up wolves, and solve puzzles. If you make the player figure out a puzzle, he's not playing a role anymore. He's not playing a role-playing game, just a mindgame, just a trick. Just like if you make a player run a race to win initiative, he's no longer playing a role, he's running a race. Those can be fun in their own way, but they have nothing to do with being a sword-swinging dragon slayer in a fantasy world. They remove the level of abstraction -- suddenly, your character's genius in puzzles and mindgames is dependant on your own. And it never should be, in my view. I mean, it's obviously working for you, so good, but the opposite opinion shouldn't shock you. People don't want their role's abilities to depend on their own. Just because *I* can't fly doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to play a flying monkey. Rolls, advice, in-character analysis....these things keep the barrier between character and player, and so don't wind up making the bard actually sing a song to help his party.Because it doesn't matter how well Ed sings, and it doesn't matter what kind of smarts Julie has. It matters how well Ed's half-elf bard sings, and it matters what kind of smarts Julie's puzzle-loving halfling has. And that demands abstraction -- challenging the characters (and through the characters, the players who make choices for them), not just challenging the players while ignoring the characters.Making them solve a puzzle is like making them run a race -- it challenges the players, but it means they're no longer playing a role. Thus, it hurts role playing.</blockquote>

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