So What is a Roleplaying Game? Forked Thread: Clark Peterson on 4E

[Mallus]

IIt's much harder to imagine the SIS when the battlemat is right in front you insisting that it is the correct and final version of what "is" and "is not."

A battlemat isn't an impediment to imaging the in-game world for me, but I see where you're coming from.

The role of maps & minis to control 1E combat (and restrict the SIS) were far, far weaker than in 3E or 4E.

I was just trying to convey that when I played 1e, fight scenes sure looked a lot like a wargame.

I roleplay NPCs and the players roleplay their own PCs. I do it for the fun of being someone else for an evening.

So do I. Currently that someone is a Gnostic Dragonborn paladin who worships the little bit of the dragon god inside himself and marks enemies with his own semen (I bet that was a little too much information, eh?).

... not to "tell stories" to someone or out of any wish to "act".

All part of role-playing for me. Though, semantics-wise, I don't how you "role-play your character" without acting, or without engaging in de facto storytelling.

 

[Shroomy]

So do I. Currently that someone is a Gnostic Dragonborn paladin who worships the little bit of the dragon god inside himself and marks enemies with his own semen (I bet that was a little too much information, eh?).

Um, yes...

 

[Remathilis]

Except they aren't. All one needs to do to play an RPG is role-play their character. The other stuff is part of the indie confusion.

Think about using the skill system and the Skill Challenge system to resolve combat. Is it still rewarding? You choose your sword skill. The DM determines this is an "easy" skill for this encounter. You say what you do with it, "hurt enemy" and roll the die. After a predetermined number of successes or failures is reached the DM declares the winner.

Flip that around using the combat system for social situations. Do you really think you're role-playing with "non-combat powers" when persuading, gaining insight, or basically interacting with people and places in the world? I'm not talking about magic. I mean this is the program you follow to converse with your fellow players. It would be a farce.

Neither combat nor non-combat systems work in 4E as role-playing systems.

Can't the same be said of ALL versions of D&D?

In 3e, I don't add weapon points to my "sword" skill. I don't get synergy bonuses to great sword for having ranks in bastard sword. I can't resolve a conflict in melee with a single die roll (diplomacy, bluff) and I can't take 10 on a ranged attack if no foe is around me. Similarly, there is no "base skill bonus" determined by specific class (rogues get the highest, fighters the least?), etc.

Go back even further. My thief moved silently up to his foe with a percentile die roll (lower better), attacked with his d20 (higher better), got surprise on his foe the next round with a d6 (higher better), then rolled initiative on a d10 (lower better) to turn around and make another attack on a d20 (higher better) again before making a tumbling check on a d20 (lower better) to get away and then make a saving throw on a d20 (higher better) when the angry mage targeted him with Hold Person.

D&D has ALWAYS separated combat/non-combat, otherwise combat abilities and spellcasting would be skill-based and not class based (like Storyteller, d6, and MERPs did). The correllary to this is that every edition has granted wider rule-berth to combat resolution and left non-combat encounter resolution sketchy or incomplete. In that regard, 4e is really no different other than providing a framework for assigning DCs and XP for them.

(As a final though: 4e is closer to unifying skill/combat mechanics than any other. The generic formula for d20 rolls is [d20 + ability mod + 1/2 level + bonuses], where bonuses could be trained for skills and proficiency for weapons. Compare to 3e, where combat d20 rolls were [d20 + BAB + ability + bonuses], Saves were [d20 + Base Save + ability + bonuses] and Skills were [d20 + ranks + ability + bonuses].)

 

[JVisgaitis]

I'm not sure how 3e and 4e could've made melee more interesting in-combat without focusing on positioning....

Me neither. We did a lot of work trying to bring more options to combat. What we finally decided on was positioning. That's pretty much one of the most important things in a battle anyway.

 

[jdrakeh]

There definitely isn't any single definition adhered to by hobbyists. For me, it's pretty simple, though — in order for a game to be a "roleplaying game" it must have two elements:

1. Roleplaying: Wherein people assume the roles of imaginary characters or beings other than themselves.
2. Game: An activity providing entertainment or amusement by way of adherence to rules.

Any game that has those two rules is a roleplaying game in my estimation. This includes the widly hyperbolic examples such as "My friends and I pretend to be bankers when playing Monopoly and have invted our own rules for character death!" that often show up in threads like this, posted by parties attempting to derail any serious discussion by introducing improbable scenarios.

The good news is that, in such cases, under my own definition I can state with authority that by modifying the way Monopoly is played in three different ways (i.e., first by introducing imaginary character roles, second by having players assume them as personae, and third by incorporating rules that govern them), such folks have transformed it into a roleplaying game!

Of course, some people will scream that role-playing games do not require roles, or rules, or anything else that the name suggests. I've seen more than a few people argue this and it serves as a great example of why the question "What is a roleplaying game?" will never have a single answer.

To wit, my answer works for me, but some others think that any game which requires measuring character movement on the tabletop is not a roleplaying game. Incidentally, this is, for me, always funny because it excludes all editions of D&D from the category of "roleplaying game" — every edition of D&D has included rules for measuring movement on the tabletop, either in inches or squares

 

[Yair]

When people say "the game within the game" they are talking about something going on that doesn't have anything to do with role-playing. For example, you could play Chess as a role-playing game. Chess includes many different roles to play, but just because you can "re-skin" what a move means in Chess does not make it a role-playing game. The role-playing is occurring independently of playing Chess. Most players will never role-play along to it as 1) the game doesn't suggest doing so, and 2) it isn't very representative to what is happening in the role-played world. It's simply a bad mechanism for resolving reality in a hypothetical world. This has nothing to do with the quality of Chess as a game. It's actually one of the best around. IMHO.

A very good explanation.

4e is definitely a roleplaying game. But I find that the game-with-the-game in it is taking too much of a focus, making combat often appear to indeed be some weird version of chess. I think this is because the combat was developed to be fun as-a-game, instead of representing some inspiring fantasy reality. Also, because the rules are complex and just so specific - even more than in 3e, for me.

Perhaps all I need is for the game to grow on me, until the mechanics become transparent and the world settles in. We'll see.

 

[pemerton]

First of all I do not get the distinction in roleplaying regarding combat and non-combat encounters. If it is a roleplaying game then combat rules should fall into the same aspect regarding roleplaying. You are roleplaying a persona of a given setting or world in which world combat happens -it is not something apart.

4e has adopted quite different approaches to combat and non-combat action resolution mechanics. This is one of the distinctive features of the game (for good or bad) compared to many contemporary RPGs.

Regarding specifically the skill system, to me it does not make any sense. I fail to see how it represents actual realworld group standard behaviour dynamics when facing a challenge.

It's not meant to.

Furthermore the skill challenge system -even for whom may have more insight than myself and see how to connect it with roleplaying is broken.

On the "connection with roleplaying" matter - Lost Soul has given numerous examples, especially in his Emergent Features of KoTS thread.

But I would be happy with 4e even if it only managed to provide good roleplaying rules for combat. In fact the major problem I see in 4e is this one since combat is mostly what is about.

Not moreseo than earlier versions of D&D, which typically had action resolution mechanics only for combat.

 

[Jack99]

People talk. One of the reasons I wasn't part of the 4E design or development process was because I had some knowledge of what was coming and wasn't willing to associate myself with it.

I wasn't aware that WotC used freelancers to design and develop 4e.

 

[pemerton]

How is the first two chapters of the 4e PHB not more conducive to roleplaying than the first two chapters of ANY other edition of D&D?

If I gave someone the 4E PHB and ask them to "roleplay", I'm honestly thinking the 4E PHB provides much more help on how to roleplay than any other edition.

So why is this simply discounted?

I've asked the same question in the past, and had the same non-response as you seem to be getting.

 

[pemerton]

The rules should facilitate task resolution. Combat is one type of task resolution, social interactions is another. Consistency throughout the various aspects should be one of the stated design goals.

Why is consistency important? It is obviously not an accident that 4e uses different action-resolution mechanics for combat and non-combat encounters, as that is one of the most striking features of the design. Other games have also featured this sort of difference between combat and non-combat action resolution mechanics (eg Rolemaster, Runequest) although it is more marked in 4e. It suggests to me that combat is meant to be one of the primary vehicles whereby the expression of one's PC's character takes place. This puts a heavy burden on the power system to deliver in this respect. I think that, on the whole, it probably does. A PC's powers are the window into that PC's soul (a bit like in a superhero comic).

My ultimate goal is for people to honestly evaluate what it is we're being asked to spend their money on. Is this new edition truly an improvement upon the previous?

<snip>

You're paying more for less. And it isn't just a little bit less, it's a lot less. Again, I don't have the wordcounts, but if I had to venture a guess, I'd imagine that because of the horribly ineffeicient use of space, you're only getting about 40% of the material in the 4E core books that you did in the 3.5.

<snip>

Those of us who see it would very much like it if those who bought in would set aside the talking points marketing spoon fed everyone before release and be honest. WotC shortchanged us with this edition and now we either have to live with it for the five to eight year cycle, or we have to abandon it. The failure was WotC's for putting out a product that they knew would not going to go over well with much of its audience.

<snip>

this is, in my mind, a pretty clear case where satisfying their greed comes at our expense. If you're fine with this, then by all means, carry on. Keep paying too much to rebuy the material you should have gotten in the first three books. Just please be honest with yourselves about what you're getting.

Honest evaluation - I am paying for the first version of D&D I can conceive of playing seriously since 1st ed AD&D back in the 1980s. I don't care about the word count or the white space. I care about playability.

If I had to choose between paying for 4e or downloading Pathfinder for free I'd choose the former, because I can't imagine playing the latter. (Addressing the question of whether, ultimately, it's a good or bad thing that a good RPG is available only to those with the money to pay for it is probably outside the scope of this thread, and a violation of the board rules.)

As for the suggestion that I have some sort of duty to purchase RPGs from smaller companies who have gamers at heart: (i) I have a shelf-full of ICE products, including practically everything published for Rolemaster in the past 20 years, plus a good collection of products from other companies, so I feel I've done my bit to put food on the table of deserving game designers; (ii) Ron Edwards ran much the same argument in his "Nuked Apple Cart" essay written 10 years ago, and if I felt I was under any such duty I would go the rest of the way with Ron and spend my money on "a few slim roleplaying books with high-octane premises and system ideas" rather than on rehashes of 3E D&D.