Some Wrecan Stuff

[Jester David]

Originally posted by wrecan:

When is it okay for a PC to die?
When the dice dictate it.

What events are deemed "important" enough to allow for PC death?
I don't worry about "importance".  I've had PCs die in climactic battles and PCs die in the middle of adventures.  Death is death.

Does it matter that a dead PC can be brought back relatively easily?
Not really.  Nobody like their PC dying.  I find NPC resurrection to be more problematic.

As a DM, if your PCs never die, how do maintain a level of imminent (or even momentary) threat?
By failing in their goals.  If you live, but the kingdom falls to demons, you failed.  If you live, and the village is burned by the orc horde, you failed.  If you live, but your equipment is lying at the bottom of the ocean, you failed.

For me, in a well-crafted game, death is one of the least motivations for players.  Plot is the primary motivation.  Now, a plot could be "Oh, geez, I don't wanna die!", but most plots have a less fatalistic story arc, somewhere between "I want to find the Scepter of Stonehall and be rich" and "I want to stop the Dread Lord Morgataw from conquering the Noble Kingdom... and be rich."

Do you think the game works better if your PCs never die?
I don't think it matters.  The game works better is the players are invested in what happens to their characters and the world the characters inhabit.

But these questions all dodge the real issue your grappling, imo.  The real question is...

How do you choose how deadly do you intend to make your adventures?
I mean, we're the DMs, right?  We could ensure no PC survives the Grimtooth's Hall of Antimagical Oubliettes.  We could also ensure every adventure is through the Gumdrop Forest of Tickle Fights.  I assume most DMs fall somewhere in between the two.  For me, I design adventures where the PCs are likely to all survive, but some bad rolls or bad choices might affect that.  But I don't plan TPKs.  I don't write Tomb of Horrors-like adventures.  Nor do I generally write cakewalks.


Originally posted by wrecan:

I see it broken down into 3 possibilities:
1- We gather here to tell an in-depth, living, malleable story with the PCs as the stars.
2- We gather here to test the Survival of the Fittest theory.
3- The Hybrid.

I think this is a false choice.  Nobody who play a RPG in an ongoing campaign ever really chooses the first or second choice.  Tomb of Horrors was a tournament module -- even Gygax wouldn't run his regular players through it.  Maybe as a one-shot for fun you play this way, but not for an ongoing campaign in any edition.

And nobody runs D&D in which the ending of an entire campaign is preselected from level 1.  Players have free will, so it's almost a guarantee that cannot work unless the DM completely railroads them. 

So really every game is a "Hybrid".  This is just an easy way to avoid the tough question.

When you write a scenario, how do you determine how lethal it will be?  Do you have in mind the goal of trying to kill them all?  Do you try to kill just one each adventure?  Do you make it lethal enough for them to possibly die, but know they won't if they're smart.  Do you try to make ti fun without it necessarily being lethal at all?  Do you actively avoid situations where PCs might be killed?

 

[Jester David]

Originally posted by wrecan:

What about making a gift as tribute to a king, to resolve a diplomatic conflict?

Making a gift is not an act to resolve an immediate conflict.

Just like your walking doesn't improve simply because you're walking to the dungeon. From a game design perspective, character don't need CraPPer skills because such skills are not relevant to the game.

Or what about having a better product-to-production-cost ratio, thus freeing up more capital for future needs? A better swordsmith makes a better sword from the same materials as a worse swordsmith.

D&D doesn't have variations in sword quality. You can't buy a better or worse sword.

And, frankly, the quality of a sword rarely materially affected its capacity in combat. A better sword might be lighter so that the warrior did not get as exhausted using it in prolonge combat. Or a sword lasted longer in poor elements, so it did not have to be replaced. Those are not factors ever present in D&D. No edition of D&D ever had official rules for getting exhausted for swinging a heavy sword around. No edition of D&D ever had official rules for keeping your mundane equipment well-maintained.

Also, mundane swords are cheap in D&D. By the time and team is 2nd level, the amount of money you should be able to save by blacksmithing is inconsequential to the time you could spend adventuring. Moreover, blacksmithing requires enormous amounts of capital. You need tools, an anvil, a smithy, a supply of coal, raw materials and other minerals. This is not something you can just do during the off-season.

But that's only if you seek hyper-realism in crafting. The main point is that if you're character is a crafter in D&D, mechanics are not needed. If your character wants to spend in-game time crafting, you're holding up your friends who cannot participate in your crafting side-quest. If the entire party is a band of blacksmiths, then you're best off looking for a game that has a robust system of blacksmithing mechanics, rather than trying to showhorn D&D, which never had a robust system. (I don't consider a system in which your ability to smith is based entirely on a character's Intelligence -- with no consideration of his Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, or Wisdom -- to be a particularly robust blacksmithing system.)

 

[Jester David]

Originally posted by wrecan:

Neither is flavor text, for that matter.

Neither is flavor text what? Necessary? Who said it was necessary?

I said nothing about hyper-realism; you pulled that one straight out of your @ss. I'm not talking about advanced metallurgy; I'm talking about a general skill that can improve.

But if it doesn't improve in a way important to the game, then it doesn't matter.

Also, if you're not discussing realism, then you're discussing a world in which the skills don't work the way they do in real life. (We're discussing, after all, mundane skills like blacksmithing and singing, not fantasy skills like spellweaving and mindpainting.)

If you want rules in which there are skills for blacksmithing that don't operate the way they do in the real world, then it doesn't make sense to have such rules in a general game that isn't about your fantasy version of blacksmithing. If, in your world, a blacksmith can make a sword without the investment in anvils and forges and coal and minerals, and that his skill affects how quickly one can make a weapon, or how much damage it can do in combat, then that is a specific fantasy realm, and perhps that should be reprsented as a campaign setting, not as a general rule to be applied to every campaign using the default D&D rules.

Moreover, adventurers "improve" by getting experience by overcoming Traps, monsters and skill challenges. Why should your blacksmithing improve because you kill a dragon?

This ends up with the weird scenario in which all the best blacksmiths int he world are also better fighters than the people for whom they make swords,because, to get enough experience to improve blacksmithing, they have to go out and kill things. Or, if you can get XP by blacksmithing, all those long-lived races should spend their prolonged childhoods blacksmithing. That way, their race will never run out of armor and weapons, and they'll all be epic-level adventurers before they even begin adventuring.

And that's why CraPPer and adventuring don't mix very well.

And these abilities can have an impact on the game. What if one of the adventurers is a blacksmith? How do you know how much money he makes? Can't the player just say "I'm the best . . . blacksmith in the entire universe, so everyone comes to me and I have no competitors because my quality is so high", and thus he has nigh-infinite money?

No, because the DM runs the world. No fluff text can dictate how NPCs react to the PC. You can't say you're the best blacksmith, because that dictates what other blacksmiths are like. And your character has to fit in the DM's world.

It's the same reason a player can't declare his character to be the beloved godchild of every noble family on the planet who can walk into any town and be expected to be showered with presents and money and whatever magic ites the nobility has available. Even though there are no (and never have been) mechanics for being somebody's favored godchild, the DM gets to decide how reasonable your backstory is.

What if the bard wants to play a song? Can't he just say "I play the song more beautifully than any God every could"?

No, because the DM controls God, as an NPC in the DM's world.

Why not have a skill so that bards can have a music contest?

Because having a skill for corner cases (like music contests) is bad game design. It forces players to choose between two different types of effectiveness. That's why blacksmithing is relegated to a separate mechanic: Backgrounds.

On a separate note, why is when people try to defend CraPPer or Crapper-style systems, they always reference these weird little contests? A singing contest? I've seen others talking about impressing a king with a bake-off, or that you might impress a king with non-magical some gift the PCs made, as if kings were really impressed by the adventurer's equivalent of "Mom, I made you this macaroni art." If this an actual fantasy trope somewhere? Is there an example of award-winning fantasy literature or some myth out there of which I am not aware in which some major conflict is resolved because a hero of yore managed to win a craft contest?

The only myth I can imagine is the Roman myth of how Arachne insulted Minerva and was turned into a spider. Except, of course, Arachne was not an adventurer. Weaving was all she could do. So it wasn't actually a contest to resolve a conflict. It's just a backstory to explain the presence of spiders. Oh, and Arachne didn't get polymorphed because she beat Minerva in the contest, but because she chose a blasphemous subject for her contest entry. So the contest, was, in fact, not even waged!

It seems this concept of Craft Contests was devised to justify CraPPer mechanics; CraPPer mechanics were not designed so that people could roleplay out some notion of Crafting Contests that existed before CraPPer skills existed.

 

[Jester David]

Originally posted by wrecan:

there is great differentiation between a poor smith and an excellent smith.

Only in a game where the differentiation matters.

Being a mediocre smith vs. a great smith matters only in a few situations that seem totally alien to the sorts of playing D&D envisions....

1) You are a businessman trying to set up a shop and make a living. Your artisanship may help you get backers to finance your project and customers to buy your wares.

D&D doesn't work well for this sort of game. Being a smith is an individual activity, and D&D is a team game. The game doesn't want the other players twiddling their thumbs while the PC blacksmith is negotiating with his coal suppliers and the iron minesfor materials before heading off to the blacksmith guild to review his compliance with the guild's work mandates.

This could all be a background, which means it doesn't happen at the game, but in the downtime between sessions. And for that you just need the DM and player to agree beforehand about the background, just like the DM and player need to agree if the player wants his PC to have an interesting relative or strange hobby.

2) Some weird city is having a blacksmith contest in which blacksmiths from all over the land are going to compete in weird and utterly arbitrary ways, such as "Who can make more horseshoes in an eight hour day!?" and "Make me a sword while my judges rate you." And again, this is a peculiarly individual event, when D&D is supposed to be a team endeavor. if you can turn this into a team competition, then you have what D&D already has -- a skill challenge, likely using Endurance, Athletics, Streetwise, and History, with circumstantial bonuses for PCs with an appropriate Background.

 

[Jester David]

Originally posted by wrecan:

I will give a couple real life examples to clear up the 'hyperbole' since the statement "used to be cautious now go in guns blazing" seems to ilicit a snarky remark:

Here, let me adjust that for you:

Old School

Scenario 1

"You enter the room.  It is 20x20.  There is an iron door across from you with a grill looking out into a hallway.  A large statue of a winged devil sits next to it.  It has four arms, each holding a gem.  The gems are a ruby, an emerald, a sapphire, and a topaz."

PLAYER1 :  "I slowly search the room looking for traps.  Are there traps on the floor in front of me?"

DM:  No.

PLAYER2: Can I do something?

DM: Are you a Thief?

PLAYER 2: No.

DM: Are you a Cleric with a Find Traps spell prepared?

PLAYER 2: No.

PLAYER 3 raises his hand.

DM: Shh.  You aren't either.

PLAYER 1:  I cautiously go up to the statue.  I search for traps along the statue.

PLAYER 2: I'm going to order a pizza.  Anybody want something?

PLAYER 1: Shut up.  The last three creatures we fought didn't even have backs for stabbing.  This is the only thing I ever get to do.

PLAYER 3: I'll go with you.

PLAYERS 2 and 3 leave.

DM: okay... You check the status and find a trap on the feat.

PLAYER 1: Awesome.  What about secret panels.

DM: (rolling)...

PIZZA GUY: Oh, Players 2 and 3, good to see you.  Is it game night already?  Player 1's checking for traps, eh?

Scenario 2:

PLAYER 1:  I cautiously go up to the statue.  I search for traps along the statue.

DM: You failed your Find/Remove Traps Roll.  The trap kills you.

PLAYER 2: Sorry about that Froddo IV.

PLAYER 1: Whatever (rolls dice).  Hi, everyone, I'm Froddo V, looking for me cousin.  oh, he's dead?  Too bad.  Mind if I join you?  (To DM)  I cautiously go up to the statue.  I search for traps along the statue.

(Continue with reference to Scenario 1.)

Today:

"You enter the room.  It is 20x20.  There is an iron door across from you with a grill looking out into a hallway.  A large statue of a winged devil sits next to it.  It has four arms, each holding a gem.  The gems are a ruby, an emerald, a sapphire, and a topaz."

PLAYER 1:  "I walk up to the statue and grab the gems."

PLAYER 2:  No!

PLAYER:  Hellz yes.  If it's trapped what's it going to do?  About 20 points of damage maybe?  I have 55 and all my healing surges, so I basically have about 210 hit points.  Piece of cake.

Player takes the damage and is dazed by the trap. which also calls the three kobold slingers in the next room.

DM: The eyebeams from each of the gems is now searching the area while the kobolds begin to toss a weird viscous fluid.

PLAYER 1: I use my one action to disarm the trap (Thievery check)

PLAYER 2: I use a minor action to analyze the fluid (Nature) and a standard action to call up an arcane shield.

PLAYER 3: I will tumble over to the statue, using it as cover against the slingers (Acrobatics), then I'll use this power to give the Rogue an additional save against the daze effect.

(Everyone rolls dice.)

PIZZA GUY: How come nobody comes by any more?

The difference is that while static traps are, at best, fun for the thief, the fun in 1e had nothing to do with the deadliness of the trap, but that it shined a spotlight on 1 PC.  Which isn't much fun for the others.  Of course, that was okay because if you were a fighter, you had the spotligh on you for the first 7 levels.  If you were a wizard you had the spotlight on you for the levels after that.  If you were a cleric, you were probably someone's younger brother shanghaied into playing the cleric, and you really couldn't expect a spotlight ever.

Now, the goal is everyone participates equally. Death comes not because of a single failed die, but because of a lack of teamwork or a really bad string of unluck.  Traps are not the equivalent of Russian Roulette, but actual hazards that interact with the players.  I've plated both.  I prefer the latter.

 

[Jester David]

Originally posted by wrecan:

Please explain in more detail. Quote some of my posts and tell me how I can convey the same information in a more respectful manner.

Only because you asked...

• Don't use inflammatory language like screwed(x)
  
• Be specific.  Don't intimate that you've already proven yourself right(x).  That comes off as pompous and self-congratulatory, not convincing or civil
  
• Don't declare yourself the winner of an argument(x) for the same reasons.
  
• Avoid the snide parenthetical asides(x)
  
• Don't use ALL CAPITALS(x) for emphasis.  It makes you look angry and irrational.
  
• Avoid the adolescent use of hipster speak such as "WOTC=fail(x)".  This makes it seem like you are more interested in appearing hip than in making substantive points.
  
• Stop making one-off quips(x) that don't contribute to the conversation.  (A good half of your recent posts appear to be posts in this vein.)
  
• Stop making emotional whines(x).
  
• Oh, and you could stop cyber-stalking Dane_McArdy with your "Dane, you are my hero" posts.  That was pretty much the nadir of your behavior today.
  

I only provide this because you asked.  This is just what I noticed from reading the posts you've made in the last six hours.  (You post a lot!)  I'm sure if I went further back into your posting history I could find you more examples.  I am posting this is the hopes that you were sincere about wanting to be a more productive and civil poster.

Please note I did not ask you to stop posting negative things about Wizards or their products.  My posts only concern the manner in whcih you post, not the substance.

 

[Jester David]

Originally posted by wrecan:

Hey, [redacted], good to hear form you again!

I had a similar problem to you in my early 4e sessions.  I have termed this problem "Combat Investment"

Players invest a lot of time in 4e getting their characters properly equipped for combat.  Feats, Equipment and especiallty Powers are all combat-oriented.  This investment psychologically encourages players to want a return on their investment.  I.e., they spent time making a kick-ass combatant, so they want the pay-off.  If you spend an hour making a combatant and then spend the whole session never rolling a die, you feel a bit cheated.  You feel like you want that hour of your life back.

In contrast, role-playing takes very little investment.  You pick your Abilities, Backrounds and Trained Skills at the beginning of character creation and then you never touch it again (unless you retrain or pick up a Linguist Feat).  So even if you enjoy roleplaying, there's no "buy-in".  You don't feel as cheated if you don't roleplay because you don't feel like you "wasted" any time prepping your character for roleplaying.

Compunding the error is the DM's own Combat Threshold.  Roleplay takes comparatively little prep time.  You don't need minis, maps, or even stat blocks to roleplay as an NPC.  You need a few lines of personality, a physical description, six Abilities, a few Skills and some general character goals.  That all happens well before the session.  Combat on the other hand, usually requires a battle map or tiles, minis, character stat blocks to be created, terrain or obstacles, and some general NPC strategies.  There is also tiem require din game to set all this up.  And it can weigh on a DM's mind that he needs to budget some setup time.  This encourages a DM to get the Threshold out of the way and get to the combat.  This is particularly true if combat takes a lot of time to run (as many 4e DMs complain it does), and since many DMs like to end a session with a big climactic battle.

Combined, the Combat Investment and Threshold encourage players and DMs to skip or rush the roleplay and get right to the headbanging.

This doesn't mean 4e is bad for roleplaying.  It works just fine in my games.  What you need to do is overcome the hurdle of Combat Investment.

First, you need to be conscious of the Combat Investment and Threshold.  Usually, once you realize what you've been doing, the Investment and Threshold are easier to resist.  Second, if you can, don't put the minis and maps on the table when there's no combat.  Also, encourage your players to keep their sheets face down when they aren't looking at equipment lists during roleplay.  This minimizes the temptation to get to the combat. 

Is this a new phenomenon in 4e?  It sort of is.  Except for spellcasters and optimizers, most players didn't require a lot of prep time for characters.  And most people who played non-spellcasters were, almost by definition, not optimizing.  So martial characters generally had very little Combat Investment to overcome.  And in prior editions you had more spells that had use outside combat (often in the form of divinations and enchantments that could obviate roleplay altogether, but still), so the players' investment in spell memorization wasn't entirely Combat Investment in prior editions.

For DMs, however, I think the Combat Threshold has actually lessened.  Creating encounters is a lot easier compared to 3e, so I can spend time preparing more roleplay.  But it's still not as easy as it was in 2e (and likely won't ever be).  However, 4e, more than other editions, now requires me to devise interesting combat fields and hazards and obstacles, which I find can be a time drain that increases the Combat Threshold.

So, I understand your complaint, Hocus.  I've found ways to compensate for the problem, and I really do enjoy 4e more than prior editions.  If you find your way back to 4e, I hope you take some of my advice.

As an aside, Combat Investment is the facet of 4e I am most hopeful 5e can fix (when it eventually comes out hopefully many years from now).  If they could reduce the time players spend getting their characters combat-ready, it would reduce the Combat Investment.



Originally posted by wrecan:

Anyway, I don't think the problem is combat investment so much as non-combat blindness. GMs don't seem to have the experience to look past the large adverts for powers that spindle, fold and mutilate enemies and don't see the subtle (and not so subtle hints) as to what the game can be about

I respectfully disagree.  Hocus and I have been DMing for more than a half-century combined and have not had this problem with other systems (even 3e).  The problem is not lack of experience.  Nor do I think the problem is an inability to see the game's subtleties.

As I said, I had the problem and was able to fix it without changing systems.  I did not fix the problem by "looking past the large adverts" or seeing "the subtle ... hints as to what this game can be about."  I already knew what the game could be about and never saw the adverts.

For my group -- and I suspect for many groups -- combat investment is real phenomenon.  It's not a new one either.  I see it as analogous to the Sunk Cost Fallacy in economics and game theory.  Once a player has spent time building a character for combat, he focuses on that aspect of the character in order to get a return on his investment of time, even if might enjoy the roleplay.  It's a psychological phenomenon, and it can be addressed simply by recognizing that's what you're doing.

I do understand that people with no prior history in RPGs may be misled by the marketing.  But Hocus-Smokus and I are not those people.  We didn't buy 4e ignorant of the role-playing possibilities in herent in the game.  We just fell afoul of a pretty basic psychological fallacy, and one that can be (and for my group was) easily remedied.

 

 

[Jester David]

Originally posted by wrecan:

A) Less focus on combat (powers, magic items, spells, etc.), or
B) More focus on skills and non-combat options

While I appreciate the input, Hocus, I'm going to have to vehemently disagree with B.  I don't think "more options" for non-combat (at least in the form of non-weapon proficiencies and certain powers) is helpful.  While it will force an investment of time in building a social or skillful character, the price of that is, in my opinion, limiting the free-form nature of roleplaying outside combat.

Combat powers allow you to do things in combat that are otherwise impossible.  But that's because combat is an inherently competitive challenge with a clearlose an a clear winner.  Noncombat is not competitive.  For skillful encounters, there are generally no opponents -- only obstacles.  "Options" in such encounters either prevent you from doing things you should be able to do, or they become free passes around the obstacle, thus obviiating roleplay.

An example of the former would be a Mountaineering Skill which forces the DMs to alter encounter difficulties so that only people with the Mountaineering Skill can accomplish the challenges for traveling through the montains.  An example of the latter would be a teleport spell, which allows players to entirely avoid the challenge of traveling through the mountains.

So, no, I don't think the solution to Combat Investment is to also force players to engage in Skill Investment.  I think the solution is to ramp down the amount of investment.


Originally posted by wrecan:

if they spend two hours on working out combat related stats, they should spend 2.5 hours on working out character background etc.

I think arbitrarily making players spend five hours building characters is a step backwards in character creation.  The sad fact is that you don't need to spend hours preparing a character you can roleplay, and forcing people to do make-work only causes resentment.

That's why I suggest trying to include in powers some out-of-combat uses.  That way the player is not engaging in creating a combat a combatant, but is spending the same amount of time building a well-rounded character.



Originally posted by wrecan:

Sure, players bring ideas to the table. But, what if those players have never played D&D before? Say a new person sits down to his first 2E game and hears his buddy talking about playing a dwarf. So he asks his friend to describe a dwarf...short guy, stocky, bonus to poisons, makes good fighters, etc. But the friend still hasn't answered the question (to any real degree). To this new player, all he pictures is a short guy with poison resistance that's better at one certain classes
more than others. Not very helpful. So he asks the friend to describe an elf. Slender guy with pointy ears that is good with a bow. For all he knows, the guy asking is now picturing Spock at an archery contest. The 2E books don't really help that much. Sure, they give a couple of paragraphs that expound on what the friend said, but then drops it as quickly as they started. Again, it's the emphasis on crunch and abandonment of fluff. From what I hear, though, they also made some Kits that will improved this immensely. I'm looking forward to reading them.

Come on, [redacted].  The 2e PHB has as much (or as little) racial fluff as 4e did.  I really didn't expect this level of discussion from you.

 

[Jester David]

Originally posted by wrecan:

I think different people mean different things by "roleplaying rules", and often they are inconsistent. Here's a few:

Personal Interaction (or "Act or Die, 20-sided").
These are rules that allow an asocial player to play a social character. These rules could be considered to "facilitate" roleplay by allowing the dice to replace actual acting ability.

In OD&D/BECMI/1e, this is handled by Charisma checks. In 2e, this is handled by some non-weapon proficiencies (but mostly Charisma checks). in 3e and 4e, this is handled by Bluff/Intimidate/Diplomacy (and Gather Information/Streetwise).

Background Flair (or "Where do Adventurers Come From?").
These are rules that are not as important for the dice, but simply as a sort of mnemonic people use to give their characters a background unrelated to adventuring.

OD&D/BECMI don't have rules for this. 1e has Secondary Skills, 2e has Non-Weapon Proficiencies, 3e has the Craft, Perform and Profession Skills (and some related feats), and 4e has Backgrounds.

Combat-Free Skills (or "I Know What You Did in-between Adventures").
These are skills that don't facilitate role-play per se, but rather help resolve actions that are not directly related to adventuring. Cooking, riding, writing a play, etc. are skills that are not commonly associated with adventuring in dungeons or confronting dragons.

OD&D/BECMI/1e do not have rules for this and expected DMs to make up rules for it on the fly, often with Ability checks. 2e used Non-Weapon Proficiencies for some aspects, but otherwise expected DMs to use Ability checks. 3e assumed Craft, Perform and Profession would cover anything you need (which basically translated into an Int, Cha or Wis check unless you had put skill ranks into these skills). 4e expects you to use Skill Challenges and DMG p.42 (which relies on a combination of Ability Checks, Skill Checks, and circumstance modifiers based on Backgrounds).

Obscure Knowledge (or "Who Wants to be a Narrator"?).
This is a means by which DMs can filter useful bits of trivia, backstory and exposition to players who can then reveal the information in a dramatically appropriate way. In some senses this also facilitates roelplaying, by giving players something to use when crafting dialog for the character.

In OD&D/BEMCI/1e, people generally used Intelligence checks, or the DM just gave out the information as he deemed appropriate. 2e had the same approach, supplemented by some non-weapon proficiencies. 4e also has the same approach, supplemented by the Arcane, Dungeoneering, History, Nature, and Religion Skills. 3e had ten Knowledge Skills, and it was basically assumed that any knowledge the PCs might need would be found under one of those headings, or if it were Common Knowledge, could be known by anybody with a DC 10 Intelligence check.

Roleplaying Restrictions (or "You Vill Roleplay und You Vill Like It"!)
Some people, when referencing "roleplaying rules" sometimes mean those rules that carry mechanical bonuses or, more often, penalties, if one does not roleplay in a manner that the game has deemed appropriate. The most famous of these rules is alignment, particularly in 1e/2e, when a change of alignment would mean the loss of class levels. These rules add "structure" to roleplaying, by letting players know what was expected of their characters. It also gave the DM a nice carrot and a club to use to keep players in line.

Another iteration of this are the descriptions of classes. Druids, for example, in several editions, were not allowed to use worked metal. Clerics in 1e/2e could not use sharp or piercing weapons. Other class variants required specific behavior of the adherents. These were, quite literally, roleplaying rules, because they were rules that dictated how one should roleplay a character. I am hesitant to say these rules "facilitated" roleplay, except insofar as they may have reminded hack-n-slash parties to ocassionally act in character lest they get dinged by these rules.

These rules exist in all editions of D&D. They were mildly prevalent in OD&D/BECMI, strong in 1e/2e/3e and almost non-existent in 4e.

Now, to the OP's question... whether one "needs" roleplaying rules depends on which of these categories you discuss:

• I think some form of rules for Combat-Free Skills is necessary, though I don't think it needs a lot of detail.
  
• I think rules for Background Flair and Obscure Knowledge are nice, but not "necessary".
  
• I am deeply ambivalent about Personal Interaction rules. At one extreme, it removes roleplaying. Rather than speaking in character, players just say "I Bluff my way past the Guard" or "I seduce the wench with Diplomacy". At the other extreme, it punishes people who lack acting chops. A middle ground must be sought and that is always a delicate balancing act.
  
• I am not a fan of Roleplaying Restrictions. I don't think they are necessary, except, at most, as part of a specific campaign setting built around the restriction.

 

[Jester David]

Originally posted by wrecan:

I always thought New Coke was marketing ploy.... And I'm totally serious. No conspiracy theorist here.

The idea that New COke was a "marketing ploy" is a conspiracy theory and a bad one.

The Chairman of Coke lost his job over this. When he died of cancer several years later, he was still insisting to anybody who would listen that New Coke was better tasting than "Coke Classic".

Coke had to do serious rebuilding of relationships with its bottlers.

In the end, all that happened is Coke ended up with the same market share it had vis-a-vis Pepsi before the New Coke flare up. New Coke sales hurt Coke for one quarter and the re-release of Coke Classic made up for the losses.

As marketing ploys go, it was a flop. They lost money and then broke even.

Sometimes companies make mistakes. New Coke was a mistake. It didn't kill the company, but it was a mistake.

they knew New Coke sucked when they put it on the shelves. It sucked on purpose.

No, it didn't. The developer had market research and taste tests and focus groups that said this was going to be huge. They thought they were going to cripple Pepsi. They had no idea it would almost sink them.

The "They planned it all along" theory has got to be one of the best counter-spins I've ever seen.

"Hey, guys, we really messed up. Now, not only is the brand tarnished, the chairman canned, our bottlers in revolt, but our reputations as some of the most brilliant minds in business is ruined. What do we do?"
"I know! Let's tell everyone it was a 'marketing ploy' and we intended it all along. We'll call it free publicity."
"Brilliant!"
"But guys, anybody who looks at the sales data will see that we lost money."
"Shh. Nobody looks at data but MBA candidates. And they're morons. After all, some MBA told us to release New Coke."
"Good point."