Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 4898200" data-attributes="member: 3424">Sometimes, living on the other side of the world from most of the people involved in a discussion is a real pain. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />Anyhow...And this is where I would make the distinction: in a storytelling game, there is no need for a player to play just one character at a game session. However, if the activity is both a storytelling game AND a roleplaying game, then the player should (must?) have a character to roleplay. As mentioned in the actor/scriptwriter analogy, it is a matter of playing two distinct roles related to the same activity.There are some grey areas, though. Who has control over the PC's friends and family? How free is the DM to introduce elements that essentially contradict the PC's background by saying that the PC only knows part of the story? (E.g. "You thought you were an only child, but you actually have two half-orc half-brothers.") How free is the player to add elements to his background after the campaign begins, or add flavor elements to the game? (E.g. "Quillain orders the vegetable stew instead of the roast beef. The elven druids of his order do not eat meat during the winter solstice.")I personally do not see why the player cannot flesh out details of the campaign setting if it adds flavor to the game and does not detract from the challenge that the PCs face. For example, telling the DM that your PC would not have eaten the roast beef because of his elven druidic tradition after he tells you it has been poisoned is bad form, in my view.</blockquote>

Verification