Strategy or role-playing game?

[LostSoul]

There's as much role-play in D&D as you/your group wants.

If you want to really push role-playing, you might want to try out a game that rewards players for role-playing. With D&D, you can still give out XP or loot for players who get into their roles, but that just makes them better at killing things and taking their stuff, not at role-playing.

And that's why D&D gets called a videogame. It's designed around the "orc and pie" scenario. But you can put as much role-play into that scene as you want, so I don't think that the videogame criticism holds.

I guess I'm saying that 1) D&D isn't designed to make role-playing its primary focus, but 2) there's nothing in D&D that conflicts with role-playing.

As opposed to now, where you pull out your "Diplomacy sword" and engage in social combat. And if you tell your players that they should roleplay their way through the encounter rather than just rolling, you are apparently a bad DM.

Well, if you didn't tell your players that you'd be house-ruling Diplomacy (or Bluff/Sense Motive), that's not a good thing.

 

[LostSoul]

I think D&D gives you the tools to run the game any way you want - strategy mode, role-playing mode, or something in between.

I don't think you could get strategy out of D&D. Most of the choices you make come in two forms - character creation/development and combat. You could choose to play a character who is created according to character type, and may or may not be effective; and you could choose to make poor decisions in combat; but your character would be penalized (or at the least, not rewarded) for that.

Unless you scrapped the CR/XP system entirely (which is, I'd say, the underpinning of D&D).

 

[Krypter]

It's not that the rules per se in 3E are more oriented towards wargaming or roleplaying. It's that 1E had far _fewer_ rules, and so players and GMs had to/could roleplay to fill that ambiguous space. Now we have 10 rules for everything, so that "empty space" has, in many cases, been filled by rules. Neither rule system is terribly conducive to roleplaying, but 1E or Basic was at least a lot simpler. Just look at the stat blocks. Then again, 3E rules make sense where many 1E/2E rules did not.

Of course, as in any situation, this is altered by the attitude of the GM and players. Heck, I did my some of my best roleplaying with a coin and marker while on forced marches in the Boy Scouts!

 

[Beale Knight]

As a DM, you can help to prevent using social skills in place of role-playing by making your players role-play out the action. If they can't describe what they are doing, even to a little extent, then the character won't do it. Then, give bonuses to the social for good role-playing. This will both make the players role-play and rapidly encourage good role-playing.

I take this one step further. I also insist the player describe what their character is doing, and role-play it. While I give bonuses to the Diplomacy/Bluff/other social skill roll for good roleplaying, I also give penalties for bad role play. And by bad I don't mean that the player's trying but just isn't very good, I mean half-assed attempts. If someone's going to depend on their skill bonus without giving a role playing a good attempt, their skill check is going to suffer for it. This goes a way to side step players that depend on the "Diplomacy Sword" (great term Icy Cool) at the expense of actual role-play.

 

[Reynard]

I take this one step further. I also insist the player describe what their character is doing, and role-play it. While I give bonuses to the Diplomacy/Bluff/other social skill roll for good roleplaying, I also give penalties for bad role play. And by bad I don't mean that the player's trying but just isn't very good, I mean half-assed attempts. If someone's going to depend on their skill bonus without giving a role playing a good attempt, their skill check is going to suffer for it. This goes a way to side step players that depend on the "Diplomacy Sword" (great term Icy Cool) at the expense of actual role-play.

Obviously, you can whatever you want at your table, but I find this kind of GMing to be extremely irritating, and I avoid it when I run a game. I reward a good solid attempt, an entertaining monologue, or what have you with a +2. I also reward a decent plan for disarming a trap, or a gee-whiz cool description of chandelier swinging, too. But just like the Diplomacy skill, the Disable Device and Tumble skills belong to the PC, not the player. It is unfair to penalize the player or the character because talking happens to be the one thing both of them can do. That's why there is a skill system in the first place.

But that doesn't mean you don't encourage role-playing, critical thinking or exciting action descriptions. that's what the bonuses are for. hopefully, especially with the new players, succeeding more often because they got 'into it' will build a habit of emracing the role-playing part of the game. If not, though, it is still a game, no more and no less.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

It is unfair to penalize the player or the character because talking happens to be the one thing both of them can do. That's why there is a skill system in the first place.

Quoted for truth.

Brad

 

[Umbran]

I think 3.5 gives a GM more freedom in determining what level of roleplay is appropriate for his campaign.

Yea and verily, the truth has been spoken here. Absorb it, and wisdom shall be thine.

 

[Beale Knight]

Obviously, you can whatever you want at your table, but I find this kind of GMing to be extremely irritating, and I avoid it when I run a game. I reward a good solid attempt, an entertaining monologue, or what have you with a +2. I also reward a decent plan for disarming a trap, or a gee-whiz cool description of chandelier swinging, too. But just like the Diplomacy skill, the Disable Device and Tumble skills belong to the PC, not the player. It is unfair to penalize the player or the character because talking happens to be the one thing both of them can do. That's why there is a skill system in the first place.

But that doesn't mean you don't encourage role-playing, critical thinking or exciting action descriptions. that's what the bonuses are for. hopefully, especially with the new players, succeeding more often because they got 'into it' will build a habit of emracing the role-playing part of the game. If not, though, it is still a game, no more and no less.

I think you may have misunderstood me, because from what you say here we seem to agree. I put in a penalty for social skill checks if the player simply says "I bluff him" or "I use diplomacy here" without even putting an effort into the roleplay part of it, by explaining how
he's bluffing or saying something diplomatic "in character." Maybe I should have said lazy role-play instead of bad role-play.

If a player tries, but isn't a skilled or experienced enough role-player to do a good job of explaining how he's bluffing or saying something diplomatic "in character," then I *don't* apply a penalty, because I *am* trying to encourage role-playing. It's the effort that matters to me most, even if the player's result is less than stellar. A player is trying but still learning to express himself well in character, but who's playing a bard with an 18 charisma and lots of ranks in diplomacy, is going to see their bard do well socially unless the dice are just all kinds of cruel that night.

However, an experienced and confident role-player that delivers a stunning performance of their bard's speech is even more likely to succeed, because I'm going to give a bonus for the player's stunning performance. I don't see this as much different than giving extra XP for the pious fighter whos player actually shouts out praise and prayer to his character's diety in the middle of a battle.

 

[diaglo]

Interestingly, while the older D&D versions were strategy oriented, the fact that the newer versions go through a lot of trouble to codify as many types of activities in combat as possible mean that some people perceive it as being more tactically oriented. In addition, the fact that mechanical character development has gone simply from "this is your class & race" to "this is your class, race, feats, skills, templates, etc." means that people perceive it as more strategy oriented as well. The truth is, there's as much roleplaying capability as there ever was; in fact, there's as much as if we were LARPing cops and robbers as kids.

i'm with Henry on this mostly.

in older editions the first thing the referee determined behind the screen was placement of encounter and reaction. reaction could be modified by roleplay if the two sides saw each other.

the newer editions still do this.

the biggest problem i have noticed is how players perceive the rules and their use. much more time was spent roleplaying the parlay or exchange or even taunting during battle in the older edition games i played. the newer edition games i have seen break down to Voadam's example. even experienced players still say: "i roll diplomacy." like it means they don't have to roleplay

 

[wedgeski]

Last night, my DM made the comment that third edition makes D&D a strategy game, so I asked him what it was before 3e, and he said it was a role-playing game. Previous DMs have made similar comments, stating that 3e is designed to be easily functional with computer games.

Where on *earth* do people get this notion? If your friend thinks that the 3ed D&D rules were easier to integrate into, say, The Temple of Elemental Evil, than the 2ed rules were to integrate into, say, Baldur's Gate, I suggest he give Bioware a call and/or seek medical help!

To the point, 3ed gives more strategic options, but is no less a roleplaying game than it ever was.