Strategy or role-playing game?

[wedgeski]

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.

Penalties?! You apply this same principle to the fighter swinging his longsword.. how?

 

[BryonD]

Penalties?! You apply this same principle to the fighter swinging his longsword.. how?

-2 to hit if you don't actually try to punch the DM of course.

 

[vulcan_idic]

What I don't care for at all, though, is having a DM claim the right to decide whether my character succeeds or fails based on that DM's evaluation of my "performance" as a player...which sounds to me like what you're proposing. I say good riddance to that school of gaming thought!

I have to say I agree completely with this statement. Social interactions aren't just die rolls and should be played... but that being said, I am not my character, I'm just trying to play him. If the character would be diplomatic in the situation, and I play that - however poorly due to my inept acting skills or lack of actualy diplomatic talent myself - then I am roleplaying that character, and to the best of my ability. The reason the skill is there is to adjudicate whether or not my character's skills, not my own, are equal to the task at hand.

Strategy is an inherent part of the game. I would think that, for example, a fighter character - a character who makes physical combat a part of their lives and lives and dies by the sword - should as a matter of course think tactically and strategically, it's what keeps them alive. Talk to a real life Marine, SEAL, Ranger, or Army person and I would fully expect them to think tactically as a matter of habit even when off duty - when you train hard and heavy every day it simply becomes second nature. Not thinking that way would seem to me to be not roleplaying in many instances. Of course, YMMV.

 

[StupidSmurf]

Anybody who thinks that 3/3.5 are more wargamey (word???) than its predecessors hasn't taken a good look at the original AD&D, and to an extent, 2ndEd. To wit:

Weapon speed factors??
Bonuses for certain weapons against certain armor types?? ("Yes, your leather armor isn't as effective against this Bec De Corbin. The wielder gets a +2.")
Turns/Rounds/Segments?? (1 turn = ten minutes...1 round = 1 minute....1 segment = 6 seconds). Very precise measurements there, like you'd find in a wargame.

And let's not forget that D&D's ancestor was wargaming, specifically, miniatures!

Oh yeah, and as far as social interaction, I don't give penalties if the actual player doesn't have the words, but I ask that, to use a social skill, the player at least make some kind of effort to play out what's being said. Any effort! If the player actually impresses me with an amazing, well-thought speech, I'll give a circumstance bonus between +2 (great job) and +4 (pardon me, I need a Kleenex...that was beautiful! ::sniff:.

 

[Storm Raven]

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.

Other than people who like to go on tirades condemning game mechanics for social skills, I don't think anyone makes that claim. In previous editions, the "role-play" aspect of D&D depended entirely on the personal skills of the player, while the "combat" aspect of the game depended entirely on game mechanics. The big difference now is that we have a game mechanic for differentiating people who are bad at social skills from people who are good at them. I fail to see why people think it makes sense to have slovenly, out of shape players use rule mechanics to pretend they can fight like ninjas, but it is somehow bad to allow shy or socially awkward players use rule mechanics to pretend they are great orators.

And don't even get me started on the inflated importance that the rules have taken on with the players now. Before, things not covered in the rules were up to the GM, and so players generally had less of a problem with the GM's ruling.

You are constructing a rose-colored fantasy regarding the past if you think that is the case. There were never more vociferous arguments than when the DM in 1e/2e made an off the cuff ruling that some player thought was "unrealistic".

Now, I've seen players get belligerent with GMs on what should be happening in the game, or they feel somehow cheated if the GM were to make a GM call instead of using a rule.

Yet more unsupported hyperbole. I have had no such experience in the several years that I have played and DMed 3e/3.5e. I usually follow the rules though, because that makes the game more consistent, and doesn't spring stuff on the players out of left field.

I don't know if there's just more of a PCs vs. GM mentality nowadays, or what, but I've definitely noticed a change. Maybe it's just the gaming circles I've been in lately, but sheesh. My current campaign is ending sometime before February next year, and it's going to be a cold day in hell before I gm for some of my current players again - if I pick up the D&D 3.x GMing mantle again at all.

Yeah, it was never PC vs. DM before. :\ I mean, Knights of the Dinner Table is out there, and that doesn't make fun of 1e type gaming at all now does it? Oh wait, I think it does. Especially since Hackmaster is basically just 1e D&D with some added mechanics.

I think it's just you, or a small subset of gamers like you. I have never seen these problems that you claim are endemic to 3e/3.5e.

 

[Henry]

"I bluff(/diplomacy/intimidate) my way past him, I roll a 34." intensive role play facilitated by those rules there.

I'll give an example.

In a one-shot this year, I played a woman buccaneer with a +14 bluff skill. I figured that seduction was a good way to get past two guards who watched a ship's gangplank, to get them where my allies could knock them out.

Turns out that I SUCK playing a woman trying to seduce a man. However, Carlotta (the PC) knew a heck of a lot more about femine wiles than I did, so the DM called for a Bluff check, assessed a penalty for my less-than-stellar "you wanna?" approach, and we went forward.

Had I been asked to continue playing out that little uncomfortable scene, all we would have accomplished is more pain and suffering.

 

[Odhanan]

Is there something about 3e that diminishes the importance of role-playing?

Not in the three core rulebooks. I like many things in RPGs, and role-playing immersion is just one of them. Strategy is another. Painting minis and building cool set-ups is another. Writing backgrounds, coming up with cool ideas, and enjoying the food people bring at the game session are yet other things I like about it. I truly think you can have strategy and role-playing in a single session. They are not exclusive towards one another.

The opinion they oppose each other by essence comes from the sources of RPGs, when suddenly guys concidered the minis on the table with the first person and thought "hey, this isn't a wargame anymore, that's a ... a... role-playing game!"

RPGs have evolved from there to find an identity of their own. Some started to promote character immersion and ambiance, to point the finger at "powergamers" and "leveling-up". To concider RPGs as something of an art. Call of Cthulhu became the Holy Grail of these people at one time (and let's face it, it's still a kick-ass game, so I don't mean to bash it). (Much) later came a myriad of immersive RPGs, among which the World of Darkness series definitely was a corner stone.

Meanwhile, some people went down another path. RPG systems had to be as precise as they could be. Believability went through a system that represented reality with the most accuracy, first. These people went through RoleMaster and rules-heavy games.

In many ways, D&D3 is like a cousin, or a bastard son, of RoleMaster. Like a RM lite, without critical tables and rolls without limit, a d20 instead of d100, but still fairly comparable to RM (stats generating bonuses applied to skills, skill points per character levels, myriad of character classes and so on). Add to this the design concept of pleasing the D&D fans out there who loved miniatures, and you have the implementation of a movement and combat tactics & strategy into the game.

The guys of the "immersion" school see that as a shame and a great step backwards for the "art of role-playing".

I think they're wrong. Wrong because one "school" is not superior to another. There is no universally best way to enjoy RPGs. If there is such as thing as a "right way", this is whichever way pleases most the people around the game table and of course, it varies greatly from table to table. The rest is egotistic diatribs.

I think D&D went back to its roots while incorporating some of the experience gained with other RPG experiments (like an integrated skills system, for one). I think it's good, because D&D didn't forget its identity and what makes it fun (fun as in "game" ) for so many people.

 

[Mallus]

I fail to see why people think it makes sense to have slovenly, out of shape players use rule mechanics to pretend they can fight like ninjas, but it is somehow bad to allow shy or socially awkward players use rule mechanics to pretend they are great orators.

Its actually pretty simple. Requiring slovenly out-of-shape gamers to act out lethal hand-to-hand combats around your dining room table will land you in jail. Requiring them to talk will not... You can play out the talking. Its as simple as that.

How do you feel about giving players who are awful strategists something like Knowledge: Planning, and reducing all in-game PC scheming to a skill check?

 

[Ashrum the Black]

Okay, I'm in the minority here. But yes, to me 3.x DOES feel more wargamey. It's the almost fanatical reliance to a battle map and minitures I think that does it to me. In 2e and 1e days we played and never used mini's. We tossed fireballs and let the DM describe the effect it has.

Today the party wizard agonises for five minutes on the best place to toss the fireball. Just like the guy trying to place his blast marker for an whirlwind missle shot in warhammer 40K. This relaice on what is the best way to get to my opponent without atracting an AOO, setting self up for the +2 because the guys flanked. That kind of tacticle thinking was never there when we had no battle map. We relied on the DM to describe the scene and we described our actions.

From that respect yes it IS more tacticle and wargamey. Could the game have been played this way in 1e and 2e? Sure, but the rules didn't seem to force it as much as the current ones do. Myself, I could wiggle out of the need with osme thought, but a new player is quickly going to find things don't work wthout a grid map and tokens. YMMV of course.

-Ashrum

 

[Li Shenron]

Is there something about 3e that diminishes the importance of role-playing?

I think it's the players that have changed over time.