D&D General Styles of Roleplaying and Characters

[Bill Zebub]

Another way of saying this is: the amount of "you" in a character can be anywhere from 0 to 100%. (One of my arguments is that it's impossible to reach 0%, but for the sake of this particular argument, I'm willing to pretend it is possible.)

So the question is, how much "not you" is necessary for a character to become interesting, both to you and to others? I don't think it's very much, and by far the larger factor is what you do with the parts that are different.

However, the argument I seem to be hearing (maybe I'm misunderstanding it?) is that "real Roleplaying is 0% you". And I just don't get how that could possibly be true. I do get that some people think it's a fun exercise to strive for 0%, and if that's your goal then that's your metric, and you should have fun with that. But that doesn't make it "real" or even "better" roleplaying.

In some ways I guess I'm critiquing Colville's argument...which admittedly I'm getting translated through the OP...that "2 dimensional roleplaying" is one-concept schtick, but suddenly "3 dimensional roleplaying" is not even you. In my book that would be "infinite dimension roleplaying", and there's a whole lotta gradations between 2 and infinity.

 

[aco175]

Anyone else reading the OP and hearing Matt in their heads. I was reading it with his pauses and pronunciation until I noticed it.

 

[Malmuria]

How does one bring a 3d character to the table in a meaningful way? If you are playing with a group that has 1d characters, your 3d character might show up as a spotlight hog, as pretentious, as anti-social, or just as something that exists in your head but not in the fiction of the world. This is the problem of the infamous 8 page backstory that no one else is interested in. To Roleplay in 3d, you need buy-in from the whole table.

Other problems:
Dungeon Delving with Adventurers: characters that delve into dangerous, underground lairs and/or who go on epic, defeat evil and save the world adventures are already particular sorts of people. Whatever motivation or backstories your character has, it has to work within those bounds.

Emergent Play: there is a difference between OC play where characters start out with a variety of narrative threads that the DM and group pulls on over the course of a campaign, and a more emergent style where the character starts out as 0d or 1d, but grows into three dimensions through interacting with the world. I don't think the former is more "sophisticated" than the latter, as both can be fairly difficult to pull off.

Genre: the unstated premise of the video is that interiority is 1) a transhistorical phenomenon and 2) available to any genre of storytelling. Is that true? Are characters like Achilles or Beowulf interesting and meaningful because of their rich, "3d" interiority, or because of their heroic actions in the world? Is fantasy the right genre for exploring themes of alienation or memory along the lines of Kafka or Proust?

System: yes, you can do anything with any system. But maybe consider how non-dnd games help players create 3d characters and worlds in a way that dnd does not.


Per that last point: I do watch Colvile's videos as they are interesting and entertaining and have been helpful. But his more recent videos are increasingly annoying me. The mashup of narrativist advice (as in this video) and gameist "tactical combat with grids" play that he seems to enjoy may work for him and others; godspeed. But it's annoying to me how solipsistic and dnd-centric his content is. He focuses on 5e, and now 4e, to the exclusion of all other games, including even talking about pathfinder. He talks about earlier editions of dnd by way of explaining them to his audience, but without referencing the osr at all. He barely even talks about other 3rd party 5e creators, outside of the people he hires for Arcadia. Not that he has to do any of that (though, given the size of his audience, it would be nice), but I find his arguments less compelling when they all circle back to the Colvillian approach to dnd.

 

[Mallus]

A staggeringly huge number of playwrights, novelists, screen-writers, and so forth have shown us that it is very possible to write characters who seem different from both each other and from the choices you personally would make. Stop trying to gatekeep that Roleplaying (as defined in the video) doesn't exist.

Right. But when they claim things like “the character wrote themselves“ or “the character told me who they were”, the writers are speaking figuratively. The authors exist (and thus have volition), their characters are fiction.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

My observation is that 3-dimensional characters can be especially fun to play, because their inner conflict can justify a wide range of decisions, there's a wide range of 'what they would do' in many situations, so you can still engage with the game as a game without breaking character.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Right. But when they claim things like “the character wrote themselves“ or “the character told me who they were”, the writers are speaking figuratively. The authors exist (and thus have volition), their characters are fiction.

ehhh, the concept of a muse and divine inspiration is classic, it may ultimately be the subconscious at work but plenty of writers, musicians, and other artists have experiences where they genuinely feel divorced from the authorship of their creation, and are instead recording something that feels as if its been presented to them by an exterior force. I've had that experience, and my understanding is that its what many authors are alluding to.

 

[bloodtide]

For one thing, I just don't believe it's psychologically possible to leave yourself behind and make decisions without your own subconscious intruding. It's just not how our brains work. There are mountains of research that show we don't make decisions for the reasons we think we do. Even that act of trying to avoid doing what you would do is, in a roundabout way, making a decision based on what you would do.

It is true that "leaving yourself behind" is a skill and not everyone can do it. But it is very possible. There are a couple hundred of us world wide with the skill......but sure nearly everyone else just blunders into everything as "themselves".

As one of the deep role playing people, I'd say the whole point of the game is that I want to role play someone 0% of myself. I'm myself most of the time: I want to play a game as someone else.

 

[Blue]

Interesting use of “gatekeep”.

In any event, I don’t think we are disagreeing. To me, the key word in what you wrote is “seem”. If what we are talking about is a character that seems outwardly interesting and coherent and driven by it’s own motivations, then I think we are successful.

But, in my opinion, what the actual motivations are, inside the players head, is entirely separate.

Pick a favorite character from a movie or book. Would it lessen your enjoyment to know that essential parts of that character were really the writer expressing their own self? And without knowing a lot about that person, how could you even tell?

I would say it's unrelated to what we are talking about, so not really important in this thread.

 

[Bill Zebub]

It is true that "leaving yourself behind" is a skill and not everyone can do it. But it is very possible. There are a couple hundred of us world wide with the skill......but sure nearly everyone else just blunders into everything as "themselves".

Is there a secret handshake?

But...I guess you probably aren't allowed to tell me, huh?

 

[Lanefan]

For one thing, I just don't believe it's psychologically possible to leave yourself behind and make decisions without your own subconscious intruding. It's just not how our brains work.

That doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't try to leave ourselves behind. Even partial success is better than nothing.

For example, imagine that I think, "Well, I happen to know there's a trap there, but avoiding that trap would be 'metagaming' and I don't want to do that, so I'll step on the trap because I think that's what my character would do." I'm really making the decision as the opposite of what I would do, and then slapping a "what my character would do" label on it.

First question: how and why do you-as-player know there's a trap there when your PC doesn't?

Here's where I see the problem:
1. It's a totally valid form of roleplaying to try (however quixotically) to make decisions as your character, not you.
2. However, that seems sometimes/often to get interpreted to mean that your character would definitely not do what you would do, especially if you happen to have knowledge that would help your character make good decisions.
3. And then from there, people seem to want to project these self-imposed rules on other players. To wit: "You are only making that decision because you have player knowledge. Your character would not do that." As if "what your character would do" is somehow deterministic. People make unpredictable decisions based on complex inputs, and there is no one answer. And god save me from a game where everybody is just supposed to do the most likely thing.

It's the whole meta-gaming argument again; and I think we already know we're on opposite sides there.

I just try to have my character do what it would do given its established personality and history. Further, "it's what the character would do" IMO gives full justification for anything; provided that what's being done is in fact in tune with the character's already-established patterns, history, etc.