D&D General Styles of Roleplaying and Characters

[Campbell]

@Oofta

The issue I personally have is you seem to be implying a host of personal failings must be involved to have a preference for social mechanics. Not a difference in perspective, techniques working differently for different people, or just wanting different sorts of experiences. You say you do not mean to be insulting, but then you talk about social mechanics like a crutch or imply a desire for them means you do not trust the people you play with.

You also make a ton of assumptions on how games you do not play, have not run, have no interest in learning about must work. That's my primary issue. Do you. If you are happy with how you do things that's all you have to say.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Which is what I repeatedly keep stating. It's a personal opinion. It's never been about other games or people's preferences.

The last in the exchange was a good example. The one prior, even if your opinion, was a statement that is extremely arguable even as opinion because it rests on some assumptions that aren't true -- you aren't better at "realistically" representing character than a mechanic, you're just different. Like the difference is a very defensible opinion -- I wholly support that you might like one over the other. The problem isn't that you have a preference, it's the basis for those that you're presenting. This is a discussion forum, and if you say you like Ice cream because of the way that they get ice cream from artic cows, expect that to be challenged not because you like ice cream but because of the supporting statements.

I mean, if you care why people keep challenging you on this. If you don't, okay, but don't expect it to change.

 

[Oofta]

@Oofta

The issue I personally have is you seem to be implying a host of personal failings must be involved to have a preference for social mechanics. Not a difference in perspective, techniques working differently for different people, or just wanting different sorts of experiences. You say you do not mean to be insulting, but then you talk about social mechanics like a crutch or imply a desire for them means you do not trust the people you play with.

You also make a ton of assumptions on how games you do not play, have not run, have no interest in learning about must work. That's my primary issue. Do you. Just do not tell me how my games function.

I don't know what to say. I get irritated when people tell me that my opinion isn't valid followed shortly by telling me that other games are not just different but better.

Better and worse will almost always be subjective on this particular topic.

But this is a never ending cycle. I state my preference and people tell me I don't know what I'm talking about. Once every couple hundred or so posts, someone actually gives a somewhat concise explanation of what the rules look like in other games. I appreciate those examples when they are given. But if I try to explain where I'm coming from? Suddenly I'm criticizing everyone that wants something else.

Different people want different things from games. I don't want hard rules beyond what we have for social interactions. I don't think it would be a good direction for D&D in general. Feel free to differ.

 

[Umbran]

As for the last paragraph, my thinking is that some things you might want a game to do has to come from the people to be done authentically, and therefore need a light touch from the system,

Yes, but "light" is a relative term, not an objective one. Light, as compared to what? If you are used to "nothing," then to start with, anything will seem heavy, sure. But one can get used to a lot of different things. I mean, it isn't like combat systems are simple and smooth the first time we pick them up, either.

There is another matter to consider - our own creativity, which I expect is often lacking in this space. In our own games, if the ruleset is our GM's head, the only results one will ever see from any particular topic are... our GM's concepts.

Our games regularly have major fantastical elements come out of all sorts of mechanical resolution. We, in fact, pay designers to generate systems to do new and different fantastical things, because we recognize that we cannot and will not think of all the neat stuff that might happen on its own.

So, how many of the GMs who reject social rules have actually had something magical or fantastic result from social interaction? If we haven't written down the rules for it, I strongly suspect the answer for the vast majority of GMs is... none. Almost never happens. I daresay, while we allow our barbarians to cleave ogres in twain with a single blow, and our wizards can move mountains, our social interactions... are entirely mundane. There is, for example, exactly zero power to be found in True Love in the vast majority of our games, though it is a huge player in the fairy tale space. Most of us will not even have the possibility enter our heads if a rules system does not include it. Our social interaction resolutions are thoroughly mundane and result in slightly lower prices, or a few bits of information.

How many folks here have nodded when folks say that Bards should be half-casters? That'd be a lot more plausible and supportable, if their were rules for their social skills that would fill in for the Enchantment spells. Leaving this area empty is basically abandoning a design space that could differentiate characters more.

e.g. I have a lot of trouble with games that place mechanics in our character's emotional space because I tend to have a good instinctual grasp on how I want to 'write' my character at any given moment and getting into that spirit.

So, I guess I have to reiterate - I am not arguing that any particular person ought to pick up such rules. I am speaking about their reasons for existing and utility in the broader market. So, arguments of the form, "I don't like it" are perfectly valid reasons for you to not use them, but don't speak to why/whether they should exist.

Some people have difficulty with what i find easy, and vice versa but to my mind that makes the role of rules in understanding any given game much more nebulous.

And you're supposed to understand a game... by something other than its rules? By what, do tell, are you supposed to understand what a game is supposed to do? The proof is in the pudding, not in the marketing-copy.

 

[Lanefan]

This isn't presented as an opinion: "If you have a set of systematic rules then people will tend to play to the rules, not to the person they're interfacing with."

Which is fine, as it's a true statement.

Eviodence exists in D&D history. Pre late-2e (or 3e, for most) there was no codified skill system; players often just tried whatever they thought of and the DM came up with a ruling (often informed by some sort of die roll). Sure it revolved around DM fiat, but it was way more freeform and - for lack of a better term - natural.

Once 3e arrived with its hard-coded skill system, players changed their approach to suit the rules; they tried to shoehorn their actions into using those skills they had points in and tended not to try anything involving a skill they'd put no points into. Freeform went out the window.

Hard-coded social rules would inevitably give the same result: players would meta-adjust their in-character roleplaying in order to (usually) give themselves the best position (or best odds, for rolls) the rules allowed. I for one would see this as a large backward step away from freeform in-character roleplaying.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Yes, but "light" is a relative term, not an objective one. Light, as compared to what? If you are used to "nothing," then to start with, anything will seem heavy, sure. But one can get used to a lot of different things. I mean, it isn't like combat systems are simple and smooth the first time we pick them up, either.

There is another matter to consider - our own creativity, which I expect is often lacking in this space. In our own games, if the ruleset is our GM's head, the only results one will ever see from any particular topic are... our GM's concepts.

Our games regularly have major fantastical elements come out of all sorts of mechanical resolution. We, in fact, pay designers to generate systems to do new and different fantastical things, because we recognize that we cannot and will not think of all the neat stuff that might happen on its own.

So, how many of the GMs who reject social rules have actually had something magical or fantastic result from social interaction? If we haven't written down the rules for it, I strongly suspect the answer for the vast majority of GMs is... none. Almost never happens. I daresay, while we allow our barbarians to cleave ogres in twain with a single blow, and our wizards can move mountains, our social interactions... are entirely mundane. There is, for example, exactly zero power to be found in True Love in the vast majority of our games, though it is a huge player in the fairy tale space. Most of us will not even have the possibility enter our heads if a rules system does not include it. Our social interaction resolutions are thoroughly mundane and result in slightly lower prices, or a few bits of information.

How many folks here have nodded when folks say that Bards should be half-casters? That'd be a lot more plausible and supportable, if their were rules for their social skills that would fill in for the Enchantment spells. Leaving this area empty is basically abandoning a design space that could differentiate characters more.



So, I guess I have to reiterate - I am not arguing that any particular person ought to pick up such rules. I am speaking about their reasons for existing and utility in the broader market. So, arguments of the form, "I don't like it" are perfectly valid reasons for you to not use them, but don't speak to why/whether they should exist.



And you're supposed to understand a game... by something other than its rules? By what, do tell, are you supposed to understand what a game is supposed to do? The proof is in the pudding, not in the marketing-copy.

Huh, that really hasn't been my experience-- I've never really known anyone who needed the rules system to point them at the kinds of stories they want to tell, usually they have the fantasy of what they want in their heads and get frustrated when the mechanics don't happen to take them there. Even when we were in high school, back in our 4e days, our social interactions and roleplaying picked up elements from our favorite stories and media, and it was plenty for the books to essentially offer advice and permission to tell those kinds of stories, you could be better or worse at it than another player, but that was a matter of confidence and inspiration. Something like the power of love or friendship, or defiance against fate, or whatever we wanted to express was a common feature. That doesn't seem to be unique or even rare, my understanding is that most new players to the hobby seem to perform it all quite happily in a game that doesn't have those kinds of mechanics for social interaction (5e) in the first place. You'd be hard pressed to say that for most GMs it just doesn't happen, and since the how to do it is a natural consequence of the media we all consume, I suspect anyone can.

Similarly, free form roleplayers do all kinds of the stuff you're talking about, but they only do it off the 'marketing copy' since they're usually just absorbing the thing they're roleplaying, taking some of the conventions and ideas from franchises or story concepts and spinning off in their own direction. Like, Fizzy Bubbles only ever really worked off people seeing the video game and anime stories of pokemon trainers and then beginning to roleplay in the milieu, with any combat systems arising later as tools to help them resolve over the awkwardness of a pokemon battle (and indeed, it existed in the context of RPs that did the same thing with no combat system.) A potter RP, is more or less people getting excited about the prospect of playing wizards in Hogwarts, everybody creates an idea of what kind of Wizard character they want to play, and dive straight into it, with someone doing something, someone else narrating themselves there and responding, and so forth. Its literally like a conversation right here on enworld, you see what someone else wrote and you respond, with everyone keeping the theme in their head to inform their idea of what the mutual fiction is like.

Its kind of interesting, because your description invokes Edwards infamous 'brain damage' posts which characterize these kinds of mechanics as a 'prosthetic' for storytelling for people who can't (which in your case, seems to be 'most people' and in his case 'gamers who have been broken by games up to this point') my sense after reading that post was that it was why the kinds of games he was praising could be hard for me to play, they're prosthetics for doing things that came relatively natural, or things that felt, to my tradition of understanding, as something that anyone can naturally do with a little encouragement or training. The popularity of 5e as a 'collaborative storytelling game' seems to suggest people mostly feel comfortable with the idea of doing it without mechanics, and I feel as though the current zeitgeists aversion to spending time learning rules might actually work against the idea of such mechanics in a 'What, I have to use these systems to roleplay!?'

My own experience of them is that I have to put myself in a different roleplaying headspace to enjoy them, where I basically turn off my roleplaying brain and focus on what the mechanics are telling me, and then performing that-- in that sense the prosthetic analogy makes sense, because I have to inhibit my own ability (that Edwards would suggest not everyone has, but I would suggest is simply a muscle in need of practice) to accommodate the middleman of the mechanics within that space. Interestingly, I've even observed this to happen to other people in a combat context, where they want to use their character's fictional abilities in a raw creative way that makes sense to them, but doesn't really match the gameplay of the mechanic in question-- we have to temper that to keep the resolution as something compatible with the rest of the resolution as presented by the system, but in principle its the same thing as our freeform social interaction, and exactly how we performed combat in a freeform context.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

@The-Magic-Sword

Were the character interactions you're describing PC-to-PC, PC-to-NPC or both? I think these two sorts of interactions raise different questions about systems. Just as one example, the GM is available as a referee, if necessary, in PC-to-PC interaction. But is not in the same position for PC-to-NPC given that the GM has a stake in one side of that!

Both, we would functionally GM for each other with an informal social structure being the only guide, so in other words I might introduce an NPC for you to interact with, you might introduce an NPC for me to interact with, either of us might introduce an NPC for ourselves to interact with in a scene intended to convey exposition, or exposit our characters. Often RPs would develop natural leaders (with OP, often formalized as the thread owner being the most likely default person to present larger problems and NPCs for us all to play off of and with) interestingly, this made something like whether you could say, dunk on an NPC in a scene showing off your badassery, an actual negotiation where someone will just jump into out-of-character, and be like 'hold up, you wouldn't be able to do that, also I'm going somewhere with this' and then depending on your clout, their clout, and your ability to respect each other it would resolve in some way. But thats also why the etiquette includes Gmodding, when you fire a gun, the bullet landing might not be yours to decide-- you don't know if they can dodge bullets, and if someone is being a wangrod about it, the rest of the posters just tell them to suck it up and take the bullet or something.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't know what to say. I get irritated when people tell me that my opinion isn't valid followed shortly by telling me that other games are not just different but better.

This is the second time you've made a similar claim and, for the second time, I have to ask where this is happening. I know I haven't once done this, but your responses to me are the same as to others. I haven't noticed it, because I actually have a bug in my ear about this kind of thing and have gone round with people I otherwise agree with on preference but disagree with on claiming superiority. To all the evidence I've seen, the latter here is just another statement of your opinion, and one, again, not well supported by facts.

Better and worse will almost always be subjective on this particular topic.

But this is a never ending cycle. I state my preference and people tell me I don't know what I'm talking about. Once every couple hundred or so posts, someone actually gives a somewhat concise explanation of what the rules look like in other games. I appreciate those examples when they are given. But if I try to explain where I'm coming from? Suddenly I'm criticizing everyone that wants something else.

Different people want different things from games. I don't want hard rules beyond what we have for social interactions. I don't think it would be a good direction for D&D in general. Feel free to differ.

You've never once been told you don't know what you're talking about when you state what you like. What you get pushback on are the sweeping generalizations you use to support your statements of preference that are often wrong as a matter of fact but equal often as wrong as matters of experience. Things you say are outright wrong to people that have that experience, and it's not a matter of preference or opinion -- you say things that are incorrect quite often when talking about how you don't like other games/approaches. And this is despite lots of attempts to help you understand -- attempts you dismiss or deflect or ignore. But, yet, you persist in making these supporting statements to your preference statements. And then, when challenged, you play the bait-and-switch and complain that it's your preferences that are being attacked rather than the actual target of the challenge -- the incorrect supporting statements.

Again, if you care to understand why you continually get pushback here, it's this.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't know what to say. I get irritated when people tell me that my opinion isn't valid followed shortly by telling me that other games are not just different but better.

So if I said “I don’t like 5E because it requires that I punch my friends in the face” and then you followed up with “It doesn’t require you to punch anyone”, do you think it would be reasonable for me to say “I’m entitled to my opinion!”?

That’s more what’s happening here than anyone saying your opinion is wrong.

Hard-coded social rules would inevitably give the same result: players would meta-adjust their in-character roleplaying in order to (usually) give themselves the best position (or best odds, for rolls) the rules allowed. I for one would see this as a large backward step away from freeform in-character roleplaying.

So what? Do you roll your eyes when the party encounters a trap and it’s the thief who steps forward to deal with it?

Leveraging strengths is a huge part of many games, including pretty much every edition of D&D. Why is it a problem in the social sphere?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

So what? Do you roll your eyes when the party encounters a trap and it’s the thief who steps forward to deal with it?

Leveraging strengths is a huge part of many games, including pretty much every edition of D&D. Why is it a problem in the social sphere?

In my opinion, I think that the specific pushback you get when it comes to D&D and "social skills" or "social combat" or the codifying the "social sphere" can be explained by some combination of the following:

A. Tradition. Yes, we like to mock tradition, but it's a relevant factor. It was treated differently in the past, and people wanted it to continue to be treated differently.

B. Player agency. This is slightly more subtle; but D&D has usually had a strict delineation between the player having complete control over the player's thought and actions, and the DM having control over describing the results. Implementation of social challenges (especially when it is reciprocal) can disturb that balance - while many other games consider it a normal thing for a player to do something based on a roll (even if it is considered a complication or adds to the story), in D&D that would be considered anathema.

C. The dichotomy of D&D. D&D has always been weird; to the extent that it is a big tent" game, it incorporates many influences. I think that there is value in having a hybrid game that includes both strongly codified combat, and more free-form roleplaying, for large numbers of groups for the reason that it appeals to more diverse groups of people.