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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mark CMG" data-source="post: 5655324" data-attributes="member: 10479">I don't disagree that (O)D&D, 1E and 2E "were just as hack and slash capable as 3rd and 4th ed."  I will also note that early games that I played at Gencon in the Seventies included DMs from the 'inner circle' that included both types of games.  And, remember, these were tourney games such as the big AD&D Open in the late Seventies and early Eighties rather than campaigns, and so lent themselves more naturally to a kind of play that required expediency of play toward goals if you were interested in completing the scenario and moving on to further rounds of the tourney.  Roleplaying in such situations unless called for by the DM to resolve an encounter was sometimes shunned by players as superfluous.Myself, I was a wargamer before D&D was released to the broader market in 1974, though this did include both hex-based board wargaming and miniatures wargaming, some of which was fantasy style (including the original Chainmail).  I still do all of that plus tabletop roleplaying games since D&D was finally available.  But I also went on to do stand up, improv, study theatre in college (one of my undergrad degrees is in Communications, Media, and Theatre, the other English), plus did about fifteen years in the non-equity theatre scene in Chicago, mostly acting but some directing and playwrighting.  As such, I've always had a foot in both camps, if we can draw a wavy, hazy line between them just for the purposes of this exchange.  Alongside that, my experience with rolelplaying games in private longterm homebrew campaigns and in many conventions, gamedays, and other public forums has shown me a great degree of diversity in forms of play and levels of immersion in RPGing.  I really do understand where you are coming from when you say that the oral traditions of particular groups can be very different from one 'camp' to the other.I think there has always been this elusive Holy Grail of game design regarding presentation of roleplaying, early on because it was little understood and through current times because it is difficult to express easily or well.  I'd like, however, to see the flagship product of the industry take a more serious stab at that presentation, even if for some groups the information isn't used in its entirety.  I was in one group back in the day that wouldn't have dreamed of playing without 'weapon speeds' but never spoke in character and others where most players did their best at emulating one kind of British dialect or another and rarely rolled a die.  They can both be fun ways to play, and they represent fair extremes of play styles, but I would really like to see a game that puts roleplaying more front and center in all aspects of the rules as presented if it is going to call itself a roleplaying game.</blockquote>

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