What ever happened to "role playing?"

[Sargon the Kassadian]

Clarification (hopefully)

I did not mean to say powergamers and munchkins were "dumb", what I meant is that some "dumb" people at my school are powergamers and munchkins. They try to beat the DM in a contest of powergaming, coming up with an extremely powerful character and then complaining when the DM rules against them. They take every rule extremely literally: "Since my mount has improved evasion, if a 50,000 mile wide asteroid hits me dead on he/we can save and take no damage" That is a real example of what I would term stupidity. The DM would obviously overrule you and you would die. There are several powergamer/hacknslash types at my school that are very smart, but three or four of them use such twisted logic.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

I think Loki is disappointed with 3e and is blaming it on the dm. I have played with a lot worse dm's than what he described. Hell, that sounded like a fun game. I've ran across the "impassable cliff" before too. I ran a module where the pcs had to go to a certain place, but they wanted to cross the river instead, to cut some time off. Well, it was either let 'em cross and come up with 4 hours of adventure on the spot, or stop them from crossing somehow. So, I made the current incredibly tough, and threw random encounters at them every few minutes or so, until they got the picture. Railtroad? perhaps, but I work for a living, and didn't have time to provide for their taking that particular course of action. You can find a similar scenario in Kenzer's "Knight of the Dinner Table." Remember when BA had the huge fence with the cow behind it? The fence was there, so the group wouldn't go off-map and would get to the dungeon, but to the player's there HAD to be a reason that cow was being kept in such a high security area. Turns out the cow was just scenery.

Now these impassible, cliff, rivers, fences, may seem somewhat lame, but do any of us really want to spend the whole night with the dm running randomly generated terrain and rolling for random encounters? This advances the plot nowhere.

Now, what I meant by the rules thing is that I have seen to many players - excellent role players, btw, say "I bluff my way past the guard." No role playing, just that and a d20 roll. Then the dm has to tell them what there character said to get by! Now, not every game is like this, but imo, 3e promotes that kind of play. Hell, I'd give bonus eps to hear a character say "Me Grok, me here to make mighty weapons for Jarl. Me bring puny dwarf to be slave!" *points at the dwarf pc*

But, no, all I get is "I bluff the guard" *rolls d20*. :-(



*Disclaimer - This is not a bash on 3e, all editions have their weaknesses, but I honestly believe 3e DOES lend itself better to "roll playing." There are ways around it, but not if you play by the rules as written. *

 

[takyris]

Now, what I meant by the rules thing is that I have seen to many players - excellent role players, btw, say "I bluff my way past the guard." No role playing, just that and a d20 roll.

And? Why is that bad?

If it happens every time, and these "excellent roleplayers" feel that how they bluff is so unimportant that they just want to do it, then that says something about your campaign. Is asking them, "How would you like to bluff them?" that difficult? If it happens because the game is almost over for the night and they want to get inside, that sounds good. Getting past a minor area in order to get to the big interesting bit before you all have to go home.

Now, not every game is like this, but imo, 3e promotes that kind of play.

(emphasis mine)

I disagree. I believe that 3e allows this kind of play. Currently, the d20 Modern game I run has a... socially inept, awkward, unempathic, generally cold-fish guy. He's playing a Charismatic4/Strong2 character, the face-man for the party. Just as I wouldn't restrict someone from playing a Fighter because they weren't a martial artist or swordsman themselves, I shouldn't restrict this low-charisma player from playing a high-charisma character. Using the "I bluff him" approach allows me to do this. In fact, he sometimes throws in what his character says, and it's the most unhelpful, uncharismatic, awkward and socially inept stuff I've heard. I just nod and let him roll, and that determines what happens.

Rolling is not the death of roleplaying. Rolling adds to the roleplaying, because it lets people who don't have the ability to do what their character can do fake it for awhile. Maybe my low-charisma player will learn how to talk to people more effectively. Maybe he'll see how taking the time to formulate things more politely can affect the situation. Or maybe he won't, but he'll have fun playing a non-useful character.

Hell, I'd give bonus eps to hear a character say "Me Grok, me here to make mighty weapons for Jarl. Me bring puny dwarf to be slave!" *points at the dwarf pc*

But, no, all I get is "I bluff the guard" *rolls d20*. :-(

Have you let the players know this? Players don't naturally just start doing the "I bluff" stuff with no flavortext. They almost always have some reinforcement for doing so, either timewise or responsewise. I give out bonuses (or, in rare cases, penalties) for the rolls if the PCs flavor-up their bluff attempts, but really, having rolls for Diplomacy and Bluff has opened up certain aspects of the game to people who wouldn't be able to involve themselves in that part of the game before. It's a good thing. If your players aren't using it, that's not the game's problem, any more than it's the rules' fault if your fights run like "I miss, he hits, I hit, he hits, I hit, he dies".

Sometimes, in my campaign, we have unimportant side-plot fights run like that to keep things moving. But in the main fights? Wow, even if it's just two people swinging away at each other, we've got flavor-text and shouts and curses and energy and emotion. I'm not responsible for it -- my players are fantastic, and they bring a great element to the game -- but I do like to think that I helped make it accessible for them. And letting people roll for Charisma checks, without flavor-text if they don't feel comfortable, is another way to make the game accessible to people who wouldn't otherwise be able to enjoy it.

EDIT: Typos.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

*Disclaimer - This is not a bash on 3e, all editions have their weaknesses, but I honestly believe 3e DOES lend itself better to "roll playing." There are ways around it, but not if you play by the rules as written. *

I don't share that view. That is, the game now allows gamers that prefer that methodology to play the game easily enough; Beyond that, it's a matter of indicating what standard of role-play that a specific group desires and will use.

 

[James Heard]

I think Cowboys and Indians was a great game, until my friends got some lawn darts. THEN it became abusive and stopped encouraging roleplaying. Dammit, those guys were AFTER me just because I wasn't blonde and because that made me 'the indian', but it wasn't the fault of the lawndarts. Those guys were jerks anyways, the lawndarts just gave them a tool to use to wallop me. I'd give my daughter some lawndarts today. Why? Because it's not what you've got to show off what a jerk you are that makes you a jerk, and in the end lawndarts is just a game.

 

[milotha]

And? Why is that bad?

Rolling is not the death of roleplaying. Rolling adds to the roleplaying, because it lets people who don't have the ability to do what their character can do fake it for awhile. Maybe my low-charisma player will learn how to talk to people more effectively. Maybe he'll see how taking the time to formulate things more politely can affect the situation. Or maybe he won't, but he'll have fun playing a non-useful character.

Consider the other side of the coin. Consider that you like to role play out a situation, you have a decent relevant social skill, and all it boils down to is a dice roll. How does the encourage creative play? How does that encourage the players to think as their characters? How is a die roll more fun?

And on that note. I've gamed with martial artists, fencers, boxers and wrestlers. You had better bet that if someone knows this stuff, they make a far more effective fighter, no matter the rules sets. They usually think of creative things to do that are still outside the rules. As a GM you can harsh on them, or you can be thrilled that you've fostered cretivity, interest, and fun in the game.

 

[takyris]

Consider the other side of the coin. Consider that you like to role play out a situation, you have a decent relevant social skill, and all it boils down to is a dice roll. How does the encourage creative play? How does that encourage the players to think as their characters? How is a die roll more fun?

1) I did mention that I give bonuses (or in rare cases, penalties) for description, because I do like description.

2) One could argue that this is like complaining that you could know a lot about combat as a player, have a decent Base Attack Bonus as a character, and then still miss by rolling poorly. Yep, the game does allow for that. I kind of like the fact that it does. Succeeding all the time would be somewhat dull. But I see you've addressed this below.

3) Sounds fun to me. I've had hilarious moments with some of my more personally charismatic players who, after having their average-Charisma PC make a very well-reasoned statement, roll the dice, utterly blow the check, and say, "Okay, that's what I wanted to say, but what actually came out was, 'Oh, don't be such a nazi, you pinhead. Pull your head out.' Just like I've had hilarious moments with the fencers who, upon watching their decently skilled fighters blow an attack, come up with a hilarious method through which their guy skewers the wall instead.

3.5) According to the D&D rules, your character is, at some point in his or her career, going to blow an important attack, misspeak with some important NPC, overlook a hidden object of great importance, and fail to get that critical spell cast by losing your concentration at just the wrong time. It's going to happen. Attacking that idea with "It all comes down to a die roll, so roleplaying doesn't matter" seems wrong to me, because it implies that roleplaying is something that by its very nature leads to success. Roleplaying doesn't let you decide what the weather is like. Roleplaying lets you decide how your character reacts to the weather. (In my opinion, which is only an opinion, and possibly only mine.)

And on that note. I've gamed with martial artists, fencers, boxers and wrestlers. You had better bet that if someone knows this stuff, they make a far more effective fighter, no matter the rules sets. They usually think of creative things to do that are still outside the rules. As a GM you can harsh on them, or you can be thrilled that you've fostered cretivity, interest, and fun in the game.

Interesting. I've had creative ideas come from people with all levels of skill. I'm almost always interested in giving people chances to do fun things (my usual rule is "Some kind of related skill check, usually DC15, for a +2 or +4 to hit" -- so sliding across the table to kick the gun from someone's hands is a Balance check, while swinging from a chandelier is a Climb check), but I don't see what the player's level of ability has to do with it. I'm a fifth-degree black belt, and if I'm playing a first-level Smart Hero with no combat feats and a strength of 10, I wouldn't expect to get any mileage out of "Okay, my PC doesn't know anything about combat, but he'd like to step back as he's punched and see if he can catch the other guy's arm, and then punch the other guy hard, aiming for the throat, so that even someone with my low strength can do a lot of damage." That's a blatant attempt to get an unfair advantage because of my personal abilities.

By the same token, I don't let wizards with no ranks in Disable Device use Mage Hand to "randomly move the tumblers of a lock" in hopes of having it work, because wizards with no ranks in Disable Device don't know what tumblers are. It's an attempt to game the system, and I don't consider that a good thing. (Note that I consider this different from letting a wizard/rogue or wizard with cross-class Disable Device ranks use Mage Hand to try and pick a lock -- in this case, the character has the appropriate knowledge and skill ranks, and is just trying to use his character's existing skills in a slightly different way. I'd probably bend the rules to let the Wizard/Rogue pick the lock using Mage Hand, using either Disable Device at a -4 penalty or a Concentration check, whichever is lower. It's not as good as doing it up close and personal, but it's a lot better than nothing.)

I'm honestly not sure whether we agree or disagree, because I'm not sure at what level you're arguing. If you're saying "A wizard/rogue should be able to try to pick a lock with Mage Hand," then I agree with you, although the level at which we'd penalize such an attempt will likely vary. But if you're saying "A wizard with no ranks in Disable Device should be able to twiddle the tumblers with Mage Hand", then I think you're allowing your players to use their personal knowledge, knowledge that their PCs wouldn't have, to their PCs' advantage. And I disagree with that. Doesn't mean your game is bad or wrong or evil. I just don't advocate doing it that way.

Flexible combat is great. Fun ideas are great. But a fun idea shouldn't let a character with no ranks in Balance, Climb, or Jump do a standing leap over a balcony to catch a chandelier, swing across the room, land on a greased silver platter, and skateboard on it across the room and under the closing portcullis (although I wouldn't outright forbid it -- I'd just require the appropriate skill checks and then nod sympathetically when the character inevitably failed). That's not me slamming creativity. That's a player attempting to violate his own character concept for personal advantage -- the antithesis of roleplaying.

 

[milotha]

My point is this. It is a two sided coin. As I've stated before:

1) Forcing everything into a die roll to resolve a social situation isn't fun for the players. This is especially annoying with the small number of skill points, high DCs, social skills as cross class skills, large number of skills and the high degree of randomness of a single d20. It crushes creative role playing, and turns the game into "I attempt to bluff" - rolls die.

2) Allowing the players to do any social skill without resorting to any die rolls isn't fun for the players either. This isn't fair to the players that aren't charismatic (or intelligent and/or wise for that manner too). Just because the player is this way, doesn't make the character that way. Sadly, I've seen to many GMs lately turn the game into roll playing in an attempt to prevent this. As I've said, this is extremely boring to me.

There has to be a middle ground. So, players - please role play your characters, and GMs encourage creativity and reward it with a lowered DC or graduated levels of success for the social skills.

I've encountered GMs out there that don't realize what they are doing with the social skills, and I'm trying to wake them up to this fact.

 

[takyris]

So, um, consider me dense. Are you agreeing with me or disagreeing with me? I completely agree with you that it should be a middle ground, but I think we might disagree on what exactly constitutes a middle ground. I don't think many people would try to argue that you should get to hit the monster in combat without rolling for it just because you described your attack really well, but there seems to be some feeling that, in important areas, this is okay with interpersonal skills.

Note: I don't force diplomacy rolls every time someone opens their mouth. That's not what the skill is for. The skill is specifically for attempting to influence the attitudes of others towards you just by personality. If you save the life of the king's daughter, you don't need to make a skill check to improve his attitude toward you. Or, heck, you can, and if you can get better than 3, it improves. If you have hard evidence of an assassination plot, you don't need to roll Diplomacy to prove it when you show your evidence to the law -- or again, you roll it with a "don't roll a 1", unless the guy you're showing it to is already inclined to mistrust you. Interpersonal skills can easily be misused.

The main reason I'm continuing this is that I sense something disturbing in what you're saying. I'm not saying that it's wrong, but it's different from what I do, and I want to explore it. Your attitude, grossly oversimplified in this example, seems to be:

- I act out the situation, and then I hope that the dice don't mess up my roleplaying.

I prefer the other method: I roll the dice first, and then I roleplay the result. Just like I'd change my flavor-text if I described an attack and then rolled a "1", I consider "describing the way in which I botch something" to be an incredibly important aspect of roleplaying. In my philosophy, if roleplaying only means "describing how I succeed", then that's not really roleplaying. You are playing the role of somebody, and sometimes that somebody screws up a check or roll, and, for anyone who believes roleplaying to be important, faithfully characterizing the flavor of a really bad roll is just as important as faithfully charactering what this character's version of a natural 20 looks like.

By the same token, if a player complains to me that his Fighter can't be the dashing swashbuckler that he visualized because I won't let him fudge skill checks in order to do acrobatic stuff in combat, then my response is that the player did a bad job of translating his character concept into a D&D character class. I'd rather revamp his character as a Fighter/Rogue, a swashbuckling Fighter variant from UA, or even just a fighter with a lower Strength, a Higher Dex and Int, and more skills, some of them cross-class. After all, I wouldn't fudge the rules to let his fighter character throw blasts of fire from his hands, even if it was an integral part of his character concept. I'd suggest that he take a couple of sorcerer levels.

What are your feelings about this?

 

[Bendris Noulg]

I prefer the other method: I roll the dice first, and then I roleplay the result.

I've read this method before, and I gotta admit that I don't like it. It seems to change the game from improvisational to script-reading.

Just like I'd change my flavor-text if I described an attack and then rolled a "1", I consider "describing the way in which I botch something" to be an incredibly important aspect of roleplaying.

I think the problem here would be describing the action too far; describing the action should fall just short of not being able to adjust for a fumble, screw-up, or other result (e.g., "The orc raises his axe to strike at you..." and then roll vs "The orc raises his axe and thrusts it at you with menace and skill..." and then rolling a 1 and trying to recover).

There's also a difference between "First Person" and "First Person Shorthand". My group uses the later, being that while we tend to speak "in character", we know that we aren't speaking as the characters speak. Everything is weighted against a diversity of factors, primary amongst them being Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, followed by social status, background, native language (vs. the language being spoken), and Diplomacy ranks. The player might say, "I'm going down the road a bit," which can translate into "I am traveling to yonder farmstead beyond the rise", "me go 'dat way", or a multitude of other possibilities depending on the above variables. In this way, the player may give a compelling statement that gives me, the GM, the idea of what the PC is attempting to convey, but in the end, it's the Diplomacy check (or Bluff, or Intimidate) that determines how well the character made that point and how the NPCs receive it.