What ever happened to "role playing?"

[Zappo]

Of course, not having seen the rulebooks, I have no way of knowing what context they are applied. I mean, if a game is written to be noting more than Streetfighter-styled kombats, then why would it promote anything else? Although, as I stated earlier, I would have a hard time viewing such a game as an "RPG". A game? Yes. A "Fighting Game"? Most definately. But a "Role-Playing Game"? Heh...

It was actually promoted as a "Storytelling Game". I don't know what the guys at WW were smoking. I guess having the SF license went to their heads. I flipped through the book, and it seems to try to promote roleplaying in the style of other WW books, but from what I've heard it fails miserably - there's just not enough of that in the setting to work on.

A word of warning: don't mention this game to hardcore WoD fans, they tend to get upset.

To which I have to ask: Were all those "massively more complex psychological/social rules" included into Streetfighter, or were they trimmed out due to irrelevancy?

I don't know, sorry. I haven't read the book thoroughly enough. Even the basic ST skill system has more social skills than D&D, though; since they tried to push it as a "Storytelling Game", I doubt they've cut those away.

 

[IceBear]

Well, my group (all of whom have been playing various RPGs for 15 years or so - the youngest is 28, the oldest 53 and the rest in our mid to late 30s) haven't noticed any change with the rules switch.

I think that this theory that there is less direction for roleplaying in 3E is bunk. I started with OD&D and moved to 2nd Edition and various other RPGs. I don't remember any TSR product giving me advice on roleplaying. I remember me reading Dragonlance and going - "Gee, I wish I could get my players to not always act like best friends (because we all were in RL) and have some intra-party conflicts". So I started requiring them to present a background and character history/character quirks and then giving out XP if they "stayed in character".

I like 3E. It requires less fudging on my part when a character wants to do something that's outside of the rules. Why? Because it's either in the rules now or the "skeleton" of the resolution is there in the rules. Maybe this lack of "winging it" makes it feel like it's more rollplay and less roleplay, but to me, it just means the rules are more consistent. More consistent rules mean I have to think about them less and concentrate on the story more (and hence promote more roleplay).

I think those that are blaming this on 3E might have forgotten what it was like to be new to this hobby and not know how to roleplay. There was no rules telling us how to. It was something we learned with time when we got bored with just killing monsters and taking treasure.

Neither myself, or my other DMs in the my group (the same group that used to play 2nd Edition together) have noticed a slide to rollplay. Perhaps those that have noticed it have newer players or players that were always rollplayers.

Again, I think the Internet is more to blame than 3E rules. Every time I see someone on the rules forum ask for a design that does "optiminal" damage I see a person more interested in rollplay than roleplaying (not that is necessarily the case, but it seems likely). Answering that question puts people in a more of a rollplay frame of mind than a roleplaying one, and that's more of the problem than the rulebooks in my mind.

 

[The_Gneech]

Did you know that there is a RPG based on the Street Fighter videogame? Yeah, the hadoken game. Whacking each other in cool ways, and not much else. I think fans are making Mortal Kombat supplements, too. Guess what system it uses? Begins with 'S'. No, I'm not joking.

That game was my baby.

Well, not exactly, more like my adopted baby. Of the four products ever made for it, my name is in the credits of two, (one of which, The Perfect Warrior, was written entirely by me), and I was going to be writing big pieces of the fifth when the line got yanked.

I loved that game, and of all the things ever published by White Wolf, it was the only one I liked at all, because it was fun and upbeat.

Which is, of course, why the WOD core audience hated it, le sigh. But James Estes, Steve Long (more widely known for his Champions stuff) and I all loved it to pieces and were having a great time with it.

Was it a role-playing game or a fighting game? Answer: Yes. In other words, it had elements of both. You could spend skill points on more better fighting moves, but you could also get things like a sensei or NPC companions -- neither of which were the slightest bit of use in a fight. It was designed to tell very comic-book melodramatic stories, make no mistake, but they were definitely stories, not just a framework to go from one fight scene to the next.

The ending of the Street Fighter line, I think, was one of the big things that drove me away from "deep immersive storytelling;" the whole thing began to just come off as smug and self-congratulating on the part of people who were into it, and I was as smug as any of them. (I remember being so proud of having my GMing compared to Twin Peaks -- now, the idea makes my skin crawl.)

Le sigh, I do miss the Street Fighter game.

-The Gneech

 

[Bendris Noulg]

A word of warning: don't mention this game to hardcore WoD fans, they tend to get upset.

Kinda like visiting a 2E forum and mentioning 3E?

 

[Acid_crash]

Don't diss on Street Fighter, that rpg rocked and was one of the better ST system driven games ever produced. Just because it was compared to Vampire and Werewolf and it didn't have the same feel doesn't mean the game sucked. Far from it.

The ST system and game mechanic fit perfectly with Street Fighter. I had more fun playing that combat system than anything recently, and it was a good showing of applying a game system to a world and modifying the game mechanic to that world than vice versa.

All the WoD fans expect angst from WW and nothing else, and that's all they want. Even Exalted has angst in it, if on a different scale. But, if WW does produce a ST game, and if there isn't angst in it, or massive metaplot, or Vampires trying to dominate the cities and Werewolves battling the Wyrm and stuff like that, then it will fail. People laugh that they made Street Fighter, but I think that it was one of the better games they have ever produced.

It sucks that a d20 version is in the works, unless I'm wrong on that. Which I probably am.

 

[The_Gneech]

Don't diss on Street Fighter, that rpg rocked and was one of the better ST system driven games ever produced. Just because it was compared to Vampire and Werewolf and it didn't have the same feel doesn't mean the game sucked. Far from it. ... People laugh that they made Street Fighter, but I think that it was one of the better games they have ever produced.

Dude! Now I want to give you a hug! *sniff*

-The Gneech

 

[med stud]

I dont understand two things here:

1) Why do people care whatever others role play or not? If your group is too low on role playing for your taste then I can see if you have a problem with it but now it seems like some people here is very concerned on how RPG:ers they dont associate with play their games. Let everyone do what fits them and care about your own game. It will leave you less peptic ulcers in the future.

2) The implied correlation between rules and role playing. As others have said before me, the role playing for me began when just killing monsters and taking their stuff became boring. It's like playing Diablo II; first you make the frozen orb/fire wall sorceress, then the whirlwind barbarian but after that they become boring and you start to design "inferior" characters for fun. For me and my group it was the same about the time we began high school. We already had broken the rules and fought the GM in any ways possible so we started to play original characters instead. The challenge went from the system to the psychological.

When starting with D&D 3E we didnt know the rules and we had to look them up a couple of times when starting to play but we didnt care very much if we got everything right or not either. As long as there werent really stupid things going on we never bothered to learn more of the rules than needed to play and then we kept going again with the role playing we started with as 16 years olds.

---

I dont think our group is unique, either. If the group wants to role play it will role play even if you force them to play monopoly. Otherwise it wont happen.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

I think those that are blaming this on 3E might have forgotten what it was like to be new to this hobby and not know how to roleplay. There was no rules telling us how to. It was something we learned with time when we got bored with just killing monsters and taking treasure.

But it's not about rules for role-playing; it's about encouragement to role-play.

I'll give you a specific example: Compare the flavor-text on your average Kit in a 2E product to the flavor-text on your average Prestige Class for a 3E product. Not the rules, here; just the fluff. Consider how the Kits describe their probable role within a campaign and compare it to how Prestige Classes barely even try (some don't try at all!). Compare how 2E describes the kind of personality that would likely be attracted to the Kit (and why) to how a Prestige Class is rarely more than a set of neat-o abilities. Sure, the DMG does touch on Prestige Classes being used/applied in this fashion (at least, the 3.0 one did...), but then this concept is burried beneath the presentation of Prestige Classes as nothing but sets of new abilities with just enough flavor to serve as an excuse for their existance.

To me, it's the difference between "here's a piece of world-flavoring for you to consider for your game world" and "here's a short blurb for you to sell your GM on so he'll let you have these powers..."

To which I'll add that I tend to reject Prestige Classes if the introduction to that Prestige Class doesn't grab my interest (i.e., if the flavor is lacking, I don't even pause to review the mechanics). As it is now, I use less than 10 published Prestige Classes, ignoring most others for that very reason. In comparison, I found myself considering Kits quite often; even if the mechanics weren't right for my game, they usually inspired me to work-up something similar but more suitable.

 

[milotha]

I like 3E. It requires less fudging on my part when a character wants to do something that's outside of the rules. Why? Because it's either in the rules now or the "skeleton" of the resolution is there in the rules. Maybe this lack of "winging it" makes it feel like it's more rollplay and less roleplay, but to me, it just means the rules are more consistent. More consistent rules mean I have to think about them less and concentrate on the story more (and hence promote more roleplay).

I think the view that the rules to 3e are complete or are a complete skeleton is the problem. If you want to do something, then the GM will attempt to find some rule in the book that applies to your action and make you roll on it.

That's just great, except that there actually aren't all that many social skills. They aren't all inclusive, they are all based off of one stat, which isn't necessarily representative of the entire skill.

Is Bluff just based off of your charisma? Doesn't the intelligence of the bluffer also play into how believeable the bluff is? Doesn't the strength of the person play into how believeable an intimidate can be?

Do you really believe that there is a modifier in the book for every conceivable combination of social interactions. Can social interaction be so codified, that a single die roll is appropriate? How can the DCs be so codified in advance of the player's actions.

If you boil the game directly down to the rules in the book and making everything a roll based on the rules in the book, then do the player's actions at all effect the roll? Since the DCs are set by the GM, how is making the players roll any less arbitrary then having the GM just say that you failed or succeeded?

I guess that I really view that reducing the game down to rolls against preset DCs strips the players social interactions of any relevance.

 

[milotha]

My group doesn't -- well, I correct myself; my group needs no rewards beyond the "solving encounters through communication and social skills" stuff that's, y'know, written right there in the DMG, in which the party gets XP for getting past an encounter and doesn't lose hit points, spell slots, or item charges in the process. Or do you want XP for roleplaying stuff that actually doesn't affect the game? You want extra bonus XP for talking in character? Why is your group so hung up on getting rewards? Sounds kinda like rollplaying disguised as roleplaying, since we're getting so comfortable slinging these derogatory terms around. "Sure, we want to delve deep into our characters' psyches, provided we get XP for doing so." I mean, really.

I never said anything about an XP bonus, I could care less about that. I said that the actions of the player should affect the DCs used in social situations. It doesn't have to do with how charismatic the player is, it has to do with them bothering to roleplay.

If you have an entire set of people sitting there and going "I bluff the guard, I rolled a 12, do I succeed." Then how does the 3e system discourage this? Where is it in the system that this isn't how the social skills should be played? According to many of the posts this is a valid way to let the social encounters go.

What if the players just aren't bothering to stretch their wings beyond this? What if they aren't motivated by the rules to bother to role-play? What if they would really enjoy it, but they just aren't being encouraged to do this? If you contend that the rules allow both types of play. That's fine. They do. But how do they encourage new players who aren't familiar with role playing to add this into their character?

Everyone is contending that the new players will learn from the older players. That somehow role playing will be its own reward. This is great dreaming, but many people are just plain 1) scared of trying 2) intimidated by the other players 3) to unmotivated to bother 4) repressed by GMs that actually don't bother to listen to the players anyway.

How does the new system encourage going beyond "I bluff the guard."?

D&D has a fairly tactical combat system that has seen some fairly extensive play testing over the years. As for the social skills, IMHO they seem to be less well thought out, less well play tested, less complete, and less comprehensive than everyone is making them to seem.