Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1543079" data-attributes="member: 5171">Well, the replies of one person, or even ten, would simply be anecdotal evidence.  Anyone who logs onto ENWorld is in the upper echelons of interest in D&D to begin with, methinks, which is going to skew the answers as well.Bendris, one logical note: I don't think it necessarily follows that because D&D has lowered the roleplaying-requirement bar, it has therefore encouraged lesser roleplaying.  That could be true, but it does not have to be true.For counterexample: As a writer, I am in a hypothetical writing group.  Writers often have trouble producing, due to real-world stress and the like.  Let us say that the group starts with a minimum writing requirement of four stories per year in order to remain in the group.Person A writes six stories and has no trouble.Person B writes four stories, the bare minimum.Person C writes no stories, because they're so wrapped around the axle about having to write a story every three months that they get completely blocked.  In fact, they end up leaving the group before the question of their eligibility even comes up out of sheer frustration (note: This is hypothetical, but it's based largely on actual events, and C did in fact drop out).Now let us say that the group goes, "Hey, man, we were trying to encourage writing, not make people who couldn't do it as well get so frustrated that they left.  Let's lower the requirement to two stories a year."Person A, who was already an obnoxious overachiever, continues to write six stories per year.Person B should be divided into B1 and B2.  B1 keeps producing 4 stories per year, because it's do-able, while B2 slides back a bit and only does the bare minimum.Person C should also be divided into C1 and C2.  C1 leaves the group anyway, because 2 stories is still 2 more than they could really produce, and they can't even handle that much.  C2, though, says, "Okay, 4 stories was too much, but maybe I can do 2 stories a year."  C2 gets his act together and puts 2 stories together -- or at least one and a short scene of another.  He does something.Now, let's say that this hypothetical situation is roleplaying and not writing, and that D&D has indeed lowered the bar for minimum roleplaying level by adding those skills.  I don't know that it has lowered the bar, necessarily, but I do think that it's made roleplaying easier for those who aren't good at it -- it gives them somewhere to start.  Perhaps, in your mind, that's lowering the bar.  But I digress...Person A is always going to be Person A.  The people who really get into the roleplaying will always do it.Person B could conceivably dip down, like B2, instead of continuing on at his old good roleplaying level, like B1.  I believe that B2 is the person you're focusing on in your "Why this is bad" scenario.  But I don't think that there are that many B2s in the world.  I just don't see it as that big a concern.Person C might still leave, and really, if that's the case, then Person C was never a good fit for the group to begin with.  But if Person C goes the C2 route and at least gives it a shot, when he otherwise would have DEFINITELY left, then that's a good thing for the roleplaying market.The question, of course, is in the numbers -- how many B2s we have, and how far do they fall, versus how many C2s we have, and how far they rise.  The A's are always going to be there, and, to be impersonally rude, an A who insists that he can't be an A anymore because of the new rules is most likely either a glory hog, or is not very good at building a character who represents, by the numbers, the concept he wanted.  Not saying that about anyone here.You're arguing, by my (increasingly strained) metaphor, that the B2's are going to get lazy, while others seem to be arguing that the C2's will be inspired.  And the truth is that both sides are right.  Somewhere, someone is going to do what you suggest, and someone is going to do what the other side suggests.  As I said, if we had numbers, we could prove which happened more once and for all, but I doubt we ever will, aside from anecdotal evidence that really adds nothing to the conversation.  For my part, I agree with you that some people will coast on interpersonal scores instead of roleplaying if given the chance, but I see the chance to ease new players into the game as worth that price.  But that's probably because I'm one of the obnoxious A's -- as are most ENWorlders, I suspect.  Most of us are going to keep plugging along regardless.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification