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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bendris Noulg" data-source="post: 1546983" data-attributes="member: 6398">Ah, see, here we have two factors that are colliding into the effect we're trying to describe here...1. The concept that experienced gamers will fill in the details on their own leads to the minimalist approach of discribing the possibilities for the new gamer.2. The "D&D is kewl" image of 3E marketing both drawing in new players who now have less references to role-playing to encourage it.See, that's kind of the problem with this discussion; folks are asking for specific examples, where as I believe the situation is caused by a synergy of factors WotC has produced within the community via marketing ("Taking it back to the dungeon!"), buzz-words ("Balance"), and lack of inclusion ("The tools, the whole tools, and nothing but the tools, so help us Hasbro.").And nothing wrong with that.  What I fault is the lack of mention for anything beyond those tools.  Yes, it's true, the DMG does talk about this stuff here and there, but one might consider the posts made asking abot the social skills.  Most of them are of two camps:1. GMs griping about their players not willing to role-play.2. Players griping about their GMs insisting that they role-play.Kinda speaks for itself, don't it?Ah, actually, I'm a fan of Gygax.  Not as hard-core as some, most assuradly, but his material (even in d20) remains fairly solid even if a tad dry.  And one cannot overlook the fact that the man taught many of us to respect our Thesaurus, which is not a small feat.What I'm talking about though is clear in the evolution of the game.  It grew originally out of Chainmail, providing the players with an opportunity to have the leaders and heroes of the Chainmail games to become legendary heroes in mythical-based adventures (0E).  It then grew to put more emphasis on the game world environment (1E, the Greyhawk Gazetteer, etc.).  It then grew to put more emphasis on long-running campaigns and developing characters beyond their combat potential (2E).  This is all part of the evolution of the game I described earlier.The problem, as I view it, is that 3E moves backwards in its emphasis.  That is, the PH is clearly in-tone with 0E (heroic adventures), while the DMG floats between the tone of 0E and 1E (interactive world).  Aside from the occassional reference (which are primarily aimed at GMs than players), there's little to nothing to encourage the tone of 2E (long-running campaigns and story-driven character development).  I'm not argueing that 3E is bad, nor am I saying that 3E doesn't handle all three "levels" of playing; I'm simply argueing that the rule books, by barely giving a nod towards (what I guess we'll just call...) the "2E tone", the rulebooks will actually cause people to adhere more often to the "0E tone" and "1E tone" than try out or move into the "2E tone".Combine this with the "Anti-Thespian Patrol" at the WotC boards and the resulting picture is one that's opposed to role-playing rather than supporting it.No, I agree that 2E had severe flaws, with the "designed as the writer would role-play it himself" issue being exceedingly predominant.  At the same time, there was plenty of mention and discussion beyond the broken bits that couldn't be seen as a strength or weakness in the system by virtue of not actually being part of the system but did indeed encourage the emphasis on long-term campaigning using the system.Not the rules; the presentation of the rules with little to no emphasis on using the rules to resolve role-play which results in role-play being ignored in favor of a die roll surrogate.</blockquote>

Verification