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Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
What is the "role" in roleplaying
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<blockquote data-quote="Aenghus" data-source="post: 6939399" data-attributes="member: 2656"><p>Roleplaying as an overall concept is complex, more complex than it seems, as it's based on lots of spoken and unspoken assumptions on a huge variety of issues.</p><p></p><p>For instance take the example above, which you obviously consider an example of good roleplaying in the context of that particular gaming group. The exact same behavior at a different group could be considered problematic, or even a violation of the party social contract. Let me explain.</p><p></p><p>One adventuring party could consider themselves in it for the loot and professionals about it, so destroying an immensely valuable item would be anathema to them, they would find some other way to express their anger in the situation above, or risk being hit by a huge compensation claim from the rest of the party. In some cases the PC might be placed on probation or fired outright.</p><p></p><p>In a game where the sword concerned was an important plot device in the ongoing story and happened to be vital to ultimately resolve it, destroying it might doom the world or some section thereof, and place the DM with the conundrum of allowing mindless rage to derail his/her epic campaign or change the setup to accomodate random vandalism by PCs. I have seen destructive spirals happen in some games where PCs destroy stuff that was needed, and cross DMs just let it happen and let the campaign go down in flames. </p><p></p><p>At least some of the time the player in the above scenario may subsequently utter the dread words "I was only playing my character". IMO nothing justifies totally selfish play, not even roleplaying. RPGs are a group activity that demands a minimal level of compromise from all participants - what this entails will vary from group to group.</p><p></p><p>Roleplaying is complex, context matters.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Aenghus, post: 6939399, member: 2656"] Roleplaying as an overall concept is complex, more complex than it seems, as it's based on lots of spoken and unspoken assumptions on a huge variety of issues. For instance take the example above, which you obviously consider an example of good roleplaying in the context of that particular gaming group. The exact same behavior at a different group could be considered problematic, or even a violation of the party social contract. Let me explain. One adventuring party could consider themselves in it for the loot and professionals about it, so destroying an immensely valuable item would be anathema to them, they would find some other way to express their anger in the situation above, or risk being hit by a huge compensation claim from the rest of the party. In some cases the PC might be placed on probation or fired outright. In a game where the sword concerned was an important plot device in the ongoing story and happened to be vital to ultimately resolve it, destroying it might doom the world or some section thereof, and place the DM with the conundrum of allowing mindless rage to derail his/her epic campaign or change the setup to accomodate random vandalism by PCs. I have seen destructive spirals happen in some games where PCs destroy stuff that was needed, and cross DMs just let it happen and let the campaign go down in flames. At least some of the time the player in the above scenario may subsequently utter the dread words "I was only playing my character". IMO nothing justifies totally selfish play, not even roleplaying. RPGs are a group activity that demands a minimal level of compromise from all participants - what this entails will vary from group to group. Roleplaying is complex, context matters. [/QUOTE]
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What is the "role" in roleplaying
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