What system elements promote and hinder roleplaying (inspired by "does 4e hinder ")

[LostSoul]

One way around this is to have some decisions have no mechanical effect at all, or at best *extremely* limited - e.g. the past professions table I mentioned above. Another is to simply remove many of the mechanics altogether, and go rules-light. A third is to remove the mechanics-based decisions - in other words, do like 1e and make each member of each class mechanically the same; thus forcing any difference to come via the role-played personality and-or in-game possessions.

There is another option: let the player choose what he gets rewarded for.

Google The Shadow of Yesterday, and look up Keys.

 

[xechnao]

So I ask of you all, what helps, what hurts, and why?

Artificial rules hinder roleplaying. Abstract rules do not. Having a scaling Wisdom stat for example is artificial -not abstract- because it does not model to something found in our reality. OTOH having a scaling strength stat in the system can be seen as something abstract as stronger people in real life do have some advantage in melee combat.

Artificial rules promote gamism and drive away from role-playing. The more of artificial rules a game has the more it hinders roleplaying.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

To answer these questions...

I don't think that the difference between D&D and Settlers of Catan in how much people roleplay is a mechanical difference exactly. There is a difference in how much people roleplay in those games, but it doesn't have a lot to do with the limitations or mechanical options in either. Rather, I think it has a lot to do with the expectations of people going in to the games. People go into D&D to roleplay while they play the game, and people typically don't go into Settlers of Catan expecting to roleplay. In this regard, you might say that the act of creating a character for D&D might be considered a mechanical incentive to roleplay, since it puts you in the mindset of playing a role (your character), but that might be the extent of it.

As for chess and such... for some reason a minor scene in C. S. Lewis' Voyage of the Dawn Treader comes to mind, where mouse knight Reepicheep keeps losing at chess because he is too busy replaying grand stories of valorous knights to remember to try to win. You don't see roleplaying in chess because, well, it gets in the way of winning, and chess is an extremely structured and competitive game with clear good and bad moves (clear to skilled players, that is, not necessarily clear to me ). I think there is a certain point where, if roleplaying and winning directly conflict, winning will almost always be put at a higher priority. That said, I don't think this applies very much to any RPG I have ever seen, because such games almost always allow numerous choices that are all equally valid routes to victory (unless you have a stingy railroading DM, which is fortunately rare).

Put simply, there are factors that affect how much people roleplay, but they come up in the comparison of RPGs to other forms of entertainment far more than in comparisons between different RPGs.

I actually think this is a very good example.

If you want to promote roleplaying, it must create a game reward and a way to success.

For example, there are two "rules" in most RPGs that I use as an example.
1) Never split the party.
It's too dangerous. A single character has less chances to survive if he enters any kind of combat, and even other types of conflicts get either if there is help. But, there are actually valid reasons for PCs to go Solo. The Rogue that goes scouting, the Bard that seduces an NPC to get aid.
So basically there needs to be a "rule" in the game that helps doing this.
There is another problem with this - RPGs are played with multiple players, and if an individual player has the spotlight for a longer time, it tends to get boring for other players. So,you need something to "fight" against this. For example, the game might allow PCs to take over NPCs in any given situation (without it "breaking" the game, too.)

2) No inter party conflicts.
That's something that we all avoid, because it leads to splitting the party and weakening the overall group. But realistically, sometimes this can happen. But most people avoid it - and it also hurts the enjoyment of the game if sometimes, inter party conflicts turn into conflicts between players.
If you want to promote something like this, you need to create rewards that help all sides and compensate for any disadvantages the conflict creates in other situations.

---

I think the "guiding" principle I see in these two examples is that you need to distinguish between "character award" and "player award".

A character isn't rewarded if he falls in love with an NPC and the NPC is later held hostage or killed. It's a terrible experience for the PC, and it gave his enemies power over him. He might lose money, his life or his love, he will fail at other in-game goals. But you can give the player a reward for going through all this, because he roleplayed how his character would act in this situation.

If you want the PCs to run "solo", sometimes the other players will have to take over NPCs or other opposing elements. The rules will need to reward that player, too, while his character is entirely unaffected by the event.

The biggest "disadvantage" of this approach is, that it lacks something some people really like, the "simulation" aspect of the rules. The rewards the players get don't model anything in the real world. They represent something outside the game world.
But they will still affect the game world - the player can use this rewards to shape the course of the campaign - set stakes, take control over game elements, and so on.

 

[loresjoberg]

I think of an RPG as being like a bar where the barkeeper -- the GM -- and the other patrons -- the players -- are all friends of yours. Roleplaying, in this analogy, is like dancing.

Say the bar you're in doesn't have a jukebox, or a DJ, or any sort of sound system. But it does have plenty of open space.

The funny thing about this particular bar is that there's nothing to discourage you from dancing. The bartender doesn't mind, your friends might very well cheer you on and clap to help you keep time. Maybe the barkeep pulls out a harmonica and improvises a tune. You might dance the night away without ever hearing a note of professionally-recorded music.

On the other hand, you might say "Screw this, if I'm going to dance I want some music playing." So you go to another bar, also full of your friends, one that has music playing all the time and a crowded dance floor. Maybe this is a perfect bar for you and you dance for hours. Or, you might say "Man, this sucks. They keep playing songs I don't like and I don't have as much room to twirl. I want to go back to that other bar, where I can dance the way I want to and the music isn't telling me what to do."

The reason people disagree on what system elements encourage or hinder roleplaying is that people are encouraged and hindered by different things. Some people see a lack of rules as a wide open space where they can roleplay as they please. Others see it as just a big blank nothing. Some people see a detailed social combat section as a strong motivation to play a character as a dashing diplomat rather than a combat monster, but others just see numbers and dice standing between them and playing their character the way they want to.

 

[pawsplay]

Things that promote roleplaying:
- A rules system that provides a reasonable resolution mechanic for any plausible action to attempt. That resolution can be simple or complex, narrative or mechanical, but there should be an obvious way to tackle it.
- A clearly understood central narrative.
- A setting that is group or at least cohort friendly. The PCs should have clear roles to play as allies or rivals.

Things that hinder roleplaying:
- Game mechanics that create perverse incentives.
- A lack of general rules for when there is no specific rule.
- A narrative structure that is either too rigid or does not provide sufficient guidance as to what you are supposed to be doing.
- A setting that focuses on individuals, irrespective of their relationships with other PCs.

 

[tomBitonti]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using the mechanics to roleplay. Sure, many players may roll the dice without thinking about character motivation and such, but just as many players would try to have an Int 4/Cha 4 Orc Barbarian be eloquent and polite when trying to convince the duke. You can roleplay whether you use dice or not and you can fail to roleplay whether you use dice or not.

I think a part of this is playing your character as you designed him/her.

That means, if you character has a 6 cha, you should play them annoying and brusque, and tactless, even if you as a person are quite eloquent.

From the point of view of whether a system encourages role playing, then the rewards should be based on how true to character you are playing your characters, and should give you a lot of tools for creating colorful character backgrounds and personality qualities, and should provide mechanisms for resolving conflicts in character.

 

[steenan]

System traits that encourage roleplaying:
- a game world that is consistent (allowing "what would I, as the character, do in this situation?" thinking) or built on a well known genre and theme ("what would characters in book/movie X do?")
- game mechanics that allow failures, but mitigates their results (a resonable percentage of negotiations/battles/etc IS lost by the party, but it does not cause death, permanent injury or something else that makes the characters unplayable)
- game mechanics that describe not only character's abilities, but also personality and attitude, actively encouraging acting according to the initial concept (but not penalizing other behavior in such a way as to discourage character's growth and evolution)
- game/adventure design with a lot of scenes that are not challenges (there are not winnable/losable)
- game/adventure design with a lot of moral choices (value conflicts - not evil/evil dilemmas)
- game mechanics that allow taking a concept and making it into a playable character (instead of taking a mechanical construct and trying to add a desired flavor to it)
- a reward system that encourages playing characters with flaws and weaknesses, not "perfect" and "well-rounded" ones (for example, by rewarding failed tests or getting into trouble because of character's personality and value system)
- a party concept that assumes cooperation, but not perfect understanding and agreement
- a wide range of viable character choices (not necessarily of mechanical concepts); for example, a possibility of playing a character that only fights using nonlethal methods or that never uses any kind of magic

System traits that discourage roleplaying:
- a mish-mash world with no distinct flavor, incoherent with itself or with the game mechanics
- a world that does not give characters any motivation but selfish ones (wealth, power, fame)
- a world with no real conflict and no real change; a world that just lacks fluff
- game mechanics with a lot of stackable options (one, that may be "optimized", because some combinations are better than other); no system is perfectly balanced, so the only resonable way of avoiding this problem is keeping the system simple, with few degrees of freedom
- game concept centered on "winning" by appropriate use of game mechanics (by combat abilities and tactics, by social skills etc.); focus on winning (gamism) is not bad if it stresses adaptability, creative thinking and (roleplayed) social interaction
- too much predictability in how the world and the system works; often a result of too strong reliance on player-controlled mechanics
- a game mechanics that makes character deaths too frequent, thus lessening player's investment
- game concept and system that make player focus on something else than the character he is playing (equipment that determine character's competence, many types of strong metagame mechanics etc.)
- system that makes it hard to explain in-character why certain resonable actions are (mechanically) impossible; abstract mechanics is not automatically guilty of that - but it may only be saved by describing precisely what and why is abstracted and by giving examples of how it is supposed to be used in play
- harshly punishing non-optimal behavior and tactics, as a result forcing a separation of "conflict" (especially combat) scenes and "roleplaying" scenes. It should be hard, but possible, to get through negotiations or combat with a party containing a reckless, rude and dirty barbarian and a greedy, cowardly rogue, really played according to their concepts. Or, maybe, it should result in failure, but not one that would ruin the adventure.

 

[Wombat]

Another important aspect I have run across yet not see in this excellent discussion yet is expectations.

Yesterday I was talking with a friend of mine who had been very excited about the advent of 4e, but is now burnt out on it due to how people approached the roleplaying aspect. As he told me, however, there seemed to be a self-selecting nature to this. He said that many of these people, like himself, played multiple systems. The players had read through the rules for 4e, saw an emphasis on combat tactics and thus looked upon the game as strictly a combat, "bash 'em and take the treasure" board game. Thus while some of these same players would develop deep backgrounds, family trees, and other "extracurricular" material for, say, a character in Call of Cthulhu, that same player would simply think in terms of dice rolls and mechanics in D&D -- assumptions fulfilling expectations.

I, too, have seen "roleplaying" in miniatures battles, AH/SPI boardgames and the like, simply because the players felt this added to the experience; I have also seen players in White Wolf games who only thought in term of the straight mechanics. I think a lot of this has to do with what a specific player (or even character) brings to the table... along with those expectations of what a game should be about, no matter what the intentions of the authors may or may not have been.