Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Wombat" data-source="post: 4725504" data-attributes="member: 8447">Another important aspect I have run across yet not see in this excellent discussion yet is expectations.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; As he told me, however, there seemed to be a self-selecting nature to this.&nbsp; He said that many of these people, like himself, played multiple systems.&nbsp; 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, &quot;bash 'em and take the treasure&quot; board game.&nbsp; Thus while some of these same players would develop deep backgrounds, family trees, and other &quot;extracurricular&quot; material for, say, a character in Call of Cthulhu, that same player would simply think in terms of dice rolls and mechanics in D&amp;D -- assumptions fulfilling expectations.I, too, have seen &quot;roleplaying&quot; 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.&nbsp; 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.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Wombat, post: 4725504, member: 8447"] Another important aspect I have run across yet not see in this excellent discussion yet is [I]expectations[/I]. 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 [I]Call of Cthulhu[/I], 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 [I]should[/I] be about, no matter what the intentions of the authors may or may not have been. [/QUOTE]

Verification