Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="The_Gneech" data-source="post: 4519305" data-attributes="member: 6779">I don't think anyone's arguing that 4E impedes roleplaying -- just that there is an underlying tone implying that roleplaying should be met with a held nose and a refrain of &quot;Oh, if you must, but get it over with so we can get back to combat!&quot;Certainly as long as I can remember, in the larger RPG community, D&amp;D was held up as &quot;the bad example&quot; as far as roleplaying is concerned. I particularly recall blinking two or three times at a passage in Call of Cthulhu, c. 1985-1986, which decried &quot;that bane of intelligent roleplaying, the wandering monster,&quot; as it was a revelation to me at the time. The hoary old cliche of &quot;why ROLL-play when you can ROLE-play&quot; has been used by other games to differentiate themselves from D&amp;D for decades.However, previous editions of D&amp;D, in an effort to bring as many people into the fold as possible, recognized this as an area that could use some development and started to include that crowd in its thinking. The 2nd Edition Campaign Guide is all about &quot;the story,&quot; and how GMs can encourage players to get into the roleplaying aspect of the game by playing it up themselves.3E, with the &quot;back to the dungeon&quot; mantra, wasn't quite as pro-&quot;talky parts&quot; as 2E by any stretch, but on the other hand by allowing much more flexibility in character creation, it was still much better at creating &quot;just the character you want&quot; instead of something &quot;sorta in the right neighborhood.&quot; The fact that &quot;just the character they wanted&quot; for a lot of min-maxers may have been a dual-wielding dwarven cleric named &quot;Bob the Stumpy&quot; doesn't detract from the fact that it was easier for those of us who wanted &quot;high-concept&quot; characters to build them. (Early 3E-era Dragon magazines had a ton of articles on how to do this ... I remember looking at the Skald -- i.e., a bard/barbarian multiclass -- and thinking it was a brilliant idea.)In other words, 3E wasn't built with the intent of being a role-player's paradise, but it still supported role-players in a way that 4E's &quot;choose from column A or B&quot; class system doesn't seem to.That's how it strikes me, anyhow.-The Gneech <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool&nbsp; &nbsp; :cool:"&nbsp; data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="The_Gneech, post: 4519305, member: 6779"] I don't think anyone's arguing that 4E impedes roleplaying -- just that there is an underlying tone implying that roleplaying should be met with a held nose and a refrain of "Oh, if you [i]must[/i], but get it over with so we can get back to combat!" Certainly as long as I can remember, in the larger RPG community, [i]D&D[/i] was held up as "the bad example" as far as roleplaying is concerned. I particularly recall blinking two or three times at a passage in [i]Call of Cthulhu[/i], c. 1985-1986, which decried "that bane of intelligent roleplaying, the wandering monster," as it was a revelation to me at the time. The hoary old cliche of "why ROLL-play when you can ROLE-play" has been used by other games to differentiate themselves from [i]D&D[/i] for decades. However, previous editions of [i]D&D[/i], in an effort to bring as many people into the fold as possible, recognized this as an area that could use some development and started to include that crowd in its thinking. The 2nd Edition [I]Campaign Guide [/I]is all about "the story," and how GMs can encourage players to get into the roleplaying aspect of the game by playing it up themselves. 3E, with the "back to the dungeon" mantra, wasn't quite as pro-"talky parts" as 2E by any stretch, but on the other hand by allowing much more flexibility in character creation, it was still much better at creating "just the character you want" instead of something "sorta in the right neighborhood." The fact that "just the character they wanted" for a lot of min-maxers may have been a dual-wielding dwarven cleric named "Bob the Stumpy" doesn't detract from the fact that it was easier for those of us who wanted "high-concept" characters to build them. (Early 3E-era [i]Dragon[/i] magazines had a ton of articles on how to do this ... I remember looking at the Skald -- i.e., a bard/barbarian multiclass -- and thinking it was a brilliant idea.) In other words, 3E wasn't built with the intent of being a role-player's paradise, but it still [i]supported[/i] role-players in a way that 4E's "choose from column A or B" class system doesn't seem to. That's how it strikes me, anyhow. -The Gneech :cool: [/QUOTE]

Verification