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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pming" data-source="post: 7316263" data-attributes="member: 45197">Hiy!Depends on the game/table/players/DM, actually. But in a very broad sense...sure, "D&D isn't an adversarial game". I can go with that.(PS: Clearly you've never played Hackmaster 4th Edtion! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ). This I'd disagree with a bit. It's not "pretending to be someone else", so much as it is "imagining what a certain character would do in a situation". Splitting hairs, maybe, but someone can role-play a character to the hilt without ever 'speaking in character', or 'pretending you are your PC'. I guess it's a REALLY fine hair, but I see a slight distinction between "pretending" and "imagining". With "pretending" you *are the PC*...but with "imagining" you are not necessarily thinking of yourself as the PC, so much as "imagining what THAT PC would do". All that stuff is not mutually exclusive. By the very nature of the game, you, the Player, must take game mechanics into account. I mean, a Fighter who grew up in severe hardship where it was everyone for themselves will see some situational solution that would/could be completely different from a Wizard who grew up in the same childhood. In order to "role-play" the character, the Player has to take 'mechanics' in order to 'react appropriately'. See above. Describing something doesn't mean you have to include the make-up of that thing. For example, if you woke up in some room with lots of weird equipment in it, you could describe the stuff you saw without having to refer to it as whatever it is. (i.e., "It's about a foot long, cylindrical, with a rough surface over most of it's length. The end bulges out in a sort of 'rounded cone' shape, with the point being inside the cylinder, and the flat area being a piece of clear plastic. In side that plastic cone, it looks like a 2cm glass bead is fastened into the center". ...or, "I see a metal flashlight"). In D&D, I can say "Fhadrah is a halfling fighter who wears medium armors and uses a shield and sword. She is good looking, but comes across to most as a bit uncaring, even cynical, because of her somewhat low Charisma". By saying "halfling", "fighter", "medium armor", and "charisma"...it's just grouping a bunch of descriptions together (re: "a foot long cylinder..." or "a flashlight"; saying "flashlight" automatically gives everyone an idea of what the object is). Not entirely sure what you are getting at here, so I'm going to leave it alone. Sorry! Because maybe the Rogue character does know. Remember my statement about the description vs just saying 'a flashlight'? Same sort of thing applies here. Nobody can write down EVERY SINGLE THING that his/her character does or doesn't know. It would be impossible to do in any sane manner. So, by saying "...a Rogue", it gives everyone at the table a baseline. Things that are significant from that baseline would need to be mentioned. In this case, if the DM said "Er, Sneaky Pete? How would you know that spell, let along how it works?"...and the Player can then re-evaluate. The Player can then acquiesce, or come up with a viable reason. "Uh...well, he did grow up on the street. Maybe he was friends with a wizard guy who fed him for doing some household chores. During dinner, the wizard would go on and on about spells, magic and general wizardry".Role-playing doesn't just mean "pretending/imagining a character", it also involves being able to adapt to what the other players and the DM do/say 'in the game'.  This is a "table style/preference" thing. Some DM's enforce a strict "realism" mode for talking and suggesting stuff to do in-character and in-game. Some DM's ignore it completely, where a player can help another even if the two players PC's aren't even remotely near (as in, one is on Oerth, the other is in the Astral Plane, for example). Most DM's and games, I'd suspect, would fall somewhere in the middle. I'm closer to the "ignore it completely" crowd. If a player can get involved and help with the 'fun' of the game, I'm all for that...within reason. I'm gonna firmly place this into the "different styles for different tables" category. This may very well float your boat, and there's nothing wrong with it, but I'm calling shenanigans on this being "the One True Way" to play an RPG. Again, "different styles". I agree with that. Everyone, Player and DM, should try different 'styles' of play as well as different RPG systems. The more you experience and know, the more you will figure out what style you like most. But, as I said, what you wrote here isn't the One True Way. I tried this type of play a couple times over the years. Every time the game felt...hmmm...'lessoned' from what it could be. And every time, I dropped that style of play. There's something to be said when a DM says "You take 15 points of damage!", and everyone at the table gasps and oooh's, aaah's, and woah's as the realize that PC, the only one left standing, is now fighting for his (and everyone elses unconscious PC) life with only 2hp's left. Knowing and using the mechanics of a game to describe stuff can, and indeed, does, significantly add to the excitement and fun factor or RPG'ing.^_^Paul L. Ming</blockquote>

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