When "Roleplaying" rears its ugly head...

[Conaill]

You know, I have to admit I was a little offended by Hannibal King and others blaming "roleplaying" for the troubles they're having.

People seem to forget that roleplaying isn't just acting. It's just as much writing a role for your PC as acting out that role. Someone who just blindly forges ahead with a rigid character concept would not be considered a great "roleplayer" in my mind. Just like an author who writes himself into a corner where the actions of his protagonists produce a boring or unstatisfying story wouldn't be considered a great actor (consistent as those actions may be in the world he has set up).

Good roleplaying requires a flexibility and creativity to see the range of consistent actions your PC might take, and to pick out of that range of actions those which will produce the most satisfying story.

 

[Desdichado]

"The Controversial Paladin" "wink-wink" [...] "No enlargement spells"

C'mon, everyone wants to see those two in the same campaign I think...

 

[Elf Witch]

You know, I have to admit I was a little offended by Hannibal King and others blaming "roleplaying" for the troubles they're having.

People seem to forget that roleplaying isn't just acting. It's just as much writing a role for your PC as acting out that role. Someone who just blindly forges ahead with a rigid character concept would not be considered a great "roleplayer" in my mind. Just like an author who writes himself into a corner where the actions of his protagonists produce a boring or unstatisfying story wouldn't be considered a great actor (consistent as those actions may be in the world he has set up).

Good roleplaying requires a flexibility and creativity to see the range of consistent actions your PC might take, and to pick out of that range of actions those which will produce the most satisfying story.

I have felt the same way reading this thread. I get the most enjoyment out of role playing my character and making them more than just stats on a page. I really get tired of the comment of why don't join a local theatre. Belive me I have no desire to be on stage but I do love to write and create characters and worlds. Ask the DMs I game with and they will tell you that I get very involved in their worlds I ask questions write journals and do more inneracting with NPCs than just killing them. In our first 3e campaign that lasted three years the world we developed with the DM was fantastic. The NPCs over time became fully developed characters. And I can see a situation coming up with a tough choice of who to bring back from the dead a PC or an NPC. It never happened but if it did we would have role played it out. To have just metagamed and said no bring back the PC would have broken the feel of the game.

I don't think the player is wrong for wanting the NPC raised if it for the reason he claims that he is buddies with the NPC and does not know the PC that well. That's role playing. But being childish and trying to control the outcome by saying he won't let the new PC back in the party that is not role playing that is being a bore and bad player.

I am also tired of the players who create these lone wolf anti social characters who refuse to give their character any motivation for being with the party. And then claim that they are just role playing their character. They are not role playing they are simply being jerks.

Good role players don't make characters that won't fit into the party on purpose. Sure it sometimes happens as things develop in game but to make a paladin when everyone else is playing chaotic neutral types who take what they want is just asking for conflict from the start. That is just stupid and selfish.

It's a game and everybody needs to have fun to do that people need to work together to make the game fun.

And the DM has some responsibility in helping this along. In the situation here why did the DM have the NPC say he wanted to return to life if there was no way to bring him back? He was in control of the NPC. I am not sure why he is upset with the player wanting to bring back the NPC when he himself set up the situation. He made an error assuming that the players would all just metagame and choose the PC. It sounds to me like he may not know his players all that well.

 

[Doug McCrae]

People seem to forget that roleplaying isn't just acting. It's just as much writing a role for your PC as acting out that role.

Actually as I use the term roleplaying pretty much is acting. When I want to praise the whole package someone brings to the table I talk about being a good player rather than a good roleplayer.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I am also tired of the players who create these lone wolf anti social characters who refuse to give their character any motivation for being with the party. And then claim that they are just role playing their character. They are not role playing they are simply being jerks.

I think they're roleplaying and being jerks.

 

[D+1]

(a) The guy's player is not reading this thread so you're not actually explaining anything to him.
(b) That's your style of play. It also happens to be mine but there are plenty of people who have fun who don't take those things into consideration. They just have a slightly different kind of fun than we do. Just because we need these things taken into consideration does not mean everyone does.

Sorry if that wasn't clear. I just refuse to repeatedly say that which supposedly goes without saying - play the game the way you want. If someone disagrees with my opinion on how the game is best played I have no problem debating it but it's still going to come down to personal preference no matter how strenuously I inisist that my way is better. And it is. If someone wants to be silly and read it as if I'm saying it's my way or the highway and I'm holding some kind of authority over their heads... well there's not much I can do. But I'm not gonna be starting every sentence with, "Play the game the way you want..." Someone who insists on being oversensitive on that isn't interested in debate, they want to argue and play victim.

 

[D+1]

I won't comment on the rest of your posts but all I have to say is...man... We're playing two different games or in alternate realities or something.

I'll also thank you for calling a large segment of the gaming population stupid, even though you were hopefully exaggerating your opinion. Good day, chief. Have fun with that.

Just trying to keep the conversation lively. BTW, just in case I was unclear, what I was objecting to was not roleplaying in a general sense, nor placing a heavy priority on roleplaying. What I object to is the idea that some players seem to get into their heads that roleplaying is a legitimate excuse for annoying and disruptive behavior both in and out of the game. It isn't, and it annoys me to no end because of the sheer arrogance it requires. Even moreso when you haven't established VERY clearly beforehand that everyone else at the table is on the same page.

As I think I mentioned before I usually see it crop up as a matter of alignment. For example: Character A earns the ire of character B and because his non-good alignment allows it, B kills A. The player of B doesn't pause to think there might be less drastic, alternate means of handling things in-game and the player of A gets mad that his favorite character has been killed. B then defends his actions as, "I was merely roleplaying my alignment."

I don't believe that that is a large segment of the gaming population, it's a very small segment but that seemed to me to be what the DM in question thought he was dealing with. Now the DM in question is NOT without some fault in the matter and I believe I have said so, just not in my initial post.

Now as DM, I belive the players character should be raised and the NPC should risk the reincarnation spell. Obvious the players enjoyment is paramount over my NPC. But wait for it...

One of the players of one the older player characters feels that the NPC should recieve the resurrection and the newer player character should risk the reincarnation cause he is has been around longer and is a friend of the older player character.

I argued that I won't spoil the player's enjoyment for the sake of an NPC. He argued that it would be the true roleplaying way to handle it. My reply was to hell with that! I won't allow roleplaying to ruin a player's enjoyment. His arguement now is that this is ruining his enjoyment of the game. And that we (the rest of the group) are a bunch of metagamers who don't have a clue about the true roleplaying way.

What I'm reading there is that there is a great deal of insistance that the NPC is irrelevant and that there is laudable concern for the enjoyment of the PLAYER. Now ensuring that by starting to tell players how to run their characters is hardly the way to go about it but the players response to that is, IMO, rather a bit more excessive and definitely not motivated by a desire to ensure the enjoyment of everyone at the table. This, of course, also assumes that we are getting at least a reasonably reliable, albeit one-sided view of events.

Roleplaying is NOT the be-all end-all of D&D. If you think it is, have fun with that but hopefully the others at your gaming table feel the same way or you're likely to end up with a similar problem to the situation at issue. Pursuit of "good roleplaying" doesn't include the right to throw evil characters into good parties and then using "roleplaying" as your shield when everyone gets upset. It similarly doesn't give you the right to insist that everyone at the table subscribe to your belief that roleplaying trumps all and the other player across the table from you means nothing, particularly when it's quite apparant that at the very least your DM doesn't, much less all the other players.

There's blame to share here and this is obviously a group that has some issues to iron out at their next game session - if not before. Part of that is needing to find out just how all the players DO feel about how and why the resurrection should be doled out, both from their characters perspectives and as players. The DM should get back behind his shield where he belongs and leave CHARACTER issues to the characters and their players, and the player at issue needs to get down off his high horse.

 

[fusangite]

I'm not a big fan of The Forgeindie-rpgs.com.

Nor do I feel that the GNS model is the totalizing system it purports to be.

However, for this particular debate, the GNS model is very helpful. One side is stating that simulationist play is inherently bad; the other side is arguing that simulationist play is a perfectly reasonable way to go.

I'm not a big practitioner of simulationist play per se, more due to my belief that the character is not as knowable by the player as we like to think than my love of other styles of play.

 

[fusangite]

Sorry if that wasn't clear. I just refuse to repeatedly say that which supposedly goes without saying - play the game the way you want... If someone wants to be silly and read it as if I'm saying it's my way or the highway

D+1, some advice if you don't want people to "be silly" in future:

That doesn't mean that player/PC's desires will ALWAYS take precedence and that other factor are disregarded, but it does mean that PC's must ALWAYS take GREATER CONSIDERATION when being dealt with than dealing with NPC's.

I'd lay off using the term "ALWAYS" if you don't want people to assume you mean in every situation.

Failure to recognize this is not just poor roleplaying - it is being a poor PLAYER.

And terms like "being a poor player" again seem awfully universal.

 

[RSKennan]

D+1, some advice if you don't want people to "be silly" in future:I'd lay off using the term "ALWAYS" if you don't want people to assume you mean in every situation.And terms like "being a poor player" again seem awfully universal.

I agree, and it's the EMPHASIS that helped annoy me. Anyway, I understand what you were getting at now, D+1, even if I respectfully disagree.