When the system gets in the way

[boredgremlin]

I used to think 3e worked for RP. And i have played for 12 years now in a bunch of systems. One game totally changed my mind....

Gamer 1- he wanted to make a general based on spartacus. Unfortunately diplomacy and bluff suck for fighters. So his fighter had no chance to talk decently, and when he was talking to someone his sense motive sucked. So it was virtually impossible to turn a fighter into a rebel rousing, loyalty inspiring Spartacus.

He needed diplomacy, bluff, sense motive and knowledge (military tactics) to be a believable slave freeing Spartacus. Unfortunately 2 skillpoints per level and most of those being non class skills rendered Spartacus impossible to believably achieve as a fighter. Neither ranger nor palidan made sense so Spartacus was clearly impossible to have ever existed as a character.

Gamer 2- wanted to be an army ranger type character. It was medieval but he was a hardcase professional elvish soldier who hated magic and thought it was corrupting his people. Having some expertise in the area i told him he needed wilderness surival, weapons skills and great physical prowess.

Unfortunately this meant he needed wilderness lore, spot, listen, search, ride and handle animal to be a believable ranger in a fantasy setting. Of course the fighters 2 skill pts dont add up to be anyone decent at anything, so his very cool layout of a magic hating zealot who did all he could to protect his home got FUBAR'D into a non magical ranger variant from the unearthed arcana that we both hated.

In both cases D20 directly killed great character concepts based on RP. I have had many games like this. So many in fact that i decided to completely ditch D20 and moved to a storyteller system, basically from White Wolf....

All my players are happy, they can actually create the character they want.

I knew D20 was crap when i saw the bluff and diplomacy skills way back when. Any game that takes role playing and reduces it to rolling a D20 with a few modifiers has completely failed and killed real RP.

 

[boredgremlin]

I forgot to mention that 3e has discouraged most new players i have dealt with. They galme a session or two, see a rules lawyer beat them badly in a competive sense and ask why. My response as a DM? He bought the 40$ book and read it cover to cover a few times to find every tiny rule he could game into a numbers advantage.

So if you want to keep up with the power gamer o newbie you must take home this book and read it cover to cover a few times and take good notes..... How many played more then 3 sessions? 25%.

I went to white wolfs storyteller sytem a few months back. My newbie retention rate? 5 out of 6. They dont have to read and memorize hundreds of pages or spend hundreds of dollars on optional books to keep up. Newbies in a rules lite system can just walk in with an idea and thier RP concept and play a good solid game where they are fairly balanced with even the veterans.

 

[Treebore]

While I'm glad that you obtained the role playing that you were looking for, but the pessimist in me suspects that the number crunching will return after prolonged familiarity with the game occurs. It's been my xp that no matter what the system it starts off as more roleplaying, but as time passes and familiarity grows the players will make characters who are more "efffective" than the original characters were. Then you'll have a return to what you were upset about to begin with.

But hey maybe I'll be wrong and it'll all be peaches and candy

my $0.02

It sounds like you are responding to my post, so here is my feedback.

I'm like many here on ENWorld, I have been playing/DMing for over 20 years, and I can confidently say that you are wrong about C&C ending up that way. There is very little crunching to do. You select Primes and roll stats. That is all the number crunching there is to do. From then on it is all roleplay and level advancement. Classes are like 1E and 2E, a set progression of power, unless I were to decide to house rule things, which I have decided I will not do. I like the simplicity and my players have realized that the adventure stories that the character goes through is much cooler than the feat chain and skill ranks it has. Plus since the game sessions go so much faster and so much more happens, there is a heck of a lot more story to tell about their characters exploits.

Plus, the way I handle the rules, every character can attempt to pull off a feat type maneuver, and I use the skill lists from 3E to clearly define what skills your character knows. Which in my games is every skill on the list for your character class archetype. The only house rule I have had to add is that knowledge skills are limited to your INT divided by 3.

Simple, and no limitations on what characters can do. Plus, in play, the only time my players even bother to try out feat type stuff is when the fight is going against them. Then they try the "crazy" maneuvers to try and turn the tide of the battle.

So I think my C&C games are going to avoid power creep, especially since spellcasters have to reach 9th level before they can even start to make magic items more powerful than potions and scrolls.

Plus it has been real sweet to pull out my old 1E and 2E adventures and use them almost as is. Especially my old 1E stuff, like Keep on the Borderlands and Castle D'Amberville and the "N" series, "U" series, etc...

I've found the game system that is going to keep me happy for however much longer I keep gaming, and it is a pretty darn good feeling. Many of the posters in the C&C forums have expressed the same feelings.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

It's never the system, it's always the group.

Some groups take a tactically-focused game like D&D and can't get anything else out of it. Some have no problem focusing equally on story as on the mechanics of the game - or more so.

Conversely, some groups play a rules-light game and can't get anything out of it, because they can't engage with their characters when they're so, for lack of a better word, "abstracted". I recall a thread on this forum concerning a player's inability to meaningfully represent a dextrous "light fighter" in Castles & Crusades, and how that player (der kluge?) was unable to roleplay the character because she wasn't interacting with her world in the game the way she did in his mind.

I think it has nothing to do with system, except inasmuch as individual players, and players in groups, find different systems more or less easy to game with while they roleplay. For some people, the game demands too much of their time and attention at the table. For others, the game becomes far too meaningless.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

But, beyond that, I seem to feel that, with the level and complexity of D&D's mechanics, the players become less focused on WHO their character is. While in our Iron Heroes game there was some character building (we had the son of a nobleman, a tattoed arcanist, and the like) the fact is, none of the characters had NAMES that anyone remembers. Compare this to in our d6 game I ran. My friend Squee was playing "Taint", a crazy knifefighter, while Shelley was playing Julianna, the hacker. When Squee made a decision to abandon the group at a nightclub in search of a quick fix, Shelley was able to say something along the lines of "That sounds like something Taint would do". In other words, not only were my players more aware of their own characters, but they were also more aware of the REST OF THE GROUP'S characters. I definately noticed a difference in the role-playing quality. How much of this is due to the system, and how much is due to my own decision to focus on role-playing, I don't know.

Here's an anecdote from my own experience: the first two Third Edition games I ever played, a Planescape game run in straight D&D and a d20 Wheel of Time campaign, back when nearly everyone in the group was still learning how the d20 System worked, were so heavy on the roleplaying that at least some of us would have long discussions about the motivations of the characters and their future goals on the drive home. I spent more than a few evenings talking to my friend Gareth in my car out the front of his place for more than two hours, and all of that chatter was about our characters.

Even back then, when it was all fresh, I couldn't have told you the exact builds people were using - I know that the one half-celestial and two half-fiendish characters in the Planescape game were mechanically aasimar and tieflings because the DM didn't want to bother with the templates, and I could tell you roughly what everyone's classes were, but despite some pretty high-level, tactically-complex play I don't think anyone ever felt like the system was in the way.

In fact, I would have liked a little more in the way of attention to the system in the Planescape game, but expecting that from the DM in question might have been a futile hope.

I think it's got more to do with how much emphasis the group places on motivation and character goals, and whether or not the group finds the system intrusive for them, than it has to do with some innate properties of the system.

 

[mmadsen]

It's never the system, it's always the group.

Why is it so hard to accept that it's always the system and the group?

If the same players play differently with a different system, obviously system matters.

 

[Hussar]

Why is it so hard to accept that it's always the system and the group?

If the same players play differently with a different system, obviously system matters.

Fair enough to a point. When systems are radically different, then it is pretty much impossible to play the same. At least for anyone who actually intends to play the game in front of them.

I've met more than a few people who play Vampire pretty much exactly like DnD.

But, if the game in front of you supports certain actions and not others, then, well, you have to change how you play. 2e doesn't support tactical combat (at least out of the box it doesn't) so it doesn't make much sense to think tactically in that game. 3e does support tactical thinking in combat, so, we tend to see much more tactical combat occuring. Which, in turn, turns off some people who don't want to worry about small details and think it derails the game.

If that's the consensus around the table, then changing to a system that doesn't support tactical combat, or rather, handwaves it, should result in a happier group.

Now, are the problems caused by the system? I don't think so. The system is what it is. Saying "I'm not having fun, this system is bad" is a far cry from "I'm not having fun, this system is not for me." To me, it looks like Wik falls into the second camp, not the first. And, really, good for him.

Yes, the system will affect how you play. Of course it will. You cannot have Free Parking in Poker. But, the point is, the system is what it is. Whether it's the system you like or not is up to you, not the system.

In my mind, it really is the group that's the issue, not the system.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Now, my question here: do you people find that some systems allow for role-playing better than others? Do you find that D&D gets in the way of role-playing, that you have to pay conscious attention to the rules of the game, and that this gets in the way of your role-playing experience? And, if you do find some systems work really well for role-playing, what systems?

The rules can lend themselves to certain styles of play. d6 is definitely more rules-light. You just don't have the infinitesimal tactical options intimately described by rules. It then lends itself to a more free-wheeling style of play since even though your characters might be doing the SAME THING under d20 you aren't gaming the system to make it work in your characters favor. What this means is not that d20 can't support that kind of play but that it depends on the players and DM both to recognize this influence and refuse to submit to it.

The one truly unfortunate design decision made in developing 3rd Edition was this notion of Rules Mastery. It's great for selling a constant stream of materials but highly conducive to ROLLplaying over ROLEplaying. The latter recieves almost NO emphasis while WotC willingly drowns in rules minutiae. Your players have now been wallowing in the same minutiae for 6 years. When you throw them into a system that they simply CANNOT obsessively manipulate purely because they lack the necessary familarity with it to even start doing so, well of course they're going to play differently.

You can probably get them to play differently with D&D rules as well simply by giving them less rules to manipulate - restrict the game to Core Rules.

I'm a little curious. This has been a huge eye-opening experience, and I'm still incredibly excited about role-playing again after wednesday night's game, which is something I haven't felt in years.

Well then don't feel guilty or change a thing. ENJOY IT.

 

[reanjr]

Now, my question here: do you people find that some systems allow for role-playing better than others? ... And, if you do find some systems work really well for role-playing, what systems?

It's possible to do good role playing in any system. But I do feel that certain systems lend themselves better to the experience or interfere somewhat. D&D is definitely one of the latter, though it is far better with fewer supplements. Stick with the 3 core rulebooks with no prestige classes, epic rules, or purchasing magic items and the system becomes simple enough that people don't expect the rules to cover everything.

World of Darkness (new edition) has a very tight system that lends itself remarkably well to role playing. This isn't as true with the Werewolf, Mage, or Vampire supplements, but the core game is absolutely fantastic for role playing.

SAGA was one that was very good for role playing, but unfortunately the rules did sometimes cause problems when they were broken (you mean it's impossible for me to hit that dragon now, but in a minute after he has been frostdarted by the wizard, I now have the magical ability to hit him?)

Alternity was also alot better for role playing than D&D, but not quite so good as the other ones I mentioned.

If you want to stick with d20/OGL systems, Iron Heroes is pretty good for role playing. It manages to get rid of most of the cruft of D&D (magic, prestige classes, equipment) and allows you to just play. There are also a couple of really good feat trees that are totally role playing oriented.

The only other thing on my shelf right now is All Flesh Must Be Eaten. It has a non invasive rules system, but isn't really dynamic enough for anything other than the zombie survival genre.

 

[reanjr]

I knew D20 was crap when i saw the bluff and diplomacy skills way back when. Any game that takes role playing and reduces it to rolling a D20 with a few modifiers has completely failed and killed real RP.

I have just made this my sig