Why would you want to play *that*??

[der_kluge]

Dude, you win the internet!

 

[Seeten]

From badfun to goodfun in 0.9 posts.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

From badfun to goodfun in 0.9 posts.

And back to badfun as soon as someone, somewhere, tries to actually sing it.

If there's one thing that's badwrongfun in this world, it's fansongs.

 

[Agback]

QFT.

However, the roleplaying aspects of the game developed quite quickly.

Just as you say.

 

[Hussar]

RC, that was brilliant. Well done. Someone give that man an anime schoolgirl.

And, yes, I actually tried to sing along.... (Remembering to put the period on the end of the ellipsis.)

 

[Hairfoot]

Quick! Someone hand Crowking an Oscar, an Emmy, and the Eurovision before he gets his hands on the Mikado!

A rendition of 'three little mind-flayers from school are we' may cause me to be the first recorded casualty of death-by-laughing-a-lung-out.

 

[Presto2112]

But I have to believe that people who play such mind-boggingly bizarre character concepts ONLY approach them as a collection of statistics. For example, do people who play Warlocks choose them because they would make an interesting role-playing challenge, or do people play Warlocks because they have a lot of phat k3wl special abilities?

Have people lost site of the fact that this is a ROLE-playing game?

Why does it have to be one or the other?

My current character is whisper gnome warlock. Yes, I assembled him with some "phat k3wl special abilities", but along with those special abilities, I also had a lot of work to do in terms of character background as to WHY he has those abilities. In fact I had to explain why there are whisper gnomes to begin with (a band of dark-skinned, gypsy-like gnomes made a deal with a Pit Fiend hundreds of years ago to gain the stealthy abilities of the whisper gnome).

You can role-play practically anything if given the chance (and that's actually something you do in your game). About five sessions ago, my warlock was dominated by a sorcerer and he nearly took out the party's paladin with his eldritch blasts. I turned this around and made this nearly tragic loss into a neat RP opportunity! I've had the warlock feeling really guilty about his actions and he's been spending a lot of his down time and non-combat time with the paladin, apologizing ang getting to know him better.

Bottom line, I think it IS possible to get some superb roleplaying out of a half-dragon barbarian tempest, an earth genasi monk sacred fist, a werebear gnoll druid sorcerer fohlucan lyrist, or whatever. Sometimes, a player just feels that a human fighter has been done to death, and wants to try something new.

 

[Hairfoot]

Hey, Presto.

This is the hassle with "RP gods VS evil munchkins" debates: it's impossible to generalise.

Choosing a juicy mechanical benefit and using your imagination to fold it coherently into the character is good roleplaying. That's very different from exploiting every loophole you can find, then working up a perfunctory backstory so it holds together.

The PC you describe is growing and sticking with his background. It's a fine use of story and mechanics. On the other hand, I've seen all sorts of thri-kreen monks and teifling hexblades which were, essentially, built as wargame units for their numerical benefits, with characterisation as an afterthought.

 

[TheAranan]

I fully agree with Presto2112.

I have never managed to grasp why some people think roleplaying and number crunching have to be exclusive to one another. Sure, some people will treat their character as just a block of statistics and be happy with it. Others will focus solely on their character's personality and give minimal attention to the numbers.

Personally, I like to do both. I won't claim to be an uber leet roleplayer. I'm also not the most efficient and talented optimizer. I do like to mix both aspects into every character I create, though. Besides, if I'm going to play a character and invest time in developing it, I want it to live though as many encounters as possible.

[edit] Oh, and Hairfoot, I often start my characters as mechanical concepts and build their personalities around that. So even that generalization doesn't work.

 

[Presto2112]

Hey, Presto.

This is the hassle with "RP gods VS evil munchkins" debates: it's impossible to generalise.

Choosing a juicy mechanical benefit and using your imagination to fold it coherently into the character is good roleplaying. That's very different from exploiting every loophole you can find, then working up a perfunctory backstory so it holds together.

The PC you describe is growing and sticking with his background. It's a fine use of story and mechanics. On the other hand, I've seen all sorts of thri-kreen monks and teifling hexblades which were, essentially, built as wargame units for their numerical benefits, with characterisation as an afterthought.

*sigh* I've actually played in a very large group (when 2e was king) that had two "evil munchkins that were nothing more than a collection stats brought together to lay havoc upon the land, two guys who INTENTIONALLY made their characters weak because they thought that would make the PC more fun to roleplay, and a guy who actually spent equal focus on roleplaying AND powergaming, but did both quite badly. Then there were three normal guys and me.