Saturday, March 7, 2009

Role-Playing is not...

... what I once thought it was.

This thought came to me reading (yet another) for vs against 4e argument (that I was interested in for the discussion about the role and responsibility of a critic, not for the actual argument about the game).

Role-playing is not the characterization and speaking in voices and inventing a background and developing a persona that's a unique little snowflake. Your character's personality and "what would my character do based on that personality?" are add-on extras completely irrelevant (yet can enhance and perhaps make the effort enjoyable in the first place, make no mistake about what I'm saying here) to the basic activity of role-playing.

Fighting Man Level 1
ST 12, IN 8, WI 10, CN 9, DX 10, CH 9

That's your character and your role, right there.

41 comments:

  1. Yeah. "I'm the cleric! It's my role to turn undead, cast Cure Light Wounds at the appropriate time, and bash things with my mace." Everything else is whip cream and sprinkles on top.

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  2. Proclamations like that are when you guys begin to completely lose me. What is the benefit to anyone of all the snide "unique little snowflake" language bandied about the conversation these days?

    I suppose it might "perhaps make the effort enjoyable" as you say, but let's not let that get in the way of our real goal, the distillation of the game to its platonic essence? Is that the idea here?

    Rients and Mal, from your play reports, are those stats, presumably not far off from Grognard and Pike's, their character and their role really, and there's really nothing added from a mustachioed character sketch or the little whiff of irony from the retired gravedigger entering the ancient tomb.

    It might be fun of course, but that's *irrelavant* in this *game,* right? Of course not. James R., I know you're the "I hate fun" guy, but, frankly, you know the whole point of playing is to have fun!

    The glory of RPGs is that they are so expansive, and inclusive of so many things. Again. You guys KNOW this. What's the benefit to play of screeds reminding us to get to the heart of the games to reducing them to austere ritual or intellectual exercise?

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  3. >>What is the benefit to anyone of all the snide "unique little snowflake" language bandied about the conversation these days?

    It's a reaction against the idea of trying to have a guy all awesome and interesting before he ever enters play... thus having players attached to characters that haven't done anything... and thus having players unhappy with unfortunate events that befall their characters.

    Risk, sudden death, and rolling up a new character (and discovering, not controlling, what you come up with) are all part of classic gaming. Including energy drains and save-or-die if we're being game-specific.

    Too much character customization, background and personality quirks that interfere with the action at hand (the question is, "What if these guys were in this situation?" not "Why would my guy do this in the first place?"), and basically anything that gets in the way of speedy character creation kills classic gaming.

    >>What's the benefit to play of screeds reminding us to get to the heart of the games to reducing them to austere ritual or intellectual exercise?

    "Advancements" and advice that bypass the heart of the games are no good, that's why. It's easy to get caught up in a lot of things, and miss the very basics.

    ***

    I see since I started this reply, Bat in the Attic has chimed in. And I agree with what he says from the "I am NOT advocating..." line, and I do not think it conflicts with what I am saying here.

    And I forgot to add an alignment to my original example. Oops. :D That does add a bit of dimension built-in as well, especially the 9 point alignment.

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  4. >> "Advancements" and advice that bypass the heart of the games are no good, that's why. It's easy to get caught up in a lot of things, and miss the very basics.

    I think you're wrong.

    First, you really have to go out of the way to miss the basics, because if you're, say, running a dungeon adventure with traps and torches and iron rations, those basics are right there in front of you.

    All the things you mention are part of classic gaming. No one of them is critical. Any of them can be changed. The early days of published gaming instantly exploded into a wild cosmos of different takes on the game each a little different.

    You've argued before that, say, counting every coin worth of encumbrance is critical. If you do, it further forefronts resource management, which we can all agree is a part of old style play. If you don't, you know well the game doesn't implode. It shifts a little. This is just an example.

    I just keep getting the feeling in a lot of your essays that what you see players as liking are fundamentally opposed to the integrity of the game. Te tone of "all awesome and interesting" suggests a contempt for the player who comes bright-eyed to the table saying "My Fighting Man is a squire who hopes to earn his spurs in the dungeon below!," shadowed by a fear that his statement is going to be like a cancer, mutating play, that must be excised.

    Old style play is deadly, and there might be a little more of a sting when the squire dies than the guy who doesn't have a name on the index card yet. The next character, who might NOT have a name on the index card yet, might eventually get one 30 minutes after he enters the dungeon. Is that equally a problem?

    To me it sounds like the mirror of the objection of the 90's story DM fearing the player who's going to accidentally deep-six his plot. The players show up to play, and the DM is there behind the screen trying to hold onto the wisp of smoke that's the right way to game.

    It's all smoke, just sacred smoke and you just sound like you're trying to make the "classic" style very faux-sacred, very ritualized, which seems to me a bitter irony in comparison to the earliest RPG texts, which are so palimpsestic, which throw down the gauntlet to imagine the hell out of it, not to dogmatize the hell out of it.

    You have a lot of good ideas, and clearly a sharp critical eye. But half the time when you start laying down the law on what classic play is, I can't help but I would not have a very good time showing up at your table.

    --GCL

    This response is dedicated to the memory of Bradley "Shithouse" Rogers, the halfling thief who died wordlessly upon his entree to Tegel Manor, and to his player's next character, the halfling constable who showed up five minutes later, hot on his trail.

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  5. Rients and Mal, from your play reports, are those stats, presumably not far off from Grognard and Pike's, their character and their role really, and there's really nothing added from a mustachioed character sketch or the little whiff of irony from the retired gravedigger entering the ancient tomb.

    For me, it's a question of priorities. Pike is, first and foremost, a fighting-man; that's his role and that's why his player chose to create him. The rest, which helps differentiate him from the hireling fighters, is useful and important but also unnecessary. Now, in actual play, I've never seen a character who was played more than about 15 minutes who didn't become more than the role dictated by his class, but that's the nature of RPGs.

    Jim can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think his point isn't that there's anything wrong with a character being more than the role dictated to him by his stats and class. Rather, it's that it's a mistake to consider such things as primary to their creation and play, when they're better treated as emergent properties of the activity of gaming.

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  6. >>Jim can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think his point isn't that there's anything wrong with a character being more than the role dictated to him by his stats and class. Rather, it's that it's a mistake to consider such things as primary to their creation and play, when they're better treated as emergent properties of the activity of gaming.

    Correct.

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  7. It's all cake.
    Cake is good, but icing makes it tastier.
    Too much icing will give you a toothache though ...

    :)

    JM.

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  8. Doesn't the game just become a boardgame at this point? I mean, even having a name gives your role some character. Maybe this:

    Fighting Man Level 1
    ST 12, IN 8, WI 10, CN 9, DX 10, CH 9

    Maybe that's your role, but all the 'extras' must be your character. Though in a role playing game I think character is very relevant. Otherwise you're just playing a boardgame, one where I guess you could develop character along the way.

    Unless you start out as a newborn or some kind of avatar, then the fighting man who's role you are playing must have at least some character to begin with. At the very least a name....

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  9. >>Rather, it's that it's a mistake to consider such things as primary to their creation and play, when they're better treated as emergent properties of the activity of gaming.

    Ah, after I posted there were a few more comments. That make's sense then.

    So what you're saying is don't worry about the details upfront and let the actual role playing develop and define your character.

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  10. Rients and Mal, from your play reports, are those stats, presumably not far off from Grognard and Pike's, their character and their role really, and there's really nothing added from a mustachioed character sketch or the little whiff of irony from the retired gravedigger entering the ancient tomb.

    I premised my response above on the assumption that nearly everybody likes whipped cream and sprinkles, even though they aren't required to have a tasty ice cream treat.

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  11. >>James Maliszewski said...

    >>Now, in actual play, I've never seen a character who was played more than about 15 minutes who didn't become more than the role dictated by his class, but that's the nature of RPGs.

    I think you have struck to the heart of the matter here despite somewhat arguing other. It is part and parcel of the animal of play; it seems almost unavoidable. To say that it occurs according to "the nature of RPGs" yet is simultaneously unnecessary is pushing the argument into thin semantics.

    Even the character studiously distilled to his OD&D stats is still "role-played" according to the persona of his player, even if none other.

    You could remove all mechanical differentiation from one character to the next and recreate the D&D dungeon adventure, as it grew in the wild, quite closely--various other systems remove, add, and remove again different bits and pieces; none are critical. The character as he interacts with the world the DM presents is the nature of the game. Even a name is character.

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  12. >>Jeff Rients said...

    >> I premised my response above on the assumption that nearly everybody likes whipped cream and sprinkles, even though they aren't required to have a tasty ice cream treat.

    Really, that's the sentiment in which I took your response to be written. I think the OP's argument ventures unpleasantly close to saying that going so far as to pick a flavor and then eat the ice cream is a dangerous detriment to the classic ice-cream parlor purchase experience.

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  13. You can run a character and fully participate in adventuring without ever naming the character or deciding he has any sort of consistent personality, basing all decisions only on the situation in front of you.

    It is that "decision in a situation" which is the role-playing. Any extra description you put on it is for your own amusement, but that addition doesn't create role-playing where none was before.

    I got this idea from the "4e isn't a role-playing game" argument. Now I'm not going to go as far as that (haven't even done more than look at WotC marketing and flip through the PHB in a store when it comes to 4e), but I will go so far to say that narrating a skill challenge roll or spot check after the fact is about as much role-playing as deciding you're JP Morgan and affecting a voice when you play the hat in Monopoly.

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  14. I agree with what he says from the "I am NOT advocating..." line, and I do not think it conflicts with what I am saying here.

    Rather, it's that it's a mistake to consider such things as primary to their creation and play, when they're better treated as emergent properties of the activity of gaming.

    While the Fighter 1st Level example looks straight forward. It wrapped up assumptions of the OD&D rules. Eventually on the third, fourth, etc campaign players will get tired of starting out with those assumptions.

    With OD&D one way to alter things is to start off with the character having a minimal background, a distinct personality, and yes a funny voice.

    This makes the subsequent campaigns more interesting. For example somebody can play a fighter trained as a city guard, an apprentice to the royal mage, a acolyte of local parish church.

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  15. "Your character's personality and "what would my character do based on that personality?" are add-on extras completely irrelevant (yet can enhance and perhaps make the effort enjoyable in the first place,"

    I don't think I discounted the fact that this can be done, or said that it was bad to do so. Just that it's not central to the basic activity of the game.

    You can do all that with a Monopoly piece as well ("My doggy piece was abandoned as a pup, and learned that nothing came free... so now that he's got starting capital, he's going to buy up everything and become rich!" "Nay!" cried the iron. "I will flatten you all, using my preexisting love of railroads and utilities, inspired within me by my mother the hair dryer, to attempt to buy those properties and make sure electrical appliances are never abused again!" "HAHA, you went to jail, you must have embezzled and sent thugs to deal with tenants on Baltimore that complained about lousy conditions!"), and that doesn't turn Monopoly into a role-playing game.

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  16. You did claim it was bad to do so:

    '"Advancements" and advice that bypass the heart of the games are no good, that's why. It's easy to get caught up in a lot of things, and miss the very basics.'

    >> and that doesn't turn Monopoly into a role-playing game.

    To an extent, it does, though of course a poor one. In my experience, I have observed that players with even a very limited exposure to D&D often do just this when playing board games among other RPG players. Generally you play to win, but generally you play to win in RPGs as well, where winning is generally "surviving."

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  17. >>You did claim it was bad to do so:

    Look at what I just quoted back to Conley.

    It's bad to do so when it interferes with the game. It's not bad to do so when it does not. It's good to do so when it enhances the game. But it isn't the game.

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  18. Good God man, there's no way I'm wading through 50+ pages of RPGnet discussion about 4E.

    I think you like to phrase things strongly for effect but the parenthetical near the end is important to the meaning. It looks to me like Cole and Mr. Bat in the Attic have misunderstood, despite the explicit warning not to.

    I'll say that for me, good roleplaying is when you feel like you *are* the character, and bad roleplaying is when you are sort of "piloting" the character, or dragging it along behind you. It's like if a LARPer, instead of wearing the costume himself, put the costume on a mannequin that he hauled around with him and occasionally primped, and in a confrontation would explain how the mannequin had just run away too fast for you to follow.

    For this reason it is best if PC's start out relatively blank, because I believe the character concept should adjust to the actual way the character is played at the table. What goes on at the table should in some way be reflected in what goes on in the game is a DMing commandment, I feel. If the players are spending a year arguing about which corridor to go down, their characters are wasting time arguing in the game world arguing as well. If the players are arguing loud, increase the chance for a wandering monster.

    If someone shows up with their half-elf Ranger with a commissioned character sketch and a history of being through three wars with the drow, etc. but their player is timid and wimpy and doesn't know how to control a fighter but insists "wait my character should know how to do that" -- fie on that.

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  19. >>It's bad to do so when it interferes with the game. It's not bad to do so when it does not. It's good to do so when it enhances the game. But it isn't the game.

    I think that the most aggressively austere positions of--forgive the term-neoclassicist play have equal or great potential for interference. Deliberate reduction of various elements the game to a minimum suggested by 70's play as it is remembered and understood can be good when the game is the better for the approach, but this philosophical minimalism is not the game, nor fundamental to it.

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  20. >> If someone shows up with their half-elf Ranger with a commissioned character sketch and a history of being through three wars with the drow, etc. but their player is timid and wimpy and doesn't know how to control a fighter but insists "wait my character should know how to do that" -- fie on that.

    That is a definite pitfall of adding on too many bells and whistles to the character before play. If you can't pull it off then it's been done for nothing.

    >>Deliberate reduction of various elements the game to a minimum suggested by 70's play as it is remembered and understood can be good when the game is the better for the approach, but this philosophical minimalism is not the game, nor fundamental to it.

    Developing your character as you go and grow with your character, that's a method that makes sense to have been the original way of doing it. Before the player characters even had a role they were just faceless, nameless troops. The role defined the character before everything else and over time the extras were added to sort of support bringing the character to life.

    So as for the minimalism not being fundamental, I think it is. But I don't think that means it should stop someone from adding extras if they really wanted to, or if they felt comfortable with pulling off the extras without having a "What would my PC do?" moment. Over analyzing should be left to post game banter or it could paralyze the momentum of the game.

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  21. Backstory - yeah. When I have a player that has a fancy story about their character it usually end-up one of two ways: 1) the physics of a monster biting him solves the problem for me, or 2) I remind them that them they're first level.

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  22. I have two possibly contradictory observations.

    #1 is that my current game has "Anon the Mage" in it. Anon is a mage because he (or she--even that's indeterminate) had a higher MIND stat than anything else (m74). Anon's role is, yeah, to cast [i]Magic Missile[/i] and to stab monsters with a dagger to conserve its magic. Anon works fine in the context of that m74 game.

    #2 is that we tried a game using m20. This was a Zombies game. And we did a 3d6-in-order character creation. My character had horrible stats (like 6,4,8, I think), and in this game, a single zombie bite is almost certain death. My role was very much dictated by my stats: I tried to run to the center of the other players, and shrieked aloud to Jesus to protect me, and didn't try to do anything useful because that would have meant almost certain death. I had a terrible time with that character, and so did everyone else. Yet, it was a very old-school game in the sense of "let the dice fall where they may." In OD&D that'd be a Fighting Man, but a really crappy one. However, in a Dawn-of-the-Dead type game, I really felt no urge to charge in and get my braaaaaaain chomped. Was I wrong?

    Adam

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  23. "yet can enhance and perhaps make the effort enjoyable in the first place"

    Wait, if it takes characterisation for 'it' to be enjoyable, then that's the enjoyable thing for that person.

    If the original founders of roleplay found that to be the important thing, then what your into is actually the irrelevant part and characterisation actually is roleplay - what you like is just an add on that doesn't matter too much.

    As it is, if you take Gygax to be the founder of the roleplay were talking about, well there was also Dave Arneson around at that founding point as well.

    I would say Gygax was into what you like, while Dave Arneson - well, he had a house rule that went "You only get XP for spending gold on things that are important to your character"

    In other words, roleplay was founded both on what it is you pursue, and characterisation - even though they are not always mutually compatable.

    So no, characterisation is about an irrelevant add on as the thing you pursue. How about imagining someone else going all revisionist history and writing out what you like as simply an irrelevant add on?

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  24. The link is to the start of a thread of at least 52 pages with no immediately obvious relevance (as you said, more about reviewer and review).

    "Role" as game function seems to be what 4E is all about. If Malizewski's "Bingo" is to Rients' comment, then I'm more confused than enlightened.

    The key element to me is "putting myself in the shoes" of my character. Trying to pretend that, e.g., I don't already know about the regeneration ability of trolls is after all these years a dead letter. I'm a D&Der, Jim, not an actor! Better to subvert my assumptions.

    4E is too disconnected from established referents for my taste. It's too thick with stuff that gets in my face reminding me not only that it's "just a game" but that it's not even "D&D as we know it."

    A proper RPG to me goes too far neither in that direction nor in the "story-telling-author" direction. Either extreme jerks my perspective right out of those sandals smacking stone.

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  25. You might as well be playing a card game then.

    You will never have to roll another character again, just roll up 10 different characters for each class and roll a d10 each time one dies.

    If you don't want your character ignorant of a monsters abilities then take the proper skills that say hey I know this thing.

    The great thing about RPGs is that it IS a story, one where personal convictions, honor, betrayal, desires, motivations and goals reach deeper than I'm a LG Priest of (insert generic god which will have no real bearing on game play anyway) who will act like a CN thief because alignments and moral codes are to restrictive and I want some of the good stuff that non evil PCs get.

    And btw, if your character dies fighting the troll because you didn't know what it was, how about running?
    OH HOW DARE THE GM PUT US UP AGAINST SUCH AN ADVANCED MONSTER
    how about you frickin run, do some studying, find out what the hell it is and then pelt it from afar with flaming arrows?
    Unless your haracter is really retarded with an IQ=/<7.

    I don't know how many here are DMs/GMs, but part of the fun for me as a GM is letting a story unfold into unexpected directions bcause of the personal touches on a character, beyond alignment. Otherwise it's, here's a troll, here's your xp
    here's a group of orcs, here's your xp
    ramorraz, xp
    6th level thief, xp
    4 wyverns, xp
    thingie, xp
    thingie, xp
    wooo
    15th magic dagger+1
    8th magic sword+3
    12th fp+5
    100th greater healing potion


    heroism only comes if the there is a cleric who can raise dead, thereby negating the supposed heroism

    I prefer to let the characters tell me the story through the circumstances I provide.

    Without story just go play WOW or Everquest on line where who you are has no bearing on what your doing. Where thinking is really not required.

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  26. When I started playing 4E, I was not playing a "striker," "defender" or "controller; I was playing Joe So-and-So from Waterdeep (or wherever).

    At the same time, I was playing myself in the situation -- at least to the extent that (e.g.) I reacted to an encounter with a ghost on the basis of my previous D&D experience.

    The other players reacted on the basis of familiarity with the 4E Monster Manual.

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  27. For crap's sake.

    The Arneson example is actually a really good counter-point to the whole idea that what Jim is talking about here has nothing to do with "playing a character." In Arneson's games you were a random mook as likely to be killed as to live up until you were a hero. The Great Svenny had no predetermined background, he was one of a big group of men at arms who got lucky and survived the adventure. He became a hero afterward. That's old school D&D - you become a hero by earning it in game, not by writing a piece of short fiction before it starts. Your character comes into the dungeon as fresh meat and if he survives, eventually becomes a hero. This is why level titles are important: they remind you that you're not playing a hero until level 4. Until then, you're just some guy looking for glory.

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  28. Notions as to what's being reacted to/against here are flying off in too many directions for me to track.

    Maybe next time Jim could offer more of his own mind, instead of pointing to a bogglingly long RPGNet thread?

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  29. >>Maybe next time Jim could offer more of his own mind, instead of pointing to a bogglingly long RPGNet thread?

    The thread had the usual talk of "4e doesn't include role-playing," but the thing is, I've glanced at 4e. Haven't read it. Don't ever plan to (just like I'm a metalhead with no real opinion on Death Magnetic, because I haven't ever bothered to listen to Load, let alone any of the albums after).

    So giving my opinions on the exact debate at hand isn't possible, but I can use that to form my own opinions in a general manner.

    >>You will never have to roll another character again, just roll up 10 different characters for each class and roll a d10 each time one dies.

    That's actually a good idea...

    >>If you don't want your character ignorant of a monsters abilities then take the proper skills that say hey I know this thing.

    Or maybe the referee can describe the monster instead of saying "You see a troll." Asking an experienced player to ignore his own knowledge when it comes to these things is a sign of bad refereeing. I had one player yesterday guess that they were looking at a bulette and a wyvern and in the bulette's case all I was even taking liberties in the creature's environmental capabilities (I had a shark's fin swimming around a lake, and then it came right on shore, and nobody saw more than the fin before deciding they should split.)

    ... "You see a fin in the water," also caused a bit of comedy at the table, now that I'm telling the story. People wondered for a moment if I said, "You see a Finn." heh. If that was the case, I would have presented it as, 'You see a drunk longhaired guy carrying a hockey stick.'

    >>Without story just go play WOW or Everquest on line where who you are has no bearing on what your doing. Where thinking is really not required.

    Never played WOW or Everquest, but I don't doubt that computer role-playing games are role-playing games (Ultima IV - VI are almost how I wish I could construct campaigns... big quests are there, and things you did yesterday can greatly change things today, but there's so much to do that has nothing to do with any big quests!). I'd say that the interplay between referee and players is a key point in enjoying role-playing (and the unlimited options whereas computers can only handle actions previously predicted and programmed), but what if the core activities of our hobby can actually be wholly produced by a computer game with no human contact? Then surely a multi-player environment would be doing it better than that?

    Does WOW have "scenario" builder and the capability do play 'closed games' away from the main servers or however it works?

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  30. This is where I break company with the old-school approach (which I otherwise agree with and lean toward).

    I fully recognize that it's possible to play a 1st-level Fighting Man with a 12 Strength and no name. I also recognize that playing in that style would personally bore the poop out of me. Others' mileage will obviously vary.

    And that's fine! We gravitate toward our own fun.

    Lord Hobie

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  31. Reality - Role-playing means whatever the hell one wants it to mean.

    But, by all means, keep arguing about it. It's very entertaining. :P

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  32. >>Reality - Role-playing means whatever the hell one wants it to mean.

    Then it doesn't mean anything at all.

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  33. The Method of Roleplaying vs. Role-Assumption vs. Role-Acting;

    I told all of you so several years ago. As did Gary, even some more years back.

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  34. Roleplaying as defined at wikipedia fits what the OP says. But I think a real encyclopedia might be more accurate.

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  35. We're obviously talking about just a gaming context here.

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  36. Personlly, I can't stand going in with a set of stats and slashing at things. That's boring as hell. I love the acting part of roleplaying.

    You keep your hack-and-slash characters, you run those campaigns, and you have a blast. It doesn't make me less of a gamer that I adore playing out complex psychologies. I'd way rather play a character who willingly drops her sword because she can't bring herself to attack her friend-turned-rival than kill 200 orcs in a session. If you're the other way around, have at it. Don't belittle me.

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  37. I don't like hack and slash either. That's got nothing to do with the post.

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  38. I haven't read all the comments or references to the post "roleplaying is not..." (I live offline), so I might be repeating some stuff, or maybe saying obvious things… Maybe I’m just kind of stupid and un-modern bothering myself with a week old subject…

    >>"Role-playing is not the characterization and speaking in voices and inventing a background and developing a persona that's a unique little snowflake."

    I know, I am guilty... And I know that "unique little snowflakes" melt...

    >>"Your character's personality and "what would my character do based on that personality?" are add-on extras completely irrelevant (yet can enhance and perhaps make the effort enjoyable in the first place, make no mistake about what I'm saying here) to the basic activity of role-playing."

    How much (and what kind of) Player-to-Player-to-NPC -interaction you want to have in a game, is a question of personal preference, but when exactly does "getting into character" become a nuisance, or a distraction?

    What is "the basic activity of role-playing"?

    The "getting into character"-part can determine lots of character action in the game, that might or might not have influence on the events. In my mind it's sometimes difficult to draw the line when that immersion is irrelevant: it produces in-game action! As a player, I have to pretend I am the character: otherwise I can't see, hear, smell or grab a thing in the fantasy world!

    Here's two adventurers relaxing before entering a cave:

    GOOGIE THE EXORCIST: "I'm going to spend the rest of the night fiddling with little pieces of wood, trying to make little statues of the Unknown Gods, for amusement..."

    DWARFO THE BIG: "Hey, you're too engaged in unimportant shit again, snap out of it!!!" (Slapping Googie's face with an open palm like Gene Hackman in "the French Connection")

    It's always possible that Googie's little pieces of wood might work as projectile weapons later on, or something else...

    In a fantasy world unexpected things often happen: secondary things can turn out to be important and so on... So, as a player, I think it's not smart to disregard seemingly trivial character-based actions as some kind of narcissistic acting-excercises! Now imagine that it wasn't Dwarfo who would correct Googie, but the GM? Should we set a standard on how much character immersion is permitted?

    >>"Fighting Man Level 1
    ST 12, IN 8, WI 10, CN 9, DX 10, CH 9
    That's your character and your role, right there."

    Is the player just a "necessary evil" needed to glue those bits together? The CHARACTER is often the KEY to player's (use of) imagination, which is VITAL in getting "into the game", or game "world"... whatever.

    So, "character acting" can be character ACTION?... And I don't mean "using voices" or elaborate "backgrounds" either: it can be very subtle things that do the trick. Not necessarily pretending to look and sound exactly like a [character/monster of your choice here], but getting into it... often goes through details.

    (And I know you know, that I know…. You know, That. With pointy teeth.)

    -mikko t.

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  39. Your role is entirely defined by the mechanics of the game?

    Well, you should feel right at home in 4th Edition, then. (/snark)

    That's old school D&D - you become a hero by earning it in game, not by writing a piece of short fiction before it starts. Your character comes into the dungeon as fresh meat and if he survives, eventually becomes a hero. This is why level titles are important: they remind you that you're not playing a hero until level 4.

    Interesting fact: In OD&D a 1st level Fighting Man is a Veteran. Implicit in that title, you'll note, is the assumption that the character has a significant history before he ever begins play.

    I think there's an interesting discussion to be had regarding crafting vs. discovering a role and the various ways in which character backgrounds can be developed and used (by both players and GMs). But One True Wayism that tries to disguise itself through a wild and absurd semantical redefinition of terms like "role" and "character" is just a waste of time, IMO.

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  40. Trying again.

    Food is, at its base, sustenance. You can add all the flavor you want to it, but that's not the point of eating.

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