For me, roleplaying is making improvised decisions from the point of view of an imaginary character in response to an imagined scenario.
Providing detailed descriptions of actions, or speaking in the first person, is entirely tangential. One may provide detailed, creative, imaginative descriptions delivered from the point of view of the Shoe in Monopoly moving around the board. That doesn't mean you're roleplaying the shoe. Unless you improvise actions, it's not roleplaying. It's boardgaming, computer-gaming, wargaming, etc - with added silliness.
That's just my definition. Yours may differ.
Improv is only a single piece of that puzzle, and is only part of the puzzle at all if the character would improvise, instead of using tried and true methods of battle to defeat enemies.
'Improvised decisions' means only that they are not codified menu options in the rules, that you must choose when you play. If you, as the player, are given a list of options that you're allowed to do, and completely restricted from doing anything else - that's not roleplaying combat. 4E, for instance, allows roleplaying in combat - it allows actions outside the menu of options.
I believe, however, if the players never do anything but select from the very attractive menu of options (as I noticed was very often the case with my players) - they aren't roleplaying. They're playing a complicated miniatures skirmish game. Some people don't mind that - I didn't mind that for about 9 months of playing 4E with my group. I liked miniatures skirmish games. I got to not like them anymore, though. Because when my players played 4E combat, they didn't roleplay. I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm just saying my players didn't (very often).
At least you are willing to bring up that it was a problem with the players, not the system. Though we don't play it as a tactical skirmish game, per se. Yes, the combat mechanics are based in the idea of moving pieces on a board and using abilities, but there's also so much room for improv and actions outside the norm that I just can't see how people can't find that in 4th ed. Though I do think the 4th ed system helped to identify those that, given a menu of options, would rather be constrained by those options.
Garthanos, never claimed it wasn't. I do find that only having one menu option encourages taking actions outside that option more often than having a list of 24 or more options - at least for my players. You can play AD&D combat just saying 'I hit the orc with my sword'. You will get bored with it extremely rapidly - the system seems almost designed to discourage you from simply selecting from the menu, doesn't it?
It discourages me not only from picking form the menu, but from even playing the game. A game that limited in rules and that wide in scope is inching dangerously close to simply being round robin storytelling. Which is fine if that's what I wanted to play at, but round robin is an exercise, not a game. Games have rules.
But the system for adjudicating improvised actions is pretty simple. Page 110. DM sets a percentage difficulty based on what he and the player agree is fair. Then the DM gives the player modifiers to his die roll - again based on what they both think is fair. Player rolls, if he makes it, he succeeds.
Basically a primitive 'universal resolution system' without the charts. Replace the d% with a d20, restrict the modifiers to skill ranks and ability mods and a minor circumstance bonus, and you've pretty much got the D20 universal resolution system.
I find the % system much more intuitive than the d20. Player says something, I think for a second, and say "That's got about a 50% chance to succeed." Player says but I'm so strong, and I'm using a lever, and these magic boots. And I say "Okay, you get a 25% bonus". I know exactly how likely it is he'll succeed at the task, without needing to look at a chart.
This does, however, sound very much like the page 42 rules of the DMG, and I use them all the frigging time.
Hell, even when someone is pure talking, no dice or anything, I'm still weighing their talk as, "sounds about like a roll of ___ to me".
"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." --Bill Cosby (1937- )
Vanador: OK. You ripped a gateway to Hell, killed half the town, and raised the dead as feral zombies. We're going to kill you. But it can go two ways. We want you to run as fast as you possibly can toward the south of the town to draw the Zombies to you, and right before they catch you, I'll put an arrow through your head to end it instantly. If you don't agree to do this, we'll tie you this building and let the Zombies rip you apart slowly. Dimitry: God I love being Neutral. 4th edition is dead, long live 4th edition. Salla: opinionated, but commonly right. fun quotesShow
If you can't understand how someone yelling at another person would make them fight harder and longer, then you need to look at the forums a bit closer.
quote author=56832398 post=519321747]Considering DnD is a game wouldn't all styles be gamist?
In fact, both of them are parts of the roleplaying. You can't say "noncombat interaction is roleplaying while combat is not". It is ridiculous. Everything the PCs do while interacting with the game world is roleplaying.
The thing is, D&D game sessions have always become heavily geared towards the combat part. In a 2-hour game session at least 90 minutes of the players go to rolling lots of dice and fighting foes. Since combat is a long, tiresome and time-killing process in this game, players tend to hurry all noncombat activity to quickly proceed to the combat and get it done reasonably within the session duration. The solution is simple. You have to find the best way to reduce the time combat activity takes. Fights and encounters in this regard should be fluent, smooth and especially very fast to play.
In addition to these, combat should be deadly. Yes, deadly enough to make the players think twice about starting one and think of an option to avoid it by creative thinking. I don't mean throwing more monsters on PCs to make a given encounter more lethal. The very concept of combat should be a very dangerous activity in the PCs minds.
Use the “DM’s Best Friend”: This simple guideline helps you adjudicate any unusual situation: An especially favorable circumstance gives a +2 bonus to a check or an attack roll (or it gives combat advantage). A particularly unfavorable circumstance gives a –2 penalty.
That's from the 4E DMG. I hate it. "Especially favorable" circumstances should not add +2 to a check. They should make success virtually automatic. If a player goes to the trouble to arrange especially favorable circumstances, the roll should mean very little. Reward their creativity.
Cast the Action as a Check: If a character tries an action that might fail, use a check to resolve it. To do that, you need to know what kind of check it is and what the DC is.
This is what AD&D does.
All 4E did was replace d% with a d20. Oh, and give you a suggested chart. In which you "set the DC according to whether you think the task should be easy, hard, or somewhere in between".
4E's universal resolution system is exactly as arbitrary as 1E's. But in 1E, the injunction is that the DM/Player negotation result in something both sides think is fair. Whereas in 4E, it results in something the DM/Designer thinks is fair.
Page 42 in 4E is a more complicated, graph intensive version of 1E's 'pick a DC and pick a mod according to circumstances' resolution system, that provides the exact same result. The DM uses common sense to pick a number, and the player rolls a die to try to beat the number. That's it. 4E offers some guidelines based on level and such. 1E assumes people can guesstimate a percentage probability, and brief negotiation between player and DM will make it fair.
Use the “DM’s Best Friend”: This simple guideline helps you adjudicate any unusual situation: An especially favorable circumstance gives a +2 bonus to a check or an attack roll (or it gives combat advantage). A particularly unfavorable circumstance gives a –2 penalty.
That's from the 4E DMG. I hate it. "Especially favorable" circumstances should not add +2 to a check. They should make success virtually automatic.
whatever dude.. you described yourself jumping on the table or swinging that chandelier and have high ground, now you auto hit... sure. Your adjectives dont match theres who cares.
1. We need to make people aware this is a 'role-playing game'.
It says so right on the cover. Besides, the 1:1 player to character ratio makes it an RPG, even if you don't label it as such. D&D called itself a wargame. But, it was quickly played as an RPG, because you had only the one character to play, thinking about it as a personality instead of a miniature was almost inevitable.
2. We need to demonstrate role-playing is not independant of combat, and at the same time combat is not a role-playing rich environment.
First part true, second part false.
Combat is a very emotionally charged environment. People don't try to kill each other without some very strong reasons. Those reasons find expression one way or another.
3. I'd also like to see more: options, non-combat encounters, and exploration in 5e which explains at least in part the kind of role-playing I'm talking about. Role-playing 'other' than combat to resolve problems. Heck, even 'role-playing only' to resolve more problems would be great.
I think there's a big problem here in the use of "Role-playing" which is the whole game, to talk about only the social skills of characters. Talking to the DM in-character while he talks back at you in the character of an NPC is certainly an example of role-playing. But, if the talking is meant to resolve something, that resolution needs to include the nature of the character and the NPC. The character you're playing and the one the DM is handling may have very different "social skill" than you and the DM, as well as a very different relationship. "Social Skills" need to be something the characters have and you use to resolve the results of non-combat encounters. "Role Playing" is something you can do as part of a non-combat or combat encounter or even while not resolving anything, just hanging out at the tavern with your party, discussing what to do next or swapping tales.
But the system for adjudicating improvised actions is pretty simple. Page 110. DM sets a percentage difficulty based on what he and the player agree is fair. Then the DM gives the player modifiers to his die roll - again based on what they both think is fair. Player rolls, if he makes it, he succeeds.
Doesnt sound like guidelines... just "Mother may I", or strikingly like winging the pummeling system ..
Yes I know any improvisation has the element of DM adjudication.. its part of the point but as a DM in 4e I seem to have damage guidelines and a system of well defined effects to describe the results of an improvisation. A set of skills to act as built in modifiers and similar things.
Maybe it's because I've never been the DM, but both of these are news to me. I can't recall ever rolling percentile dice for anything other than system shock or resurrection survival or a few other oddball things. I can recall making a regular attack roll to knock an orc out of the way or grab a kobold and throw him or catch a thrown rope or item, and I remember one DM making us roll LOW, under an ability score, to succeed at ordinary stuff like catching that coil of rope or things that a theif rolled percentile dice to do, like sneak past a sleeping dragon. In 4e, the rules seem to cover almost everything. The one thing I wanted to try that I just couldn't was disarming. An odd omission, since it's a classic of everything from Hollywood fencing to obscure pole-arms. I don't know if anything was 'improvised.' Maybe some of what's in modules uses those improvisation rules and presents them to the DM? For instance, there was one scenario where we were able to call in catapult fire as a standard action. That was different.
Use the “DM’s Best Friend”: This simple guideline helps you adjudicate any unusual situation: An especially favorable circumstance gives a +2 bonus to a check or an attack roll (or it gives combat advantage). A particularly unfavorable circumstance gives a –2 penalty.
That's from the 4E DMG. I hate it. "Especially favorable" circumstances should not add +2 to a check. They should make success virtually automatic. If a player goes to the trouble to arrange especially favorable circumstances, the roll should mean very little. Reward their creativity.
Cast the Action as a Check: If a character tries an action that might fail, use a check to resolve it. To do that, you need to know what kind of check it is and what the DC is.
This is what AD&D does.
All 4E did was replace d% with a d20. Oh, and give you a suggested chart. In which you "set the DC according to whether you think the task should be easy, hard, or somewhere in between".
4E's universal resolution system is exactly as arbitrary as 1E's. But in 1E, the injunction is that the DM/Player negotation result in something both sides think is fair. Whereas in 4E, it results in something the DM/Designer thinks is fair.
Page 42 in 4E is a more complicated, graph intensive version of 1E's 'pick a DC and pick a mod according to circumstances' resolution system, that provides the exact same result. The DM uses common sense to pick a number, and the player rolls a die to try to beat the number. That's it. 4E offers some guidelines based on level and such. 1E assumes people can guesstimate a percentage probability, and brief negotiation between player and DM will make it fair.
What is bolded is my biggest problem. I'm an artist, not a mathematician. I'm not good at guestimating percentage probability. And by the way I read things of older editions, being awesome at math was a requirement for DMs, which would have heartily excluded me. Past that, why should there have to be a negotiation at each and every interaction and skill a player wants to use? Instead, why not look at the circumstances and determine if they are favorable, and give them a bonus in their favor? I look for each bonus and penalty (the guy hates you, but you know something about him and his family, and you have evidence to hurt his reputation; -2 because he hates you, +4 because you have dirt on him and the evidence to back it up is a plus 2 bonus. Even I can do that math.) and go for it that way. That, for me, is much more intuitive than trying to determine the percentage chance that someone has to do something and then have them role for it after haggling with them over what kind of bonus they can get.
Simply put, the "older" way is more difficult for me, the newer way is easier.
"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." --Bill Cosby (1937- )
Vanador: OK. You ripped a gateway to Hell, killed half the town, and raised the dead as feral zombies. We're going to kill you. But it can go two ways. We want you to run as fast as you possibly can toward the south of the town to draw the Zombies to you, and right before they catch you, I'll put an arrow through your head to end it instantly. If you don't agree to do this, we'll tie you this building and let the Zombies rip you apart slowly. Dimitry: God I love being Neutral. 4th edition is dead, long live 4th edition. Salla: opinionated, but commonly right. fun quotesShow
If you can't understand how someone yelling at another person would make them fight harder and longer, then you need to look at the forums a bit closer.
quote author=56832398 post=519321747]Considering DnD is a game wouldn't all styles be gamist?
It isn't as hard as it sounds. Basically, Player thinks of something unique that falls between the rules. Player asks the DM, what are my chances of success? DM comes up with something that he thinks as fair. The negotiation part is basically the DM telling the player what he thinks the chances are and the player deciding if he'll accept that risk.
Something I've done a few times in a homegame lately. My character is getting low on HP, I get hit dropping me to say 2 HP which is a really bad situation as next hit might be death not unconscious. So I asked the DM if I can voluntarily drop with the hit and pretend to go Unconscious. In this case he asked for a Bluff check.
The point is sometimes players come up with ideas that make sense but there might not be strict rules for. As DM you need to make up a fair system to decide if it works. Conversely, if you don't think the idea has a chance in the 9 Hells, you let the player know so they can do something else. Generally, I try to tie it into an appropriate ability or skill check.
In short, yes. I dont want the only RP to be at the start and end of the mission, there should be ample rp involved in most missions etc, not just inter party chats while we do extended or short rests.
I want role-play in combat, in exploration, and in social situations. If that means they have to dumb the combat aspect down to where a 3 year old can do it without trouble that's fine as long as we still have meaningful choices. We can throw out a lot of stuff, but still have fun...
