[Kylen]

I decided to start this thread based off the Pet Peeves thread. Would have posted there, but it was off topic and the thread is already a month or two dead.

From what I've seen, I seem to be the lucky one. In 3.5, outside of two guys our group rapidly stopped playing with, everyone I've played with built their characters in this order: Class, the ACTUAL CHARACTER (Name, race, background, physical stats (height and shit, not numbers) etc) then actually started rolling. Granted, as with any system, there's always a little bit of min/maxing and such, but never any 'rule-playing'. Then, Pathfinder came out and I kinda abandoned 3.5 for it's slimmed down, easy to learn wonderfulness that gave me a firm platform to hate 4e from. (That's a rant for another topic)

So my question is: Am I really just the lucky guy who finds all the 3.x/PF roleplayers over roll-players, or has anyone else actually found any? And do you dislike/hate/loath/wish to eliminate all traces of either one from the universe and why?

[KarmaInferno]

Eh. I've met roll-players and roleplayers alike in both systems.

There's no good reason a min-maxed rules monstrosity can't also be a deep roleplaying experience as well, in my opinion.

Then again, most of my characters start with "concept", like "fist-fighter" or "fire mage", etc. and then I build the most optimized version of it the rules allow. Since it has a base concept it's built around, that makes it easy to come up with roleplay for it as well.


-k

[EmperorPenguin]

I think the potential is certainly there.  Roleplaying is possible regardless of ruleset, and a tighter set of rules shouldn't discourage roleplaying.  It comes down to the player(s).  Different systems, thanks to their mechanics, might attract different types of players.

My gaming group is a Warhammer group.  About half were also interested in roleplaying, so several years ago we started up with 3.5.  It was homebrew, and I was as new a DM as most of them were roleplayers.  Our early games were very straightforward and action-oriented.  And we loved them.  The opening bar brawl (complete cliche) was still talked about years after we started.  So I call that successful.

Better still, as the players (and me as GM) eased into the experience, more roleplaying started to occur.  Players were discussing their motivations and tried to stay in character.  I would say it culminated late in their careers where they disputed over which of two potential rulers should receive the recovered magical badge of office.  The thief, convinced by another player's dream, went against the team consensus, stole the bracers and ran cross-country to the capital.  An act that put half the team in jail while the other half swore to help recover them.

My resistance to 'optimization' is entirely personal.  I won't do more than grumble if my players optimize their build, even if it's toward combat.  I just hope that they bring a personality with more dimension than their character build.  My guys impressed me.

[KarmaInferno]

I will say this. In my experience, real levels of roleplaying only begin to occur when the player starts getting comfortable being in the "skin" of the character.

I have had characters I "clicked" with almost immediately, where I started getting a handle on who these characters are and what motivates them from the start. I have had other characters that seemed to have an interesting concept but in play I wasn't able to step into their personality for quite a few game sessions, and as a result my roleplay with them was at best superficial. I've had a few characters that I never figured out - those tended to get shelved eventually.

This has nothing to do with how min-maxed they were, really, but it is a factor in my mind on how much roleplaying you'll see out of a player.


-k

[FastJack]

Agreed. Any rules system can have both types of players. I'm with Karma, though, in that I start with a concept first, then build the character around that concept. Since we play where we roll our attributes/ability scores in Pathfinder/D&D, the die results sometimes tweak that concept (for instance, I recently built a Dwarven Rogue and got 17, 17, 16, 16, 16, 16 for my rolls).

[Crash_00]

I've found a lot more roleplaying in Pathfinder than D&D 3.5, but less in both than I do in games like SR, 7th Sea, Deadlands, etc.

I feel there are several contributing factors, but here are a few I'll list:
A.) Less Roleplaying reward. Use SR Mission as an example. In Season 2 most runs were giving 2-4 karma with another one to three for good roleplaying. That's have again in game experience for roleplaying. In a strictly time based sense, its worth going that extra mile for the reward (especially since its harder to botch the roleplaying portion of a run  ). Now arguably Roleplaying is the entire point of the game, but a lot of people play RPGs like the do the video game versions these days, and if they haven't been exposed to a group of actual RPers they play a calculated what gives me the most style of game.

B.) Levels and Classes. The entire concept of levels and classes in the sense that D&D and D&D Clone (I mean Pathfinder of course) uses them shatters the veil of the world for a lot of players. Spending weeks crafting a sword only to, on a two day expedition, kill a goblin and suddenly get better at blacksmithing is just quirky. So is being forced to pick and choose your abilities in tidy little bundles. What if I really do want to play Jellian Lee Floustan, writer adventurer, why should I have to gain points in attack. Add in the fact that most pre-written adventurers and the guidelines for creating encounters are so stacked towards halfway optimized characters, there isn't near as much room for flavor as there is in classless and leveless games.

C.) World. Look through the core book for Pathfinder and D&D 3.5. Compare what it says of the world to games like SR, Deadlands, and 7th Sea. There is no comparison. Ya, its supposed to be usable in any fantasy setting, but it gives you such little information for a base setting that its hard to develop your character more than I'm Gary the fighter, I come from uhm...are there mountains in GM 128's world? Most other games have so much submersion into the setting that you're dripping wet when you're done reading the intro (before you ever get to character creation).

D.) Character Creation. Most games put an emphasis on what do you want your character to be and give examples (fast talking elf, sly and stealthy ork assassin, etc.) and suggest you know before you start building a character. D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder technically said something similar, but the examples they gave were always how do you want to fight rather than who are you (toe-to toe, mystical mage, stealthy ranged rogue). Ninety percent of D&D's creation seemed based on how you would perform in the inevitable dozen combats per level that crop up.

None of this is meant to say that you can't roleplay in D&D or Pathfinder, but that it is insanely easier to learn to roleplay in other systems while D&D and Pathfinder are very good at teaching how to rollplay due to their extremely structured nature. Some of my critique may be a little harsh (I don't dislike either game particularly, I just am not fond of levels or classes at all. My first game was West End Games Star Wars followed closely by 2nd Edition Shadowrun, and D&D always felt more like playing a video game to me than any other RPG (excluding that horrible horrible game called World of Synni...no it's too horrible I can't finish it)).

I remember sitting down to run Living Greyhawk for a group of players back in the day (they had been playing a while too, they were level 12 which at the time was quite a feat to reach in LG as most players didn't live past the entry slaughterhouses....errr...I mean modules) and having them look at me dumbfounded as I roleplayed the NPCs. It took me twenty minutes to find the tiny little section in the third edition players guide on roleplaying to let them understand what roleplaying actually was.

[ARC]

I keep a file of characters that I spend a lot of time on.  When Mason said he was going to run a game it was about a month to a month and a half before we started playing.  I wrote and rewrote my character like two doxen times before I was complete, and really had gotten into the character and had him exactly the way I wanted him at the starting bps.

There is just something special about a character that takes a life of it's own.  Sometimes what it takes is just giving the character the love they deserve.

[Xzylvador]

I still blame the miniatures for ruining our 3.5 to 4e transition.
The moment things start being played out like a board game instead of existing inside the collected minds of players, a lot of the mystery and fantasy disappears.
3.5 used to be "I throw my flaming daggers towards the troll, then turn and run for..." Pssssst, what's the nearest cover? Right! "... the barrel standing next to the bar and jump in it -with a stylish salto- to hide myself!" The people at the table have a laugh at how your gnome is acting like a wimp again and is now submerged in a mixture of water and oat. GM/DM nods, possibly rewards some extra points of RP for your IC behavior and decides whether or not the slow, stupid and enraged troll realizes where Carl Glittergold disappeared to. Even if the troll doesn't, chances are it'll get the thought in its head to use said barrel as a weapon, pick it up and toss it at the group's fighter. Hilarity ensues.

4e now is. "Okay, I use..." Damned, I can't throw my daggers really hard because I did that earlier today. Fine, I'll throw them a bit less hard. "Sliding Attack on the troll. It moves 1 square backwards and so do I." Okay, now I can move, I've got 7 movement. <Starts counting squares.> That stuff over there, could give me cover? Ah, I need to be behind it, okay. What, it's an extra 2 squares for me to move over it because of terrain? Shit, then I'm 1 square short of movement and can't use my Nimble Running power because I did a little sprint at the beginning of the encounter! <Starts counting squares to another piece of the map> "I move 1-2-3-4-5" I can squeeze through this diagonally, right? "-6-7 and am out of actions." The troll will never have an original thought and use or destroy any of the terrain, it'll just use its Boulder Throw attack every time rolling a 5 or 6 makes a boulder magically appear in its hands, otherwise use its Club Swing attack to attack everyone in 2 "squares" while being magically pinned because a dwarf fighter is standing next to it.

Can't comment on Pathfinder other than it sounds very interesting.
What I've found so far though is that generally the more rules there are and the harder enforcing them is pushed/required, the less roleplaying gets done usually. That's where 4e killed the out of combat roleplaying: skill challenges or whatever they were called. Instead of having to act through something hard -possibly using dice to assist if you were stuck or tried something harder than normal- everything just became a dice game. Okay, to convince the Duke to assist you, you need to roll 10 successes on <this>, before he has 10 against you. The rest can use <this> and <that> to give you bonus dice. Start rolling in turn, no need to actually say something. While half a year ago we would've done said "social encounter" probably without rolling a single die and actually talking. Any rolling would've been for seeing how convincing your lies were when claiming the Orc army numbers in several hundreds instead of a few dozen.

The ones that liked the 4e changes were the ones that spent loads of cash on miniatures even before 4e and just played 3.5 for the combat encounters while staying quiet for most of the non-combat moments other than "Rock drinks beer all evening in the tavern.".

Bah, sorry, don't mean to turn it into a 4e rant. I do mean this for games in general.
The more rules become required, the less roleplaying can be done. For SR we play entire sessions without rolling dice.
The numbers are there so we all know what our characters are somewhat capable of; Yes, Boulder the Troll can kick down the simple wooden door without much effort, Janey couldn't budge it and Yes, Janey the pornomancer can talk the bartender into getting free drinks.

[Kylen]

See, now the opinion that minis ruined D&D i disagree with to a point. Granted, I've been in too many fights in both that and Dark Heresy where it was to useful to have the physical representation of everyone to help keep combat nice and easy to follow (never organized. It's a fight after all. But at least players and the DM knew what the hell was going on after 10 turns of moving and killing), because when a fight involves a minimum of 10 combatants (consider 5 players and 5 enemies), it's bloody hard to keep it all straight, and I've been in combat with 6 and 20+.

As for building, I've always been a fan of "Roll and Pick", where you roll up your stats and then drop them where you wanted, because it's just no fun if you roll them exactly, and your wizard ends up with a 4 in Intelligence, or your Archer has a 5 in Dex, and those are exactly what you want to play. I know players who use it that way tend to when they actually don't know what to play, but that's them. When I walk up to a table, I usually know exactly what class I want to play, and would REALLY like not to have the dice decide to hardcore gimp me and make that class unplayable.

When it comes to 4e, I have a special place in my heart of hatred for it. You can seriously just make stacks of note cards with the powers written on them, sorted by class and level, and then let the player put their stats on a fresh one. Then he/she just needs to pull a new power out of the deck every level. Just no fun for me, because I'm now going to ALWAYS pick the same powers depending on what path I take. Sure, in 3.x there's the "Pick these obvious ones" per build, but you're still fairly free to pick as you wish so long as you have the prereqs. 4e might as well be WoW: Table Top Edition.

Pathfinder (My love and joy on the Fantasy side of the spectrum, whereas SR is it for me on this end) took a lot of what was wrong with 3.5 and fixed it. Such examples as it actually being a good idea to single class, Fighters are a useful class for something other then feats. My TWO favorite things had to be the changes to the skill system: 1: Instead of that half rank crap, all skills cost 1 point, and your class skills get a bonus if you put at least a point in them. This means low skill point classes, like Fighter, aren't horribly gimped on stuff any more. 2: Skill cap is your level, and you only get x+Int every level. None of that x4/6/whatever BS. As it comes to RPing, it's really the GMs choice as to call for a dice roll, or actually force the player to RP it out. I know GMs who do both, or if the player is someone who's not exactly in line with his character (A shy stutter-bomb who plays the charismatic Face/Bard/Whatever) can usually roll for it though. But again, how Social Interaction happens really comes down to the GM and his/her group. Hell, my current DH group doesn't get dice rolling unless it's a Knowledge check, or we're trying to skip over the several hours of "You ask around". Outside of fights of course.

[FastJack]

I have to agree on the miniatures, with a caveat. Most battles that occur, you can easily play out with a good GM keeping track of stuff in his head. However, some battles are better if you put the mat and minis out. Sometimes the only way to defeat the BBEG is tactics, and some tactics need to be physically tracked.

[tzizimine]

I have used minis in 3.5 & PF, both to great effect. I also use them Shadowrun on a regular basis, using a 1m : 1" ratio for regular combat and a 10m : 1" ratio for vehicle combat (although I admit, I had to create big map tiles from presentation paper for that work).


I don't think that minis detract from the game, personally. If anything, it helps give a clearer picture of what's going on and allows the players to think in their character's 'skin' easier. I'm also a big fan of descriptive combat and give on-the-fly bonuses for novel tactics that would likely only work "just that one time". It makes for better combat stories and more memorable sessions.

[Zilfer]

I have used minis in 3.5 & PF, both to great effect. I also use them Shadowrun on a regular basis, using a 1m : 1" ratio for regular combat and a 10m : 1" ratio for vehicle combat (although I admit, I had to create big map tiles from presentation paper for that work).


I don't think that minis detract from the game, personally. If anything, it helps give a clearer picture of what's going on and allows the players to think in their character's 'skin' easier. I'm also a big fan of descriptive combat and give on-the-fly bonuses for novel tactics that would likely only work "just that one time". It makes for better combat stories and more memorable sessions.

Haha! I like you for that last paragraph. I'm trying to look for ways to get them more into the Roleplaying mood and I also am trying to stay in character tips like these help. I've read giving bonus' for descriptive combat before, and I like the idea i just need to remember to do it in combat.


Also Minitures are a good thing, though I've done both as of late. I've told the guy that owns the most to bring them almost every time but some sessions we don't even pull them out.

It's very good to have mini's I think especially for those large scale battles. It also gives you the impression of space and just how close or far away you are. How outnumbered you are, ect.



As for the main topic, I love 3.5 and Shadowrun. We have our own house rules of course to make things interesting.

I think my group is probably more on the Rollplaying side but they aren't afraid to roleplay either and sometimes we have halarious bouts of conversation between characters. So most of the time when I hear complaints i'm not sure whether I've been lucky as well because most of the time it doesn't happen. I also play with all my friends I knew from Highschool so we are all friends and can discuss things inbetween us all civily. *shrugs*


On that note anyone got tips for keeping or rewarding people for staying in character?

I just remembered something in the DM's guide about rewarding characters for other things than battle. So I'm thinking I might start incooperating some Shadowrun rewards into my D&D sessions to see how it's received and if it encourages more Character thinking.

[Gleeful]

I tried Pathfinder this past year at gencon. I _thought_ I liked 3.5 and 4E about the same--that is, I prefer Shadowrun, but will willingly play about anything else as well.

Apparently, however, I've not played 3.5 in about 3ish years, and returning to the rigidity from 4E made me SO incredibly frustrated. Instead of being able to do 3, sometimes 4 things, I got to do one limited one. Ugh.

Anyway, I've been roleplaying for about 30 or so years, and I've found it does not matter WHAT system you use to elicit roleplay. If the players AND GM want to roleplay, there will be roleplay. If the players AND GM prefer combat, there will be combat. When the two mix, there shall be conflict.

I've played SW(both editions), Rifts, Palladium, Warhammer RPG, D&D(all editions, I prefer 2nd(which is also limited, but.)), Shadowrun (all editions), Middle Earth, Rolemaster, Call of Cthulhu(Now, there is a game which ought to be PURE roleplaying, but sometimes is not), Champions, Traveller--and more. You get the idea. I don't hate Pathfinder, I just don't like the rules. Don't care for 3.5 anymore either. But if a good roleplaying combination asked if I'd play, I'd still say yes. And I love Shadowrun, but if a BAD roleplaying combination asked me to play, I'd still say no.

Heck, you can roleplay monopoly, if you really want to.

[kirk]

On minis, a minor thing that worked for me was to play it on a gridless surface. If necessary I broke out the movement sticks, but generally I allowed eyeball movement and horseshoes accuracy. (Close is good enough.) Other players willing to ridicule the 15 inch foot helped keep things under control.

Movement stick. I've discussed this elsewhere, and it's common in formal mini's battles. Take a stick. Put a mark at each critical point (walk and run in this case). Color each zone differently, plus a third for 'no".

[Zilfer]

On minis, a minor thing that worked for me was to play it on a gridless surface. If necessary I broke out the movement sticks, but generally I allowed eyeball movement and horseshoes accuracy. (Close is good enough.) Other players willing to ridicule the 15 inch foot helped keep things under control.

Movement stick. I've discussed this elsewhere, and it's common in formal mini's battles. Take a stick. Put a mark at each critical point (walk and run in this case). Color each zone differently, plus a third for 'no".

Don't any of you own a ruler? It's a definate "Stick" XD Works for all characters too regardless of armor! xD