I mean, honestly folks...it seems as though the mechanics have overrun the entire game.
Whatever happened to having a weakness?
Whatever happened to creating an interesting character concept based on the personality and the way it interacted with the class?
Why does everything have to be "the best"?
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I always attempt to do a character that would seem believable, it's just too hard to survive. Many monsters have stats for min/maxed characters. I don't mind being outshone by some character that has a +20 on a skill due to such practices.
But when you're playing and sometimes there's nothing besides fighting, well... the game becomes a "who can do more damage/somethingelse" competition. And that sucks.
For example, I always spend a few skill points in giving my character flesh, something that won't save my life, just because... a normal person does more than a single thing with his/her life throughout it.
But it seems it's not as cool as having a character that can slaughter a CR 2 levels higher than him like it's nothing. Fortunately, my group (we're relatively new to roleplaying, we started playing a year before 4.0 was announced) has two or three players that appreciate such characters.
shameless bump
Why has "discussing the rules" become a four-letter word?
Tnemeh, thanks for throwing your thoughts in...
Personally, in my game, I award heavily for ROLE PLAYING...I've even instituted a practice where if everyone at the table foregoes mentioning game mechanics ("Hey, do you have any cure light wounds left", "Will your sleep spell effect those higher hit dice characters") and works to replace them with statements that the character would be more likely to make ("Father, could you take a moment to pray over my wounds?", "Do you really feel that your arcane energies can lull that Giant to sleep?"), I award the party a 20% bonus to earned experience points for the night!!!!
I feel, as does everyone who's worked to achieve this, that it truly adds to the overall experience and makes it alot more fun!
Why has "discussing the rules" become a four-letter word?
Perhaps you and cappadocius can have an engaging discussion on that ?
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16
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Sometimes I wonder the same thing but I remember years ago when I had time to just hang out in game stores the same sorts of game mechanics discussions on how to be "the best." Even those players who were the most vocal about this or that power combo often made characters with flaws and weaknesses because they were more interesting.
I think that the internet has just widened the discussion. Of course there are people who refuse to play "subpar" characters but I don't think we can look at the debates on the internet and say this is the way most people are playing.
My group is a Role-playing group and we're the only ones whose play styles I have any reason to track.
Characters in my game always have at least one stat with a negative modifiers, 98% of the time anyhow, whether it suits the class or not, that weakness is always then given rp elaboration. Ther is nothing wrong IMO with building the stats to suit rp a little, using lots of imagination and fluff, and being tactical. Magic is a part of the world, adventurers are around it alot, no need to bog down battle speed with renaming spells, especially if its all in character.
The problem may be, that the adventures have become so damn combat heavy and difficult that you almost can’t survive without min-max-ing.
We just played “Cormyr Tearing of the Weave” with a more or less optimized group 2 levels above the recommended level and nearly got slaughtered in every fight.
The adventure made me almost quit playing.
Wizards adventures of the last few years had almost no Role Playing encounters, just fight, fight and fight
Why can't you aspire to both? An optimized character that is interesting to role play as well; that's a real challenge!
In general I would say no, you can't do both honestly.
Generally you will do one, and try you best to make the other fit.
Ok I want a half-orc raised by the local church when he was found at a young age wondering the city streets. He feels devoted to the church, espically the clergy. He also feels that he needs to prove himself to those outside of the church so he accepts an offer to join an adventuring band headed for the frozen mountains of (whatever).
Ok that's the story, now the class. Well Cleric seems easy, but not what I was aiming at. How about paladin, no too devoted to the god, and while he is devoted to the god, he is more devoted to the clergy of the faith. Fine, how about fighter will eyes towards Pious Templar long term. That's how I would build him when concerned more with story then power, notice taking Pious Templar does little for me, I already have specialization, my none fort saves will be poor so mettle is more cute then useful since nearly all fort saves are for all or nothing and I am not making very many will saves. The rest gives me some spell casting but nothing great. So it is a viable build but hardly powerful.
So now I go to maximize things. Ok couple levels of rogue (sort of fits he was found on the streets and gives a bucketload of skills points) ok fine, but in 3.5 that could mean an xp issue since neither is his favored class....ok well instead of fighter go barbarian, make sure you pick a god with a good two-hander, ok ready set munkin time still go Pious Templar for specialization and mettle, with some spell casting for extras. So you get a backstabbing, raging, weapon specialized killing machine. Kind of fits the story but you ended up with to me less of a character then the fighter to pious templar above.
You can use RP to justify cheese as well, but again it ends up diluting the RP. And frankly it is just there to justify the cheese.
I nearly never build a character with a goal of going to a prestige class, sometimes I might build them with a multiclass in mind, like a Cleric/Fighter of a non-LG god to be a sort of Paladin but in generally I build them with a backstory and some goals, like get rich, make a name for himself, become the high priest of XXX.
RP is very important to me and a game just isn't a good one without it. But still no need to go attacking everyone with a rules question.
Why can't you aspire to both? An optimized character that is interesting to role play as well; that's a real challenge!
This is opinion only but it is a bugbear i have been wanting to get of my chest for a long old time.
Optimisation is damaging to good roleplay.
Because by choosing to play an optimised character you are limiting the range of character concepts that are available to you. A good roleplayer can play any character that the game rules allow.
A optimiser who roleplays well is only able to play a very narrow selection of characters by comparison.
A good roleplayer, who has chosen to play a world class mage will make a wizard who is built with the same approach an optimiser uses make a character. However, when making Maggie Whiteford, mage school drop out, the optimiser cannot square concept with mechanics.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I remember back in high school, we would use the term "role-playing" to describe our gaming because it indicated that we were really into the role-playing aspect. These days, I would never ever use the term because it has too many sexual connotations or (worse yet) HR *shudder* connotations.
Most of my players do a good job in terms of roleplaying. One in particular even surprised himself by choosing suboptimal feats because of his character background. He was even more surprised when the suboptimal feats turned out to be useful.
I mean, honestly folks...it seems as though the mechanics have overrun the entire game.
By the way, what four letter word do you mean? If it doesn't get through the filters, tell me something that rhymes with it.
One important distinction, though: In the title, you talk about role playing, but in the post, you talk about the game (probably meaning D&D). D&D isn't the only RPG. In fact, it's probably one of the games that are the least concerned with roleplaying (and 4e only made that worse).
A lot of other games are a lot more about roleplaying (as long as you don't play them with a power-gaming D&D group. I tell you, one of my players can turn *everything* into a hackfest.)
I'm not saying that D&D makes roleplaying impossible, or even really, discourages it, it just does encourage a more combat-heavy game, and a lot of players are all for the fighting. Usually, it's players that discourage roleplaying.
In that case, it often works best if you talk to the players. Encourage roleplaying. Create situations that cannot be solved through the application of brute force.
Why can't you aspire to both? An optimized character that is interesting to role play as well; that's a real challenge!
Some people here im sure wont believe me but this is what my group mostly tries to do (some dont and we make jokes about them just as much as being a lame character cause if you going to make a non optimized character then you better have one hell of a story)
Make solid characters with good stories
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Okay, maybe making a totally minmaxed character might not be role-playable in any meaninful way, but it is certainly possible to make a character roll playable and fun to role play at the same time.
My Second Darkness group is full of well-constructed, but characterful ...um characters. Sure, they're not totally munchkinned out, but they fill their party roles effectively.
I think part of growing into a mature gamer is to be able to balance out both aspects of character creation to make something that is rewarding and fun to play.
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D&D isn't the only RPG. In fact, it's probably one of the games that are the least concerned with roleplaying (and 4e only made that worse).A lot of other games are a lot more about roleplaying (as long as you don't play them with a power-gaming D&D group. I tell you, one of my players can turn *everything* into a hackfest.)
Indeed. Before DMing MCWoD (and being a D&D player) I used to be a Vampire ST (Masquerade only, Requiem sucks). The rules were so ambiguous that there was no way to stop a power from being more abused than Justine. Games with ambiguous rules around combat basically tell you "we're not quite interested in combat mechanics. Get over it and let the roleplaying resume as soon as possible".
And yes, my group... when they didn't get too "creative" with their powers, they always found a way -thinking or unwittingly- to make chaos follow them. Once, they even got a Prince killed (another NPC did it) within their first session, using fresh characters.
I award heavily for ROLE PLAYING...I've even instituted a practice where if everyone at the table foregoes mentioning game mechanics, I award the party a 20% bonus to earned experience points for the night!I like that idea and am going to add it to my campaign!
Just so you know, it aint a new idea. In 1st ed players were rated by the GM at the end of a session. That rating (1-4) would then be multiplied by the cost to train for the next level. Trust me a 4 was not a good thing, paying 4 times the cost to train could often mean you had the XP to level, but without the training you couldn't level.
Joey if you say you all RP, don't let me or anyone tell you that your style of RP is any less then anyone else's. As long as you are in good faith trying to RP, that is good solid RP to the only people that matter you and your gaming group.
IMO role playing ISN"T a four letter word it just dosn't matter.
I have been playing for 20+yrs and have had alot of good sessions of both styles.
I find that smaller groups of say 2 or 3 players(max) lends itself to role play while a group of 7 or 8 lends to roll play.
I could quote chapter and verse on the fun of both styles of games.
I fully understand that the size of the group is not always an indication of the style that is simply my observation.
When you have a smaller group the players take time to actually flesh out the personalitys more than when your trying to help the DM out and hurry things along by just saying "heres my shopping list from town, lets go enslave some villagers."
I have found myself in both types of games and it comes down to play the type of charecter YOU like to play. I have RP'd in the most monty-haul-hack-and-slash, lets all be evil and kill the planet games you can imagine and loved it. I was still a powerhouse but I didn't care if all the other players took Monster of legend and I was just an undead deathkight cleric of velsharoon. I came up with MY own ways of role play and the DM responded because it had NO in game effect but was still fun to do. If you really want to RP outta the box take the heritic feat( I think thats what it's called) and change the offical cannon of your faith just a little. No big in game effect but lottsa fun. My cleric was a loyal servant of velsharoon in all his undead glory BUT taking the heritic feat I was also a devote follower of the weave/mystra and would kill any sharran/cyrian/etc. on site(death is just the beginning)
I guess what I am trying to say is The type of game you want to play in depends on the type of player YOU! are.
Okay, maybe making a totally minmaxed character might not be role-playable in any meaninful way, but it is certainly possible to make a character roll playable and fun to role play at the same time.
My Second Darkness group is full of well-constructed, but characterful ...um characters. Sure, they're not totally munchkinned out, but they fill their party roles effectively.
I think part of growing into a mature gamer is to be able to balance out both aspects of character creation to make something that is rewarding and fun to play.
I agree with this 100%.
I award heavily for ROLE PLAYING...I've even instituted a practice where if everyone at the table foregoes mentioning game mechanics, I award the party a 20% bonus to earned experience points for the night!
Neat idea!
Joey if you say you all RP, don't let me or anyone tell you that your style of RP is any less then anyone else's. As long as you are in good faith trying to RP, that is good solid RP to the only people that matter you and your gaming group.
We harass and make fun of the other guys in our group (my brother still stuck in 1st ed dungeon delves) when they dont attempt to roleplay most things in the game
We all have fun with it so I really dont care what other people on here think
We all have fun with it so I really dont care what other people on here think
I agree with this guy 200%!
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I like Paizo a lot.
But since I have started playing APs and Gamesmastery/Pathfinder Modules almost exclusively I have become more of an optimiser.
I'm fully expecting my character in RotRL to bite the dust fairly soon - a brave, naive Varisian sorcerer in a party with limited healing... He's great but...
My CotCT characters are tougher but I'm guessing that my DM has given me a few breaks.
And i'm DMing in Darkmoon Vale. Blimey! My new player is having a hard time surviving even with DM help.
Oh, the cruel irony, that an adventure as roleplaying rich as Burnt Offerings should also be for powerful characters.
So, I have tried to adopt the good character with good stats approach.
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So, I have tried to adopt the good character with good stats approach.
Don't play harder, play smarter. :) Many fatalities in the AP's you've mentioned can be avoided with stealth, guile and the right information. These things are very role-playable.
Brute force and luck do have their places though.
We all have fun with it so I really dont care what other people on here thinkI agree with this guy 200%!
That is a fair position to be in.
He is doing what he enjoys.
Much as when i go out dancing and it happens to be cheeze trance with memorable lyrics from my 6th form days, i have a whale of a time. I don't try to claim that what i dance to on such a night is some how of great artistic merit, or even a peticularly compitent example of the style.
Equally, Joey isn't trying to make a claim that what he is doing is a fine example of 'Roleplaying', only that it is what works for him and his friends.
I can entirely respect that, and hope he has many more years of it.
So, I have tried to adopt the good character with good stats approach.Don't play harder, play smarter. :) Many fatalities in the AP's you've mentioned can be avoided with stealth, guile and the right information. These things are very role-playable.
Brute force and luck do have their places though.
That i have to agree with. Quick thinking and guile go a very long way.
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I think it is more of an Internet attitude than a real issue with the game One of the reason we see it a lot, is because you can't argue with someone about a role-playing moment. You can argue about a rules calling. IMO message boards tend to draw the people who are interested in feeling smarter than the other guy. They want to show off that thier knowledge is better than yours. (Now mind you, this is not everyone who comes to messageboards. Not even a majority, but the ones that feel this way tend to be the biggest posters, posting on every thread, so they get noticed the most.) Because of that the big discussions are the ones that have a lot to argue about. Rules and mechanics are a hive for these discussion, but chatting about a good character story isn't. That is why the argument thread go pages and pages and the chatty threads die down fast (again not all, but most). (An example is this thread. Your topic was pretty clear, but yet three or four post in someone came in and rather then discussing the topic, just shot back an argumentative statement).
I think there are lots of groups out there who don't min/max at all, and spend time making interesting concepts, stories, and even cool weaknesses. (My sorc, player gets his power from stealing life force from people he dosen't know and can't control, so he spends most games trying not to cast any of his spells. Now that is a handicap). Those players though, just don't have any interest in coming to a message board to argue with a guy who thinks his fighter sucks because he can't move and take a full attack. (again compare that with a sorc who dosen't want to cast his spells cause it might kill someone he dosen't know)
so yea, I think it just looks that way way because of the discussion on most boards. Someone did mention something above too though that might add into it. I almost never run premade adventures. I have been writing my own since I started DMing, but I recently decided to run RotRL. Compared to my normal games, there is so much combat, that my player have gotten bored. We are currently in the last part of the Massacre at Hook Mountain, and while the story is good, they are just tired ow rolling the dice, and checking a hit or miss. (and honestly I am tired of describing the combat. I like to describe the hits, etc, so it is more than just "i hit" or "I miss" but after so long, it all starts to feel the same.) Now I am sure there are people out there who love that. Those that do are mostly the type who love to optimize their characters. The difficult combat IS the challenge for them, not the interaction. It isn't the fault of the adventure either, I mean when writing a story, you can only do so much. It is static. You can add all the details you want, but since you have no idea what the players will do or how they will interact, you can only do so much. So you fill the rest with interesting combats. This is going to draw thoes that like optimizing thier charaters.
Of course 4ed is going to bring a whole new breed of people who are in it for the optimization... Old players will be able to adapt and add fluff, but new players who don't have experience with real role playing, are going to read the books and think that it is just one awesome strategy game. I would not be surprised if in a few years, you see people building great characters, (Even with stories of their own) but when it come time to game, they will barely describe their actions, instead concentrating on how to get the pluses they need to take out the bad guy.
As always this is all just my opinion.
Blah blah blah, Stormwind Fallacy , Blah blah blah...
carry on nothing said here matters in any direction.
Blah blah blah, Stormwind Fallacy , Blah blah blah...
carry on nothing said here matters in any direction.
The Stormwind fallacy is a strawman arguement, plain and simple.
I'm going to go with the statement 'You can't roleplay if your character is dead.'
Sometimes, roleplaying a character well, requires accepting that the death of the character is both possible, appropreate and part of a good story. In short, 'yes, you can roleplay if your character is dead.'
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Blah blah blah, Stormwind Fallacy , Blah blah blah...
carry on nothing said here matters in any direction.
The original poster didn't say anything about not being able to roleplay AND min/Max. He said the focus these days seems to be on optimization. That thing like cool weaknesses are being left out of the discussions these days. In other words, how come most people seem to give off the impression that is it somehow a disservice to play a NON-optimized character? That is what I get from his post, and I agree. But again, I think it is just because there are so many people out there talking about how this class sucks, or that class power is useless because it isn't as good as something else, the the ones about (less then optimal) characters seems to get lost.
I certainly met players under both 1e and 3e who were not into role-playing but into power accumulation and exercise (both in and out of the game)...they just weren't a part of my gaming circle, and I didn't become a part of theirs either.
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Sometimes, roleplaying a character well, requires accepting that the death of the character is both possible, appropreate and part of a good story. In short, 'yes, you can roleplay if your character is dead.'
Not when you are rolling a new character nearly every session. Or worse, having the character by rights be dead, only for the DM to continually handwave it by 'you were just knocked out and helpful NPC healed you'. Completely destroys any possibility of death being meaningful, appropriate, and good storytelling. And yes, I am projecting my own experiences here, but damn it, that campaign was BS.
The Stormwind fallacy is a strawman arguement, plain and simple.Blah blah blah, Stormwind Fallacy , Blah blah blah...
carry on nothing said here matters in any direction.
Prove it.
I'm a bit puzzled.
I think rules and optimisation questions lend themselves to debate more readily than roleplaying does. That means internet forums (or face-to-face discussions for that matter) are going to be more often focussed on "How do you use the rules?" than "How do you roleplay?" - the fact there's more talking about rules doesnt imply that rules trumps roleplay. It means there's more to talk about with rules - roleplaying...you just do it.
You can't really roleplay "wrongly" whereas you may well be screwing up whether or not two feats stack.
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I tend to think players get confused between "role-playing" and "playing a role".
Example, I have a player in my group who thinks the cleric's ONLY job is to provide healing and be a buff bi*ch to the others. His idea of roleplaying is making a different voice than his normal and just healing and buffing. Hence his "PC" is playing a role in the grand scheme of things. I think he gets that idea from all the MMROPHs that he plays and it just kind clinged on to him. He also cant seperate from himself and from his PC...if someone slights him in real world, he will slight that person through his character in the game... Kinda sad.
In my group we have cut the metagaming and min-maxing down alot but rolling up PCs using 3d6, 8 times-best 6 OR 4d6, 6 times. Its amazing how a 5 in your stats makes you think about roleplaying more. :)
In my group we have cut the metagaming and min-maxing down alot but rolling up PCs using 3d6, 8 times-best 6 OR 4d6, 6 times. Its amazing how a 5 in your stats makes you think about roleplaying more. :)
Well I disagree with you our group thinks if characters dont have heroic stats then why not stay as commoners unless you want a low stat for a roleplaying aspect
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In my group we have cut the metagaming and min-maxing down alot but rolling up PCs using 3d6, 8 times-best 6 OR 4d6, 6 times. Its amazing how a 5 in your stats makes you think about roleplaying more. :)Well I disagree with you I think if characters dont have heroic stats then why not stay as commoners
Because heroes are what you make of them..... IN games such as 3.5 D&D, you have all these feats that make you special.
think of old fantasy literature... Frodo is a good curent example.... or even real-world examples....
Better yet, think of the line from "the incredibles"...if everyone is special than nobody is...
Our games are great and very heroic...its not like everone has crap scores. The monk in our party has 14, 12, 13, 12, 10, 10 for stats and he is kicking arse cuz he plays it smart.
YMMV though....but I get alot of mileage out of my group.
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We use a level playing field and do point buy. It gives everyone the same baseline to build from. What you do from then on is up to you and your imagination. Right now, all we use is Beta and it's created a wide range of great characters that are fun to play and don't break the game.
Ground rules like that and a sense of fair play are important things; otherwise you can just end up playing MtG where the person with the most money to spend on cards wins.
Better yet, think of the line from "the incredibles"...if everyone is special than nobody is...
Everybody is not just the PCs
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The two ideas tend to go hand in hand in our groups. We enjoy some role-playing, we enjoy some descriptive commentary instead of dry mechanical recitations, *and* we generally enjoy playing competent, effective characters who are good at what they do. Heroes (or, in the case of 1st level D&D characters, *potential* heroes), not zeroes.
None of us *want* to role-play 'a character who isn't very good at anything,' so the balanced and useful characters that people usually bring to the table happen to be the 'prodigy with a longsword' or 'idiot savant spellcaster' that they want to role-play anyway.
The only time I care either way about 'roll-playing vs. role-playing' is when someone is spouting off fiddly mechanical stuff during the game, and slowing everything (particularly combats, which I prefer to be fast and evocatively described, not crunched and parsed to within six decimel places. If it can't be looked up in 30 seconds, screw it, the DM says what happens and we move on. We can look it up afterwards, if anyone really cares...) down with boring minutia, or the high-maintenance sorts get the entire party killed, ruin everyone's night and storm out in a melodramatic huff when their 'I was just role-playing my character!' excuse for the night's game-wrecking inter-party-conflict-inducing drama-queenery gets called out.
Sometimes, roleplaying a character well, requires accepting that the death of the character is both possible, appropreate and part of a good story. In short, 'yes, you can roleplay if your character is dead.'Not when you are rolling a new character nearly every session. Or worse, having the character by rights be dead, only for the DM to continually handwave it by 'you were just knocked out and helpful NPC healed you'. Completely destroys any possibility of death being meaningful, appropriate, and good storytelling. And yes, I am projecting my own experiences here, but damn it, that campaign was BS.
Well, i can't help with your bad experience as a Player.
But if personal expereince is to be accepted as arguement in this thread, I have had experiences of playing entirely suboptimal characters with glaring flaws and weaknesses in DnD and survived without resorting to optimisation. Admitedly, it works better in Roleplay intensive enviroments like city adventures, but i have never made a secret of the fact that i would like to see adventures in general move more toward that style of game and the dungeon crawl die the painful death it deserves.
Those characters, who were among my faverate could not have been optimised and remained the same character. They would have lost much of what made them enjoyable by being optimised.
Prove it.The Stormwind fallacy is a strawman arguement, plain and simple.Blah blah blah, Stormwind Fallacy , Blah blah blah...
carry on nothing said here matters in any direction.
Sure.
Here's the new definition I use, since the old one got pruned.If someone says something to the extent of any of the following: I am a roleplayer; thus I do not min-max.
I purposely make all my characters weak in at least some ways; that makes them better roleplayed.
You're dishing out thousands of damage per hit! You're not roleplaying, you're min/maxing!...And so on and so forth. If those things come up, then they are committing the Stormwind Fallacy: Just because one optimizes his characters mechanically does not mean he cannot also roleplay well. Just because a character plays his character well does not mean he cannot be optimized. As a corrollary, characters who are min/maxed are not automatically played worse than those who are not, and characters who are deliberately handicapped are not automatically played better than those who are not. It's easy to imagine players who are good at either one of those things, or bad at both, or good at both.Essentially, roleplaying and min/maxing can easily coexist since they are independent of each other.
For instance, in one of my current games, we've got three of the CO board regulars playing along with two others, with a cast of a pair of high-power swordsages, a CHAMELEON (widely held as one of the strongest PrCs ever published), and my Shadowcraft Mage (you know, as in "I can cast any spell from two different schools spontaneously, even if I don't know them"?)... and yet each character is deep enough to cause moral problems, interconnected enough to work as a team, and compelling enough to be an interesting character in their own right. The existence of a single case like this game is more than enough to debunk "Optimizers cannot roleplay" under any scientific or logical reasoning base. Now, it isn't enough to say that it's rare or common, but it is enough to demonstrate existence.
For those of you following logically, you may recognize this: It's the False Dilemma fallacy, actually, just expressed in terms of D&D. False Dilemma is a fallacy that in which one sets up a dichotomy when in truth there is a continuum or independent axes. An common example of a False Dilemma is "You're either for us or against us." It's possible to support neither cause whatsoever and abstain from helping either side, but the statement is set up in such a way to suggest that this is not a choice -- thus it presents you with a false dilemma. Here's a few more "false dilemma" examples, and a proof. (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/false-dilemma.html)
The Stormwind Fallacy is a special case of this applied to roleplaying; a faulty argument in the following fashion:
1. Either you roleplay your character well or you have min/maxed that character.
2. This character is not min/maxed.
3. Therefore he must be roleplayed well.
Conclusion: All good roleplayed characters are not min/maxed, and all min/maxed characters are poorly roleplayed.The faulty assumption comes at 1 -- I provided an example of one of my games above which demonstrates that you can optimize your characters and roleplay them at the same time. ONE counterexample is all that's needed -- and I KNOW I'm not the only one (I should show you the Real Adventures games the CO boards hold -- several stellar roleplayers there and they're all CO board regulars, in other words min/maxers).
Unless you can either:
1) Demonstrate that this is not a mapping to the False Dilemma Fallacy OR
2) Demonstrate that the False Dilemma Fallacy does not hold,
then the Stormwind Fallacy holds.For the record, it's named what it is because of an old debate on the DM boards. I (and others) thought that this idea was mind-numbingly obvious, while others thought that it was a logical impossibility. I snapped at one point and decided to formalize it under a handy shorthand name so people could spread it and learn about it a bit more. I was arrogant (still am), and chose my own name.
To this day I still don't think we need it, but since it's commonly cited (and misused), it stays. I do regret naming it after myself, though.The original thread it's from is here (http://boards1.wizards.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-624756). It's fairly representative of what things were like before the fallacy was formalized (i.e. before simple logic was shown in terms relevant to D&D).
People carry it in their sigs to say things. Some people use it incorrectly to say that "Because I'm a min-maxer, I'm a good roleplayer". Others use it correctly and say "Just because I play good characters doesn't mean I can't min/max" or "just because I min/max doesn't mean my character isn't deep".
It's a good message, I feel.
EDIT: To put it clearer, I should say it with graphics.
The people who commit the fallacy left, right, and center are almost always "I'm a ROLEPLAYER and I don't min/max" people who treat min/maxing as the DARK SIDE. They present you with this (http://www.telusplanet.net/~sdupuis/Tempest/StormwindFalse.gif) type of argument. Your character and game have to fall somewhere on that line, they say.
In truth, it's something far closer to this (http://www.telusplanet.net/~sdupuis/Tempest/StormwindTrue.gif). It's easy to imagine a character at each of the four corners: A Faerun fighter who speaks like he's from the ghetto and took Weapon Specialization (Gravel) on the low/low side, the archetypal munchkin on the low RP / high min/max corner, the drama queen on the low min/max / high RP corner, and the kind of players I describe above (in my game) towards the high/high corner.
What the Stormwind Fallacy does NOT say, though, is that one of these is inherently superior to the others. I fully subscribe to the Jell_Moo Principle: Do not tell other people how to play the game. If you're having fun with poorly-min/maxed characters, fine, more power to you! No problems here! ...Unless you start asserting that yours is the ONLY way to play and people who make effective characters are somehow automatically worse at roleplaying than you are.
I do need to clarify slightly and say that the way in which you are using the Stormwind Fallacy is a strawman argument, and that it is under most modern conditions that it is used. I believe, but have no evidence, that it may have been a strawman in its original use; simply because I have never heard anyone make the claim that, it is used to refute.
The Stormwind Fallacy is logically sound in and off itself. If any of us had claimed that is was impossible to create a character that was both soundly role-played and had been mini-maxed in some ways, then it would be appropriate to cite the stormwind fallacy.
The original poster asked only why it had become so common to see character concepts that had to be 'the best.' I have seen this trend myself. One group with whom I played for some time was entirely uncomfortable with systems were they where statistically unlikely to achieve a success within a one-turn period, despite being able to within a two turn period. Equally, I am currently DMing for a group who, when confronted with encounters which actually threatened them, became irate, because they believed that as heroes they should be able to breeze through danger.
Tenmeh does not make the claim that Mini-Maxing and roleplaying are mutually exclusive, only that optimisers can be a disruptive influence in a group. Although he does not mention it, directly he does skirt around the issue of the 'arms race'.
Locke also does not make the that Mini-Maxing and roleplaying are mutually exclusive. Rather he points out that desire to play only the best, leads to a narrowing of concepts.
Xuttah says he believes you can have both good roleplay and optimisation. Right or wrong, he certainly is not engaging in the storm wind fallacy.
Thurgon only argues that what is appropriate based on concept and what is optimal can clash.
Then we get to me, possibly the most expressly anti-Optimisation. Oh and I actually state that a good roleplayer who wishes to play the worlds greatest wizard needs to use the techniques that optimisers use to make characters. Which by implication means that sometimes god roleplaying REQUIRES that you mini-max a character.
I cannot see a single example of the stormwind fallacy before you posted your comment. And I don't think there is an example after it either.
Roleplaying has not become a taboo word in my gaming environment, AFAICT.
Now, rules-heavy games like D&D in any incarnation tend to lead to rules-heavy play, or roll-play. A game like CoC, which is relatively rules-light, tends to lead to higher role-play games IME. Of course, you can have good roleplay with D&D as well, but as soon as the rules come into play, the danger is there that the game becomes rules-heavy. If there are detailed combat rules, they will be used. OTOH, if there are no combat rules at all, you have to look into other solutions. This experience comes from live role play - if you have a fantasy LARP, there are combat rules, and they are used - a lot. We play on and off some 1920 live role play (with participation limited to people we know), and the last time, we did not have any game rules at all (only the societies rules about proper behaviour in the 1920ies at a conservative british nobles manor), so we had to be creative to find the solutions to the problem (a classical murder story) with resorting only to roleplay.
The percieved reduction in roleplaying efforts may stem from the internet messageboards, as these lend themselves to rules discussions much better than to roleplaying discussions - roleplaying depends on direct interaction (no MMORPGs for me, thank you - these ain´t ROLE-playing games in my book), and is almost entirely a matter of personal taste, as the comments in this thread show. There is no wrong way and no right way to do it, besides that it should be fun for all involved - and having fun can vary widely from person to person. Thus, it is hard to discuss this in the net.
Stefan
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I think it is stigmas:
Is it just me or is it that when you hear the words d20, D&D, Heroic and Fantasy, one thinks of the min/maxing rules stigma associated with the game.
BUT when you hear Cthulhu, or World of Darkness (for example), one immediately thinks of roleplaying (of the 'acting' type).
Cheers! :D
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I do find the depth of game mechanics to be a plus. There were some things about 1st Edition that were "places one should not speak of". It seems that improving the game has made the whole thing focus entirely on the mechanics (which are great), but have lost the original Bard feel of the game. The game has become mechanics driven and not roleplay driven. That said, it would be interesting to see a roleplay intensive version of the game instead of a mechanics version.
By making such a thing, new creative talent would be unlocked that are not as "stat saavy" as the current standards require.