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So do you play your character in Role Play style or do you only think of how to max it out in Rule Play style, only taking the best combat advantages?
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Are the games you run a collection of battles or does it have a very deep story and such?
Do you ever use the Sandbox method where there are encounters you cannot beat and you must run away if your party runs in to them?
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Why do you assume they're different things?
Why do people always assume optimizers obviously fail at roleplaying and having more than one combat per session equates to a weak story?
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I aim for a mix of the two, though I err on the side of roleplaying.
I would feel guilty being the party load just because I had this neat idea that I wanted to try out. I know my team is counting on me to pitch in in a fight, so I always try to make sure that my character is at least carrying himself.
However, I don't see the point in just creating a killing machine that can stomp on every encounter and win at everything, without caring that much about character development. Might as well just write "YOU WIN" on a piece of paper and look at it occasionally. I especially don't like it when people make choices that make no logical sense, or which are at least a huge stretch of the imagination to reconcile, just for the sake of optimization.
So, I think a happy medium between the two is what's best. And it's certainly possible.
And on the other hand, I also once joined a 3.5e game where we started at level 8. I played a paladin that came out really well, as I managed to work with the GM to blend him into the homebrew setting (it was such an awesome setting, major kudos to the GM). In contrast, one of the other people in the party made a character who was a member of 8 different classes. She literally dipped every level for the sole purpose of optimizing her Diplomacy skill. I hadn't even heard of some of these base classes and PrCs; they must have been from splat books. She had some ability which let her make a Diplomacy check as a standard action, even in combat, and had like a +40 check and could essentially automatically befriend everyone we met with an int score. There were many contradictions between the classes she chose, like she had one level of paladin, one level of a cleric of some weird demon god, she was some sort of ninja, a pirate, and like an undead hunter? I don't even know. The "background" section of her character sheet only listed her age, hair, and eye colour. -_____-
EDIT: I somehow missed the questions about GMing. I prefer to make very open-ended games where the players can do whatever they want. In order to make this work, I sit down with the players ahead of time and we work together to come up with motivations for characters both to pursue some sort of storyline, and most importantly, to stick together as a team.
And I do warn them that they should not expect that all encounters are tailored to their level. I don't go out of my way to swamp them with insane encounters, but I like it when players have to decide when to fight and when to run. Similarly, they'll sometimes run into encounters that are super easy for them, which they usually find quite enjoyable, actually. It can be especially refreshing to curb stomp some low-level encounters as a little ego boost after you've had a string of hard fights or defeats. ^__^
It's a lot of work, but I like to make complex plots with a lot of choice, lots of recurring NPCs, moral grey areas, etc. I'm also big on personal/individual storylines, though it can be tricky to weave them into the metaplot without disrupting things too much. In general this is all a ton of work, but it's what I enjoy most about GMing.
@Chris: that second anecdote made me laugh. I've never heard of anybody doing that min-max with a ton of different obscure classes to max out diplomacy. Mind you, if she could use it to befriend people in COMBAT...THAT would be interesting
And also, I enjoy a mix of both--I like role-playing and character growth, but I also enjoy combat.
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The whole "if you try yo make your C good you are a bad roleplayer!" thing is getting old and frankly is idiotic. These are people that live dangerous lives and risk death at any moment. If you are playing someone that is not trying to be the best that they can be then you are roleplaying an idiot.
Yes
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Reposted:
The Stormwind Fallacy, aka the Roleplayer vs Rollplayer Fallacy
Just because one optimizes his characters mechanically does not mean that they cannot also roleplay, and vice versa.
Corollary: Doing one in a game does not preclude, nor infringe upon, the ability to do the other in the same game.
Generalization 1: One is not automatically a worse roleplayer if he optimizes, and vice versa.
Generalization 2: A non-optimized character is not automatically roleplayed better than an optimized one, and vice versa.
Proof: These two elements rely on different aspects of a player's gameplay. Optimization factors in to how well one understands the rules and handles synergies to produce a very effective end result. Roleplaying deals with how well a player can act in character and behave as if he was someone else. A person can act while understanding the rules, and can build something powerful while still handling an effective character. There is nothing in the game -- mechanical or otherwise -- restricting one if you participate in the other.
The fallacy is actually a bias of perception: there are players who roleplay poorly and have poor rules knowledge, and players who create effective characters and roleplay them well. Typically we label these types of people as just 'good' or 'bad' players and don't consider them in relation to the above.
I am the quintessential roleplayer. I honestly could play this game without any rules whatsoever, but ...it happens to be FUN learning to master this rules set. I'm also aware that for some gamers, having a solid rules set acts as a sort of covenant (if you will) between GM and players, protecting players from GM excesses.
However, there are those who see only the rules, and optimization. I've played PFS. You all know what I'm talking about.
Let's not generalize though. I don't mind players optimizing, but while you're making your prehensile-haired witch who specializes in hair-based touch attacks, remember that slowing down and talking to that farmer outside the town gates as one concerned citizen to another helps immerse everyone in the story. If I can get everyone at the table to lose track of time, I've done my job as GM. :)
So, OP, what exactly did you intend when you started this thread, other than trying to act like your way of playing RPGs is any more valid than anyone else's?Isn't it obvious? Forums are boring right now.
The last flame war died so he's giving us a hand.
Idk, you must be missing the s#&* storm over the new Snowball spell.
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A bit lame in terms of flame wars, so I suggest starting a psionics thread. Those usually draw the crazies out! :D
Let's not generalize though. I don't mind players optimizing, but while you're making your prehensile-haired witch who specializes in hair-based touch attacks, remember that slowing down and talking to that farmer outside the town gates as one concerned citizen to another helps immerse everyone in the story. If I can get everyone at the table to lose track of time, I've done my job as GM. :)I'm fine with that up until I'm sitting at a table chewing on a piece of pizza on saturday night waiting for someone to quit yakking with the local smith about how good an imaginary tavern's pheasant is that night. I let random meaningless conversations with npc's go on 5, maybe 10 minutes where the entire rest of the table is waiting on them.
Then I accuse someone of defiling my sister and crack a barstool over their head (in my defense I regularly play characters with low charisma and no social skills)
Fair enough. Every good GM will keep the game moving and not get bogged-down in minutia or grandstanding...or shenanigans.
Reposted:
The Stormwind Fallacy, aka the Roleplayer vs Rollplayer Fallacy
Just because one optimizes his characters mechanically does not mean that they cannot also roleplay, and vice versa.
Corollary: Doing one in a game does not preclude, nor infringe upon, the ability to do the other in the same game.
-snip-
Here's the thing, though: Characters are both qualitative and quantitative. One one hand they're a mix of background, personality, and ambitions, and on the other they come with a sheet full of numbers and finite abilities that obey very specific rules. Building such a character involves making a series of small decisions that eventually add up to a whole character - but sometimes a decision can be really good for one part of the character (say, the background), while being a bad fit for the other (such as their combat ability).
There are times when building your character to primarily suit either a really cool background or a really awesome combat ability can infringe on the other aspect.
For example, here's my estimation on how the vast majority of the people I meet make their characters:
First, they come up with a core build idea - a combination of abilities that work extremely well together by compounding bonuses to great effect. Their plan is to get those abilities as quickly and efficiently as possible, then use the hell out of them as often as possible for great justice. They will take any feat, any trait, any class to make this happen.
ONLY THEN do they give thought to character concept. To them, their character's background is little more than a legal case explaining how their character came to be an oni-blooded human barbarian princess bard who was adopted by dwarves who were also martial artists, who then became a paladin and then conveniently fell from grace for some reason just in time to take that level of assassin. A lot of the consequences that these decisions have on their character tend to be pretty stereotypical; for example, being raised by dwarves means that he has a Scottish accent, loves his ale, and is mistrustful of elves. That sort of thing.
Now, this doesn't mean that this character won't be a blast to play at the table, or that the player won't get really into it, that he won't get emotionally invested in his successes and failures, or that meaningful things won't happen or be achieved by him. That's all roleplaying, and honestly, with a good GM it's almost impossible to avoid it even you tried.
But that doesn't change the fact that this character came to be the way he is not because of any inspiration, creativity, or desire to rolelay, but primarily because of decisions made to optimize his ability to roll dice. This can get really frustrated when taken to silly extremes - and I have seen some pretty silly extremes. That's the sort of thing that tends to rub people the wrong way.
And the reverse can absolutely be true about people who are overly dedicated to a character concept that frankly just isn't viable in a campaign that will involve life or death combat on a regular basis. I mean, it's great that you want your character to be really good at basket weaving, but now is not the time to be taking Skill Focus: Craft (Basket Weaving). That is why someone invented The Sims. This is D&D. If your character leaves his animal companion at home because he loves it so much that he can't bear to subject it to the dangers of adventuring, I think maybe you're missing the point.
There is absolutely middle ground, and particularly among the people I actually wind up playing with, the middle ground seems to be the norm. But that doesn't mean the extremes don't exist.
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Well, yeah. But they're called exceptions for a reason. You can't argue against optimization or roleplaying just because there are exceptions to the rules of "don't go super crazy with it, because you're likely to ruin the experience for the buddies you're sitting around the table with."
I think it would be great if people would stop acting like anyone who doesn't play the game exactly like them is having badwrongfun. Everyone would play their own version of the game, and enjoy themselves.
But no, we apparently cannot have nice things.
I'm not arguging for or against optimization or roleplaying, I'm just trying to explain where people are coming from when they say they have a preference, or get irritated by one or the other.
It feels like a strawman to me to simply say that the middle ground exists. The middle ground isn't the problem, it's the extremes.
And it isn't about telling people that they're doing it wrong. The problem occurs when the way someone plays starts to trample on the fun of other people around the table.
And even when this happens, it's rarely just one person's fault. For example, a classic scenario: an experienced player with an optimized characters sits in with a bunch of green players who have sub-optimal characters. The pro player dominates all encounters, and everyone else feels like they're part of the setting. It may be easy to single out the pro player as a "power gamer" (regardless of whether or not he also has a rich character concept or whether he's roleplaying his character well, whatever "well" means), but I find the best solution is usually a compromise. While the pro can maybe tone it down a bit and try not to hog the spotlight, it's probable that the new players could also use a few key pointers to bring their characters up to speed.
Or conversely, everyone has been in that situation where one player decides to create a huge amount of drama "because my character would do that". Suddenly the whole adventure is on hold and you're rolling for initiative, and then next thing you know someone has thrown some dice and stormed away from the table and locked themselves in the bathroom or something equally rash. They want a new character or they want to stop playing entirely and it's not their fault because that's how their character is! Nevermind that they made their character that way and maybe that wasn't such a smart move to begin with. But again, the best solution is often a compromise.
EDIT: It occurs to me that I'm also really sleepy and rambly, so sorry if I'm not making much sense. ^_______^
And the reverse can absolutely be true about people who are overly dedicated to a character concept that frankly just isn't viable in a campaign that will involve life or death combat on a regular basis. I mean, it's great that you want your character to be really good at basket weaving, but now is not the time to be taking Skill Focus: Craft (Basket Weaving). That is why someone invented The Sims. This is D&D. If your character leaves his animal companion at home because he loves it so much that he can't bear to subject it to the dangers of adventuring, I think maybe you're missing the point.
A character who is poor at combat but excels in the task they were created for (such as basketweaving) is still an optimised character. What this person has done is failed to create a character concept suitable for the pathfinder game style. A perfectly optimised ragelancepounce combat monster could be in the same basket (forgive the pun) if your game mostly revolved sunday craft classes. Or urban spycraft, for a more realistic example. On the flip, the fallen paladin princess bard assassin may be an entirely suitable character for a tongue-in-cheek high fantasy romp.
There IS one factor that the stormwind fallacy doesn't address, which you've touched on here. That is, when some players come up with a character concept, they tend to focus entirely on either the mechanical or story aspects of that character without considering the other. This is't so much a conflict between those two concept factors as it is a failure of those players to adopt a holistic approach to character creation.
TLDR: yes, there are people who ignore one factor in favour of the other. The fallacy comes from the leading assumption that there is therefore an causal, inverse relationship between the two. You can be a good optimiser and fantastic roleplayer. You can also be just one, or neither.
So do you play your character in Role Play style or do you only think of how to max it out in Rule Play style, only taking the best combat advantages?
Neither. I like to play my character like it is in a Role Playing Game. That means we play to both have fun and to have interesting situations. Our GM has found a nice balance and we go along for the ride.
Are the games you run a collection of battles or does it have a very deep story and such?
Both, our GM has often presented us with great stories that include conflict in various forms. Keep in mind all great stories have conflict in them. Some even includes combat.
Do you ever use the Sandbox method where there are encounters you cannot beat and you must run away if your party runs in to them?
Yes, this has happened as well as encounters we could have "beat" but chose to leave because of story concerns.
I think you are trying to draw a line that is not clearly there for our group. We have a hard time seeing how one or the other is more important and we have also found that when we balance both into a game, it is the most fun.
So do you play your character in Role Play style or do you only think of how to max it out in Rule Play style, only taking the best combat advantages?
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Are the games you run a collection of battles or does it have a very deep story and such?
Do you ever use the Sandbox method where there are encounters you cannot beat and you must run away if your party runs in to them?
Role play. We have a very deep story most of the time, and the many of the group members have taken social skills (feats, abilities....) at the expense of more combat driven ones.
We tend to Sandbox it, however, the group I'm in, we have a tendency to retreat or not engage groups we should be able to defeat, and attack to the death groups that we should have talked our way out of or avoided.
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Normally it is heavy based on combat, but lately i have been trying more sandbox approaches but my players don't think in that way, I had to tell them to run from an encounter because they don't run. Other then that when i play i optimize to the build ie a diplomat needs good diplomacy along with other skills. If I am doing a duelist I go with skills and feats that will help him towards that.
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I'm not arguging for or against optimization or roleplaying, I'm just trying to explain where people are coming from when they say they have a preference, or get irritated by one or the other.
It feels like a strawman to me to simply say that the middle ground exists. The middle ground isn't the problem, it's the extremes.
And it isn't about telling people that they're doing it wrong. The problem occurs when the way someone plays starts to trample on the fun of other people around the table.
And even when this happens, it's rarely just one person's fault. For example, a classic scenario: an experienced player with an optimized characters sits in with a bunch of green players who have sub-optimal characters. The pro player dominates all encounters, and everyone else feels like they're part of the setting. It may be easy to single out the pro player as a "power gamer" (regardless of whether or not he also has a rich character concept or whether he's roleplaying his character well, whatever "well" means), but I find the best solution is usually a compromise. While the pro can maybe tone it down a bit and try not to hog the spotlight, it's probable that the new players could also use a few key pointers to bring their characters up to speed.
Or conversely, everyone has been in that situation where one player decides to create a huge amount of drama "because my character would do that". Suddenly the whole adventure is on hold and you're rolling for initiative, and then next thing you know someone has thrown some dice and stormed away from the table and locked themselves in the bathroom or something equally rash. They want a new character or they want to stop playing entirely and it's not their fault because that's how their character is! Nevermind that they made their character that way and maybe that wasn't such a smart move to begin with. But again, the best solution is often a compromise.
EDIT: It occurs to me that I'm also really sleepy and rambly, so sorry if I'm not making much...
Only about the first half of my post was directed at you, and we're effectively agreeing with each other, so don't worry about it.
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Whoa! Did not mean to start a fire!
I have mostly experienced players who were one way or the other.
I have realized my error that some of the more role playing sorts were taking the advantages just in the confines of the story now that I think about it.
The other players were just being bad players/jerks. I would use another word but this is a family website.
I would love to find a perfect gametable where everyone followed the story AND used the rules to form a perfect game.
I personally punish the pure min-maxer (that is also a bad player) that only thinks of himself at the table if possible.
I don't punish. I talk.
We're adults, not children (mostly). Most issues can be dealt with by talking. If that don't work, just kick them out. No harm, no foul.
...yeah....
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Whoa! Did not mean to start a fire!
I present you the musical cue that plays every time somebody starts a "Rollplay v. Roleplay" thread.
So do you play your character in Role Play style or do you only think of how to max it out in Rule Play style, only taking the best combat advantages?
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Are the games you run a collection of battles or does it have a very deep story and such?
Do you ever use the Sandbox method where there are encounters you cannot beat and you must run away if your party runs in to them?
You are aware that many of us optimizers consider combat only a small portion of the game right? Sure, it's a critical portion, and the portion most often talked about (and arguably most exciting usually), but in my experiences the vast majority of most sessions are spent outside of combat.
Also, some of us use the rules to support our roleplay. Understanding how to get the mechanics to represent the character you want when he's in action. :)
On a side note, deep story AND awesome battles is kind of the ultimate fantasy trope, right?
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Ok, be honest. How many of you are just cut/pasting your responses from one of the other 100000 threads about CO vs RP?
So there are groups out there where everyone at the table Role Plays very well and Optimizes their character and the game rules and kicks @$$?
Well If I can't find a group like that I will try and form a group like that.
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Where I am at and where I am coming from is this sad story.
I am returning to Pathfinder after a long sad quest to find and or create the perfect RPG experience for Old School and New School players.
I made a Fantasy Heartbreaker. See the Forge website for the article on what a "Fantasy Heartbreaker" is.
IMHO PFRPG is the most awesome and complete system ever made while it is also the most clunky overdone set of rules for everything as well.
But still once one would learn it all and become an expert then it would be a breeze.
I was a part of the OSR before 4th edition that I played for a year and a half and was still a part of the OSR after I quit playing 4th edition.
I had left 3.5 in disgust after a rules lawyer, min-maxer, bad role player, and such destroyed our game. He never cheated he just used the rules to gain all advantages and would "accidentally" always be the star of the show. He completely had every single rule memorized without fail. He was never a prick but his actions always turned out that way because he would by the book lay out every monster. We turned to 4th edition and he left the group because he could not min max his characters.
For the player PFRPG is the best possible system to make a character and really get into it, AND it does a way better job than 3.5 ever did by juts a few simple changes. I have only actually played PFRPG a few times and must say more fun that any other system out there fantasy wise save WHRPG 1st Edition. I was playing a Wizard Necromancer and it did not suck.
For the GM it has every tool at your disposal. It just takes time until you learn all of the rules to make any kind of NPC and Monster when compared to the much lighter rules from long ago. I did not like running it as I had converted a huge old school dungeon from Labyrinth Lord to Pathfinder and due to working out of town did not have time to convert it over.
The players loved it. I loved it at first but could not keep up with it as I was working out of town in an internet dead zone. Plus with only 3 players a megadungoen gets really lame. It's something that needs at least 8 or more players.
SO I went back to my Old School Renaissance games and kept working on mine. What I was doing was basically what D&D Next is doing. Right about when I got done with my rules D&D Next was announced.
I got very little to no response towards my game.
Most of all the OSR people who claimed they wanted a game that was Old School Simple yet had the options of Modern RPGs did not respond. I decided after one night of heavy drink in my Mead Hall/ Gaming Building that I was going to shelve my game.
What was the perfect system out there? At that time the Pathfinder Core Rulebook somehow fell of the shelf and landed in font of me. Damn corner is bent now.
The people at Pazio and most of the Pathefinder Players really love the system and have fun with it.
Because of that I am going to give it another chance.
I guess I am going to have to run the games. I decided to go back with my fantasy version of Lake Charles, LA called Lake Charlemagne.
It was one of the most fun for everyone settings that I ever ran. So be gentle on me I am just returning to PFRPG and plan to have many monster die!
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The Druids took from both Cleric and Magic User Spell List until they came out with a Druid.
There were originally only three classes. Fighter, Cleric, Magic User with the Dwarf, Elf and Halfling being very limited.
There is a free download called Delving Deeper that is a clone of the original rules before the expansions.
http://www.immersiveink.com/
Somewhere there is a link to download. Maybe of RPGNow?
There is also the )E clone called Swords and Wizardry. Very cool game. Free Downloads!
http://www.swordsandwizardry.com/
If you look up the Ryth Chronicles you can read Newsletter PDFs of a campaign from the 1970s!
http://www.risusmonkey.com/search/label/Ryth
It was very cool to see how it was played "At the dawn of Role Playing Games"!
I always cut down the character options for player characters significantly at the start of a campaign. The players have to agree on a common background and their choice of race has to reflect that. Usually there's only five to seven classes to pick from and feats and spells are limited to a core rulebook.