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Whats the tldr?
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I agree. All of the people who i know playing 4th ed are heavy rollplayers, consummate WoW and MtG players. Except one who plays it as a convenience because he is too lazy to open a rulebook and read a little.
And most people i know playing storytelling based games are usually older guys (not kids) who have gotten past that "kill everything loot their stuff" mentality. Now, i said most people i know. I don't know a lot of people, maybe a thousand, so please don't jump down my throat or feel insulted.
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I don't think you have a conflict with the Stormwind Fallacy.
I think you are unhappy with the misuse of the Stormwind Fallacy.
This is not the fault of the idea, nor of the original Tempest Stormwind; it is the fault of those who misuse the Stormwind Fallacy.
If I read a game book that spends most of its chapters in building up stats and powers and gear and then most of the game's adventures all focus around things like dialogue with the Prince of Fluffistan I'd definitely be thrown for a loop.
I think this sounds like a good approach - put the mechanics primarily in the rulebooks and then the flavour material elsewhere (I realise there's 'bleed' between the two, but isn't this basically what Paizo have done with Pathfinder?)
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And most people i know playing storytelling based games are usually older guys (not kids) who have gotten past that "kill everything loot their stuff" mentality.There's two reasons why I think storyteller games like WoD have an "older" crowd:
1) WoD started out with Vampire in a time when Goth was huge. I still remember being young and seeing the older kids in black clothes and makeup go into the FLGS to get VtM stuff. WoD and Vampire spoke to that goth crowd as well as the theater club kids. Those people probably began as roleplayers and are older now and probably grown up with families. I think WoD probably still attracts the current crop of goth kids (those that are left) and theater kids who start out as roleplayers.
2) I think its very common for us to "evolve" as RPGers. If you really think hard about how you started playing I think many of us started out on DnD as a young kid, began as dice throwers looking for stats and loot and then slowly changed. After some period of time we started branching out into different games and discovering stuff like WoD or exotic games. It grew boring just making cheesed out characters, hacking and slashing, and collecting gear so we started working on roleplaying and character development as well. This probably is the largest group of players out there. There are probably some that never changed from rollplaying to roleplaying and some that changed very little. I highly doubt there are many if any players that started/became heavy roleplayers then switched to rollplaying.
I honestly don't know if the newer 4e generation will change like I and many did, but it will be interesting to see considering how heavy mechanics-based 4e is.
I think what you'll find, and is perhaps the reason why the Stormwind Fallacy can often be relevant, is that many people mature/develop in their playstyle without wanting to learn new rulesets or change genre.
If you began playing 3e when you were 15 and learnt to optimise and enjoy character-creation and combat-triumph... you might now be using the same ruleset (almost) and have 10+ years of experience. As such you can probably optimise, balance and adjust characters with little effort.
This player, now 25+, might well be crafting emotionally-rich characters full of RP potential. But she/he can also drop a powerful build on that concept in twenty minutes.
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Ok this is strange....but in my experience the game systems with the least mechanic seem to attract the power gamers. Often because there is really nothing stopping them from power gaming. Not saying all WoD games are filled with powergamers...just the ones I know about in my area.
Personaly their are pros and cons to either style of game...how it is played is almost entirely up to the group.
My problem with Stormwind Fallacey is when it is misused to defend all powergaming/min/maxing. etc. If you bring uber guy to a game of average guys...it really does not matter how well you RP...you are still causing other players to feel useless...especialy when you don't have to.
I have issue with this approach because first, when mechanics is the first thing done and emphasized in core books it sets a theme of what's important and every thing else is accessory to be purchased.If I read a game book that spends most of its chapters in building up stats and powers and gear and then most of the game's adventures all focus around things like dialogue with the Prince of Fluffistan I'd definitely be thrown for a loop.I think this sounds like a good approach - put the mechanics primarily in the rulebooks and then the flavour material elsewhere (I realise there's 'bleed' between the two, but isn't this basically what Paizo have done with Pathfinder?)
I understand that's your theory - I'm not sure it's anything more than anecdotal though. I only have my own group to go by and we play RPGs the same whether it's rolemaster, 4E, Pathfinder or Dungeon Crawl Classics - the mechanics are very unimportant to us and the focus/approach of the rulebooks doesnt actually impact on how we play(granted the character generation of DCC makes us a little sillier, perhaps).
I can see that it might make some people take the approach you're describing, but it doesnt gel with my experience, for one.
Not that many players go out and buy golarion setting books when they have the phb, apg, um etc. Books released for players are generally about classes and powers. When you look at VtM there's enough in there about the world that you could run a game without buying the expansions about the cities. Not enough of that is done in CRB because its pact with other stuff like spells and magic items. Then again this IS dnd! Paizo has, however, done well on the DM side with the APs and setting books that don't just have dungeons and slash and add flavor to the game..but on player side...well look at what most threads on this forum are about. Are they about how to make cool character concepts and interesting setting plots or about how to make a cool new class and optimize it?
This is related but could be a whole other topic: I think when a game is class based (which requries a whole area for mechanics) and/or uses game mats (requires a whole mechanic) instead of point based and free form it gets an environment geared toward powergaming as well. Everything is always about this class vs. that class and is this class worthless and I want this cool new class to play etc. etc. Again i think class based lends itself more to powergaming as people get concerned about each classes abilities and then...
I dont really see where you're heading with this subsequent bit, but to clarify for me - do you think Pathfinder is at the 'mechanics heavy' end or the 'story focussed' other end?
Ok this is strange....but in my experience the game systems with the least mechanic seem to attract the power gamers. Often because there is really nothing stopping them from power gaming. Not saying all WoD games are filled with powergamers...just the ones I know about in my area.I think these games are more open to abuse, but that's why they usually have a more dominant "DM" role to prevent this and keep the story going. So much of it is flexible and open to interpretation that a player could argue many things to try to get a rule to lean in his favor. I'm not sure how much more "powergaming" you can do in a lot of WoD stuff tbh other than some min-maxing especially dealing with 7/5/3 and 13/10/7? traits and skills. By making it more flexible and less rule heavy it usually lets the focus be more on the story than the mechanics, but again there's nothing to stop a group from running a WoD dungeon crawl campaign.
See that is the other side of the coin for Storyteller sysytems if your GM tightly holds on to keep powergamers in control often at times they will tightly the reins of the game. Pretty much it just becomes the GM telling the story with little input from the players. Which do me is nothing like RPing.
Now of course there are pretty much a certainity that there are Storytellers who strike the proper balance...but that is alot harder to do I found in rules light games.
Also your position of rules light games being superior to rules heavy games for the purposes of RPing just seems to much of a System Elitist arguement...which I generally find narrow minded.
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OP, you are very insightful and I completley agree - the way a game is built certainly affects the kind of people who'd like to take a part in it. However, the is an application of the Sotrmwind Fallacy here that I think you might have missed - yes, a game like 4e would attract those who enjoy combat and generaly speaking a challanging game that will require them to strecth their character building muscles.
However, according to the Stormwind Fallacy, enjoying the mechanical aspect of the game is completley unrelated to enjoying the roleplay aspect of the game. So while just about everyone who plays 4e WILL enjoy a combat-and-challange-intensive game, and will gleefuly rise up to the challange of building PCs strong enough to face these challanges, none of this is any indication about how central roleplaying would be in their game and how much they enjoy it.
So yes, most of those playing 4e are *capable* of rollplaying, and generally speaking also *enjoy* the way 4e manages to represent challanging situations. BUT they might still easily enjoy roleplaying. The two have nothing to do with each other. Qoute from Stormwind Fallacy:
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.
Bottom line is that while you are correct about how game design encourages a certain group to play the specific game, this has little to no remifications about the way we should percieve 4e, for example. It caters to optimizers while not doing anything to discourage roleplayig (it even gives some slight advice on how to do so in the rulebooks), hence the ONLY thing you could say about it is that most of the 4e players are optimizers. Again, this has no impact on their tendency to roleplay.
Let me clarify that I'm not talking about the Storyteller being dominant in determining where the story is going. If you try to railroad a storytelling game you're setting yourself up for problems. I'm saying with flexible rules its open to interpretation so the DM is going to have to arbitrate much more than with a game like PF with lots of rules readily available in CRB and errata. A Storyteller is usually going to be more lenient to allow things until it starts to break the game or the story and he has to usually temporarily run a tighter ship on the mechanics to avoid abuse that makes encounters/checks too easy or lets you steamroll the story that was supposed to be more challenging/take longer.
I know what you meant...I just see Storytellers who tend to grip the rules hard...tend to keep a grip on the story just as hard.
Also...what you described is no different than what a PF Gm has to do...if the players are dealing with the encounters too easily...or getting beaten like drums by than...that the GM has to adjust.
As I said...this has nothing to do with system.
Also I will contend...Players can not break a story...because they ARE the story. Atleast in games with strong RPing in my opinion.
Also your position of rules light games being superior to rules heavy games for the purposes of RPing just seems to much of a System Elitist arguement...which I generally find narrow minded.I'm going to ignore this because it doesn't contribute to this discussion at all. I already addressed this with the badwrongfun part.
Than I suggest you rethink your position...just because you don't intend for that BadWrongFun to come out does not mean it has not.
You don't approach a 4e game any differently than you would a WoD game? I find it difficult to believe that your WoD game has the same balance between hack n slash and roleplaying that your 4e game does. I also am doubtful you have the same balance of focus between character and mechanics in your WoD game as you do in your 4e game.I understand that's your theory - I'm not sure it's anything more than anecdotal though. I only have my own group to go by and we play RPGs the same whether it's rolemaster, 4E, Pathfinder or Dungeon Crawl Classics - the mechanics are very unimportant to us and the focus/approach of the rulebooks doesnt actually impact on how we play(granted the character generation of DCC makes us a little sillier, perhaps).
I can see that it might make some people take the approach you're describing, but it doesnt gel with my experience, for one.
I haven't actually ever played WoD, but I doubt it (based on all the others). Granted we're more interested in standard fantasy stories than angsty "I am a monster" stories.. <- demonstrating the extent of my my "knowledge" of WoD.
I dont really see where you're heading with this subsequent bit, but to clarify for me - do you think Pathfinder is at the 'mechanics heavy' end or the 'story focussed' other end?I showed why I disagreed about why core books should be primarily just mechanics and not include more because of the game culture it promotes. And if I was to quantify it in some kind of nominal fashion I guess on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being uber rollplay and 10 being uber roleplay with 5.5 being the center I'd put PF at like a 4-5 based on just the content material. Obviously individual groups could change this drastically.
Okay, thanks. Based on content of the rule books, I'd have to put PF near the 1 end* (the way I like it). Given such disparate impressions, we're probably not going to understand each other much.
I read Mage:the awakening (that's a WoD game, right?) and prepared a campaign for it which never got off the ground. You might be right that we would have started playing differently, but I really doubt it.
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@Lord Snow: Like the fallacy says just because you like to rollplay doesn't mean you don't like to roleplay as well. However, if we were able to quantify how "roleplayish" a game was, would the average of 100 4e games be as "roleplay-ey" as the average of 100 VtM games? I highly doubt it. Players don't exist in a bubble where they have a set proportion of rollplayness vs. roleplayness. Just because someone likes roleplaying with their rollplaying doesn't mean a game (and its design and culture) don't have a significant impact on how the player plays it. Is the average player just as roleplay heavy in a game like 4e as he is in WoD? I highly doubt it. Maybe Player A is always roleplay heavy regardless of game and Player B is always rollplay heavy regardless of game..but I think most players tend to shift more toward one or the other depending on the game and the "culture" it promotes.
According to the discussed fallacy, rollplaying and roleplaying are not alternatives, they are perpendicular to each other. In theory, nothing prevents a rollplayer from playing a role, or a roleplayer from optimizing his character. That is the Stormwind Fallacy. I feel what you are trying to say is NOT that the fallacy is mitigated by certain games, but that the Fallacy is not entirely true, because people who enjoy one of the options ARE actualy more likely to enjoy the other less. I could agree with this.
However, your original post about how certain games attract certain players has nothing to do with the Stormwind Fallacy, because the fallacy states that even if the game attracts rollplayers, that dosen't mean those playing it aren't roleplayers.I think posing this as a logical riddle is best. Here is the data:
1) If you play 4e, you are a rollplayer
2) If you play WoD you are a roleplayer
3) Some (but not all) rollplayers are also roleplayers
4) Some (but not all) roleplayers are also rollplayers
here is the riddle: how many roleplayers are playing 4e? how many rollplayers are playing WoD?
As you can see, even if every single person who plays 4e is a rollplayer, this dosen't have much of a bearing on the number of roleplayers playing 4e. According to the Stormwind Fallacy, which provided data points 3 and 4 in the riddle above, the riddle is unsolvable.
What YOU claim is that the riddle IS solveable, because you know from personal experience, maybe combined with an educated guess, that many of those who play 4e are much more into rollplaying than roleplaying. I can agree with you about that point, and say that the Stormwind Fallacy does not address the issue of the fact that there might be some sort of statistical tendancy to relate more strongly to one of the poles - roleplaying OR rollplaying. Again, checking that requires a more extensive research than I am capable of doing.
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I do not think that the ruleset directly attracts a certain kind of players.
However I think that :
- the ruleset will attract a certain kind of GM who want a certain kind of gameplay that is enjoyable by some players more than others.
It is not the exact same thing because it means A LOT of the effect depend on the style of gameplay set by the GM, more than directly the ruleset.
- the ruleset supports playing in a specific style. Certainly, I never worried about exact positioning and AoO in the oWoD.
Thus the same player can enjoy the smooth telling of a story in oWod as much as the optimisation (both in minmaxing and in tactical thinking) in PFRPD. I know I do.
I don't believe it can be tied to game system at all. It is entirely upon the player, and often based on how and what they first learned to play.
I bet most people bring the same level of ROLE or ROLL they prefer to play, to just about any game they do play. If they prefer to ROLL, they will put themselves into situations where it becomes necessary (picking fights with NPC's is a common one). If they prefer to ROLE, then they will often try to talk out of or around problems. The game system is merely the vehicle they use to meet that goal.
Some games may make it easier to do one or the other more smoothly, but that is not indicative of a prevalence of the system itself, more than just how it caters to the methods the players use to meet their preference.
I actually prefer 4E because it gives me greater opportunity to ROLE, because the rules are cleaner and smoother, allowing me to backdrop them much easier. It also is a lot harder to power too high or low compared to others players, giving less ammunition for optimization. I've also played in plenty of WoD games that devolve into rules to resolve frequent inter-party conflict against one another. Then again, this is all just in my experience, as always YMMV.
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I don't believe it can be tied to game system at all. It is entirely upon the player, and often based on how and what they first learned to play.
I bet most people bring the same level of ROLE or ROLL they prefer to play, to just about any game they do play. If they prefer to ROLL, they will put themselves into situations where it becomes necessary (picking fights with NPC's is a common one). If they prefer to ROLE, then they will often try to talk out of or around problems. The game system is merely the vehicle they use to meet that goal.
Some games may make it easier to do one or the other more smoothly, but that is not indicative of a prevalence of the system itself, more than just how it caters to the methods the players use to meet their preference.
I actually prefer 4E because it gives me greater opportunity to ROLE, because the rules are cleaner and smoother, allowing me to backdrop them much easier. It also is a lot harder to power too high or low compared to others players, giving less ammunition for optimization. I've also played in plenty of WoD games that devolve into rules to resolve frequent inter-party conflict against one another. Then again, this is all just in my experience, as always YMMV.
To reiterate the point above, 4e is less rules-intensive than than 3e, yet supposedly according to the OP it encourages roll-playing because of its inherent design and concomitant "culture". Yet I assume he doesn't believe that of PF, and even if he did a lot of people would have issue with that. My experience of playstyle between different rulesets is that it boils down entirely to the preferences of the players. Some people just aren't that into roleplaying compared with the tactical aspects of combat. I too have never played WoD but then I've never been attracted to the whole dark-eyeliner thing that sort of went with it. So the differences could easily be about players with different play preferences (possibly including sub-cultural identification with the WoD-Goth axis v D&D-power gamer axis) selecting the games which suit them more than the games moulding player behaviours through mechanics. There's a whole evidential problem here. Frankly, it will be very difficult to prove it either way without some proper work and I doubt an anecdotal discussion here will make much dent to the issue (any more than previous ones have over the years). Not that it's not fun to discuss once in a while, but I don't expect a firm conclusion.
+ 1 to Aubrey the Malformed and Aardvark Barbarian.
I would also add in my experience games like WoD as more mechanics in dealing with Social situration than games like D&D...which in my experiences leads to less RPing and more of reaching for the dice syndrome to resolve it.
Wow, I wonder if I am playing a different game than some of the posters on this thread. As someone who spends hours optimizing and coming up with a backstory for each character I play 3.5 and by extension Pathfinder is one of my favorite systems. One of the reason I like PF so much is because it is so rules heavy and with so many options, however this makes it very easy to have a huge imbalance between different characters power levels. If someone simply chooses options based on what they think is appropriate there is a good chance they will have a character that simply can’t stand up to appropriate CR challenges. If I was to rate PF on a 1-10 scale with 1 being super roleplaying, and 10 being all rollplaying I would probably rate it at a 7-8.
The biggest problem is there are so many different options and rules, and with at least a third of the options being trap options the game is not an easy game to teach a new player and even experienced players make mistakes of a somewhat regular basis. It is a very easy to have widely disparate power levels at the same table which creates difficulties for the GM and regardless of how well someone roleplays they can easily be overshadowed by someone who is a much better optimizer. With all of those problems it is still a wonderful system for creating very detailed characters and a system I love, but it is a system that rewards optimizers far more than most systems and definitely more than 4E.
In the end I don't think either PF or 4E encourages roleplay or rollplay, that is mostly determined by the individual, and to a lesser extent the type of gamers he/she plays with. Finally all of these labels are overshadowed by this basic question, 'Is the person fun to hang out and game with.' If the answer is yes then system, gamer type, or whatever doesn't matter lets sit down roll some dice and talk in funny voices.
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It's not that number-crunching and optimization make for BAD roleplay... it's the fact that they're irrelevant to roleplay. Having a number-cruncher show up at your table doesn't tell you whether they'll be a good or bad roleplayer, any more than the fact that they always use purple ink on their character sheets does.
Optimization isn't bad from a roleplay perspective... it's just unimportant.
I think this man deserves a cookie. He hit a nail on the head, squarely.
I agree. All of the people who i know playing 4th ed are heavy rollplayers, consummate WoW and MtG players.
Now, i said most people i know. I don't know a lot of people, maybe a thousand, so please don't jump down my throat or feel insulted.
Hmmmm.... not sure if serious or just forgetful...
I'm disappointed it took until the 4th post to get in on the 4E hatin'. You paizo boyz are slipping.
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I agree. All of the people who i know playing 4th ed are heavy rollplayers, consummate WoW and MtG players.
As opposed to the good people behind Pathfinder, who have absolutely no attachment at all to Magic: The Gathering and definitely don't play World of Warcraft.
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Perhaps a corollary to the SWF is needed: Creating a game which may encourage players to develop a mastery of and appreciation for its mechanics does not necessarily mean that said game does not also encourage its players to develop strong character development and interaction as well.
Hama never specifically bashed 4e only gave his experience of the players he's seen of it.
Come on, let's be honest. He immediately followed it up by saying that the people he knew that play storyteller games had "gotten past" the mentality he's trying to highlight, in much the same way as someone might explain that their 6 year-old has "gotten past" their bed-wetting problem.
I agree. All of the people who i know playing 4th ed are heavy rollplayers, consummate WoW and MtG players.
Now, i said most people i know. I don't know a lot of people, maybe a thousand, so please don't jump down my throat or feel insulted.
Hmmmm.... not sure if serious or just forgetful...
I'm disappointed it took until the 4th post to get in on the 4E hatin'. You paizo boyz are slipping.
What is there to hate about a dead system? ;)
Nah most of us have moved on....or just don't need phase all of our debates about 'bad' role-playing game in terms of 4th ed.
Now if you started a thread of 'Why you dislike 4th ed D&D' you probably get alot more responses...but bringing it up in this thread just seems off topic to me.
you can ask him about what his intent was regarding 4e because again I don't want this thread to revolve around 4th.
Generally best not to mention it then, in my experience.
Presumably, you hold the same view about Pathfinder - PF tends to attract more rollplayers than VtM does and VtM tends to attract more roleplayers (as a group, whatever that qualification means)? I really havent seen anything other than assertion to support this though.
I grant that that's what you see (and it makes perfect sense that some would adjust their playstyle to suit the mechanics). However, it's not true in our case (granted we havent played VtM but if your thesis is correct wouldnt there have been some difference in how we played any of Shadowrun-OD&D-GURPS-Pathfinder?) This is the great weakness of anecdotal evidence - everything which gels with our experience "seems reasonable" and contradictory evidence is surprising and more suspect.
If I read a game book that spends most of its chapters in building up stats and powers and gear and then most of the game's adventures all focus around things like dialogue with the Prince of Fluffistan I'd definitely be thrown for a loop.I think this sounds like a good approach - put the mechanics primarily in the rulebooks and then the flavour material elsewhere (I realise there's 'bleed' between the two, but isn't this basically what Paizo have done with Pathfinder?)
I have played a pretty wide range of games over the years.
I like Pathfinder and DnD well enough but I don't go out of my way to play them, same goes for a lot of the other generic systems I have played.
The games I dream about playing again are all deeply tied to their setting, either through their mechanics in an explicit manner, or through deep and immersive setting material in the core book.
- Wraith: The Oblivian
- Deadlands
- Legend of the Five Rings
- Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
- Trail of Cthulhu
- Houses of the Blooded
- Dogs in the Vineyard
- Eclipse Phase
Perhaps a corollary to the SWF is needed: Creating a game which may encourage players to develop a mastery of and appreciation for its mechanics does not necessarily mean that said game does not also encourage its players to develop strong character development and interaction as well.
I agree with the base principle, but I think it is worth noting that neither 4E, nor pathfinder actually do have robust systems for encouraging strong characters.
Wraith: The Oblivion for instance included two core systems, upon which your characters very survival depended, which existed to embed your character in the world. Passions and fetters.
You had to pursue your passions to regain one of you resources.
If you did not protect your fetters, horrible things happened to your character.
This on top of the universal willpower return mechanism from all oWOD games.
Now, Neither 4e nor pathfinder go out of their way to prevent non-combat related character development, but it is pretty laughable to say they do anything to support it, in the way that the indie scene and some WW books do and did.