Maybe it's just a matter of taste. If the players decide, "We all know each other, and here's how!" I have no problem with that. If they decide, "We want the perfect party! Let's meta-game! You, meat-shield! You, arcane caster! You, face! You, healer! etc." it annoys me no end. Perhaps that's because part of my fun is watching them get to know each other via role-play. I mean, I like to have fun, too.I've never had a problem with players not roleplaying regardless how much info they might have about one another's characters. RP is a pleasure to be sought for its own sake in my mind.I agree that it is a pleasure and should be done simply because of that, but I've definitely had groups that did not role play, or did not role play well.
That being said, the particular item you bring up (needing to RP specifically due to not knowing one another's characters) is going to vary from game to game. Sometimes it works well to have the players work together to craft a backstory wherein they are already a party when the actual gaming starts. Other times its fun to roleplay forming a party from scratch.I agree. If the players all get together and contribute to a group back story that explains how they all came together, that is great too. That would also encourage role playing.
And lo, one player was a giant face.
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IN a setting like PFS or say living greyhawk I was all about my character being "Ballante Amaroso, Wood Elven ranger" even though he was a rogue/barbarian/ranger. When asked what skills I brought to a table I would gladly in character raise an Eyebrow glance to my composite longbow and dual axes then blink at them. it leads to fun times.
Its why I got to have my wizard who dressed in spiked leather armor, carried a large greatsword and truestriked the snot out of things.. No one shoots the angry looking barbarian first they go for those pointy hat wearing robe loving types.
But I wont hesistate to ask if joining a long term group what they are sort of missing, and heck I might make someone to cover that role, but its not guarenteed
You were referencing the players assigning roles to characters during chargen as a form of metagaming you hate, quoted below.
If they decide, "We want the perfect party! Let's meta-game! You, meat-shield! You, arcane caster! You, face! You, healer! etc."The joke is that the 'face' is nothing but a face.
Thanks kyrt. I am surprised you had to point that out.
Giant face, sad.
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So...you believe that if you optimise your character then it's impossible for you to role-play that character well, and if you role-play your character well then it's impossible for that character to be optimised?
I believe trying to create the most powerful character mechanically tends to lead to poor role playing.
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So...you believe that if you optimise your character then it's impossible for you to role-play that character well, and if you role-play your character well then it's impossible for that character to be optimised?I believe trying to create the most powerful character mechanically tends to lead to poor role playing.
Which is the stormwind fallacy. And a fallacy. You can make a mechanically poor character and be a poor roleplayer and a mechanically powerful one and be a fantastic roleplayer. There isn't some balancing act and neither is somehow proportional to the other.
So another stormwind Fallacy thread, eh? I thought paladins were the flavor of this month. I guess it is may now... Can we do fighters instead?
Fallacies aside, if he has found evidence for it over and over, he has noticed a trend in his personal experience.
I can also accord with this. I have seen the same thing. Now some that I have played with have tried to do a bit of rp, but the problem, as the Buddhists might say, is obsession and fixation. Focusing on being mechanically the strongest, being obsessed with ability combinations, feat trees, always getting the highest mods through ensuring their gear is always the best and better than all the rest (better than anyone). The focus on crafting and upgrades—all of these paths are not a focus on roleplaying.
You can say stormwind over and over until you go blue in the face, but when players or dms have seen evidence of powergaming leading to poor roleplaying, you are trying to say don't consider the evidence you have encountered on powergamers being poor roleplayers, because that would be a logical fallacy. I love rhetoric, and considering fallacies in arguments has its place, but experience is also telling. In a city post-adventure or dungeon crawl I have seen too many powergamers choose to fixate on upgrading and item purchases rather to engage in rp and immerse themselves in the setting. Maybe they have played too many rpgs where this is such a focus, but roleplaying concerns are far behind upgrading.
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Ahh, irony. Tell people to ignore the fallacies and other peoples personal experience, and then tell your own and present it as a truth.
It absolutely does LazarX. Mindset is extremely important.
Take intrigue games without magic marts, where roleplaying actions are the most important parts of the game, and builds matter far less than what you do and get away with. There is no opportunity there not to focus on the rp side.
Set your mindset you set the approach to the game.
I think a campaign where everyone makes their characters without consulting the other players could be fun, as long as the players and the GM are willing to take on that kind of campaign.
I actually prefer a game where the players do not know the other character's classes. I think it encourages role playing rather than metagaming.
That being said, I have never been able to pull it off with my current group. When I GM, they all tend to call each other in-between sessions and discuss things.
I guess I just don't see where keeping a class a secret would have anything to do with roleplay. If the players want to Roleplay the introductions, then they will... regardless of what the players know about the group when they sit down at the table. If they don't... the first question they ask is 'what can you do...' then the secrets out.
Seems like a lot of work for very little payoff.
Honestly, I think it depends a LOT on the characters, and the players and the game as to my preference. I have played a few characters who were VERY quiet about what they could and could not do... secrets were half the fun.
On the other hand, we usually have about 2-3 months of prep time coming up with the character for the next campaign, and the 'Who are you going to play? Should they know each other ahead of time... how did they meet!' conversation happens all the time for us.
My philosophy is that I have multiple characters that I'm eager to play every time a new splat book comes out. Throw the cards on the table, and let me know which one I'll have the most fun with in THIS campaign. If I'm REALLY looking forward to playing a paladin or an assassin... Then I do NOT want to bring them in to the group that other people are bringing in conflicting characters...
That could just add unnecessary drama and drain the fun of a character that COULD have been a lot more fun in the NEXT game.
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I love working the mechanics of my characters into their introductions. I smile when I hear a player describe his PC in-character and I can pick up parts of his build along the way.
My Oracle asks the party if they will share the bond of life with her so she can better protect them.
My Paladin greets his companions with the promise to be their shield against the dark.
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Fallacies aside, if he has found evidence for it over and over, he has noticed a trend in his personal experience.
I can also accord with this. I have seen the same thing. Now some that I have played with have tried to do a bit of rp, but the problem, as the Buddhists might say, is obsession and fixation. Focusing on being mechanically the strongest, being obsessed with ability combinations, feat trees, always getting the highest mods through ensuring their gear is always the best and better than all the rest (better than anyone). The focus on crafting and upgrades—all of these paths are not a focus on roleplaying.
You can say stormwind over and over until you go blue in the face, but when players or dms have seen evidence of powergaming leading to poor roleplaying, you are trying to say don't consider the evidence you have encountered on powergamers being poor roleplayers, because that would be a logical fallacy. I love rhetoric, and considering fallacies in arguments has its place, but experience is also telling. In a city post-adventure or dungeon crawl I have seen too many powergamers choose to fixate on upgrading and item purchases rather to engage in rp and immerse themselves in the setting. Maybe they have played too many rpgs where this is such a focus, but roleplaying concerns are far behind upgrading.
I don't discount your evidence, I just believe it to be confirmation bias.
I'm not trying to claim this is the norm, but it certainly exists as a sample of the gaming population.
I agree with you.
I guess I just don't see where keeping a class a secret would have anything to do with roleplay. If the players want to Roleplay the introductions, then they will... regardless of what the players know about the group when they sit down at the table. If they don't... the first question they ask is 'what can you do...' then the secrets out.
Depends on the group. If you play with a group that knows all of the classes and archetypes inside and out, then revealing some abilities may identify that character's class for the group.
In my current group, most of the players are fairly casual. As such, a character stating that they can use divine magic, or that they like to fight with a bow wouldn't give away their class.
In the next campaign I am in, where I'll be a player, I'm likely to be a healing-focused witch. I don't think any of the other players will guess my character's class for a long time. They've never seen a witch in play, and aren't the type to research the PRD to figure things out.
I love working the mechanics of my characters into their introductions. I smile when I hear a player describe his PC in-character and I can pick up parts of his build along the way.
Agreed - good examples. I like to try to hide the class with what makes sense. I remember reading in the 3e book I think it was that all classes could call their skills something different. IIRC the monk's Move Silently skill was referred to as Sand Paper Walk or something like that. I think that's quite flavorful and will try to work stuff like that into my next character.
My own experience is that often mechanical preoccupation is inversely proportional to role-playing skill and belief in its relevance, but ... no matter how extensive my internal database, it's still an exceedingly small sampling, and I have experienced players who do both extremely well.
Agreed on all levels.
Pointing out an obvious deductive statement like that one exception negates an absolute being true (all optimizers are x) adds nothing to your point and since no one ever says "all optimizers" makes the stormwind a completely worthless argument to use and nothing more than a cliche catchphrase.
Very well said. I got tired of explaining it over and over and over to people.
I've noticed that the newer generation of 3.x players and forward are a different breed than 2e and such. Way more focused on rules and powers more than story.
I've noticed this as well. In fact, I think the very definition of role playing has sort of changed. My guess is that it has a lot to do with the introduction of the battle map. While a great tool, players aren't as likely now to imagine the scene of the battle, its more like a mini-game.
I can remember in-depth descriptions of what characters attempted to do, followed by the DM responding with in-depth descriptions of what the monsters do. This was all necessary to capture the scene because we didn't have another way to do so. With the battle map its become more "Put my guy next to that guy, attack, hit, damage is 8, etc."
From what I've seen, some groups still do a great job with descriptions and storytelling while using the battle map, but my experience has been the opposite.
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I've noticed that the newer generation of 3.x players and forward are a different breed than 2e and such. Way more focused on rules and powers more than story.
How can they NOT be? This is just one of the downsides of the way 3.x/pathfinder evolved.
The rules have really taken over the game.
In 2E you had only a few abilities... and some proficiencies many of which never actually saw play. Pathfinders CRB is what? three times the size of the 2E Player Handbook? There are rules for moving, FEATS, classes with innumerable abilities all. There is so much customization between one ranger and another ranger and everything about them needs to be focused on 'mechanics-wise'. Every ability has a strict mechanical purpose that happens when specific conditions are set.
In 2E one of my biggest frustrations were how 'cookie cutter' characters tended to look. Fighters weren't that different from each other WITHOUT the Roleplaying to back it up. It was less about what weapon, THAC0, Saves you had.... because all fighters your level had the same. It was who's family was killed by orcs and who was raised to be a bandit before running away...
If you want a character to be of any use, you HAVE to optimize in Pathfinder. There are so many feats and talents and spells that either work well together.... or ruin a concept, that you have to plan out a few things...
Doesn't mean you can't roleplay too... but saying that 3.x players focus on rules more... is almost a 'water is wet' observation :D
Considering how many people here are amateur logicians, it's a wonder that we ever have a dispute, isn't it?
The tendency, of course, is to allow that anecdotal experience is not telling, but to give your own especial weight. It's human nature, even for those who are well-versed in logic (or at least believe they are).
My own experience is that often mechanical preoccupation is inversely proportional to role-playing skill and belief in its relevance, but ... no matter how extensive my internal database, it's still an exceedingly small sampling, and I have experienced players who do both extremely well.
Takes all kinds.
I would like to applaud your well-played disparagement. It was quite impressive.
I particularly liked how you poked fun at the use of field terminology insinuating that I wasn't qualified to recognize an example of skewed research data and then IMMEDIATELY after described the exact topic in question without batting an eyelash.
Well done.
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If it's a cool map then it helps my sense of immersion.
I loved the map when it started in 3rd ed. Before that we had a scratch map on lined writing paper if we were lucky. Usually the DM described it, and if he was effusive in his description then we all had wonderfully immersive pictures in our heads...which were all different from each others' and caused game-stopping arguments when the DM said you were dead because your PC was there when you thought he was here!
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If it's a cool map then it helps my sense of immersion.
I loved the map when it started in 3rd ed. Before that we had a scratch map on lined writing paper if we were lucky. Usually the DM described it, and if he was effusive in his description then we all had wonderfully immersive pictures in our heads...which were all different from each others' and caused game-stopping arguments when the DM said you were dead because your PC was there when you thought he was here!
This +10,000.
To often when the GM was using 'Theater of the Mind', instead of maps, I always seem to hear something different for whatever reason no matter how closely I listened to the discription of what was going on. Alot of times the others players had problems too, so I think it wasnt just me.
"The battle map." Shakti Gawain would be appalled. :)As would I. No offense to people who love the map (and no comment towards the mental reactions of others regarding maps), but the use of maps always screws with my own sense of immersion, flicks one of several toggles in my head from 'roleplay' to 'board game.'
Hmmm, note to self: Need to experiment with using maps and miniatures purely as an illustrative guide, while throwing away movement rules and the like. Just use them to show people the overall idea of the scene.
I have a love/hate relationship with maps and minis. On the one hand, they're great for immersion from a graphical and illustrative standpoint. On the other, I hate how they tend to switch the focus to a miniatures tactics game.
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"The battle map." Shakti Gawain would be appalled. :)As would I. No offense to people who love the map (and no comment towards the mental reactions of others regarding maps), but the use of maps always screws with my own sense of immersion, flicks one of several toggles in my head from 'roleplay' to 'board game.'Hmmm, note to self: Need to experiment with using maps and miniatures purely as an illustrative guide, while throwing away movement rules and the like. Just use them to show people the overall idea of the scene.
I have a love/hate relationship with maps and minis. On the one hand, they're great for immersion from a graphical and illustrative standpoint. On the other, I hate how they tend to switch the focus to a miniatures tactics game.
Check out 13th Age.
They did things like change the ranges to: Close Quarters, Nearby and Far Away.
"Area of Effect" spells target a random number of enemies, ex: Fireball targets 1d3 nearby enemies in a group. You can cast recklessly and target an additional 1d3 enemies, but any allies engage with them are also hit.
Flanking is irrelevant. For a Rogue to sneak attack, they just need an ally engaged (the term for being in melee combat) with the enemy they're attacking.
All in all, I find combat to go extremely fast. I'm in an online game, we played for 3 hours on Wednesday and we finished three combats, lasting about 3, 3 and 4 rounds each if memory serves. Plus some RP, puzzle solving, messing with traps and a 15 minute break.
Getting rid of rules involving the map is one of my favorite things ever. I still love the map, because it helps me as a person just visualize and make sure I'm on the same wave length as other people at the table, but play is so much faster by not having rules and just using it as a visual aid.
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Hmmm, note to self: Need to experiment with using maps and miniatures purely as an illustrative guide, while throwing away movement rules and the like. Just use them to show people the overall idea of the scene.I have a love/hate relationship with maps and minis. On the one hand, they're great for immersion from a graphical and illustrative standpoint. On the other, I hate how they tend to switch the focus to a miniatures tactics game.
That's what we did for years in 2E.
We never had a battle map.... but we did have lego figures or dice to represent our marching order. We also had spare dice or legos to give us a general layout of enemies on the table.
We never bothered with movement speeds or did much with line of sight or nitpicked the minutia of ranges or anything.
Once mageknight started making their figures and D&D started making some plastic ones... I got REALLY heavy into painting and customizing our personal characters. But they were just fun visual aids. It didn't become full on 'miniatures game' until Pathfinder and the 5' grids became so integral to the system.
Hmmm, note to self: Need to experiment with using maps and miniatures purely as an illustrative guide, while throwing away movement rules and the like. Just use them to show people the overall idea of the scene.I have a love/hate relationship with maps and minis. On the one hand, they're great for immersion from a graphical and illustrative standpoint. On the other, I hate how they tend to switch the focus to a miniatures tactics game.
That's what we did for years in 2E.
We never had a battle map.... but we did have lego figures or dice to represent our marching order. We also had spare dice or legos to give us a general layout of enemies on the table.
We never bothered with movement speeds or did much with line of sight or nitpicked the minutia of ranges or anything.
Once mageknight started making their figures and D&D started making some plastic ones... I got REALLY heavy into painting and customizing our personal characters. But they were just fun visual aids. It didn't become full on 'miniatures game' until Pathfinder and the 5' grids became so integral to the system.
I wouldn't say that it was Pathfinder that did that. I started with 3rd Edition D&D, and the Player's Handbook for that had a combat section full of diagrams of how combat worked based grid maps representing 5' squares of terrain. Pathfinder is working within the framework it had under the OGL, and a large part of that is the idea of grids for combat. Personally I don't use them much, at most we use different coloured pieces to get a basic idea of formation/enemy positions. Occasionally I'll break out an actual grid for a big boss fight, where the players want to play more tactically, but I prefer to avoid it.
It could always be worse though. At least there's no facing rules in Pathfinder. As much as I love the setting and the core mechanics (like the character building rules) in the Iron Kingdoms RPG (the standalone system based on the Warmachine/Hordes tabletop game, not the d20 one), holy crap does the combat tick me off. If I want to play a miniatures game where I have to measure the precise number of inches a character can move with a measuring tape, and use blast templates for area of effects all the time, then I'll play a tabletop skirmish game like, I dunno, Warmachine/Hordes. When it comes to RPGs I much prefer to be able to run things faster and keep the action moving as fast as possible.
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...if you stepped one square off the map then you couldn't step back......what?
In some scenarios you had to exit the opposite side of the map to 'escape' and couldn't come back if you did.
In one session half the players were, well, players while the other half set up the monsters in a multi-level tower according to the normal encounter creation rules.
One of the rules was that if a PC was dying when the encounter ended then he was dead and was out of the game. If he was healed with, say, a potion while the encounter was still in progress then he was back.
Another rule was that the encounter ended when all the bad guys in that encounter were dead.
(can you see where this is going?)
Toward the end of the encounter I was playing the one remaining goblin, one of the PCs was dying, another was adjacent and about to pour a healing potion down his throat, and they were too far away for me to reach and the way was blocked by other, healthy PCs.
It was my turn, then after me was the potion-pourer. If I attacked a PC I couldn't do enough damage to bring him down (minion), so the PC would be healed and I'd die as soon as they rolled a hit on me. So....I jumped off the battlements and killed myself, ending the encounter at that point and the dying PC stayed dead.
There's no way that me jumping over a battlement would logically interfere with the potion-pouring, but those were the rules. I did it partly because of the competition element of this session between the two teams of players, and partly to illustrate my growing dissatisfaction with 4E.
There were good points though. 4E's map combat was more dynamic because of all the forced movement results of various powers, but overall whenever they had to make a choice between believability and gameplay they chose gameplay, making it more and more like a boardgame and less like an RPG.
Sounds like a bad organized play scenario...
As far as 'the Stormwind Fallacy' goes- I agree with it completely. I've seen no dichotomy between ability to optimize and ability to roleplay. You can have one ability, both, or neither.
Though referring to earlier statements about hiding character abilities from the party- if a character tried that for any length of time, I have played very few characters who would be cool with it. I find it hard to come up with a personality for a character who's OK with trusting his life to someone who won't be upfront with at least a decent view of what he's capable of...