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Regarding to lengthy descriptions of what a character does is cool... once or twice. Then it slows the game. When you are bringing something new to the table, adding some description is great because it allows to paint a better picture of the situation and even give some clues based on what it's seen.
When I got my cackle hex at the start of the game my GM asked me to actually cackle each time that I used the hex. It was fun because I was the one with the knowledge skills so you can figure out the situation:
«It's a troll! *cackles madly* Use fire on him! *cackles* Burn him! *more cackling*»
I had other PCs thinking mine was insane or a psycho for a time. Then they got used to it. Before it got really annoying, we switched to just saying «I cackle». Everybody knew how my cackling sounded, everybody had seen enough to get the picture without having to roleplay again something that could have got really annoying. Being honest, if I had to roleplay it each time I used the cackle hex my character would have ended hung up from a tree by the other PCs. And I'd have left the game due to severe throat damage.
Describing is good, it helps players getting the picture. Overdescription or repetitive descriptions are useless though, and they only serve the purpose of slowing the game and getting the players bored. When the description is abused, the players sometimes will not even listen, so giving only a few important details rather than lengthy descriptions is often a lot more useful.
I try to keep my descriptions swift and clean. I still remember once that my players were breaking on a house. I had a new player who didn't know me as a GM. They entered the hall and I described it as «an empty room with a rack next to the door». The room didn't have anything relevant and looked plain, so I made just a quick description to make my players figure out how irrelevant the room looked». So, as there wasn't anything else in the room and the player, being new to the game and offended by the sole concept of an empty room, got obsessed with the rack. He searched for traps, tried to detect magic, nothing worked. But he was still sure that the rack hid some kind of secret. He was completely obsessed.
Remember they were breaking into a house. They were not subtle and had alerted everybody in the house so they needed to be quick. But he wouldn't want to keep going until he solved the rack mystery. So one of the other players just power attacked the rack and utterly destroyed. Then all the people at the house came to the hall and they had to fight them. At least it was no longer an empty room.
Since then, each time a GM throws a random item that looks like it was something but is something what is seems to be we call it a «rack». This was some sort of metagaming from the new player, but with his lack of knowledge of our gaming group it didn't work.
I think the default assumption is that if you wrote down "component pouch" in the equipment section of your character sheet then you're OK to cast anything with a (non-expensive) material component, right? "What specific component does this spell require" is unnecessary bookkeeping for some people but for some people it adds flavor.I guess that's fine for the powdered iron, sand, rose petals and cricket legs, but for the 100gp pearl and the powdered silver, that should probably be specified. Also, I remember some spells--at least in Dungeons and Dragons--that required live animals, swallowing a cricket and stuff. That all seems like important details not just for roleplaying but also with game-mechanics consequences. If you make your Cavalier decide whether he is sleeping in his armor, you should make your Wizard decide how he's going to play a role in an ambush with a caged cricket in his backpack that might start chirping at any time.
Well yes, some of them have a cost, that's why I mentioned "non-expensive" material component. Material components with no listed cost are flavor/jokes and are assumed to be covered by the purchase of a component pouch.
I don't think there's any spell that requires a live cricket, although spider climb requires a live spider (still pretty gross to swallow but less cumbersome to carry around). I don't know if there are any other spells out there where the component is unusual enough that you'd question "wait, you had that in your pouch the whole time?" ... I couldn't find any lists of components, or spell indexes that let me sort for only spells with material components, but I'm kind of curious now.
One spell requires "fine sand, rose petals, or a live cricket". Why anyone would choose to use the cricket is beyond me.
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Why anyone would choose to use the cricket is beyond me.
So you can tell a tale in your backstory about how you escaped from imprisonment after you wished on a star and subsequently a cricket showed up to "volunteer" to be ripped apart in order to fuel your magic so that you might escape your captors.
Meaning each book has to be written by hand.Magic to the rescue! (Again.)
I imagine that there would be 'magitechnology' and one of those would be some sort of microphone to paper dictated writer.
I've done this before but not with this siri (good auto correct) but with an unseen seventy (not so good) spell.
Also going back to the idea of movies, I'm pretty sure that bards and illusion spells could put on an amazing show.
I remember this style of play being very common in the 1980s, back then character abilities like skills were less well defined by the rules. These days hardly any tables play like that in my area. Instead all that matters now is what skills and abilities are recorded on your character sheet.It is that influence of video games. I have X ability, I click X ability, it does Y. I don't need to explain why I have this, how it works, if it even makes sense... It is a power... I want it.
Roleplaying is dying.
Yea, when video games were invented in 1947, D&D really went downhill. We all remember how much better RPGs were in the 1930s.
Sarcasm is better if you research.
Wasn't the first RPG video game, Adventure, created in 1972?
Still before D&D.
HWalsh is oversimplifying and overstating the problem, you are understating and ridiculing it.
Dot.
Not all metagaming is bad playing
DM is obviously setting up an adventure. Lothar Half blood as a character, isn't interested and would probably rather spend time drinking and wenching than attending the high court. But Bob has Lothar go with the party to the fancy ball anyway.
Big bad at end of dungeon is, thematically, taunting and targeting one PC. He's the evil opposite, he went after their family etc. Bob may have lothar skip his turn , delay, or hold back in the fight so Jack can have Quizinorc go to town on the guy.
Scry and fry is a very effective tactic. Players may go along with the social contract of going through a dungeon to keep the game more involved than an arena fight after arena fight.