Are You Playing D&D or Roleplaying?

[Omnifray]

... there are people who see ten foot poles, perfectly square rooms always in multiples of ten, secret doors for no reason, inevitably animated statues, random treasures, wandering monsters, ridiculously placed pit-traps and patrons in taverns as 'roleplaying'

That is what they see in D&D. That is what roleplaying is and thus when something doesn't do that, it isn't 'roleplaying' ...

There certainly are people of this ilk. In fact, I was once told, by a DM, that it was poor roleplay on my part that a wizard I was playing (in some iteration of D&D 3rd edition, maybe 3.5) dared to put his head around the corner without a fighter standing in front of him. Now, poor tactics, I could maybe accept, if you deem that I as a player should know that you can't move 10 feet without encountering yet another ****ing invisible flying ogre-mage assassin who seems to be designed to do nothing else apart from discouraging wizards from straying from the centre of the party "where they are supposed to be". But poor roleplay??

Yep, this was a guy who sees ten foot poles as the quintessential roleplaying accessory, and OMG, if we got a patron in a tavern who had something to say to us, even a set-piece plot-dump conversation, we were lucky. Or rather, I was lucky, and nobody else gave a fig. Because the other gamers in that particular group were basically wargamers who couldn't give a loose screw for anything which happened when you weren't actually in a dungeon, except maybe the purchase of new mastercrafted or magical armour, weaponry and equipment, or simply a heavier suit of armour than previously possessed. And this DM guy, he was adamant he was a roleplayer, and drew a distinction between himself and the rest of the group (apart from me) on the basis that he was a roleplayer and they were wargamers.

[Neil Gow]

Yep, thats it Matt.

Thanks for the replies. Matt has it. Maybe the 4e stuff in the OP was a bit of a misdirection - although it was the source of the conundrum.

@Baz: Yes, I've come to the conclusion that D&D (in all of its various flavours) is a different hobby and that hooby's definition of roleplaying is very different from the definition used by the players of other games. That in and of itself isn't a problem. However, it does underline to me why 'playing games a different way' can be such an explosive problem. I suspect that this isn't something that is D&D-centric. The advocates of BRP-based games, or Storyteller games, or 'indie' games could well have the same entrenched position. Everyone 'roleplaying' whilst looking at the others, rolling their eyes and guffawing that they aren't 'really' roleplaying.

Obvious? Yes, absolutely. However in many ways I have had a pretty naive view of things. Hey, I could stretch my hypothesis by grouping people as to their classification of 'roleplaying', say those that like simulation, those that like narrative and those that like games and catch myself up with 10 years of internet forum angst, right?

Thanks for letting me think out loud here. Believe it or not, understanding makes for a happy Gow Bear.

Neil

[Al]

I suspect that this isn't something that is D&D-centric. The advocates of BRP-based games, or Storyteller games, or 'indie' games could well have the same entrenched position. Everyone 'roleplaying' whilst looking at the others, rolling their eyes and guffawing that they aren't 'really' roleplaying.

My turn for an embarrassingly obvious satori. Of course that's true (and every for other subset of gaming style and every position on the continuum of behaviour within each gaming style). I suspect that there is more discussion of D&Desque play style simply because more people play D&D than any other game.

Anecdote
This week we played Fortune and Glory The Cliffhanger game. A boardgame. And I put on silly voices to describe my move, the other players moves and the baddies moves (none of which were a patch on Rich's mobsters) and thought 'hmmm what would Doctor Zhukov do here?' before each move. Culminating in wondering aloud 'is this bad form to count squares to each artefact and decide which ones the others can get to before moving' before receiving a kindly reminder 'Al this IS a boardgame'

[Omnifray]

However...

... early editions of D&D (BECMI, AD&D 1st ed and AD&D 2nd ed being the ones I have played) and even 3rd edition in its various iterations (including Pathfinder) (which I have also played) are basically roleplaying games (using the word "roleplaying" in a Gow-friendly sense to mean the talky bits)... it might be fair to say that as they've grown out of wargames they can also be used very easily for wargaming, but to imagine that no roleplaying goes on in them would be craziness, and to many gamers, roleplaying is the point.

Let's not forget that it was D&D which popularised the whole notion of a roleplaying game in the first place, and to pretend otherwise is indie-fantasy.

Plus, from what I know so far, I am quite excited about D&D Next. Hopefully it will be a lot better than either 3rd or 4th edition - the mistakes of the past have apparently been learned from.

On a slight tangent, I would say that Fiasco involves roleplaying, and it's certainly a game, but it's not a roleplaying game because roleplaying isn't the point of it. The point is the story. Classically, roleplaying is the point of D&D. Now, it's very easy for it to be lost in a swamp of dice and tables and weapon speed modifiers and (worst of all) to hit modifiers against different types of armour individually determined by weapon and armour combination (!), but it's still there right at the heart of the game.

Neil's puzzlement with wandering monsters, rooms arranged into perfect 10' squares, 10' poles etc. should be considered from this angle:- exploration of a pre-existing game-world with a life of its own is frequently a key component in [character-immersive] roleplaying. Now, it may be said that D&D has often overegged the pudding in its implementation of features such as wandering monsters (the purpose of which might be to give the impression that the game-world continues to have a life of its own regardless of the players' decisions, thus making it seem real - but clearly without going so far as to rob the players of their sense of agency). There may come a point where features designed to assist with exploration and character-immersive roleplay become counter-productive. But that doesn't necessarily make it right to conclude that they were all along the product of pure wargaming and that to think of them as aspects of roleplay is wholly wrong.

Likewise, using fixed measurements may make the game more tangible, assisting character-immersive roleplay. But it is possible to overegg that pudding by overuse of an artificial 10' standard. And don't get me started on where the lovers of 10' poles can put them!!!

I'm not so much playing Devil's Advocate as simply trying to bring a greater degree of moderation to the perspectives canvassed in this den of Indie iniquity :p

[Neil Gow]

My turn for an embarrassingly obvious satori. Of course that's true (and every for other subset of gaming style and every position on the continuum of behaviour within each gaming style). I suspect that there is more discussion of D&Desque play style simply because more people play D&D than any other game.

Quite possibly, but I don't think its quite that granular. We like to look at these things as a continuum because it satisfies our need to be inclusive within the hobby. What I'm coming around to is that this need to be inclusive may actually be counterproductive because there are groupings within the hobby which have such fundamental differences in what they consider the 'roleplaying' in roleplaying games to be that they reject the label being attached to certain activities. Rather than a smooth continuum, there are clumps - the largest being around D&D naturally - where a consensus of definition exists AND within that clump there are those more vocal who decry those different.

Why is this important? Well to me it redefines the interactions between these clumps. I'd liken it to 'football'. We all know what football is right? But 'soccer' can be broken down into men's, women's, age categories and side-sizes ... but its still fundamentally 'soccer'. Rugby Union is also termed football, but it is radically different from soccer. Rugby League is different again, and again is termed football. The American version of football is called ... football, but bears little resemblance to soccer. Asl Lionel Messi or Aaron Rogers what they are playing and they will both say 'football' - but they play radically different games.

Now consider a person playing OD&D and someone playing Witch? You ask them what they are doing and they both reply 'roleplaying', look at each other and raise an eyebrow because neither thinks what the other is doing actually IS roleplaying. (Hypothetically, of course...)

The clumps I have talked about give strength to the claim to be 'the one true roleplaying' or 'real roleplaying' - strength that individuals on a continuum cannot have.

And what if that other clump, that isn't doing 'real roleplay' ... "wins" ... and the reality of the matter is that the default definition of roleplaying becomes 'their' definition? Are the schisms between different camps really fear over loss of control over definition of their hobby? If that was true, I feel the fire may be turned at the wrong target as the mass market definition of roleplaying is now found in games like Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect surely?

I have no idea where this all came from, but its proving quite cathartic for me at least.

[pedr]

I'm not entirely sure whether things are as separated into clumps as you imply - would a video of Chris Perkins GMing for some Internet-celebrities look different if he was running AD&D 1st edition? Would it look different if he was running Hellfrost using Savage Worlds, or RuneQuest? The mechanics would be different and may drive the activity in slightly different ways, but to an observer I think things would look quite similar. Obviously games with story-focused mechanics like Fiasco would look different because of the differences in how players interact with the game-system, but the 'traditional' games would (I think) look the same.

So perhaps my point is this: there are clumps, but they don't necessarily correlate perfectly with game choice - people for whom 'roleplaying' means free exploration in a dangerous world with good roleplaying being taking actions and planning to survive may have developed those habits playing a particular game and gravitate towards similar games and players who see 'roleplaying' as acting in a way a particular character would may gravitate to different games which re- enforce that paradigm but OD&D and 4e can (probably) accommodate both approaches.

Perhaps.

Also, to pick up on 'football', perhaps there's something similar there. A highly tactical player or coach or fan may choose American Football as first-choice to invest time in, but value set pieces in other codes, particularly planned scrum/line-out moves in Union. Someone impressed by or training for hard physical contact might enjoy American Football, League, and Australian Rules to a similar degree. The long-suffering aficionado of the skill and training needed for a good scrum is left with only Union, and has to face the general unpopularity of his favoured game 'element' (cf weapon speeds?!)

[Neil Gow]

I see NFL as the analogy of 'indie' games - the cool new thing coming over from the USA

@Pedr - you've taken it one step further but I agree. Do we gravitate towards games which suit our style or is our style dictated by the games we play, or how we play them? Because you are right - you can play something like 4eD&D in a very dungeon crawl exploring way and a very loosey goosey talky way. Interesting.

One of the things that this has clarified in my mind, is why I have always cocked an eyebrow at OSR stuff. People saying that it is a purer 'roleplaying' experience have always seemed a little strange to me, but now I see, in my opinion anyway, what they mean. And thats a very very good thing. It has also explained why I wouldn't play one of those games by choice BUT I would happily play Descent. One of them isn't pretending to be 'roleplaying game', according to my blinkered definition of what roleplaying is.

Honestly, I feel quite at peace with the world now.

[Omnifray]

Ah, but D&D and thus the entire RPG hobby came from the USA... whereas American Football presumably traces its ancestry to the same British/European roots as Association Football and Rugby Football - namely a bunch of miscreants trying to get a "ball" from one side of the village to the other by any means desired, potentially including knocking your opponent out or breaking his legs.

Thus with football the Americans are giving us back something we originally gave to them, in some ways truer to the original than Association Football is today (with extra armour and gridlines), whereas with RPGs and storygames we have an original American invention which is now being added to by further American inventions. If you want to draw an analogy with football you probably have to go right back to tabletop miniature warfare, which apparently started off in Prussia, but according to the Gospel according to Wikipedia seem to have been introduced to the English-speaking world at large by two Englishmen, Fred Jane (of Fighting Ships fame) and H. G. Wells.

Kriegsspiel, from the German word for wargame, was a system used for training officers in the Prussian army. The first set of rules was created in 1812 and named Instructions for the Representation of Tactical Maneuvers under the Guise of a Wargame. It was originally produced and developed further by Lieutenant Georg Leopold von Reiswitz and his son Georg Heinrich Rudolf von Reiswitz of the Prussian Army.

[Neil Gow]

Sometimes Matt, I wonder about you...

btw have you seen this - viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12844

[Omnifray]

Sometimes Matt, I wonder about you...

...

So... you still think there's some doubt about the matter then???

Maybe you're just a bit slow on the uptake...

...

btw have you seen this - viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12844

I'll give it some thought. Bit busy at the moment but sounds like if it's going to be a regular thing it might be a future occasion to attend. I tend to prefer gaming away from the distraction of other games at least if I'm running something but I guess I could always turn up as a player if I'm too busy to prep stuff...

And thanks for letting me know about it!

[Baz King]

A lot of this is pure tribalism, thats all. And it's only a big deal to those of us who frequent fora and attend cons. My regular 6 players have no comprehension whatsoever about edition wars, the OSR or indie games. Actually that's not true, some of them have dabbled with indie games, and enjoyed them. They show no signs of joining some kind of pressure group to advocate for one 'side' or another.

I'll see your football analogy (isn't it all just 'sport'?) and raise you gardening. Gardening is the nations favourite hobby. My missus is a keen amateur and that means I get exposed to magazines, Gardeners World on the telly, GQT on the radio and all that jazz. I often ask if there's any rivalry or hostility in the scene. She reckons little if any. The big changes are there, like with the world going organic, but those who don't aren't treated badly or talked down to. Sure, there's some super competitive fruit and veg growers but they're right at the extremes, and even then it's more about jealousy at most.

More likely, when Gardeners get together it's to compare tricks and tips, to swap kit, and to admire each others work. Wouldn't that be a great thing in gaming?

[darrell]

More likely, when Gardeners get together it's to ...swap kit... Wouldn't that be a great thing in gaming?

You can have my dice when you peel them from my cold, dead hand!

Or some-such.

Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk

[Baz King]

Well, I was going to say swap seeds, but....

....I guess the analogy would be sharing content: scenarios, characters, locations etc. Thankfully there's lots of that going on. Sometimes the only thing that isn't getting shared is the love

[Omnifray]

There's a big difference between

{a} wanting to be all Them versus Us, and our way is better / cooler / has more awesome sauce / is The One True Way / whatever

and

{b} wondering in a genuine spirit of inquiry to what extent different people get completely different things out of gaming, and to what extent those differences make it more constructive to separate than to integrate, or alternatively how those differences can be constructively circumvented so that one game can accommodate different modes of play (perhaps simultaneously) without forcing everyone into the same mould, or alternatively just being interested in what the differences are and how they come about...

Anyway Neil certainly hasn't given me the impression of being the tribalist sort, and whilst I probably have a few tribalist weaknesses myself, I try to work around them. One of my relatively recent projects, as you might or might not recall, has been to try to find ways to integrate storygamers into a character-immersive roleplaying game. I haven't fully tested it out, and it might well be a completely wasted effort, but at least my heart is in the right place.

[Baz King]

Never for one minute thought Neil was in the tribalism camp. I abhor tribalists and think they're all getting it wrong. The inclusivists on the other hand, they've got better ideas.

What?