DoPo said:
Joccaren said:
The thing is, the rules actually help with role playing. It stops you from going "My wizard is actually a really good hand to hand combat player, and punches the guy to the moon", making nonsensical claims for your character in the campaign.
Not exactly. A
role player knows that "overpowered" is boring. A good GM should also be able to say "no" to overpowered suggestions.
Also, you should note that a lot of the criticism for 4e was that it was "just a dumb miniatures game, with no opportunity to role play", not that "OMG, I have too much freedom, that totally doesn't work guys" which is the
exact opposite criticism. Also one I've never actually heard levelled at any game.
However, what is overpowered is different for each person. In the situation described last post, who is right? Should the farmer be persuaded? Should they not? Why? Why not?
Its another level of overpowered if the choice is left up to the player, and if its left up to the DM it just creates conflict between the DM and the player, where its supposed to be a largely cooperative experience. You'd spend more time arguing about whether something was a legit role playing attempt or not, and whether it should have succeeded or not, than you would actually doing the role playing, and you'd get a lot of resentment towards DMs for being over-controlling in the story.
This is also likely where the "Too much freedom" stems from. If things aren't in the rules, they're at the discretion of the DM. Hell, they're at the discretion of the DM anyway but at least the players have some recourse for making things interactive and fair. If there aren't enough rules, it hinders role playing by forcing conflict between players, and doesn't allow for some quite interesting situations to happen based on the unpredictability of life, by forcing it to be purely the DMs world, and I'm sure we've all played with a DM that was far too controlling with their story and made the entire game not-fun because they wanted to ignore the rules, and just tell their own story and you had to sit and listen. Sticking to the letter of the rules all the time is also bad. Having a balance between, where the rules are there, but are somewhat open to interpretation, and the DM gets final say, makes it a more enjoyable experience.
"There are no rules for haggling. Therefore, you cannot haggle with traders."
Kind of a bit of a minor complaint, but see above. You try to haggle with the trader. DM says no, you fail. Who is correct? Do you get the discount? If yes, what level of control does the DM have over the experience? Why are they there? If no, then where do we draw the line on what power the DM has? Do the players even need to be there, or is it the DMs story time and they just want to tell it? How do we resolve the conflict that inevitably arises when gameplay is entirely based on opinions?
"There are no rules for how to talk people. You are forced to just roll dice"
Seems a silly complaint. However I can potentially see a hidden complaint at the lack of mention in the rules for DMs to be able to award situational bonuses, or role playing bonuses. It also may criticise potential situations where I could walk up to the queen and say "Yo *****, get in mah bed and fuck me silly", and roll the dice, and I'd succeed because dice. Rules surrounding what your character might actually say, and acting in character, help build that experience.
"The game only has rules for combat, therefore you can only fight"
Pretty important. Look at video games. Its a bit more hard coded there, but the same principal applies. There are no rules for climbing the outside of a tower with acrobatics in Dragon Age, so I can't do it. Again, it comes back to "Entirely at the DMs discretion" for anything but combat, which really doesn't work - it just creates conflict between the players and the DM, and makes an unenjoyable experience. Without rules for them, any action is undesirable, because it just creates conflict in the real world, and makes the game unenjoyable. This is also discounting rules lawyer type DMs who will say that because its not in the rules it can't be done. Effectively, there not being rules on how to do something, honestly does impact the role playing ability to do that in a game where everything is codified and abstracted by rules.
"The game does not have rules for how to swing on a chandelier in order to attack somebody, therefore, I can't even fight the way I want"
Situational bonuses. Pretty important TBH. Lets say you did this in a campaign. Who could decide what the appropriate penalty to apply to your rolls would be? Who could decide whether you succeed or fail? And your ability to succeed or fail based on those roles is an important aspect of the role playing side as well, as it determines the unpredictability of life, and forces you to play your role, come good or ill, and react as they would, rather than just tell a story about a person. Same problems of DM conflict with players, and inability to abstract the action effectively thanks to there being no instructions on how to do that.
"I cannot play a character who pretends he's a wizard, yet is actually a different class"
If you honestly can't do that, yeah, I sympathise with them. Honestly though, it sounds more like they just want an easy multiclass that doesn't make them shit at everything, which isn't as valid a complaint.
That's what I'm talking about. Please, please explain to me how these complains make any sort of sense from a role playing perspective. If you're appealing to the rules for everything, there is a term for that called "rules lawering" (conversely, "rules lawyer" is one who does that). It's a term deserved for the same category of people as roll players, for rules lawyers disregard any narrative shortcuts or even GM fiats and only ever consider the rules as written as the ultimate arbiter for how an action should play out. This is, of course, usually running counter to any story.
Now with this in mind, again I ask, how is "not having rules" in any way more roll playing than having them?
To understand, lets say there is a new rule added to D&D: "You must role play every character". Now, is this rule a roll playing rule? Or does it help role-play?
Rules can assist with roll playing, role playing, or both, depending on what the rule is. Removing rules can damage the roll playing, or role playing, or both experiences in this same way. Not having rules eventually equates to you sitting there listening to the DM tell a story, rather than playing the game with them. With no rules, you have no behaviour in the game to perform, and it is really just DM storytelling time. The rules provide context and flow to play. Without rules, players literally have nothing to do. In fact, neither does the DM. Without rules, the game doesn't exist, and isn't a roll or role playing experience. Which experience you build, is based on which rules you add and enforce.
Now, with almost all of the above problems, they could be solved by great DMs and great players creating their own rules around them. However, not every DM is great, nor is every player. And what about new players to the game? How do they deal with the situations? Without rules for these things codified, those who aren't expert D&D players and DMs are going to have a worse time with the game, whether role or roll playing.
Even the great DMs, however, are likely to look at it and go "Hmm. There's no rules for this. We need some. Lets just adapt the 3.5 rules for it". And at that point, where half the rules you're using are from 3.5, why are you not playing 3.5?
A lack of rules doesn't help role playing, it just creates a game with poorly defined systems. In most cases, this will mean those systems just don't exist, or don't get used - much like a computer game version - because most DMs and players aren't at the great master level of being able to invent those systems for the game. Without inventing systems, and just leaving it up to whether the DM says yes or no, you just create conflict between players and DM, and the role and roll playing experience becomes worse for everyone. It also removes a lot of the randomness of life that you role play around, and that enriches the role play experience, when the DM gets ultimate god-say without creating dice roll rules for it. Some rules build role playing - "You get situational bonuses for an in-character statement when persuading", for example, makes players try to role play, rather than just roll the dice - and if these rules don't exist, the role playing experience suffers.
I'm not familiar with all the rules of 4e, or anything of the like, so I don't know how valid the complaints are, but taking the ones you've stated at face value, it does represent a problem for role players in the game. Fewer rules doesn't necessarily create a more roll playing experience, but it certainly doesn't help with the role playing experience. If the rules removed were the ones that supported role playing, and the ones left only really support roll playing - then yeah, the removal of rules can have created a more roll-playing game. It all depends on what the rules that were removed are, and what they're replaced with.
