To a certain degree what’s being described is what it’s the DM’s job to manage. “What does my character know” is a very useful question, and a decent DM will distribute some knowledge without rolls based on a character’s background/backstory. There’s also the question of who you allow to roll for certain checks- it’s fair to rule out anyone without Arcana prof from trying to work through advanced magical theory, even if you’re only setting the DC to something like 15.
To a certain degree what’s being described is what it’s the DM’s job to manage. “What does my character know” is a very useful question, and a decent DM will distribute some knowledge without rolls based on a character’s background/backstory. There’s also the question of who you allow to roll for certain checks- it’s fair to rule out anyone without Arcana prof from trying to work through advanced magical theory, even if you’re only setting the DC to something like 15.
Agreed.
The dependency on game mechanics to create a good experience in my personal experience, is universally flawed. The best mechanic in the world can't compete with even a mediocre DM in terms of creating a good RPG experience. Its not even really a contest, generally speaking, pretty much all mechanics are deeply flawed to some degree. The DM and the players are what breathe life into a game; mechanics are just kind of there.
The proficiencies being binary also is just a bit wierd. Like at higher level you can have a +0 a +5 (proficient) or a +10 (expertise) in a given skill but not a +3 or +8 etc. That is a bit odd. It doesn't really flow narratively. There very much are other ways to curb min-maxing without that weird mechanic.
While I think the skill differentials being level-dependent is kind of weird (in 4e proficient was +5 regardless of level, expert was +8), IME there are really only three ways people buy skills
Signature skill, as high as I can get it.
Important skill, raise to whatever level is conveniently buyable.
As for RP support, again, take any game that claims to have "great RP support" and what you will find is a game with less granularity of rules, not more than D&D. While games that have this granularity are not known for great RP support, case in point, Pathfinder 2e. Do people go around saying that PF2e has awesome Role-playing support? No.. they complain that the game has way too many rules, but it does in fact have insane granularity of rules.
The reason for this is that there is a huge Dichotomy between playing an RPG (The game) and the act of role-playing. Role-playing is what you do when you are not using rules. It's the conversation and the interaction between you and the DM and each other. When you start executing rules, you are now playing RPG (the game). The two do co-exist, but when people say "rules support for RP" which notably is an old conversation, it never pans out in action as it does on paper. Lots of games have tried to quantify role-playing and those game are never famous for their RP support. GURPS for example has quantified every conceivable talent and action you could possibly conceive into one of the most robust and granular system you will ever see... no one and I mean no goes around claiming that GURPS is a "RP" system... quite the oppossite.
The point being, very simply. Rules granularity does not "support" RP, it kills it. Rules are diametrically opposed to the act of role-playing. You do need some, but generally speaking, less is more.
Hey there, I tend to agree with basically everything you've said about roleplay in this thread (and other threads lol), but I'm curious to hear if you have any opinions on Inspiration, if you don't mind. Would you consider using Inspiration to be "roleplay support?" Do you use it at your tables? Thanks!
As for RP support, again, take any game that claims to have "great RP support" and what you will find is a game with less granularity of rules, not more than D&D. While games that have this granularity are not known for great RP support, case in point, Pathfinder 2e. Do people go around saying that PF2e has awesome Role-playing support? No.. they complain that the game has way too many rules, but it does in fact have insane granularity of rules.
The reason for this is that there is a huge Dichotomy between playing an RPG (The game) and the act of role-playing. Role-playing is what you do when you are not using rules. It's the conversation and the interaction between you and the DM and each other. When you start executing rules, you are now playing RPG (the game). The two do co-exist, but when people say "rules support for RP" which notably is an old conversation, it never pans out in action as it does on paper. Lots of games have tried to quantify role-playing and those game are never famous for their RP support. GURPS for example has quantified every conceivable talent and action you could possibly conceive into one of the most robust and granular system you will ever see... no one and I mean no goes around claiming that GURPS is a "RP" system... quite the oppossite.
The point being, very simply. Rules granularity does not "support" RP, it kills it. Rules are diametrically opposed to the act of role-playing. You do need some, but generally speaking, less is more.
Hey there, I tend to agree with basically everything you've said about roleplay in this thread (and other threads lol), but I'm curious to hear if you have any opinions on Inspiration, if you don't mind. Would you consider using Inspiration to be "roleplay support?" Do you use it at your tables? Thanks!
Mind you, that I don't think there is anything wrong with the inspiration mechanic, but I tend not to use it because it's a kind of reward for role-playing, but the benefit is essentially a dice re-roll. I don't think that really qualifies it as role-play support; it's more of a role-play reward. In other words it's a mechanical reward for a role-playing activity which doesn't really suit my personal style of GMing.
I favor giving role-playing rewards for good role-playing in the context of the story. So, for example, if a player does something heroic and selfless, like saving an NPC's life, he might find later in the story that the NPC is exceedingly grateful. Perhaps he walks into a Tavern a few months later, and there is a Bard singing a song on stage about his heroic deeds because word had spread about what they did.
The best reward you can give a player for good role-playing is to make their character important in the story and in the world, so that they can see that the stuff they do matters to the world they inhabit.
I do, however, like player-based story manipulation mechanics, which I definitely think qualify as role-play support. There are some games that give you a resource like inspiration, but rather or in addition to being able to use that resource to re-roll dice or something mechanical like that, the player can use the resource to alter the story in some minor way in their favor.
A good example of this is Blades in The Dark. This is a game about players taking on the role of a sort of "gang" of quasi-criminals and the main concept of the game is that each story is a heist of some sort, a sort of criminal job they are trying to pull off. A big chunk of the game is about planning your heist, but one of the resources in the game is stress and players can use it to trigger story-based benefits. For example, in the middle of the heist, they realize that part of the plan was to scale a wall, but no one thought to bring a rope. Players can spend a stress to create a "flashback" in which they describe how they had actually thought of this problem and hid a rope behind some bushes when they were planning the heist. Now there is a rope there for them to use. In this way they have a resource that can directly affect the story and support their characters sort of narrative vision for how they see things playing out.
Stuff like that I really like, and I think if I were to use inspiration in D&D, I would probably alter the rules a bit for inspiration to have more narrative impact in the form of player-based story alteration rather than it being strictly a mechanical benefit to get an advantage.
Mind you, that I don't think there is anything wrong with the inspiration mechanic, but I tend not to use it because it's a kind of reward for role-playing, but the benefit is essentially a dice re-roll. I don't think that really qualifies it as role-play support; it's more of a role-play reward. In other words it's a mechanical reward for a role-playing activity which doesn't really suit my personal style of GMing.
I favor giving role-playing rewards for good role-playing in the context of the story. So, for example, if a player does something heroic and selfless, like saving an NPC's life, he might find later in the story that the NPC is exceedingly grateful. Perhaps he walks into a Tavern a few months later, and there is a Bard singing a song on stage about his heroic deeds because word had spread about what they did.
The best reward you can give a player for good role-playing is to make their character important in the story and in the world, so that they can see that the stuff they do matters to the world they inhabit.
I do, however, like player-based story manipulation mechanics, which I definitely think qualify as role-play support. There are some games that give you a resource like inspiration, but rather or in addition to being able to use that resource to re-roll dice or something mechanical like that, the player can use the resource to alter the story in some minor way in their favor.
A good example of this is Blades in The Dark. This is a game about players taking on the role of a sort of "gang" of quasi-criminals and the main concept of the game is that each story is a heist of some sort, a sort of criminal job they are trying to pull off. A big chunk of the game is about planning your heist, but one of the resources in the game is stress and players can use it to trigger story-based benefits. For example, in the middle of the heist, they realize that part of the plan was to scale a wall, but no one thought to bring a rope. Players can spend a stress to create a "flashback" in which they describe how they had actually thought of this problem and hid a rope behind some bushes when they were planning the heist. Now there is a rope there for them to use. In this way they have a resource that can directly affect the story and support their characters sort of narrative vision for how they see things playing out.
Stuff like that I really like, and I think if I were to use inspiration in D&D, I would probably alter the rules a bit for inspiration to have more narrative impact in the form of player-based story alteration rather than it being strictly a mechanical benefit to get an advantage.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply! There's a ton of great advice to dig into in this post and other posts in the thread. I do have some follow-up questions and I hope you don't mind.
Are there any pitfalls to consider when using Inspiration (or any other mechanic, like Stress) to allow players to essentially retcon stuff? Also, have you ever ran a sandbox campaign using D&D? If so, got any (further) advice for someone who's only ran narrative-driven campaigns?
For a bit of context, I'm starting a Proactive Roleplay sort of campaign using Microscope to build the world with the players and D&D as the mechanical backbone, when mechanics are called upon. I love rules-light systems like Mothership and believe in failing forward, only calling for rolls when there are consequences for failure, and generally want to run a more roleplay-driven collaborative adventure. D&D probably isn't the best system for this, but I keep coming back to it for some reason.
All that said, thanks again!
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I have Darkvision, by the way.
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To a certain degree what’s being described is what it’s the DM’s job to manage. “What does my character know” is a very useful question, and a decent DM will distribute some knowledge without rolls based on a character’s background/backstory. There’s also the question of who you allow to roll for certain checks- it’s fair to rule out anyone without Arcana prof from trying to work through advanced magical theory, even if you’re only setting the DC to something like 15.
Agreed.
The dependency on game mechanics to create a good experience in my personal experience, is universally flawed. The best mechanic in the world can't compete with even a mediocre DM in terms of creating a good RPG experience. Its not even really a contest, generally speaking, pretty much all mechanics are deeply flawed to some degree. The DM and the players are what breathe life into a game; mechanics are just kind of there.
While I think the skill differentials being level-dependent is kind of weird (in 4e proficient was +5 regardless of level, expert was +8), IME there are really only three ways people buy skills
Hey there, I tend to agree with basically everything you've said about roleplay in this thread (and other threads lol), but I'm curious to hear if you have any opinions on Inspiration, if you don't mind. Would you consider using Inspiration to be "roleplay support?" Do you use it at your tables? Thanks!
I have Darkvision, by the way.
Mind you, that I don't think there is anything wrong with the inspiration mechanic, but I tend not to use it because it's a kind of reward for role-playing, but the benefit is essentially a dice re-roll. I don't think that really qualifies it as role-play support; it's more of a role-play reward. In other words it's a mechanical reward for a role-playing activity which doesn't really suit my personal style of GMing.
I favor giving role-playing rewards for good role-playing in the context of the story. So, for example, if a player does something heroic and selfless, like saving an NPC's life, he might find later in the story that the NPC is exceedingly grateful. Perhaps he walks into a Tavern a few months later, and there is a Bard singing a song on stage about his heroic deeds because word had spread about what they did.
The best reward you can give a player for good role-playing is to make their character important in the story and in the world, so that they can see that the stuff they do matters to the world they inhabit.
I do, however, like player-based story manipulation mechanics, which I definitely think qualify as role-play support. There are some games that give you a resource like inspiration, but rather or in addition to being able to use that resource to re-roll dice or something mechanical like that, the player can use the resource to alter the story in some minor way in their favor.
A good example of this is Blades in The Dark. This is a game about players taking on the role of a sort of "gang" of quasi-criminals and the main concept of the game is that each story is a heist of some sort, a sort of criminal job they are trying to pull off. A big chunk of the game is about planning your heist, but one of the resources in the game is stress and players can use it to trigger story-based benefits. For example, in the middle of the heist, they realize that part of the plan was to scale a wall, but no one thought to bring a rope. Players can spend a stress to create a "flashback" in which they describe how they had actually thought of this problem and hid a rope behind some bushes when they were planning the heist. Now there is a rope there for them to use. In this way they have a resource that can directly affect the story and support their characters sort of narrative vision for how they see things playing out.
Stuff like that I really like, and I think if I were to use inspiration in D&D, I would probably alter the rules a bit for inspiration to have more narrative impact in the form of player-based story alteration rather than it being strictly a mechanical benefit to get an advantage.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply! There's a ton of great advice to dig into in this post and other posts in the thread. I do have some follow-up questions and I hope you don't mind.
Are there any pitfalls to consider when using Inspiration (or any other mechanic, like Stress) to allow players to essentially retcon stuff? Also, have you ever ran a sandbox campaign using D&D? If so, got any (further) advice for someone who's only ran narrative-driven campaigns?
For a bit of context, I'm starting a Proactive Roleplay sort of campaign using Microscope to build the world with the players and D&D as the mechanical backbone, when mechanics are called upon. I love rules-light systems like Mothership and believe in failing forward, only calling for rolls when there are consequences for failure, and generally want to run a more roleplay-driven collaborative adventure. D&D probably isn't the best system for this, but I keep coming back to it for some reason.
All that said, thanks again!
I have Darkvision, by the way.