On Role-Playing (Part 9 of 11)

DND3. My first real stint into “non-role-playing role-playing.”

Yeah, I think that’s how I’d honestly describe it. I played a lot of 3^rd edition early on (for the first couple-four years or so…heck, maybe five) and I made a lot of interesting characters, but I can’t for the life of me remember doing much role-playing at all. Isn’t that silly?

Part of it, I chalk up to the sheer mechanics of the game: most of the time I was thinking of how to best use my skills and feats and five-foot steps for maximum effect. My characters had a lot of interesting “builds.” I killed a lot of faceless monsters, of whom I remember…um. Not a single one. Wow. That’s amazing. I know I played at least two PCs (in two different campaigns) from 1^st level up to 8^th or 10^th and I don’t remember a single encounter off the top of my head. My buddy ran me solo through WotC’s “Forge of Fury” adventure (with a couple NPC buddies), and I think I made it all the way to the end…but maybe the campaign crapped out before that (I believe a dragon is supposed to be the final encounter in the adventure, and I sure don’t remember fighting one)…I know Forge was a very looong adventure.

Yeah, the characters are much more memorable than the encounters, and the game was pretty much all about encounters. I had pretty solid concepts of what my characters were (how they looked, their skill sets, etc.) but only the bare minimums of “personality,” and this was never developed in the course of play. At least not to my recollection…maybe I’m blocking the memories?

If you think I’m writing this just to throw stones at WotC or 3^rd Edition or Pathfinder (which, mechanically, is pretty much the same thing)…well, you’re wrong. I’m doing an analysis of role-playing here, and I’m attempting to be as honest and “neutral” as possible.

[as a side note, I never did talk much about 2^nd Edition AD&D because I don’t own the books for reference…however, much as I loathe 2^nd Edition, I will say that I had some very rich role-playing experiences with that edition of the game. See, I’m being nice here! It’s not all “crap-on-anything-not-B/X”]

So that was my experience. From the perspective of role-playing (as in, “this is a role-playing game so you should be able to engage in the act of role-playing”) DND3 was a total dud.

But maybe I just wasn’t “doing it right,” i.e. maybe I just wasn’t role-playing within the parameters D20 Dungeons & Dragons sets for itself. Just what, exactly, does the 3^rd edition PHB say about role-playing your character?

Not a single, blessed thing.

The only place I even see the term “roleplaying” (no hypen) is on the back cover which says:

Here is the indispensable manual of fantasy roleplaying.

And that’s it.  I’m reading the introduction even and absolutely nothing. For an “indispensable manual” on the subject, the book doesn’t even bother to define role-playing or a role-playing game. It tells you how to make a character, and it provides you with a lot of rules for playing the game…but apparently role-playing isn’t part of this game. Or if it is, then there’s an assumption on the part of the designers that people just know what to do and how to do it or that it will come naturally or…well, or really I don’t know what they were thinking. Maybe they weren’t thinking.

Or maybe they just wanted to get back to the game’s real roots as a small-scale, skirmish level fantasy wargame. I mean, that’s what we’ve got here, albeit one with an extreme degree of detailed character customization.

Now, I’ll admit I didn’t bother rereading the PHB in its entirety, so perhaps I missed a sidebar on role-playing, but even so you’d think that something billing itself as a resource on the term would be a little more upfront and obvious with it, right? Nothing in the table of contents, index, or glossary answers the newbie player’s question, “What IS role-playing?” That’s just so f’ing shortsighted. I mean, isn’t it? For the first time in a while, I am filled with the strong urge to punch WotC in the face. Repeatedly. And here I’d thought I’d made peace with them (in my mind) and decided to adopt a live-and-let-live philosophy. Nope…I’m always finding something new that makes me want to bust heads.

“Manual of fantasy roleplaying?” Are you fucking kidding me?

The 3^rd Edition DMG is a little better, in so much as it addresses role-playing (or “roleplaying”) in the section labeled Determining Styles of Play. Here it breaks those styles into three categories:

• Kick In The Door
• Deep-Immersion Storytelling
• Something In Between

Tempting as it is to post all three of these, I’m already nearing 12,000 words so I’ll limit myself solely to the second topic, which I actually find somewhat offensive:

From the Dungeon Master’s Guide (Monte Cook, page 8):

The Free City of Greyhawk is threatened by political turmoil. The PCs must convince the members of the ruling council to resolve their differences, but can only do so after they’ve come to terms with their own differing outlooks and agendas. This style of play is deep, complex, and challenging. The focus isn’t on combat but on talking, developing in-depth personas, and character interaction. Whole gaming sessions may pass without a single die being rolled.

In this style of game, the NPCs should be as complex and richly detailed as the PCs – although the focus should be on motivation and personality, not game statistics. Expect long digressions about what each player wants his or her character to do, and why. Going to a store to buy iron rations and rope can be as important an encounter as fighting orcs (And don’t expect the PCs to fight the orcs at all unless the characters are motivated to do so). A character will sometimes take actions against his player’s better judgment because “that’s what the character would do.” Adventures deal mostly with negotiations, political maneuverings, and character interaction. Players talk about the “story” they are collectively creating.

Rules become less important in this style. Since combat isn’t the focus, game mechanics take a back seat to character development. Skills take precedence over combat bonuses, and even then the actual numbers don’t mean much. Feel free to change rules to fit the player’s roleplaying needs. You may even want to streamline the combat system so that it takes less time away from the story.

Okay, Monte Cook is a fucking half-wit for writing this.

Let’s leave aside the condescension for a moment (at least he left the quotation marks off the word “story” in the last sentence). Let’s leave aside (for the moment) the complete gibberish that occupies half of this section. Let’s simply consider for the moment that WotC is still billing Dungeons & Dragons as a “fantasy roleplaying game.” In point of fact, they specifically refer to it as “the world’s most popular fantasy roleplaying game” (back cover of the PHB). And then they write THIS, as their example of what “roleplaying” is (in stark and extreme contrast to playing the game in the “kick in the door” style). Riddle me this, Batman: if THIS is “roleplaying” and D&D is a roleplaying game, why the hell do they make roleplaying sound like IT’S THE MOST BORING THING EVER FUCKING INVENTED?

Any game where buying iron rations is a more important encounter than a life-or-death struggle with a group of enemies (orcs or ogres or peasants with pitchforks) is the STUPIDEST GAME EVER DESIGNED. And let me clue you in: that ain’t role-playing, pal, unless the character you are trying to portray is a rank imbecile and delusional in the extreme. ROLE-PLAYING is making behavioral choices as if you were the character…it’s imposing the character’s persona on your own mindset. In what world would any competent person (imaginary or not), treat a trip to the local mercantile as more important than an axe being swung at your head?

That’s just retarded. But most of what’s written in this section is just plain stupid. Players can create a “story” just as readily with a game involving combat…and it will certainly be a more exciting one than the watching-paint-dry political scenario Cook describes. The difference is, if it’s going to be an interesting or intelligent or halfway-good story then, yes, you have to consider whether or not your characters have a motivation for fighting the orcs, as opposed to the brain-dead (i.e. “kick in the door”) style of killing every monster one stumbles across in a dungeon.

[to be continued]