GM vent thread

I would very quickly tell that player to cut the shit or get out of my game, I don't care if the guy was my best friend

>Patagame
I've never heard this term. Explain?

I agree with this.
>DH
>party following a crate of xenotech that got delivered to a club (by mistake), that they couldn't even use (it was a sleek, stylish Tau refrigerator, intended for a corrupt noble that the xenotech had become fashionable with)
>it's a rivethead club in the grim dark future
>put some aggrotech on
>"Oh, this is the club from VTMB! I ask around for the proprietress"
>proprietor is a man and perfectly normal, song is from Grendel rather than Chiasm
>party has successfully derailed themselves hunting a phantom

Dunno why it's so hard to accept that music isn't something the GM can create, and he's going to need to pull it from other sources.

There's a player I know who always, no matter what, has to play something out of the ordinary. Did a dwarf-themed game at one point and he tried to play a Duergar.

I'm totally fine with people playing things that go off the reservation, but to actually do it as a statement in every single game just eats away at me.

One PC insists on breaking up the party to go drink by himself. He always interrupts everyone to announce his character is using his action to drink.

I don't know why he plays, but he's best friends with the best player, so I can't just kick him.

> I am becoming more and more convinced that I could lead them through the description of an LSD trip, and tell them they won at the end, and they'd be happier than following their asinine recommendations.
If there's one thing I've learned from Veeky Forums GMs, it'd probably be this. Players usually don't know what they want, even after they get it.

Someone coined the term "pataphysics" to describe going one step beyond metaphysics. Probably a Frenchman of some kind. Meta is thinking outside the box, pata is the box not even entering your head.

So if thinking outside the game as a player is metagaming, then thinking outside being a player is patagaming.

The worst part is that if the players end up wrong with their assumptions because of the music used, then you can sure expect the GM to show up in a That GM thread out of butthurt.

>play online since bunch of group moved away
>npc is telling party about serial killer prowling the town
>constant clacking and clicking from mouse and keyboard from two players
>ask what they're doing
>playing ranked league of legends
>ask if they dislike the game
>"no, its fun I guess"
>"I'm kinda board though, cuz I don't know whats going on, you wont explain it to us"
>Start retelling the story up until this point
>"Sorry, there was a teamfight, whats going on?"
>Then proceeds to tell me how its not their fault that they don't know whats going on, and how if I was a good GM this shit wouldn't bother me at all.

Drop their ass. A player maybe browsing a bit while playing is OK. A player that got caught up and occasionally has to be brought up to speed is meh. A player that never pays attention is annoying. A player playing another game, wasting game time to be caught up a vast amount, and then blaming you for it? Fuck that.

>playing league of legends

fucking dropped dude. drop em. drop them like you decided to pick up a hot pan.

drop them to the center of the earth where they belong. and it's not because their playing a shit game. it's because you're sucking up to their bullshit cuz you need players.

roll20 randoms are better than that bullshit. drop. their. shit. now.

Yeah, this.
I used to be part of FFN/dA circles that had better players than some of the chucklefucks I found at uni.

If dropping your friends sounds harsh, it is. But you're the GM, and you've made a promise to your players that if they follow your rules, you can provide them with an engaging alternate reality that will provide countless hours of fun. If there are players preventing you from fulfilling that promise, it's on them. If you allow them to stop you, it's now on you.

I just dropped the troublesome uni players down to the "will play MTG against" list.They can still be friends, but don't let them cramp what you're doing.

I hate players that build up a character only to roleplay their own personalities

>Your backstory says that you lost your family when bandits raided your village and burnt it to the ground
>Yeah, why?
>The fuck are you setting this building on fire then, it will spread to the rest of this village and kill half the population
>Cos there are bad guys in there

Fucking infuriates me
Luckily, this was roll20 so it wasnt hard to not invite him next session

That one player who refuses to play a character that can actually co-operate.

I don't give two shits if you want to make a party comp of a LG Pally, CE Sorc, CN rogue, TN notconan, honestly I don't, but for fuck sake give your character the ability to co-operate.
>REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

If players can't make a character that is willing to go along with the party, just tell them to make a new character who will. It is your responsibility however, to ensure there is enough back-and-forth discussion (not dictating to the players) about what the campaign will entail so they can make fitting characters. And also ensuring you haven't made the campaign too narrow, like playing soldiers in Vietnam or CIA agents, without first having a group that can work within those limits.

t. all the Shadowrun adventure books.
If the runners don't want to meet with Mr. Johnson despite them being offered free money just for showing up, they need to make a new character.

TRUMP 2016

Sounds comfy as fuck. Here's a suggestion, let them have a base - a small keep with a village. Adventuring can be about maintaining and improving their holdings.

>sick of D&D's "collaborative storytelling" bullshit causing tension between me and players
>Watch as normal, intelligent friends are transformed into autistic murderhobos, min-maxers, and - worse yet - videogame players just grinding loot and trying to FILL DEM BARS™ like good children.
>rather than quitting out of rage after session 2, I decide to go full retard and pander to the worst instincts, hoping I can break the spell out of pure self-awareness, irony, and reverse-psychology
>Introduce a literal "Good Group Points" (GGP)
>I tell them that every session from now on I'll grant GGP if they obey the hints and try to roleplay their characters realistically
>They all get it immediately
>They find out hilarious and love the idea
>"All we needed was an incentive!" they joke, every conversion in the game is now factoring GGP into the equation
>What have i done.jpg
>Now they're doing everything perfectly, but for the worst possible reason

Did I solve D&D or destroy it, Veeky Forums? We have torn down the fourth wall completely and everyone is loving the new transparency

>People who "get inspired" from somewhere else and don't have the common courtesy of NOT telling the source.
>That guy who thinks being an insufferable cunt is good roleplaying as long as it's in character.

>>They both leave the group and block me

That could be shame. Nerds don't process shame well. In this case maybe they know they're flakers and are a bit ashamed. They don't want to even think about you, let alone explain themselves to you. Easy to block you, and then they don't have to worry about it any more.

vagabond?
vinland saga?

You fudged a bad solution to a worse game. That means you made DnD better, good job.

Obviously it's still awful though. You have a weird, artificial metagaming balance that creates a facsimile of good roleplaying, but it's a hollow sham of what it should be, throughly corrupted from the core. I also have to break this to you: you may have made it impossible for them to have a 'Road to Damascus' moment and awaken to the pleasure of proper RP, because now they'll forever associate RPing with mechanical rewards.

This is all DnD's fault however. It takes exceptional skill to get a good game and good players out of that generic murderhobo simulator.

Best game I ran I dragged those assholes through character development kicking and screaming. I watched them choose between some flaky nobles and early hitler, personal power and resolving a plotline, and even their personal goals and the plot. They went through siding with hitler, grabbing power, and ultimately learned that they needed to set their ego aside sometimes. At the end there was this moment where this absolutely autistic that guy was looking at his character sheet and he said, "you know this character really isn't like Luffy, but I'm glad I got to play as him instead."

If a DM were musically inclined they could write and record music to play during a sessikn.

Yeah I think we're all just realizing that D&D sucks together, and the only way forward is to deconstruct it into some postmodern faggotry. None of us are beta males who need the escapism, so that's probably a big factor of why the only thing remaining is videogame logic

>tfw I have exceptional skill

> "Oh, so you stole X from that!"
It's like you they expect you to write and compose your own fucking soundtrack.

Comprehensive reading is not your forte, is it?

>intelligent, nihilistic and a wicked sense of humour

Sure kid. You keep telling yourself that as you churn out dry Tolkienesque generishit.

>Nerds don't process shame well.
I'd imagine that the opposite would be true, considering that they ought to feel it all the time.

>>intelligent, nihilistic and a wicked sense of humour
Putting words into someone else's mouth as half the content of an attempted insult. it'd be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.
All the user claimed is that they've managed to get some good RP out of DnD. Maybe they have, maybe they haven't. But really, why do you care enough to try and bring them down? Do you have self esteem issues or are you just an ass? I can't tell, so have this duck.

Oh lookout we've got a witty one over here. I'm sure your razor wit has truly cut all of us so deeply that we're going to go outside and never pick up a dice again for fear of bursting into tears.

>Did I solve D&D or destroy it, Veeky Forums?

you did both. save yourself

wow, that's how little you can believe a guy having a game that he enjoys?

It's not about who is the most original, it's about who does it best.

Look at Halo. No one gave a shit about dyson rings or the Ringworld books, but now they're everywhere.

My way out is literally the RPG I'm designing from the ground up because of how disappointed I've been with GURPS and D&D. I'll probably never try to publish or sell it but I've already solved most of the fundamental problems with shitty RPGs that only know how to feed children pure sugar candy in their systems and "RULE ZERO is ALWAYS HAVE FUN! IF YOU'RE NOT HAVING FUN BLAME EACH OTHER!!!"

Whilst I accept that yes a DM has to do his/her best to facilitate this, to the point of saying 'Nope, run something else' there is only so much you can do when people just decide to start acting like the inn from the ballad of Edgardo.

>tfw you have to explain to a player how Savage Worlds character creation and advancement works multiple times and they still forget everything when they get a new advance
At this point I'm wondering if he legitimately has a fucking memory issue. I know he's dumb, but some of the shit he's asked is fucking baffling.

>Dangle keys in front of players
>Get mad that they are distracted
Huh.

>that one player who insists on trying to make himself the de facto team leader/face every other game, but is pretty dumb IRL and never comes up with good strategies or persuasive arguments
Even in a game where his character has ranks in tactical knowledge and persuasion skills, he keep consistently looking like he has no clue what he's doing.

>That one Spag with the fucked legs plays a character who can Walk
>Guy who can't fight is a Fighter
>Guy who can't do magic plays a mage
But guy who's bad socially wants to be a diplomancer is always an issue somehow.

D&D isn't collaborative storytelling though. That would be a game where the players get some say in world-building as well as what their characters do.

You have to admit that a guy who can fight makes for a more interesting Fighter.

D&D isn't about roleplaying though. It isn't even an rpg - it created the basic framework that rpgs use (GM and players) but it was never about putting yourself in the mind of your character. D&D is alright as an introduction to the idea of a game run by a GM, but it is not an rpg. All social interaction is resolved via a single charisma roll, a character's backstory doesn't matter and there is no mechanic for making a player act in character. It's more of a skirmish-level wargame, where the character's actions between battles can help or hinder them and the character's themselves get better with time. That user actually made D&D worse at what it is intended to do, because he incentivised roleplaying over the real goal of being clever and acting in your character's best interest - even if they have a reason to act otherwise. The main reason for this problem is that D&D sells itself as an rpg so it can claim it invented the genre that grew parallel to it.

tl;dr: D&D isn't an rpg, the reason for all it's purported problems is people thinking it is.

>a game where the players get some say in world-building

My players usually get a say. Like if one of them wants to be russian, then I'll put a russia-analogue in the setting and think about details for it.

Collaborative world-building isn't the same as collaborative storytelling.

>A guy who has Split Personalities is a better GM
I disagree.

Maybe not, but, ultimately, D&D isn't a game of collaborative storytelling. The DM controls all aspects of the story itself, as, while the players choose their actions, he chooses if they can actually do that and, if they roll successfully, he decides how they are successful (outside of combat, where the rulebooks decide.) In the end, the DM tells the story, not the players.

That's fairly common, but true collaborative storytelling allows them to add details mid-game and basically act as mini-GMs, constantly adding new story details. In a game like D&D, which has a focus on overcoming challenges and getting loot to overcome harder challenges, that sort of gameplay would be a problem.

That's wrong and dumb. Most games do not have a mechanic to make people act in character, and if they do then they're usually basic reward systems. Which 5e also does.

D&D is a game system with a focus on combat, but that doesn't mean its not a roleplaying game. Especially when there's things like perfomance skills and knowledge skills that can't be applied directly to combat. And just because there's an upward arc of development for character power level doesn't mean that every action and character is leading towards the player 'winning'. And all social interaction isn't solved by a single charisma roll unless you immediately use it as a mind control power with no player interaction other than the roll. And EVERY system that uses dice, will have, at its core, a system that involves rolling dice to solve social encounters because otherwise there's no point of making a social character mechanically.

Everytime someone complains about this, someone makes this same argument that makes no sense. What's important isn't that the person knows exactly HOW to do something, it's that he at least PRETENDS. I wouldn't ask of a charismatic character's player to be smooth and great at talking, just try.

I've had to deal with players who slow down the game because they demand to handle the diplomacy but just roll the dice and stop at that, thinking the interaction will handle itself with a good roll. I don't mind if you stutter out your response and are awkward, just do something, and as a GM I'll fill in the blanks, just like I fill in the blanks when the fighter says "I flank him to better hit him with my sword" or the mage throws a fireball in a group of enemies. Just give me something to work with.

Dunno, if he was in full control of which one surfaces when, and they corresponded to common NPC tropes, it mite b cool.

Read my post better.

>Even in a game where his character has ranks in tactical knowledge and persuasion skills, he keep consistently looking like he has no clue what he's doing.

He'll roll good on persuasion and then say something fucking dumb that makes no sense. Despite his character having the backstory of being a former military commander, he'll come up with strategies for the party to use that are completely nonsense. Having a skill substitute one's lack of a mental quality is incapable of helping this fucker.

It's certainly the case that D&D puts a lot less emphasis on "collaborative storytelling" (really that term could apply to just about every tabletop RPG) than some other systems. It's just worth noting that a game doesn't need to have everyone's input when building a world in order to have everyone's input when building a story in it.

How is rolling a dice pretending to fight any different to rolling a dice pretending to be a suave fucker different though?

He isn't really good at those things...?
How is that hard to get...?
Like how you aren't really a universe, even though you DM.

Are you my player? Because you seem unbelievable thick.

Maybe you're just explaining badly?

I just don't see why you want your PLAYER to be as competant as his CHARACTER. Seems unreasonable.

it just has different requirements to be enjoyable. It's simply a fact observable in groups. If you find the argumentation explaining it insufficient that's understandable, maybe you should put some thought into it. The fact of the matter is though, there IS an observable difference, and it's in the enjoyment of everyone involved.

D&D predates roleplaying games. 5e is an exception to the rule, but it's still fundamentally a game about killing stuff and looting things, all that 5e's done is make it a game that can't decide what genre it is. Most games don't force players to act in character, that is true, but most have more detailed mechanics than 5e does for roleplaying. Call of Cthulhu's insanity mechanic, for example, incentivizes players to act like someone who is going insane.

>This is all DnD's fault however. It takes exceptional skill to get a good game and good players out of that generic murderhobo simulator.

In fairness: D&D basically *is* a "murderhobo simulator". The problem comes when people take this game which is clearly about picaresque treasure-hunters and try to hammer it, round peg square hole style, into this mental mold they have for "le epic LotR wankfart simulator".

If the job you want calls for a screw-driver, don't reach for the goddamned duck tape.

>tl;dr: D&D isn't an rpg, the reason for all it's purported problems is people thinking it is.

youtube.com/watch?v=WrjwaqZfjIY

Exactly opposite to the truth. D&D is a role-playing game. The problem comes from people trying to use it as a storygame.

D&D is a role-playing game: you inhabit your character and make decisions from the character's perspective. Like being an actor.
Dungeon World and Fate are storygames: you hover above your character and make decisions from a narrative perspective. Like being an author.

>How is that hard to get...?

How hard is this for you to get?
>What's important isn't that the person knows exactly HOW to do something, it's that he at least PRETENDS.
>Having a skill substitute one's lack of a mental quality is incapable of helping this fucker.
The player is clearly an issue because he's incapable of coming up with semi-reasonable ways to implement his character skills. It's like if a Fighter said he attacked a goblin by rubbing the flat of his sword against its foot, instead of something reasonable or vague like cutting at it.

I don't want my player to be as competent as his character. I want my player to not be an idiot and have his character be clownshoes when he's supposed to be some suave general.

Did you not read my post ? The fighter would tell me "I move here so I can hit him with my sword, I roll for it." I've had "diplomats" tell me "well, I just rolled. What happens now ?". The fighter makes a choice and describes an action, the diplomat doesn't. I'd settle for a simple "I want to persuade the merchant to give me a discount, so I tell him his merchandise seems flawed." Choice, action.

>In fairness: D&D basically *is* a "murderhobo simulator". The problem comes when people take this game which is clearly about picaresque treasure-hunters and try to hammer it, round peg square hole style, into this mental mold they have for "le epic LotR wankfart simulator".
Yeah, which ironically means DnD works far better for sword and sorcery than epic fantasy - despite 95% of published modules being unusable for the former.

I agree with you there - D&D is fundamentally a game about killing monsters and if you want an LotR ripoff, why not play The One Ring?

I kinda disagree. I've had players who are shy but want to be the diplomancer. In the same way that say a fighter declares, "I attack", I see no issue with "I intimidate with a glare". We RP out the conversations for the most part, but roll only when needed. In time, shy players grow. But I have always thought it's unfair to force RP, even punishing a player for it, if they built a social character.

>fundamentally a game about killing stuff and looting things

But how does that mean it's not a roleplaying game? I know that D&D has wargame roots, but how does combat remove roleplaying from the equation?

A movie that's all about dudes killing dudes is still a story, even if its a less complex and one more focused on other elements. If the player is making decisions from the perspective of someone else then they're taking that role even if the way they do that is by trying to win the game.

Are less complex systems not roleplaying games? Does the game need a more complex incentive system in order to be classified as a roleplaying game? Is Call of Cthulhu not a roleplaying system if you strip the insanity mechanics out of it?

That's largely because, from 2e onward, TSR/WotC have pretended it's a game of roleplaying noble heroes, when really it's about roleplaying borderline-criminal 'adventurers', who may nonetheless be good people. Earlier editions were more like Conan than Dragonlance, but Conan isn't popular anymore.

Why don't you expect wizard players to be magicians?
If a dumb cunt wants to play a smart character, then welcome to RPGs. We all play things we could never be.

>"I intimidate with a glare"

that's circumventing the problem nicely though. Because the difference that I was talking about was between Statement and Action - You SAY stuff your character says, but you don't DO what your character does. If you are awkward in talking, playing a talky character will either be awkward or destroy a central part of the game - saying the stuff that gets said. By substituting it with actions, which has been agreed not to be acted out, but to only be stated, the problem's avoided.

So in essence, you see how a diplomancer CAN be mechanically abstracted, but you say thats Badwrongfun...?
Ok I guess...

>If a dumb cunt wants to play a smart character, then welcome to RPGs. We all play things we could never be.
That's all good until the "smart" character decides to shove a fork into an electrical socket or some equivalent.

A player can make whatever character they like. But if they can't roleplay them worth a damn, it's going to be annoying and cringey as fuck.

Why are americans so pretentious when it comes to D&D anyways?

>D&D sucks

Nah, D&D is awesome. It's very awesome at what it does. Modern editions have tried to move it AWAY from what it does best, which is treasure hunting and dungeon delving, with middling results.

>generic murderhobo simulator

Nigga, please. It's not a generic murderhobo simulator. Quite the opposite, D&D has a distinct look and feel to it, with an implied setting that is revealed through the rules.

>It isn't even an rpg

Yes, it is. You're taking on the role of characters in a fantasy setting, most of whom are motivated to amass wealth.

>All social interaction is resolved via a single charisma roll

>rolling Charisma checks
>not forcing your players to roleplay their interactions

I think I found the problem.

>character's backstory doesn't matter

Ah, you must be one of those "Mary Sue" types. You want to roleplay being a powerful demigod inhabiting the body of your waifu and you totally are the princess of a long-forgotten kingdom trying to reclaim your throne. Yawn. D&D isn't about playing through some gayfag novel, try playing Fate if you want to write a "story."

>The problem comes when people take this game which is clearly about picaresque treasure-hunters and try to hammer it, round peg square hole style, into this mental mold they have for "le epic LotR wankfart simulator".

Bingo. But it so happens that there is no good system for doing epic storytelling wankfartery except maybe Fate Core, and that's because Fate Core is designed to let the PCs do whatever the fuck they want and the dice are just there to pretend there's risk or challenge involved.

THIS

People don't know what they want most of the time like that study that showed people want coffee to be a "nice dark roast" but what they actually wanted was a light medium roast

>Why don't you expect wizard players to be magicians?
Learn to read.

>I don't want my player to be as competent as his character.
This is clearly not the case.

>The player is clearly an issue because he's incapable of coming up with semi-reasonable ways to implement his character skills.
The issue is them being incapable of convincingly roleplaying their character concept. I don't expect wizard players to become wizards themselves. I do expect them to not have the wizard consistently act like a dumbass when they have Intelligence as their primary stat.

What I mean is that it isn't a roleplaying game because it's about making the optimal decision, whereas roleplaying games are about making the in-character decision.

A roleplaying game isn't about a story, it's about getting into a fictional character's head. There's people who've played campaigns of several 40k battles, making decisions from the perspective of the commander and telling a story about war in the 41st millennium, but that doesn't make it an rpg.

There are plenty of simple rpgs out there, and a complex incentive system, or for that matter, any incentive system, is not necessary, but preferable. Without the insanity mechanic, Call of Cthulhu would still be an rpg, because it is fundamentally a game about playing a character who is going through horror, whereas D&D is about 'winning' the game by surviving until the end of the dungeon/adventure/campaign, and playing a character is purely optional.

>You probably shouldn't do that.
>Roll Intelligence
So hard to do.

You can't "pretend" to be tactical though. You're saying the player IS restricted in totally arbitrary ways.

If a player makes a good roll for being tactical, but is an idiot, you should help them plan to reflect the successful roll. Otherwise you just undermine the character they made.

not him, but let me give it a shot:
In acting, you have an objective. In a scene, you must make certain points, hit certain emotional notes, etc.
Now, "act" is just "to do." Everything you do is an action, from pipe fitting to acting.
If you are going "to do" something, you must have a plan for doing it. The plan may be as simple as saying, "I step forward and power attack the goblin," or it could be more complicated "I climb the cliff and knife the sentry, covering his mouth to prevent the goblin from squealing." The player has something he wants to accomplish, and he's telling the GM how he wants to accomplish it.
If all he does is roll a die, all the GM can tell him is whether he passed or failed. There's no information about how the act is being done that allows the GM to provide modifiers or penalties, and you may as well just be playing a wargaming because the GM is being cut out of his roll as Game Master and relegated to being controller of the opposing forces.

In a social scenario, it's the same thing. If the player just says "I roll to bluff" with no indication of what he wants to bluff with, then the GM can't give him modifiers. All he can do is tell the player if he passed or failed. The player does not need to be charismatic, but he must have a plan, and he must be able to tell the GM what he intends to do with the bluff roll. "I tell the guards we are merchants" works. "I tell the guards we are merchants from Veluca with a load of butter for market" is even better. Simply saying "I roll bluff against the guard" is akin to saying "I lie to the guard"
Lie is an action, but there's a whole range of "how are you lying" questions that follow.
You don't need to be charismatic and spin a web about how "we are weary merchants seeking shelter from the rains and forest bandits that plague the road. We bring wares from the distance city of Reyvadin for the market of Veluca," but you need to tell the GM what you're doing

See

>How is rolling a dice pretending to fight any different to rolling a dice pretending to be a suave fucker different though?

Because Fighting has two outcomes that his attack can do while social combat can lead to innumerable outcomes that may affect the campaign from that point forward.

Like, if you walk up to a Johnson and sperg out during social combat, you could lead to your group losing money, you could ruin your group's reputation, you could make yourself out to be "expendable resources" or you might even piss Mr. Johnson off to the point where he decides "y'know what, I'm going to withhold key info and if these idiots die, that's not my problem."

At least if you shoot someone, the only thing you have to worry about is whether they live or die.

In short:
Have a plan.
Some actions like attacking are self-descriptive. The player must still dictate how he moves and what he swings with, and in the same way, the intended goal of rolling a social skill must be stated to get anywhere.
It does not need to be stated eloquently or with charismatic acting, but it must be stated, and the how and why of it must be included in that statement.

Otherwise the GM doesn't have enough information to work with to determine the outcome of a roll.

That's actually pretty good advice, thanks.

The way you put it seems far more reasonable than others though.

Like the guy arguing only a Player Tactician can be a Tactical Character.

Dumb cunts who play smart characters tend to end up getting themselves or their party killed.

Mainly because they try to go for a Light Yagami type who can play 4th dimensional speed chess while coming up with a thousand different endgames at the same time when they lack the intelligence and the attention span to realize that step #34873 will never work when they can't even reach step #3.

I'm going to stop claiming D&D isn't an rpg now, I think I've lost that part of the argument. As for forcing players to roleplay interactions, the main problem is that, RAW for most editions abstracts any form of interaction to 'roll charisma to change the NPCs disposition'. Also, I hate Mary Sues. When I said backstory doesn't matter, I meant it doesn't affect the gameplay at all. If someone wants to play a Mary Sue, they should go play their own speshul-snowflake system, because D&D characters are defined mostly by race and character class and are not intended to have any exceptional backstory - a rogue used to be a criminal, a paladin signed up at a paladin order for some reason and so on. Mary Sues make no sense mechanically and aren't the sort of characters you're meant to create in D&D.

No problem.

I'd argue this is more of a player mindset than something that's actually part of any system. A group could totally play Call of Cthulhu with the end goal of winning, and not acting spooked at all. I know for a fact that it has happened, and some GMs might even allow it to happen.

But I'm also playing in 2 D&D games where the players have made decisions that make winning harder simply because it's what their character would do. Using nonlethal weapons, accepting surrenders from powerful foes that could come back to haunt them, acting scared etc.

Honestly I think you're pinning player assumptions and bad experiences/stories onto the system when in reality it's the mindset of groups. And the aspect of playing to win is part of many rpgs, since the point of games is usually to win. I can see why the G of RPG can stand out a little more in typical D&D groups, but i don't think its anything to do with the actual system and nor is it something exclusive to D&D.

>What I mean is that it isn't a roleplaying game because it's about making the optimal decision, whereas roleplaying games are about making the in-character decision.

This right here is the source of a great deal of disconnect.

Role-playing (in the sense of improvisation acting) is very much about getting into a fictional character's head.

PLAYING a role-playing GAME is almost entirely about making the optimal decision.

Role-playing games (setting aside narrative-driven storygames for the moment) largely incentivize making the most of your resources, making smart decisions, avoiding unnecessary danger or time-sinks, etc., all entirely regardless of the character's Intelligence or available information. Put another way, while it's nice to try and minimize metagaming, a certain amount is always unavoidable because you're never truly unaware of the fact that you're playing a game.

I don't think I'm saying that.