Why has Roleplaying become Rollplaying ?

Yea, well. I'd definetly expect people to say how and with what they are trying to convince the NPC. But acting out the entire thing, while it may be fun is not needed

>No, that's just a pervasive myth
I've met to many awkard players to dismiss it as a myth.

>make things easier on the GM.
I can see that as a GM. Most minor NPCs, I don't have enough idea as to their particular wants and needs to give a good answer to how they respond to a given situation, so a roll is a good extraction.

I think that might be a new house rule for me. Social Skills can only be used on non-named NPCs. IE Guardsman #3 but not Rolf De Rosefurt Captain of the Royal Gaurd.

The idea behind roleplaying games is acting a PC that you made up that is not you, right? You could say that PC does not lift the same weight as the player does, and that is all fine dandy and can be regulated with STRENGTH checks, I have no issue with that.

But what I have an issue is when players use (((PHYSICAL))) skills in order to resolve problems, they want to roll instead of lifting it out. Now I get it its supposed to represent "muh randomness" and "muh skill difference", but really do we need that in athletics? You can have fucking +100 to strength or constitution but some things just can't be lifted out off. If you lift the wrong way no roll will save you from your fuck-up but in rollplaying games it will save you.

If systems are to remove the physical skills how would the hobby go? Would it reduce the levels of autisam because you can't roll a way out of lifting because you're a scrawny nerd? What do you guys think on this?

You're mistaking correlation for causation, which isn't a good habit to get into. Also, I would strongly urge against that houserule. It'll most likely end up with one party member actually participating while the others stand around doing a whole lot of nothing.

That's a good point. But even withing soicial mechanics there's a big difference between
>I roll Intimidate on the Guard!
and
>I gently remind the Guard that he's outnumbered, and his widow won't get reimbursement for heroism.

I always use skill rolls alongside whatever description or dialogue the player provides, and I use the roll as a lens on how they came across.

If someone tries to do some epic speech or clever social manipulation but they don't have the stats to back it up and don't get a lucky roll, I'll interpret it in a negative light, that their manipulation was clumsy or badly aimed, regardless of how well the player had described it. Good fluff might get a bonus, but that won't make up the difference.

Meanwhile, even if a player struggles with a description or their dialogue is a bit stilted, as long as they put the effort in and have got the social skills, I'll interpret it in a positive light, that they delivered it perfectly and noticed things to help get their point across. If they fluffed it better they might get a bonus, but I'd only inflict a penalty if the angle of approach they took was actively harmful to their efforts, not if the fluff was just bad.

maybe I just want to use my skills to get past Gaurdsman Joe McWhoGivesaShit so I can start roleplaying breaking into the castle to rescue the kidnapped princess. Most times I saw "we eat 1 trail rations tonight". I get that we're roleplaying but we don't need to narrate every single event that occurs.

I get around the issue by making socially awkward characters. Roleplaying has never been easier!
This is how I feel. Saying you roll for something without any context is kind of boring and turns it from roleplaying into a pen and paper video game. At least make an attempt to describe your actions and why you're rolling for something.
But the castle is full of guards.

Nice meme dude.

Most of cases in my games people do the first rather than the second. Players are so annoying sometimes.

>It'll most likely end up with one party member actually participating while the others stand around doing a whole lot of nothing.
There's nothing wrong with one player getting the spotlight for a while. As long as everyone gets a chance to shine.

If you're saying that the other players will be bored, than I've already failed if they're not invested in the conversation.

This is generally the best solution as far as I'm concerned. The players have to think about how they'd approach a situation and do some roleplaying, but it also takes into account that the character they are playing could be considerably better or worse at the social skill the player is trying to pull off.

A lot of systems (and particularly d&d from amongst the systems I've played) provide a huge breadth of rules describing different combat and non-combat interactions to try to provide a balanced framework for the dm and players to build on. I believe this is intended to allow us to have an idea of how things might sensibly be played out, rather than as a substitute for common sense or roleplaying in every instance.

>Why has Roleplaying become Rollplaying?

Because Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition was deliberately designed as a game to be won based on system mastery, and it was THE roleplaying game in popular culture when most of the current generation of tabletop gamers were getting into the hobby, and thanks to Pathfinder its festering carcass isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Ivory Tower is just a cover to make it sound like they made the game shitty on purpose

>Why has Roleplaying become Rollplaying ?

It hasn't. It started as Rollplaying (via Skirmish games) and has been moving slowly towards Roleplaying over time with each new game that isn't DnD.

In DnD, you roleplay despite the system, not because of it.

>Let me get involved in a hobby where people roll dice to simulate probability and creatively describe the outcome of various rolls.

>Now let me criticize the entire concept of rolling dice in the first place and ruin an entire hobby because I'm not creative enough to describe the result of a dice roll.

If you want to tell stories without random chance as an element, find a campfire.

There's nothing wrong with that sort of play style. But I'd not what I want to play.

You know, when you're a sperg and your DM is a sperg and your spergness is not compatible, I'd take any roll over actual social skill. Because, as it later become clear, some DMs can have peculiar understanding of social interactions, for example "people run on formal logic and utter pragmatism".

I personally don't have what would be considered an 18 or higher in charisma, so how am I supposed to come up with witty repertoire and persuasive arguments on the fly, exactly?

If you ever use the term "rollplaying", you've outed yourself as a neckbeard who only plays games online, because it doesn't sound any different from "roleplaying" when you say it out loud making it worthless for face-to-face conversation.

user, did you notice we're on a malaysian charcoal image rubbing board?
Such turns of phrase work here.

>implying it didn't start at the very beginning due to how easy it was to die in the older editions, thus leading to people not investing so much into their obviously disposable characters.

I can't understand how you don't get this. First I am no great speaker, so when you ask me to give an ay defending the gates against an invading army that may have pulled a few fucking demons out of hell and then tell me I can't use my charisma checks or what-have-you to help sound more convincing, I'm going to straight up tell you to fuck off. I'll put on some effort, don't get me wrong, but there is a reason that there are socials skills, use your goddamn brain to figure out why.

>The idea behind roleplaying games is acting a PC that you made up that is not you, right? You could say that PC does not know the stuff you know, and that is all fine dandy and can be regulated with KNOWLEDGE checks, I have no issue with that.

>But what I have an issue is when players use (((COMBAT))) skills in order to resolve combats, they want to roll instead of roleplaying it out. Now I get it its supposed to represent "muh randomness" and "muh skill difference", but really do we need that in combats? You can have fucking +100 to brawling or swords but some things just can't be beaten. If you attack at the wrong time no roll will save you from your fuck-up but in rollplaying games it will save you.

>If systems are to remove the combat skills how would the hobby go? Would it reduce the levels of autisam because you can't find a way out of combat because you can't roll or what? What do you guys think on this?

Maybe in your shitty accent m8

But combat is usually played too. Positioning, what abilities to use, those all come down to player choice.

Same with social. Plan of attack, arguments should all need to be worked out by the player, then the roll can determine how well that strategy works out.

Roleplaying the social aspects out completely just slow the entire table to a crawl. All you need to do is say what you're attempting, a one sentence summary of what you're saying and a dice roll.

I don't need to hear you debate the intricacies of your argument to an NPC for 20-30 minutes only to roll a crit fail and have players get buttmad as fuck.

Wait, let me get this straight. You stole. From the party..?

My problem are the players who say "I roll persuasion to persuade him", for that is very boring for everyone.

You deserve everything you got and more for stealing from the party.

I think social skills are fine. You just have to do them right.

Typically an action justifies a roll. Just like saying "I try to hit him with my sword" gives you an attack roll, "I try to convince the Bridge Troll that he should accept three pinecones as payment to cross the river" gives a Persuasion roll if the Troll has a reason to believe that's a reasonable deal.

If he has no reason to ever be persuaded, ie he watched the character literally pick them up off the ground 20 meters away, the DC is infinity. You don't get rolls to do impossible things; you can't convince someone of something so obviously stupid anymore than you can say "I attack the moon" and actually get an attack roll.

If he produces them from his magical satchel and he prestidigitates a warm glow and makes up a lie about how they cure anal warts, maybe the troll is predisposed to believe it. I'd give that a roll.

It's cooler if they actually talk to me but I don't need my players to be actors. If they're just creative and define their actions as they would be portrayed by how they define their character, who the fuck cares, that's fine

Thats a nice post user, thank you

The simplest answer is video games and the popularization of "Lel random XD" shit like sir bearrington.

>Because you're asserting an unconscious double standard.
There isn't really a double standard though.

"I attack X with my Y" at least gives enough information for the DM to determine who is being hit with what attack and the rules for combat already has clear mechanics to determine whether an attack is successful or not.

"I convince X to do Y" doesn't cover it though, because conversations have a clear back-and-forth and depending on what you say and how you say it, you can give someone a completely different message even if you use the same exact words.

Also, social rolls in games like D&D are dogshit because it tries to cram everything that has to do with communication into a binary outcome that should already be resolved based on how the scene was played out in roleplay. Not to mention, it punishes classes that are MAD into playing socially retarded morons while casters get to be the party face by default due to their class actually benefiting from CHA.

At least in older editions, when you make a character and you level them up and see them becoming stronger, you grow more attached to that character because you took the time to make sure that they don't end up dying and were rewarded by being capable of taking on more dangerous challenges later on.

People tend to throwaway characters more often in 3.PF than in any other edition because if your character build isn't optimized and the DM isn't lenient on how much optimization is needed, you're going to end up as a background character while everyone else gets to affect the plot in interesting ways. Dying was also encouraged because thanks to the way that WBL worked, when you roll up a new character, you automatically get X amount of gold to better fine tune your next character build with, which gives you all the power without any of the work that would've been required to reach that point.

The difference?

Combat has detailed rules as far as why positioning your character in this area, with this weapon, this armor, this weapon, vs. this enemy, is relevant to your success in surviving this encounter while social rolls boil down to whether you passed the roll and what a good argument is boils down to DM fiat.

>Says it isn't really a double standard
>Proceeds to describe a double standard

>t. rollplayer

>social rolls boil down to whether you passed the roll and what a good argument is boils down to DM fiat.
So make it as detailed as combat, then.

You stole from the party. Be happy they didn't kick you out of the game or actually beat your faggot ass. Fucking cunt.

How is anything like what I said a double standard? Do you even know what a double standard is?

Thing is, coversation is not as easy to track as it would be for combat.

For combat, it boils down to where you are, the range of your weapon, where your opponent is, and your offense vs. their defense.

For social, you have to account for the words being said, the inflection being used, whether or not there's a language barrier, whether or not something gets lost in translation (like how "stupid" can mean a moronic person or another word for cool), your body language, your appearance, your facial expression, etc. and a lot of the time, it's just easier to play it out through roleplay than to attempt to boil down social rolls to choosing between options A, B, or C in a visual novel or Mass Effect game.

Only if you refuse to abstract one while being entirely willing to abstract the other. The difference is how you are approaching each of them, not any implicit difference in complexity between them.

Even then, it's adding abstraction to something that doesn't need to be abstracted. I'm already roleplaying how my character would react to the situations that the DM placed in front of me so why the fuck would I waste time rolling dice to communicate when we're already communicating to one another?

Because your abilities as a player might not be the characters abilities. The rules assist to regulate that, to assist those with less ability and to curtail those who might try to talk their way out of things while not having any investment in social stats or skills.

The rules aren't going to make someone a better roleplayer though and it creates a problem where either you pick a class who benefits from having high CHA so you actually can attempt to talk your way out of situations (creating snowflakes in the process) or you pick a class where you're an idiot savant whose only purpose in the party is to fight good and to just hang around in the background while everyone else gets to do things outside of battle (creating disinterested players who are just along for the ride until combat starts).

The rules can support people no matter their level of social skills and provide encouragement to try.

Your point about classes is just a shitty false dichotomy and you should feel bad for even trying to argue it.

You're the worst I've seen yet.

>The rules can support people no matter their level of social skills and provide encouragement to try.
They really can't, because a person who is more willing and able to communicate with others will have a much easier time roleplaying than someone who isn't. Also, if someone is willing to roleplay, they don't need any encouragement because they're already invested in both their character and the campaign.
>Your point about classes is just a shitty false dichotomy
How exactly is it a false dichotomy?

>Also, social rolls in games like D&D are dogshit because it tries to cram everything that has to do with communication into a binary outcome that should already be resolved based on how the scene was played out in roleplay.

Bit of a conundrum.

While you're correct, the problem is also that sometimes you might be playing as a 50 CHA Bard(exaggerated to make a point of course), but IRL be incapable of selling water to someone dying of thirst. And vise versa, playing as a brain damaged barbarian who barely speaks english while the player's pretty good at talking.

If you're a Bard with 50 CHA, you're already given benefits for having such unnaturally high CHA based on the fact that you're a casting class that works off of CHA.

On the flipside, just because you decided to play a class that benefits more from physical stats than mental stats doesn't necessarily mean that you should be forced to play as a functional retard whose only contribution to game is through combat, which may or may not occur often within the context of the campaign depending on how roleplay heavy or lethal the campaign/system is.

To say nothing on the fact that people tend to conflate just how bad having a low CHA or INT is when the game itself mentions that 3 is the cutoff between sentient creatures and animals but that's another matter of poor abstraction coupled with poorly explained conventions within the rules.

So basically you're mad that you have to actually invest resources in being good socially, and think that you should be free to talk your way into anything despite making charisma your dump stat?

We got it, you're just an asshole.

For fuck's sake, this stupid argument again. It's fun for shit-flinging but not much else.

Here's the thing: RPGs are inherently a SOCIAL activity. They are performed by TALKING. Therefore, when you have a swordfight in the game, you just describe it. But when you roleplay a social encounter, the two mediums suddenly match up. Then you SHOULD roleplay the conversation. And yes if the character is particularly smart about their argument, you should give a small bonus. Why? Because they actually have a convincing argument, yes. If you want to say "well I just roll an Intelligence check to come up with a convincing argument" then that player needs to just fuck off, he might as well just roll Intelligence checks and have the DM control his character.

The biggest issue is you need to stop rolling for everything. A character is not always entitled to roll for a Diplomacy check. Your bard can't just look at someone with a smile and convince them to slaughter their entire family. That has happened literally 0 times in history and probably 0 times in published fiction of any sort. It's not even funny, it's just stupid.

This is why GURPS does it better, it doesn't have a fucking charisma stat nor does it have a skill you can max out to high heaven.

So GURPS isn't actually as flexible as people always claim it is? Good to know.

It has more to do with the fact that in D&D, you're actively punished for going outside of your niche while at the same time, only certain niches have the ability to affect the narrative outside of combat in a meaningful way.

In most stories and heroes in most classic stories are generally people who are strong enough to take out the baddies, clever enough to overcome any disadvantage thrown at them, and charismatic enough to convince sworn enemies into becoming loyal companions but in games like D&D, you have to choose between being a grunt whose only purpose is to be a bodyguard and an actual character whose actions will shape the success and failure of the campaign both in and out of combat.

Only if you play the shit editions.

More like GURPS is smart enough to leave well enough alone when it comes to what needs a mechanical abstraction or not.

In any edition of D&D, you're not going to find a mechanical benefit in playing a Fighter with high CHA over high STR or high CON.

And I'm sure such broad sweeping generalisations will absolutely apply to every single situation that can possibly be conceived of, with no need for context or consideration. You can be completely confident in making blanket assumptions with no second thoughts. Good job!

Both are pronounced /ɹəʊl/ in UK pronunciation and /ɹoʊl/ in US pronunciation. What accent do you have, that you pronounce them differently?

What are you even talking about? Your original claim was that GURPS isn't as flexible as people believe just because it doesn't try to abstract social encounters when players are already going to be communicating through the GM through roleplay. Now you're claiming that I'm making blanket assumptions and sweeping generalizations just because I said that not everything needs to be covered in the rules?

What's your point user?