Whenever I hear about D&D more often than not it seems like people go to great lengths to stay in character and roleplay
This is great and makes for some very interesting stories but I tend to find myself more interested in just going on an adventure with a group of friends, solve a few puzzles win a few fights, complete a few quests etc
I’m also a big fan of character optimisation and mechanics but get the feeling that can be frowned upon by much of the community
Difficult to describe what I mean here but as an example in baldur’s gate I barely roleplay at all, my character has no personality except for the fact they make the decisions I would make, but I find that more fun, not having to worry about what my character would do and just making the decision I want to make
I realise not having a fleshed out character in D&D detracts from the immersiveness of the story because the DM can’t weave your character into the story but at least at the moment that doesn’t sound too bad to me.
Just wondering if there are people out there who run lighter roleplay campaigns
I would argue that most D&D games are roleplay light - it’s MUCH easier to just run a mechanical game than one with lots of roleplay.
I can give you session after session of dungeon crawling, or low level story stuff, but trying to put together a campaign with good (consistent) characters with motivations and personalities is incredibly difficult.
The reason you hear about all the roleplay heavy ones (critical role etc, or even stories from other people’s campaigns) is because they stand out as being special, exceptionally well done games.
You might be interested in Pathfinder Society.
Basically they’re Pathfinder pickup games with a pre-approved set of rules run at game stores and conventions. The games tend to be focused almost exclusively on mechanics and puzzles with almost no role play.
It’s not that I don’t want roleplay, I’m not sure if I’ve figured it out in my own mind yet in all honesty
Just want the roleplay not be taken too seriously if that makes any sense, characters don’t need to be too deep, breaking character for a joke isn’t frowned upon etc
I guess what I’m really describing here is just a lightheaded campaign here aren’t I
I have played different tabletop role playing games on and off for a few decades with dozens of people and only a few tried to stay in character beyond basic consistency with a character’s choices. One or two tried a voice or way of speaking, and barely kept it consistent.
A lot of people just played themselves even if they said they were going to play a certain character concept.
Its all up to the group. Most groups I have been in did not have any particular requirements. Some folks roleplayed more than others. If a group is big on roleplaying there are plenty of ways of making a character that just does not interact much. From the silent types who just take action to dumb brutes who don’t get all this talky talk. Honestly I find most folks don’t rp all that much. If you do play by discord its so hard to keep momentum going that often rp is a bit limited. people can talk your ear off but typing your eyes out is much harder.
You may also want to consider other game systems that have much less emphasis on role playing and are primarily strategy-based, such as Battletech.
There’s always been the balance between war gamers and role players (not limited to DnD). War gaming can be fun, but I don’t think DnD is especially geared toward it. Likewise, role playing is nice, but those hardcore no-meta (at all, there is no way to have a laugh ooc) aren’t my thing either.
When starting a new campaign, I like to ask whether the players prefer role-playing or roll-playing. This also serves as a nice ice breaker for discussing meta.
If you have problems finding a proper DnD group with little role playing, you might want to check out other game systems which focus less on it. Warhammer (including the Pen and Paper systems) seems to focus more on the numbers and strategy aspect.
Not that you can’t roll-play in DnD, you just need to find the right group and campaign. A friend of mine once made a campaign where we started in the room we were currently sitting in, but with the stats on our papers, where our world was being invaded by demons. So it’s definite possible to be yourself.
War gaming can be fun, but I don’t think DnD is especially geared toward it
Isn’t like 90% of the rules for DnD just rules for combat and treasure? Literally every single class in DnD is a combat class. And when people talk about their DnD characters they say “I played this Dragonborn Cleric…” or “Multiclassed Tiefling Mage/Rouge” and not “I played this Dwarf that had really good proficiency in Persuasion and ‘Use Rope’”. [Btw is ‘Use Rope’ still a skill in newer DnD editions?].
DnD started as a war game
Btw is ‘Use Rope’ still a skill in newer DnD editions?
No it’s not. :)
Yeah I was going to say: D&D is a lot more geared towards numbers and combat encounters than many other TTRPG systems. My main issue is actually finding players who want to engage in the co-creation of story rather than combat optimisation (not that they preclude each other, but oftentimes if you’ve built your character as a hammer, everything can start to look like a nail).
The current DnD system does definitely have a combat system and enough rules to get you started, though it’s way less rule-heavy than most Warhammer, Shadowrunner, and even previous DnD PnP systems I’ve played. It feels more like starting guidelines than a proper system.
I’ve considered playing stars without numbers and Fate Core, which should apparently be a very rule-light PnP system, though haven’t gotten around to them yet.
The strategic min-maxxer is a vital part of any dnd ecosystem. While not as fun as the Chaos Monkey or as cute as the Enthusiastic Noob, the strategy focused Min-Maxxer remains essential to many parties, especially if there is an Item Hoarder in the group.
Surely we all have a responsibility to care for our parties. The future balanced gaming and indeed, all life in Faerûn, now depends on us.
This is David Attenkokra, thank you for watching Forgotten Planet.
I suppose as long as you’re not a dick about it minmaxing can be ok?
You have given me hope sir attenkokra
So, all jokes aside, I’ll share some things with you that I’ve learned. Some from experience, most from Matt Colville’s Running the Game series.
Matt describes (here) two major archetypes, and then several variations on those:
The Player: they are excited to explore the world and engage with the GM, they want to do Stuff
The Audience: they are perfectly happy watching the story unfold. They’ll engage in combat or conversation when required, but really enjoy just…watching.
And here’s the key point. Both are okay. It is okay to engage with the game in a way that makes you happy. Provided you allow everyone else to engage in the way that makes them happy. But when you force others to play your way, you become another archetype: The Wang Rod
I think you’ll find the real key to enjoyable gameplay is to clearly and openly communicate what you enjoy about the game. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with liking character optimization, or wanting to jump straight to the action! Be open about what you enjoy, and find out what your fellow players enjoy. Learning to work to the strengths of your fellow players is super gratifying. And don’t forget your GM, they need to know what you enjoy so that they can balance gameplay for everyone.
My first time running a game i tried to be Matt Mercer, and i tried to get the party to engage like Critical Role. I didn’t understand, well, a lot of things. Once I realized I had a Power Gamer, a Comedian, a Taskmaster, and two Audience Members, the game got a LOT more enjoyable. For everyone. I dropped clues for the Taskmaster. I gave the Power Gamer opportunities to use their optimized build. I set up the Comedian with perfect opportunities to drop “that’s what she said” on the Boss. And most importantly, I dropped backstory on the Audience without forcing them to role play just to get the story. I told them how their character felt b/c that’s what they wanted!
Do yourself a favor. Go watch that Coleville video. It’s geared for GMs, but it has gems for everyone. And who knows? Maybe you’ll find you like being behind the screen as well.
This is David Attenkokra, thank you for watching Forgotten Planet.
should be it’s own youtube channel
Maybe Ze Frank has a brother
D&D 4e was designed for you! It did away with most RP mechanics and focused heavy on dungeon crawling and perfecting character stats.
Sure! I’ve run plenty of them over the years. It’s good fun.
It can be hard to get a group together that all have the same preferences, but you’d be surprised how many people want at least an occasional “hack n slash” session, even if they don’t want it every session.
I gotta say that I tend to prefer the more role play than roll play most of the time, even as forever DM. But I still enjoy just breaking open a random encounter chart and going ham, or pulling out my heroquest stuff for a more board game one-off session.
This is reassuring to hear
Don’t get me wrong I like a good story and I’m happy to roleplay as if I were in that situation and not metagame, I just worry sometimes that people seem to take roleplay very seriously and that scares me off a little not really wanting to or being able to keep up
Oh absolutely! I’ve heard the term “power gamer” used to describe people who love building the perfect, 100% optimal character that is multiclassed just so with such and such items, who can do X amount of damage per round, and so on. I think some people use that as a derogatory term but I don’t see it that way. It’s just how some people like to play, just as some people like to play characters who are this race with this color hair and an elaborate backstory, stats be damned.
There are absolutely people out there like what you’re asking for. Lots of combat, exploration, puzzles, and roleplay is restricted to basic narration (“my character asks where the bad guy is” “ok, roll persuasion”). They have a presence online as well, for example r/3d6 on Reddit, but it’s a bit smaller/less vocal than the RP folks I think.
It’s not even about building the perfect character, just seems like a waste of a mechanic to intentionally not make your character as strong as you can.
Think it would also be cool to do a normal campaign with roleplay and all that’s just all power builds and the DM balances it accordingly
At my table, we have high role play but we are not concerned about breaking character. Often the best humor is to be had when you mix incompatible states and simply roll with it.
I currently DM a game (going on a couple of years now) where most of the story is developed through encounters and travel time. It’s just the kind of game my players like at this point as it’s a much needed break from everyday life. The characters do get to explore their backstories through stuff that happens and people they meet though.
That’s my group’s Sunday nights. Sprinkle in joke characters or based off characters from shows or movies here and there, and that’s how we’ve been playing together for 8y or so
Why play pen-and-paper games rather than computer games if you’re more interested in combat rather than roleplaying? Pen-and-paper combat is tedious and feels like work when compared to computer-game combat. I see it as a necessary evil in a roleplaying campaign; I’m not sure why someone would want it for its own sake when computer games exist.
(Edit: just to be clear, I’m not trying to tell other people what they’re allowed to like. I love character optimization myself - I’m the kind of guy who used to be obsessed with planning my Path of Exile skill tree. I just don’t understand why some people do that sort of gaming the old-fashioned way when they could do it on a computer.)
Because I do want some element of roleplay, I’m not solely interested in the combat, but my ideal campaign is one where I’m not really changing my personality much or at all to play a character
I think you can get a lot more entertaining stories when they’re spontaneous like D&D is, games are fun but they very much don’t feel alive in the way D&D does
I see… I think my confusion comes from the fact that I consider what you’re doing to be roleplaying too. “My character is pretty much me except that he’s also a barbarian warrior” is IMO perfectly legitimate as a character background and I wouldn’t call it “lower roleplay focused” as long as you’re still interested in actually engaging with the fantasy world and telling a story.
Have you considered trying out some of the older editions? AD&D (1st edition) tends to be less focused on roleplay and more about cooperative problem solving and dungeon delving. Of course it comes down to your DM and how they run their game. If you want I can post a link to a public discord and you can see for yourself.
Play Shadowdark. It is a lot more fun than 5e.
