General Roleplaying Discussion Thread (Deluxe)
Come here, talk about the games you're in, spitball about games you would like to be in or how you would run them, whatever.
To start with, I'm posting this thread because I saw some really good (if specialized--it's for if you're playing a grid-based system IRL and also are super cheap) advice here and had to share.
The plastic rings and lids from large mouth plastic milk and juice containers can represent spell effects or pools. A blue ring around a miniature could indicate a magical shield or protection spell. A red ring around a miniature could indicate some effect like stunned or bloodied. A miniature on top of a blue lid could indicate that the character is flying. Pill bottles can also be painted a matching abstract blue and used as columns to make a more three dimensional encounter and clearly determine line-of-sight and cover.
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I've found myself wondering if it's possible to run something entirely with "roll-playing" -- i.e. an entirely mechanically-driven experience.
While some people may find this boring, I feel that this does touch on a key piece of (at least what I conceive of as) the essence of the RPG -- that it enables us, as players, to do things through abstractions that we can't do in real life. And our characters represent someone different from us in their abilities, no matter how immersively we approach the experience.
Now, this is rather clear in the case of supernatural abilities, such as magic, and it could also be said of extraordinary abilities such as particularly honed physical combat skills. But what about other things such as perception, inference, and social ability? Those things often get represented as character stats too, but a lot of the time, I've seen GMs ask that their players, say, come up with a specific line of reasoning or argument, rather than simply saying "I try to convince this NPC to do something, and I'm going to roll a Diplomacy check to do so".
But what good is a high charisma score for your character if you can't roleplay properly? On the other hand, what if you can abstract that away and simply say that your character attempts to make a case for something, and does so very convincingly even if you can't figure out how to word it yourself? Why can't you do that, when you can say that you perform sick moves skewering an enemy many times in a round with a rapier even if you don't know how to use a rapier?
Such an approach might horrify people who see tabletop RPGs as ways to give structure to their imaginations, since they'd naturally be the people who would be able to "fill in the gaps" in their understanding of the setting more readily, as let's be honest, good role-playing is a skill that requires a good bit of imaginativeness in filling in the details of a setting in with one's imagination. But -- especially from the perspective of someone who sucks at RPing, and often finds oneself kinda madly thinking of all the possibilities and uncertainties when confronted with a fictional situation but unable to speak honestly about what one's character would do in that situation, I think it could be interesting to see the mechanics as tools, and a campaign scenario as a problem to be solved using those tools, because that's how I often find myself thinking -- as opposed to having to basically co-write the setting.
I can understand that people with brilliant imaginations would feel that this mechanics-based "roll-playing" is boring, as it doesn't give them the chance to engage their imaginative fancy, but I think there is are justifications, both in the essence of an RPG as a tool of abstraction and in the consideration of players who may be better at deduction than flights of fancy, for example.