It's not my fault, I am just doing what the dice say my character would do!

[Cluedrew]

The rules won't have the granularity to award really deep RP. They will forbid / punish / withhold rewards from people who go beyond what the game rewards. They also encourage you to act out of character to get the rewards, and stunt character growth.

Starting with "the rules will not do a good job" is a dangerous premise. Still I can't really fault you with that, considering the success rate. D&D is a pretty good example of how to NOT do a lot of these sorts of things.

Unless we are just discussing detail and not quality. To which I reply, would combat crafting be more fun if instead of needing a set of tools and some wood to make a small boat, you needed prepared lumber, nails, a hammer for driving nails, a mallet for knocking the lumber into place and the tar mixture used to seal cracks between boards in the hull? And this doesn't even have a sail. Also I am not a shipwright and have no idea of the real life accuracy of what I just said.

Honestly, I'm having a hard time seeing this as an obstacle, per se. Making a deliberate choice to change who you are as a person or to overcome your addictions is hard.

Perhaps something like this should actually be implemented as a character flaw, rather than just a trait you get a bonus every time you play to it. In the later case I imagine you could have an interesting ark that ends with alcoholic getting crossed off the character sheet.

[Talakeal]

Starting with "the rules will not do a good job" is a dangerous premise. Still I can't really fault you with that, considering the success rate. D&D is a pretty good example of how to NOT do a lot of these sorts of things.

Unless we are just discussing detail and not quality. To which I reply, would combat crafting be more fun if instead of needing a set of tools and some wood to make a small boat, you needed prepared lumber, nails, a hammer for driving nails, a mallet for knocking the lumber into place and the tar mixture used to seal cracks between boards in the hull? And this doesn't even have a sail. Also I am not a shipwright and have no idea of the real life accuracy of what I just said.

Perhaps something like this should actually be implemented as a character flaw, rather than just a trait you get a bonus every time you play to it. In the later case I imagine you could have an interesting ark that ends with alcoholic getting crossed off the character sheet.

More like fleshed out rules for RP would be "too complex" rather than bad.

The ship builder analogy is a good one, but fails on three points:

1: Most characters will not be ship builders, in fact it won't even come up in the vast majority of games. All characters will have a personality. If we are playing a game where every character were expected to be a ship builder I would expect complex (or at least detailed) rules for ship building.
2: The human psyche is orders of magnitude more complex than the most complex ship ever built.
3: Some games (notably 4E) actually have left crafting totally free form and in the hands of the players.

[Floret]

The rules won't have the granularity to award really deep RP. They will forbid / punish / withhold rewards from people who go beyond what the game rewards. They also encourage you to act out of character to get the rewards, and stunt character growth.

For example, if my character trait is "alcoholic" most games will reward me every time I get drunk or go out of my way to get booze. But they will actively punish me (or at the very least withhold rewards) if my character works to overcome their addiction, goes out of their way to avoid alcohol entirely (because they know they can't stop at just one drink), or even play a long con where they avoid drinking now so that they can get more alcohol in the future.

Heck, just look at the 3.5 RAW for playing a paladin. Going by the book really limits your options; you have to act like a ridiculous caricature in certain situations and the rules like to provide a clear black and white answer to what could be an interesting moral dilemma with no clear right answer.

By not specifically rewarding the granularity, they are not constructing a ceiling, they are failing to put the floor on the level of "Roleplaying"(Roleacting) you deem perfect for you.
And, yes, the thing you describe would fail to reward the play you deem perfect - but: If you want to play what you describe, using the character trait "alcoholic", if the system has that close a definition of what constitutes "roleplaying an alcoholic" was probably a non-ideal choice on your part. Something like "Repentant alcoholic" or "dry alcoholic" might fit the bill far, far better. Sure, the system needs to have some free-form or at least consider such things in its list of options, but I am arguing with what is possible, and not with any specific system.

Also: I never said that it was impossible to build a ceiling, just that it was not a necessary follow-up of having a floor. And I am still not convinced of THAT assertion.

I don't know about Quertus, but in my experience LARPING and free form gaming are the opposite of what I consider RPing. When I RP I try and get into the head of someone I am not, while in a LARP I am always going to be bound by my own physical limitations, and it is really hard for anyone to picture my character as anyone but "me".

Also, working within the characters limits are essential, something that can't really be done in free-form or rules-less games unless the group is incredibly in-sync.

How does LARPING handle the exploration elements? The fantastic monsters, the epic vistas, and strange and alien magic?

I mean, sure, you are bound by your physical limitations somewhat. I will never be able to play a dwarf. Or whatever else of the "small races" that are so very abundant. But with makeup, applications, wigs, contact lenses and similar things, and even just with very clever usage of how your clothes are sewn and body posture, you can extend that range quite a bit. (Someone once wondered how I had grown 10cm since play ended. I obviously didn't, I just changed my default posture.)
And... that is a weird shortcoming. I had no problems seing other people's characters as distinct from them, nor they my character as distinct from me. I don't think that that is actually much more likely in LARP as it is in TRPGs, at least in LARP you had some optical help for imagining the character. (Distinguishing "no, the person behind the character does not actually hold these terrible views", for example, is perfectly common.) I mean, sure, your characters tend to look more similar to you than they do in TRPGs, but I don't think that fact actually constitutes much of an argument. People have doppelgangers IRL as well.

How is working within character limits impossible in free-form or rule-less games? (Technically, by "rule-less" I mean following "The two rules": 1) if someone plays at you, show SOME reaction; 2) If playing at someone, don't expect a specific reaction.) You set your character limitations, and act within them. The limitations of the character come from you playing them and wanting them more than being enforced by outside rules, but exploiting those is, funnily enough, while easy, not necessarily fun: You can think your character up to be the most powerful dude ever, but if everyone else reacts to your blows as if they were normal blows, because they just don't believe what you did merited more reaction than that, your blows are functionally normal blows, no matter how powerful you want your character to be.
Free-form/rule-less LARP can be insanely frustrating for powergamers, as they don't actually weild any measurable "power" that they can guaranteedly influence others with.

As for the last question... don't know how that relates to the rest of the argument but (With examples of what I experienced already, keep in mind, Larp can vary wildly, and German Larp is somewhat different from American afaik): Fantastic monsters are a combination of makeup, animatronics and special effects (Buffed up Chaos warriors coming out of (fog machine) fog; Golem Suits...); epic vistas a matter of choosing the appropriate location (Looking down through the forested valleys from the tower of an old castle); Magic a matter of effects (well-hidden microphone and speakers on a mage for thundering voice, a fireball-shooter hidden on the wrist shooting a fireball out in the sky to threaten back the bandits). All doable, with certain planning and willingness to invest time, effort and money.

[Segev]

I just don't see them as the same:

1) Things like motivation and personality and mental processes and "psyche" / "soul" are internal to the character, whereas combat and even social interaction are external to the character.

2) Most of us can't safely engage in actual lethal combat or even a close approximation thereof, as even most gamers lack the skill and training to even remotely work out combat on an actual physical level... most gamers frankly lack the knowledge to work out combat on the imaginary level, especially with the way fiction typically misrepresents combat.

Most of us can't actually talk a guard into betraying his post or a king into heeding our advice on dealing with foreign threats, either. The idea that physical capability is "external" but social and intellectual ability is "internal" is a false dichotomy. Anything which changes the world around you or enables you to enact such changes is equally "external" and dependent on the actor's ability to successfully engage such action.

Mechanics let you determine said capabilities objectively, without resorting to cops and robbers style declarations nor relying on imperfect shared understanding of the scene to help you decide if you and the other players are playing fairly or god-moding past all obstacles. Or creating problems for bad reasons ("I got convinced to turn on you. I'm just playing my character!")

[Cluedrew]

More like fleshed out rules for RP would be "too complex" rather than bad.

I suppose... but a game that is too complex would not as good as one that had just the right amount of complexity would it not? (Assuming everything else is equal.)

Also I don't really understand the three failures of the ship builder analogy. I don't think they effect/go against my main point which I will try stating directly: Representing the full complexities of a thing in real life can be unnecessary in a game and at times harmful to the game/system.

Following Segev: Also muscle memory comes from our brains, as do our social skills. (Or lack there of.) And so a lot of physical abilities are also very internal as well. Then again, all mussels are internal to our body.

[Quertus]

You might not be wrong in defining it that way, but: That is, imho, a terrible way to design definitions. You define the sort of role-playing you like, and then turn around and say "The rest isn't roleplaying".

Ok, lemme stop you right there. Since I doubtless wasn't clear on this point, this isn't the way I chose to define the word. This is the way I do define the word, because this is the way it has been defined to me since back before the internet and Google became the answer to everything.

This definition happens to have value to me, because it roughly matches something I like; trying to change that definition to make it overly inclusive waters down the meaning of the word, making it no longer have value to me.

So, yes, in the interests of communication, I defend my definition... Unless, of course, I'm demonstrably wrong.

Thus, if, as you say, I'm not wrong... well, actually, either way, I'd recommend the invention of new words to differentiate my narrow definition from your broad one.

(I am pretty sure you mean the same thing rulebooks talk about when they suggest giving out extra XP for "Good Roleplaying". Which, at least in those vague terms, is a mechanic I am highly against, but digressing...)

To be honest, I don't have a perfect replacement term myself. Maybe something like Character-acting. Or Role-acting. Now just hope it catches on

Depends on the system (many conflate role-playing with acting, for example), but, yes, that's the right general idea for what I mean.

Those replacement terms sound like they have too much "acting" to me.

Uhm... how does this provide a ceiling?

For there to actually be a ceiling, there has to be some incentive to stay below a certain level, or punishment for crossing over it.

One must break immersion, and break out of character, often enough and long enough to push the button once per session in order to receive cheese. Which, granted, can be zero times in a given session.

Not a terribly low ceiling, but a ceiling nonetheless.

Problem is: Everyone else had to invest hard currency (XP, or whatever the system calls it) into the things their character is good at, but they are not.
But Mike now is excempt. And at that point, if we act like Mike is supposed to be convincing, but not rolling dice for it because the mechanics aren't there: How do we differenciate between someone who is bad at being convincing and has a character that is convincing, and someone who is bad at being convincing and playing a character that is also bad at convincing? With your method, the second will suddenly be convincing as well. And nuances of convincing (Being able to convince the farmer, but not the hardened veteran, the king, but not his advisor, etc.) kinda... fly out the window if you just act, without any mechanical involvement to judge. Since the real-world representation is no longer in any way accurate.
(Also, if, at the table, the GM literally went ahead and said "this is a scary dragon, act like it", I would have exactly the same problem. Unless he made me roll against a Fear-Effect of the creature, and I failed that. THEN I would go ahead and be scared - and not just because someone said so, but because while comparing the skills of our characters (The dragon being one in this case) the GM/dragon came out on top. The same thing applies for me in Social situations. If there is a win, whether by actually being convincing IRL (Which I do in TRPGs only give bonuses for, and still expect a roll, tbh, to prevent the problem of "wait, this is legitimate character power without investment") or by the dice falling that way - great! That feels like a win. But if not... that does, at least for me, ring very hollow. We can't talk our way through a fight by "acting like Martin is a great fighter and will just deal with the goblins". No, we either (Reserved pretty much for Larping) have a "real" fight, or we roll the dice. So why should social situations/being convinced be any different? As your example is ALSO equivalating stuff inside and outside the social arena )

Hmmm... Let's start with the Dragon. The dragon is my running example for actors in a play, not for players in an RPG. The director is informing the actors who are asking "what's my motivation?" that "that cardboard prop represents a very scary dragon".

However, I did run into exactly the scenario you describe. A GM was describing this crazy amalgam creature, and I had my character burst out laughing at it. The GM was upset, and pointed out that this creature was specifically engineered in the setting to draw upon the worst of Man's fears, and was supposed to be terrifying, not comical. Shrug if you say so. So I had my character's laugh take on a slightly unhinged, manic tone. I still thought the creature was a joke, but roleplayed my character to be affected by how "scary" the creature was.

Now, your comments about Mike confuse me, as they're about the opposite of what I'd expect. ... Hmmm... Unlike in previous posts, I suppose I left out a few details. The theory here is that the group knows how convincing Mike's character is supposed to be, and probably just how convincing Mike usually is (or isn't). And respond accordingly, whether or not the system has any corresponding mechanics.

Just like when the "scary dragon" is a cardboard prop, and the "beautiful princess" is being played by a guy.

You actually described yourself doing this with Quertus, your own character, earlier. You described having the mechanical/metagame motivation of not wanting to have him outshine everyone else by virtue of being a wizard. And so he "holds the idiot ball" during combat. I'm sure you gave him the personality for that, too.
You made a mechanical decision, and applied a fictional reason to it.
Author Stance.
So unless you want to strip yourself of being a roleplayer, Author Stance is a perfectly valid way to roleplay a character. And most will likely never notice if you do it.

Bonus points for paying attention, and making an example really relevant to me.

Yes, I absolutely do metagame. I not only recognize this fact, I also recognize that one of my flaws as a gamer is that I do not do so as much as I probably should.

But that in no way makes me believe that Metagaming is or should be called role-playing.

It doesn't matter to your point, but just for the record, Quertus didn't hold the idiot ball because of game balance, Quertus held the idiot ball because of Quertus. That's the character I wanted to run: the Bilbo Baggins of the mage world, an Academia Mage unhappily thrust into a deadly world.

Hmmm, this is harder to say than I thought. The... particular instantiation of "Academia Mage" that is Quertus, that has his particular background, training, personality, etc, happens to also be abysmal at the tactical aspects of combat, as opposed to just being unhappy about being involved in combat in the first place.

Now, as it so happens, this particular personality is not only fun for me to roleplay, but it also happens to be very advantageous for game balance purposes. If I had tried to run Quertus, say, at Tippy's table, I'd probably have been forced to create a new character / run someone else.

But, where I've played Quertus, there has been Pavlovian reinforcement, both from my enjoyment playing him, and in others accepting a tier 1 who does not overshadow them, for me to make his behavior continue. And nothing, IC or OOC, to make him let go of the idiot ball in combat.

Warrior, Noun:
a man engaged or experienced in warfare; broadly : a person engaged in some struggle or conflict

Lemme know when your definition gets into the dictionary on that one. Because until then, the answer is YES.

The second definition of roleplaying if you google it is "participating in a roleplaying game."
So... there's precedent for your definition not being the generally accepted one, at least.

So, assuming that my definition of role-playing is one of the Google definitions, perhaps even the first, then I'm not completely wrong to define it as I do.

However, it sounds like I am wrong to consider broader definitions of warrior or role-playing to be wrong. Fair enough. And terribly unfortunate, from a communication standpoint - like how "man" can mean "human" or the subset of that species that has 2 "X" chromosomes, or... however the rainbow community defines it.

So, seemingly, "role-playing" can mean anything done in an RPG, or the subset of that which involves making choices for the character as the character, the latter of which is one of the things I value when playing RPGs. I have a difficult time seeing the value in saying that one plays RPGs to do RPG things, so one would hope that my meaning would still be obvious...

Of course not. Because that's pants-on-head logic and assumes no one but programmers eat lunch while at tables occupied by Mr. Quertus. However, they could be considered Lunch-eaters.

I do not require everyone who plays D&D with me to roleplay. I mean, sure, I like fellow roleplayers, but if you sit down to D&D as a pure war gamer, here to play undead Battletech, that's fine with me, too. Not everyone who games with "Quertus" is a Roleplayer.

We signal that Mike'w character is convincing through mechanics that he invests points in. Because, as Floret brilliantly put it, otherwise he gets something for nothing. And this all collapses once he's interacting with NPCs.
You need rules.

Ok, I'm a big fan of rules (for most parts of most games, at least), but there are freeform RPGs with no rules. And in those, my system of role-playing will continue to work just fine.

There are also systems, like, say D&D 3.x, that allow characters to spend resources on social skills / abilities / stats... but then do not allow them to utilize said skills / abilities / stats on other PCs. IMO, good role-playing almost demands that the rules be supplemented with something... and "role-playing", as I define it, seems to fit the bill nicely.

It will always be patronizing to be the only guy who gets to skip convincing everyone else because they have to be convinced by you X times per session.

Victories you didn't roll for and were softballed to make you happy will always be hollow.

I've been on Mike's end of the gaming table a couple times. I can confirm from personal experience that it is both patronizing and hollow, and you are better off just letting mike abstract the persuasion.

And you think I haven't? I'm flattered.

I know, it's hard to imagine, but I haven't always been this irresistible charismatic engine of raw charisma. I, too, have known the pain of being unable to convince others. And I can confirm from personal experience that there do exist ways of making charismatic characters act in play as more charismatic than their players that doesn't come off as patronizing and hollow.

[Talakeal]

Also I don't really understand the three failures of the ship builder analogy. I don't think they effect/go against my main point which I will try stating directly: Representing the full complexities of a thing in real life can be unnecessary in a game and at times harmful to the game/system.[/COLOR]

Maybe I misunderstood you then.

I thought you were saying something along the lines of "If you can reduce something as complex as shipbuilding down to something as simple as rolling a craft skill check, surely you could find a similarly simplified mechanic to determine player behavior."

By not specifically rewarding the granularity, they are not constructing a ceiling, they are failing to put the floor on the level of "Roleplaying"(Roleacting) you deem perfect for you.
And, yes, the thing you describe would fail to reward the play you deem perfect - but: If you want to play what you describe, using the character trait "alcoholic", if the system has that close a definition of what constitutes "roleplaying an alcoholic" was probably a non-ideal choice on your part. Something like "Repentant alcoholic" or "dry alcoholic" might fit the bill far, far better. Sure, the system needs to have some free-form or at least consider such things in its list of options, but I am arguing with what is possible, and not with any specific system.

Also: I never said that it was impossible to build a ceiling, just that it was not a necessary follow-up of having a floor. And I am still not convinced of THAT assertion. .

No, just no. The perfect level of a floor for me is none at all. I am totally fine if someone wants to play "Mike the fighter" who has the personality of a slab of concrete and only lives to kills monsters and take their stuff. I would never play such a character, and if I was in the group with them I would do my best to engage them and draw them out of their shell, but I would never begrudge them their right to RP (or not RP as the case may be) what I consider to be a shallow character.

Now, as for defining a ceiling, we need to actually figure out what system we are talking about. Does the game punish you for failing to RP? Does it reward you for good RP? Does it flat out forbid you to act in a way contrary to your predefined nature? Do the dice dictate your options? What for do the punishment / rewards take? Are they something minor and temporary like a +2 to your next dice roll, or something that will permanently cripple your character like earning no XP for the session?

If the reward is big enough to matter to encourage RP (raising the floor) then it is also going to discourage behavior which the system does not see as RP (thus also lowering the ceiling).

Say for example my character has a code of honor to never harm a woman. To "raise the floor" the system would reward me for protecting women and / or punish me for harming them. But, say part of my character backstory is that when I was a small child I was physically abused by one of my aunts, and as a result when we are fighting a bandit queen who is the spitting image of my aunt I ignore my code of honor and take out my repressed childhood trauma on her, beating her to within a half inch of her life. Now, this is in character behavior that I would certainly consider roleplaying, but at this point most system would then either punish me or withhold my reward, thus I have to choose between doing what I think my character would do and what the system rewards. IF the punishment / reward system motivates me enough to "raise the floor" it will also, in this case, motivate me enough to ignore RP in favor of the rewards, thereby "lowering the ceiling".

Earlier in the thread someone sarcastically used the example of "Always protects young beautiful redheads in the hours between 7 and 11, unless they are taller than 5ft 6" as something that is ok for a character to do but not something the system should reward, but if you actually wanted a character with anywhere near the depth that I am comfortable RPing at (and I am by no means claiming to be the worlds best or deepest RPer) then I would need dozens of pages of such stipulations, more than I would ever be able to actually sit down and write out, let alone get anyone else in the game interested in reading.

Free-form/rule-less LARP can be insanely frustrating for powergamers, as they don't actually weild any measurable "power" that they can guaranteedly influence others with.

This is kind of a loaded statement, don't you think? Although I do actually share this sentiment, I would have just phrased it as:

"Free-form/rule-less LARP can be insanely frustrating for people who like to be immersed in a fictional world because their characters don't actually have any defined capabilities and thus cannot interact with the setting in any predictable manner."

As for the last question... don't know how that relates to the rest of the argument but (With examples of what I experienced already, keep in mind, Larp can vary wildly, and German Larp is somewhat different from American afaik): Fantastic monsters are a combination of makeup, animatronics and special effects (Buffed up Chaos warriors coming out of (fog machine) fog; Golem Suits...); epic vistas a matter of choosing the appropriate location (Looking down through the forested valleys from the tower of an old castle); Magic a matter of effects (well-hidden microphone and speakers on a mage for thundering voice, a fireball-shooter hidden on the wrist shooting a fireball out in the sky to threaten back the bandits). All doable, with certain planning and willingness to invest time, effort and money.

I actually cannot fathom this. This is so far outside of my realm of experience that I am not sure I can even have a meaningful argument about it. That style of gaming must be totally alien to me and what you get out of gaming must be totally different than what I get out of gaming.

I will say that I don't think that even if I had all the time and money in the world I could pull of even a tenth of the scenarios I have ran / played in over the years.

I mean, sure, you are bound by your physical limitations somewhat. I will never be able to play a dwarf. Or whatever else of the "small races" that are so very abundant. But with makeup, applications, wigs, contact lenses and similar things, and even just with very clever usage of how your clothes are sewn and body posture, you can extend that range quite a bit. (Someone once wondered how I had grown 10cm since play ended. I obviously didn't, I just changed my default posture.)
And... that is a weird shortcoming. I had no problems seing other people's characters as distinct from them, nor they my character as distinct from me. I don't think that that is actually much more likely in LARP as it is in TRPGs, at least in LARP you had some optical help for imagining the character. (Distinguishing "no, the person behind the character does not actually hold these terrible views", for example, is perfectly common.) I mean, sure, your characters tend to look more similar to you than they do in TRPGs, but I don't think that fact actually constitutes much of an argument. People have doppelgangers IRL as well.

Ok, so the character I have been playing and thoroughly enjoying for the last three years:

Is a different gender than myself.
Is a different ethnicity than myself.
Is four inches taller than I am.
Is a hundred pounds lighter than I am.
Is fifteen years younger than I am.
Has a different voice range and accent than I do.
Has a different hair style and color than I do. As well as a different eye and skin color.
Has a different fashion sense than I do.
Has significantly different facial features and body type than I do.
Is in significantly better shape than I am even discounting my bad back and asthma.
Is a talented gymnast and fencer while I am so clumsy I literally have trouble walking and chewing at the same time sometimes.
Is a trained surgeon while I am barely competent to put on a Band-Aid.

If I even tried to LARP this character I would look ridiculous and no one would be able to see past it or take anything I did seriously. Plus I would have to cut off most of my hair and shave my beard, which is a lot to ask out of a game. I would also not enjoy the game, and I would literally kill myself if I seriously tried for some reason, as she is the type who never gives up and, as I said above, is in significantly better shape than I am. Plus, I literally can't do the things she does, and am not sure why LARPing would be any more immersive than table top if I have to constantly "play pretend"; for example rolling a dice to perform surgery is, in my mind, no more or less immersive than simply kneeling over someone and waving my hands while wiping away fresh blood.


And yeah, I could make a character who didn't have any of those features that would be easier to LARP. But then we have made the problem worse rather than better; I want to play the character I want to play and the rules of the game are fighting against me.

[Cluedrew]

Yes, I absolutely do metagame. I not only recognize this fact, I also recognize that one of my flaws as a gamer is that I do not do so as much as I probably should.

Metagaming has so many negative connotations that it is surprising to here anyone say they don't metagame enough.

Maybe I misunderstood you then.

I thought you were saying something along the lines of "If you can reduce something as complex as shipbuilding down to something as simple as rolling a craft skill check, surely you could find a similarly simplified mechanic to determine player behavior."

What we have here is a breakdown in communication. Anything to say about the new clearer version?

I suppose you could boil it down you didn't want to bother with characterization as an important part of the game. But I'm not so interested in that game, at least not as an role-playing game.

[Quertus]

Metagaming has so many negative connotations that it is surprising to here anyone say they don't metagame enough.

Said negative connotations are exactly the reason I don't metagame as much as I should. That never stopped me from rules lawyering, because I immediately saw how valuable playing by the rules was, but it was not as immediately obvious to me how important doing things for reasons other than "that's what the character would do" was. I'm still learning to overcome the stigma of Metagaming.

[Hawkstar]

Metagaming has so many negative connotations that it is surprising to here anyone say they don't metagame enough.

And doing what your character would do has so many negative connotations I'm surprised anyone bothers roleplaying. Between these, I'm shocked this hobby even exists.

Snark aside - So many people here cling to The Giant's 'Decide to (re)Act Differently" quote that they seem to ignore the immediately prior one, which outright encourages the "But it's what my character would do!" behavior - His Samurai decided to throw caution to the wind, running into trap after trap after trap. At that table, that could easily be seen as "Jackass Behavior" because it clashes with the party's goal to take it safer, and puts a strain on resources (Either healing, or leaving the party down a man when they're dead). A lot of players are either insecure enough to never risk the "Throw caution to the wind" part to play their character in the manner that they actually want to, or are in a group that's hostile to doing such.

If you have a problem with "But that's what my character would do", it means you have a problem with roleplaying. Maybe the problem is in the character made. Maybe the problem is the player is being disingenuous, and using it as an excuse to be a jackass when it ISN'T what his character would actually do. But most of the time, at least in my personal experience (And is pointed out in that article), it's something the character really would do based on their values and ethics. If the problem is the character is disruptive, that could very well be a problem during Character Creation - but it may not be apparent if there aren't personality-defining mechanics in place.

[Cluedrew]

To Hawkstar: I think the reason is thus: Playing your character is not the main goal, having fun it. But people forget that in an explicate sense and mess up having fun, or letting the group have fun, they try to use "but it is what my character would do" (that is role-playing) to justify making things un-fun. The rest of the time, when everyone is having fun, no one has to justify playing their character.

[Max_Killjoy]

To address an earlier response I'm not finding at the moment.


As a GM...

If a player said "my character is paranoid", as part of a larger description of the character, I'd be OK with that.

If a player said "my character is The Paranoid One", and was clearly invoking a cardboard trope, there would be a discussion about it.


There's a difference between an adjective, and an archetype. Adjectives are good, archetypes are trash.

[ComradeBear]

Bonus points for paying attention, and making an example really relevant to me.

Yes, I absolutely do metagame. I not only recognize this fact, I also recognize that one of my flaws as a gamer is that I do not do so as much as I probably should.

But that in no way makes me believe that Metagaming is or should be called role-playing.

I'm gonna just lump this with the point below because they're the same general idea.

So, assuming that my definition of role-playing is one of the Google definitions, perhaps even the first, then I'm not completely wrong to define it as I do.

However, it sounds like I am wrong to consider broader definitions of warrior or role-playing to be wrong. Fair enough. And terribly unfortunate, from a communication standpoint - like how "man" can mean "human" or the subset of that species that has 2 "X" chromosomes, or... however the rainbow community defines it.

So, seemingly, "role-playing" can mean anything done in an RPG, or the subset of that which involves making choices for the character as the character, the latter of which is one of the things I value when playing RPGs. I have a difficult time seeing the value in saying that one plays RPGs to do RPG things, so one would hope that my meaning would still be obvious...

There's multiple reasons why the Stances were postulated. And I'm sure something similar to your grief over the finite number of words in the English Language and existence of multiple definitions per word instead of one per word might have been part of it.
Or at least to dig into the many ways players might approach RPGs in any given moment.

So when you are making a purely metagame decision at the table, you've shifted into Pawn Stance for a moment. Then you might shift into Author Stance when you make a fiction-based reasoning for the action, and then you might shift back into Actor Stance. Later on the GM might ask you to describe what we find Quertus doing after following someone else for a time and you step into Director stance to describe the scene.

Overall, at the end, you would probably describe what you spent your afternoon on as Roleplaying, rather than "Mostly roleplaying, but a few times where I stopped roleplaying for a few minutes to metagame and then went back to roleplaying." Because not only is that wordy and overly specific, but actually communicates what actually happened less accurately. Because metagaming for 6 seconds doesn't make you stop roleplaying. You're just engaging with the GAME part of the Role-Playing Game. And often that's necessary.

I do not require everyone who plays D&D with me to roleplay. I mean, sure, I like fellow roleplayers, but if you sit down to D&D as a pure war gamer, here to play undead Battletech, that's fine with me, too. Not everyone who games with "Quertus" is a Roleplayer.

There might be some who play RPGs purely for the Game part. I don't know that these are common enough to need their own term. Even the purely Game-oriented folks I played with genuinely enjoyed the story and would reminisce not so much on good rolls and good mechanics, but on the fiction-layer outcomes brought about by their builds. They engage with the fiction, too. But they do so differently, in my experience.

Ok, I'm a big fan of rules (for most parts of most games, at least), but there are freeform RPGs with no rules. And in those, my system of role-playing will continue to work just fine.

That's because there are no rules for anything, so nothing unfair comes from giving one person the ability to not be affected by rules.

There are also systems, like, say D&D 3.x, that allow characters to spend resources on social skills / abilities / stats... but then do not allow them to utilize said skills / abilities / stats on other PCs. IMO, good role-playing almost demands that the rules be supplemented with something... and "role-playing", as I define it, seems to fit the bill nicely.

There is no rule in 3.5 that disallows you to use Diplomacy, Intimidate, or other social skills/abilities on PCs. There is simply a stigma against it because D&D's social skills are designed as well as a car with square wheels and like everything else in the system is basically just the brute force method.

Using D&D as the standard for social skills is a bit like using a microwaved burrito as the standard for fine dining.

And you think I haven't? I'm flattered.

And I can confirm from personal experience that there do exist ways of making charismatic characters act in play as more charismatic than their players that doesn't come off as patronizing and hollow.

[/QUOTE]
There is.
Let them roll for it like everyone else does for their successes.

The easiest way I've seen to do this with D&D is that when you try to convince another PC, and you want it to work and they disagree, the person being convinced requests the check.

"You'll need to use Diplomacy to convince me." Etc.

And there you go. You get your agency to be belligerent, they get to use their agency to try to convince you anyways, and the dice figure out the rest. Then you roleplay the results.

It's still not perfect, but it's D&D. It's the best we can do with the materials at hand.

Stepping into the Game part of the Role-Playing Game is ok. Even for social stuff. Because that's still part of the Game. Some people dislike that part of the game, and more power to 'em.

What I will always balk at is the assertion that because I try to keep a level playing field for social interaction between my players and their characters, We no longer count asc roleplayers. Even if our characters are important to the decisions made at the Game level and are never entirely removed. (No more than you stop having Quertus' personality in mind when rolling a spellcraft check or responding to a combat roll against him.)

I find the Seduce/Manipulate skill from Apocalypse World to be a really good option at my table. For an example of its use:
Marathon wants to go home.
Slash wants Marathon to go drinking with the rest of the group, and tries to convince him to come along.
MC: Marathon, are you ok with letting him roll to convince you?
Marathon's player: Ok. Sounds fine by me.
Slash rolls a 10+, so Marathon's player must choose: take 1xp, or still deny the request at the cost of Acting Under Fire. (A move that can potentially introduce negative consequence, but he might still walk out scott-free.)
Marathon chooses to go along and get the XP, but refuses to get drunk and leaves at the first opportunity.
Marathon stayed true to his character, and essentially came up with the reason he went along being that he knew Slash would continue to bother him if he didn't. (An accurate assumption) So he saved himself a future headache.

Had Slash rolled a 7-9, he would have to choose between offering the carrot (xp) or threatening the potential stick (Act Under Fire) but not both. In any case, the other PC can choose as they like.

This might not work for everybody. But it works for my group.

It provides a framework that isn't mind control, and that doesn't require us to step so far away from the characters that they become a non-component. What they want is always on the table, and always a consideration.

I'm still learning to overcome the stigma of Metagaming.

That's part of why the Stances as described came into being in the early 2000's over at The Forge.

Also I find that the dichotomy between Metagaming vs. Roleplaying to be a false one. The stances posit (and fairly accurately, IMO) a wider range of interactions between roleplaying and metagaming where neither has to come at the expense of another. I'm sure some inversion of the Author Stance exists, too. (Instead of making a decision for metagame reasons and then creating a roleplaying reason why afterwords, you would be making a roleplaying decision and then create a metagame reason why afterwards. I swear I've done that at least once.) There are many, many ways that a player might interact with the metagame and with the fiction layer, even simultaneously.

[Floret]

Ok, lemme stop you right there. Since I doubtless wasn't clear on this point, this isn't the way I chose to define the word. This is the way I do define the word, because this is the way it has been defined to me since back before the internet and Google became the answer to everything.
This definition happens to have value to me, because it roughly matches something I like; trying to change that definition to make it overly inclusive waters down the meaning of the word, making it no longer have value to me.
So, yes, in the interests of communication, I defend my definition... Unless, of course, I'm demonstrably wrong.
Thus, if, as you say, I'm not wrong... well, actually, either way, I'd recommend the invention of new words to differentiate my narrow definition from your broad one.

Depends on the system (many conflate role-playing with acting, for example), but, yes, that's the right general idea for what I mean.

Those replacement terms sound like they have too much "acting" to me.

The fact that you didn't come up with the definitions yourself was not apparent from what you said, and is also, imho, rather irrelevant for the point being made.
As I said, I am aware that people define "role-playing" some way similar to you, but it is, in my eyes, a terribly confusing issue of "roleplaying" and "roleplaying" meaning two very distinct things.
Too much acting? Then I am at a loss to understand what you actually mean. Because if it is not "acting out a character as fully fleshed out as possible", then what do you mean? And if it is, where is the problem with calling it acting?

One must break immersion, and break out of character, often enough and long enough to push the button once per session in order to receive cheese. Which, granted, can be zero times in a given session.

Not a terribly low ceiling, but a ceiling nonetheless.

I'm afraid I have to disagree. I don't see the ceiling in that. And I don't see how you have to break immersion and character. "The thing" you get cheese for is supposed to be something that is actually in line with your character. So if you have to break character to get it, you have probably just chosen "the thing" horribly

Hmmm... Let's start with the Dragon. The dragon is my running example for actors in a play, not for players in an RPG. The director is informing the actors who are asking "what's my motivation?" that "that cardboard prop represents a very scary dragon".

However, I did run into exactly the scenario you describe. A GM was describing this crazy amalgam creature, and I had my character burst out laughing at it. The GM was upset, and pointed out that this creature was specifically engineered in the setting to draw upon the worst of Man's fears, and was supposed to be terrifying, not comical. Shrug if you say so. So I had my character's laugh take on a slightly unhinged, manic tone. I still thought the creature was a joke, but roleplayed my character to be affected by how "scary" the creature was.

So, if Roleplaying and acting are distinct for you, why did you put up an example for actors? Because, I would actually agree that they are different - in a play you have roles and direction given out, and in RPGs... not so much. At least the vast majority of times. One of the things is, the characters capabilities are not defined by some vague author, but by the actual rules of the setting. If the setting does not have rules for frightening stuff, I would probably tell any DM that just says "Non, this is incredibly scary!" to stuff it. Either rules or immersion determine how scary something is, and if the first doesn't exist, and the second one isn't managing - telling me "no, it totally does" is... weird, at the very least, and the question of "why" in this case cannot be answered with "because it is". There has to be some metric by which it actually is.
Sure, in free-form there are no rules. But then it better be scary, or at least scary to my character (I mean, sure, a character of mine that is deathly afraid of spiders will react to a spider with fear, at least with much more leeway for GM descriptions.)

Now, your comments about Mike confuse me, as they're about the opposite of what I'd expect. ... Hmmm... Unlike in previous posts, I suppose I left out a few details. The theory here is that the group knows how convincing Mike's character is supposed to be, and probably just how convincing Mike usually is (or isn't). And respond accordingly, whether or not the system has any corresponding mechanics.

Just like when the "scary dragon" is a cardboard prop, and the "beautiful princess" is being played by a guy.

But how do they know how convincing exactly he is, if they aren't in a play, or otherwise acting out predetermined scenes, and there is no rule to use as a metric (Giving stats to it does, in fact, create rules, no matter how vague you put it) for how convincing he is? How does a system without the appropriate mechanics ACTUALLY manage to pull that off, in total absence of any convincing-ness coming from Mike? Same for the other examples. (And, besides the point, but I know a lot of guys who would pull of incredible princesses )

No, just no. The perfect level of a floor for me is none at all. I am totally fine if someone wants to play "Mike the fighter" who has the personality of a slab of concrete and only lives to kills monsters and take their stuff. I would never play such a character, and if I was in the group with them I would do my best to engage them and draw them out of their shell, but I would never begrudge them their right to RP (or not RP as the case may be) what I consider to be a shallow character.

Now, as for defining a ceiling, we need to actually figure out what system we are talking about. Does the game punish you for failing to RP? Does it reward you for good RP? Does it flat out forbid you to act in a way contrary to your predefined nature? Do the dice dictate your options? What for do the punishment / rewards take? Are they something minor and temporary like a +2 to your next dice roll, or something that will permanently cripple your character like earning no XP for the session?

I am not arguing that there has to be a floor, or even that I personally like there to be floors. I am, in fact, one of those people playing exclusively with people who do put in the effort to act according to character, no matter if to their detriment, regardless of the system giving them any reward for it.
I am just arguing that there being a floor is alright, and that it does not automatically constitute a ceiling.

If the reward is big enough to matter to encourage RP (raising the floor) then it is also going to discourage behavior which the system does not see as RP (thus also lowering the ceiling).

Say for example my character has a code of honor to never harm a woman. To "raise the floor" the system would reward me for protecting women and / or punish me for harming them. But, say part of my character backstory is that when I was a small child I was physically abused by one of my aunts, and as a result when we are fighting a bandit queen who is the spitting image of my aunt I ignore my code of honor and take out my repressed childhood trauma on her, beating her to within a half inch of her life. Now, this is in character behavior that I would certainly consider roleplaying, but at this point most system would then either punish me or withhold my reward, thus I have to choose between doing what I think my character would do and what the system rewards. IF the punishment / reward system motivates me enough to "raise the floor" it will also, in this case, motivate me enough to ignore RP in favor of the rewards, thereby "lowering the ceiling".

Earlier in the thread someone sarcastically used the example of "Always protects young beautiful redheads in the hours between 7 and 11, unless they are taller than 5ft 6" as something that is ok for a character to do but not something the system should reward, but if you actually wanted a character with anywhere near the depth that I am comfortable RPing at (and I am by no means claiming to be the worlds best or deepest RPer) then I would need dozens of pages of such stipulations, more than I would ever be able to actually sit down and write out, let alone get anyone else in the game interested in reading.

Literally, how. Something that encourages RP in certain ways does not, automatically, discourage behaviour that the system does not see as RP. It might automatically discourage behaviour that it sees as RPing against your character, but that is a different story - doing something unrelated to the beats is not going delibarately against them, and only the latter would actually be punished? I mean, c'mon. You say, quite rightly, that you RP a character without the system giving you a reward for it. Then how does it limit you to play a character, if you get a reward for some of the stuff you do, but not the rest, especially if the rest is just... unconcerned with the rules?
Would it? You put yourself in a situation where your Code of honor, which you have decided (keep that in mind. Putting that in the "I get cheese for that" category was your decision.) to put into the spotlight goes against some other aspect of your character. You wanted your character to be conflicted in some way, and thereby chose this setup. Now you have to choose - has your character actually learned to better themselves? Or have they not overcome his issues with the aunt still? Yes, this situation might present a ceiling. Because of the choices you made, and conflicting issues you put into your character.
If your character has a mechanical effect for "protecting women", but not for "I need to take revenge on my aunt", then, yeah, this puts in somewhat of a ceiling if you want to grab all the bonuses. Or at least forces your character to be the better person in all such cases that come up. But a system designed as a RP aid that has rewards for something as specific as "Won't harm women", but only provides one such slot - I would fault the specific system in that case, and not all possible ones.
And, finally: Yes, I know, there CAN be ceilings, but. A ceiling. Does not AUTOMATICALLY follow from there being a floor. That you can construct examples where both exist is, for refuting that position, entirely meaningles.

This is kind of a loaded statement, don't you think? Although I do actually share this sentiment, I would have just phrased it as:

"Free-form/rule-less LARP can be insanely frustrating for people who like to be immersed in a fictional world because their characters don't actually have any defined capabilities and thus cannot interact with the setting in any predictable manner."

Not really, no... Except in the sense of "People who want to play superheroes in LARP that are just THE BEST are people I don't wanna Larp with, and I am happy the rulesystem I play under discourages such things".
And, no, that is not an accurate rephrasing or way to look at what I am saying. Your own capabilites are perfectly defined, they are just not exclusively defined BY YOU. Or, more accurately, you are somewhat limited in defining your character, since there are no stats. You can say "I am good at fighting", but not "I deal enough damage per hit to fell a normal man". Everything you would roll for in TRPGs is requiring ad-hoc decisions in the moment, and is decided by how people see you acting. When you hit a person with a weapon, they will be hurt. That is very predictable. Just HOW hurt they will be is not, sure. But really, that is just the equivalent of dicerolls in TRPGs - there is a spectrum of what you might achieve with any given action. That does not, in fact, limit immersion.
"Don't expect any specific reaction" means "don't expect the other person to go down immidiately when you hit them once and be frustrated if they don't". It does not mean "Hitting people might or might not have any effect, and might heal them". Not given fire-elementals being healed by fireballs (Something that will be somehow knowable by the games setting and at least after the first try explicitly telegraphed - "SHOW a plausible reaction") and similar things. "Show a PLAUSIBLE reaction" means your capabilites are defined. Just not down to specific numbers. Which, given we use Random number generators, also called "dice" in TRPGs, does not constitute much of a difference in "defined capabilites" in my view.

I actually cannot fathom this. This is so far outside of my realm of experience that I am not sure I can even have a meaningful argument about it. That style of gaming must be totally alien to me and what you get out of gaming must be totally different than what I get out of gaming.

I will say that I don't think that even if I had all the time and money in the world I could pull of even a tenth of the scenarios I have ran / played in over the years.

What can you not fathom? These things happening? I assure you, all have, to me. And though of course reflecting on them out of game and talking with the people who did the monsters and mages does reveal how they pulled off their stunts, the fact that it is faked does not appear while you are "in there" and are the bandit that just got to see that guy shoot effin fire out of his hand.
Oh, surely, TRPGs can do stuff that Larp just can't. You will hear no argument there from me. But if you wanna go for immersion? There is little more immersive than ACTUALLY sitting in the underbrush, arrows being fired at you, totally outnumbered, knowing if you turn back, you will be hit, your friend desperately blowing on his whistle to make himself heard... and then hearing, in some distance, clanging. Of something big arriving. "Being in the spot" instead of just imagining to be in the spot does incredible things, and even the most immersive TRPGs I have played don't actually hold a candle to the hundreds of moments I have experienced in Larps. Yes, they have been much smaller in scale, and perhaps in "Epicness" if you wanna phrase it that way. But "actually" experiencing them makes them just feel so much bigger and closer to you, that it, for me, more than makes up for it. I'd rather have an intense moment than intense scale. I like scale! And, relating to your next point, playing and being stuff I just can't pull off "IRL". That is why I play TRPGs. The two hobbys just give me totally different things. They are better at different things, and for me, using both for their respective strengths makes the most sense.

Ok, so the character I have been playing and thoroughly enjoying for the last three years:

Is a different gender than myself.
Is a different ethnicity than myself.
Is four inches taller than I am.
Is a hundred pounds lighter than I am.
Is fifteen years younger than I am.
Has a different voice range and accent than I do.
Has a different hair style and color than I do. As well as a different eye and skin color.
Has a different fashion sense than I do.
Has significantly different facial features and body type than I do.
Is in significantly better shape than I am even discounting my bad back and asthma.
Is a talented gymnast and fencer while I am so clumsy I literally have trouble walking and chewing at the same time sometimes.
Is a trained surgeon while I am barely competent to put on a Band-Aid.

If I even tried to LARP this character I would look ridiculous and no one would be able to see past it or take anything I did seriously. Plus I would have to cut off most of my hair and shave my beard, which is a lot to ask out of a game. I would also not enjoy the game, and I would literally kill myself if I seriously tried for some reason, as she is the type who never gives up and, as I said above, is in significantly better shape than I am. Plus, I literally can't do the things she does, and am not sure why LARPing would be any more immersive than table top if I have to constantly "play pretend"; for example rolling a dice to perform surgery is, in my mind, no more or less immersive than simply kneeling over someone and waving my hands while wiping away fresh blood.

And yeah, I could make a character who didn't have any of those features that would be easier to LARP. But then we have made the problem worse rather than better; I want to play the character I want to play and the rules of the game are fighting against me.

From my experience of what I have done, seen and heard of:
Gender? Doable, depending on the person. I have played both men and women, though I am fairly androgynous, granted.
Ethnicity... Clothes do a lot of things, treading respectfully is required, but generally doable.
Four inches taller, yeah, no. You can do a bit with heels/Plateau shoes, walk utterly upright, but four inches might be a tad much, sure. (Though I would argue that specific size is actually rather unimportant in... really, whatever RPG.)
Hundred pounds lighter are indeed hard to get rid of. I mean, training, eating and the right clothes can do some things, but that is either an investment of considerable time and effort, or can't do THAT much.
Again, fifteen years might be a long shot. Depending on your age, 60 year old can manage 45 easier than a 30 year old 15. I have seen a 20something play a twelve year old quite believably, so much so that you became very unnerved with her being on the Con (At least in Germany we call the meetings that), but that is depending on your general looks, yes.
Voice range and accent can be trained. None of my Larpcharacters match mine perfectly.
Hair style and colour is a matter of wigs, styling, or hairdye. Eyecolor can be dealt with by contact lenses, skin colour... if it is something that cannot naturally occur in humans (Green orcs, Drow), makeup does the trick (There are ways to make that last a weekend; same with for example the tattoos of some of my chars). If it IS something that can occur in humans, it is still doable, but should probably be avoided for ethical reasons.
Fashion sense, c'mon. You wear different clothes on a Larp. None of my characters wear anything CLOSE to what I would put on in my normal life, but fashion sense is not something visible through anything but the clothes you wear. And those are rather easy to change. You need a costume anyways
Facial features... again, makeup does wonders. Body type... the right clothing can go long ways, but it isn't magic, yeah.
Better shape... Training does its thing, barring that, yes, that is a hard limit.
Skills, again, training or hard limit. The fencing thing can reasonably easily be brought up to a level where you feign enough confidence. Gymnastics are harder. Surgery, reading up enough to be able to convince people who have no idea (Or who are at least in character pretending to have no idea) should be done with such a concept, certainly. Larp takes time, effort, and preparation. Just as reading up on a characters culture, or designing it yourself does, putting in the effort for knowing stuff for the skills is somewhat requried if you want your character to actually be a competend surgeon.

If you tried to Larp this exact character as is, you might run into some problems, yes. But: Larpcharacters have to be, or at least should be designed for Larp, with the limitations that it puts on kept in mind.
If you only ever wanna play one specific character that lies outside of that? Larp won't be for you. I didn't try to assert it was for everyone, sorry if that came across.* Taking TRPG-characters and simply putting them in a Larp is a very bad idea (Looses you out on some of the wonder as well. Some of the things TRPG-chars have experienced will never happen or be topped in Larp. And making your character numb agains the things that CAN happen in Larp looses part of the experience.)
As for why it is more immersive: There are certain points at which you "play pretend", yes. But even those are 1) in my experience far from the majority of play, and 2) still much closer to the real thing - seing someone writhing and screaming in pain laying in front of you I would assert just IS more immersive than rolling a die while imagining it. And if you put the limit of Larp on "waving your hands while wiping away fresh blood", you are selling the possibilites of Larp surgeons far, far short. The trick is called "Interaktive Wunden" in Germany, for which the english translation sadly does not yield any usable results on google.

*What I did wanna say: Intense and immersive character play, and getting deeply into the character is a whole lot more rewarding and intense in Larps in my experience. Since I have been larping, I don't try to get that out of TRPGs anymore. I DO get it out of TRPGs, but it is not, mainly, what I play them for. I know Larpers who do. They see TRPGs as a poor substitute, and don't enjoy it that much, which I find a shame, since TRPGs have other things to offer, that LARP can't.

[Talakeal]

@ Floret:

Sorry, the formatting for the multi-quoting is getting to be a bit much so I am just going to ignore the specific points and respond to generalities.


About floors and ceilings:

Any system that tries to encourage RP is going to have a range of acceptable behavior. It is going to reward behavior that falls within that range and / or punish behavior that falls outside of it. If that reward / punishment is sufficient to encourage people who are normally RPing below that range to rise to it, it will also be sufficient to encourage people who would normally RP above that range to drop themselves into it.

Some systems are more complex than others (although I have never seen one that is terribly complex), but it is not feasible to make a system where the acceptable range is anywhere close to the actual range of human behavior. You would need so many rules, way more than D&D has for combat or even spell-casting, before you got anywhere close to a reasonable facsimile of a real person like you would find in your average sitcom or Saturday morning cartoon character.

So I agree that IN THEORY you could have a system that (effectively) has no ceiling for RP, but in practice that is just pie in the sky.


About LARP:

I don't doubt that it exists, I just can't fathom why anyone would put the required time / money / and effort into it for such little payoff. Anything more involved than sitting around the campfire talking in character or something akin to a paintball / SCA hybrid would require an amount of time, money, effort, and number of participants that it boggles my mind.

Frankly if I had the resources and discipline that it required I wouldn't bother with games, I would go out and get a PhD, land a six figure job, and spend my free time dating models or traveling the world.

Also, it would seriously tax my acting ability. Like, say for example, I am pretending to be someone who is orders of magnitude more skilled and coordinated than myself, at the same time I am pretending to be injured when I am fine IRL, but my injured character is doing her best to ignore her injuries and fight to the best of her ability. That is a situation that comes up all the time in table top, but if I was trying to LARP that I wouldn't have the first idea how to do it, and it would be such a challenge that I wouldn't have any time for enjoyment or immersion.


About Freeform:

Again, I just don't think I get it.

Say, for example, we are playing an X-Men RPG. I am playing Colossus. Obviously, a regular guy can't hurt me with a punch. Why would I show a reaction if he did? At the same time, if The Beast attacked me, I might show a reaction, I actually have no idea. If we were using numbers and dice I could (for example) see that beast has a d20+8 damage modifier and Colossus has a Resilience Rating of 25, meaning that The Beast could hurt Colossus roughly 15% of the time (numbers just pulled out of the air here). How would you actually resolve this in a free form setting?

Also, how do you avoid people either god moding or getting hurt feelings without something impartial like dice? Like, if I am playing an ace pilot and I roll three "1"s in a row and the DM says I crash in a one in a million freak accident, that seems fair. If there were no dice and someone proclaimed my ace pilot crashes I would feel singled out, but at the same time if I always flew perfectly wouldn't other people resent that?

[maybe]

The point is, there's nothing inherently wrong with rules forcing characters to behave in certain ways. But these rules are heavily game/genre dependent and shouldn't be applied to most games.

[ComradeBear]

@ Floret:

Sorry, the formatting for the multi-quoting is getting to be a bit much so I am just going to ignore the specific points and respond to generalities.


About floors and ceilings:

Any system that tries to encourage RP is going to have a range of acceptable behavior. It is going to reward behavior that falls within that range and / or punish behavior that falls outside of it. If that reward / punishment is sufficient to encourage people who are normally RPing below that range to rise to it, it will also be sufficient to encourage people who would normally RP above that range to drop themselves into it.

Some systems are more complex than others (although I have never seen one that is terribly complex), but it is not feasible to make a system where the acceptable range is anywhere close to the actual range of human behavior. You would need so many rules, way more than D&D has for combat or even spell-casting, before you got anywhere close to a reasonable facsimile of a real person like you would find in your average sitcom or Saturday morning cartoon character.

So I agree that IN THEORY you could have a system that (effectively) has no ceiling for RP, but in practice that is just pie in the sky.

You need to demonstrate the claim that a floor always means a ceiling. And bear in mind that even one example where that isn't true will blow this out of the water.

So for instance, to use one of my favorites as said counter-example:
In-character goals from Stars Without Number.
They can be whatever you want. (Including things like getting medical training, overthrowing a particular government, getting closer with another character, saving one's home planet, etc.)
They are worth real XP.
There is no upper limit to how many you can have, but they do recommend avoiding 10+ goals for practicality reasons only.
Goals are as broad or specific as you want them to be. (I had a character desire to contact her family. That was it. It wasn't worth much XP, but she got it.)
You may alter/add goals at any time.


This has no ceiling. (Hell, I'm fairly sure the limit of 10 was my homebrew rule about it to keep my own bookkeeping down since I have to track their goals as well.)
It rewards roleplaying your character.

Show me the ceiling that is BUILT INTO this system. That means:
"GM can abuse this" is not an argument. GM can abuse any system.
Neither is "Players can abuse this" for basically the same reason.

About LARP:

I don't doubt that it exists, I just can't fathom why anyone would put the required time / money / and effort into it for such little payoff. Anything more involved than sitting around the campfire talking in character or something akin to a paintball / SCA hybrid would require an amount of time, money, effort, and number of participants that it boggles my mind.

Frankly if I had the resources and discipline that it required I wouldn't bother with games, I would go out and get a PhD, land a six figure job, and spend my free time dating models or traveling the world.

Also, it would seriously tax my acting ability. Like, say for example, I am pretending to be someone who is orders of magnitude more skilled and coordinated than myself, at the same time I am pretending to be injured when I am fine IRL, but my injured character is doing her best to ignore her injuries and fight to the best of her ability. That is a situation that comes up all the time in table top, but if I was trying to LARP that I wouldn't have the first idea how to do it, and it would be such a challenge that I wouldn't have any time for enjoyment or immersion.

You can't fathom someone wanting to run around in the woods pretending to be a knight and being willing to spend time and money on that hobby?

Can you also not fathom camping?

About Freeform:

Again, I just don't think I get it.

Say, for example, we are playing an X-Men RPG. I am playing Colossus. Obviously, a regular guy can't hurt me with a punch. Why would I show a reaction if he did? At the same time, if The Beast attacked me, I might show a reaction, I actually have no idea. If we were using numbers and dice I could (for example) see that beast has a d20+8 damage modifier and Colossus has a Resilience Rating of 25, meaning that The Beast could hurt Colossus roughly 15% of the time (numbers just pulled out of the air here). How would you actually resolve this in a free form setting?

You play fair. You do what Quertus suggested we do for Mike The Unconvincing.

The exact same reason you can't parse making this interaction fair is the same one we have for social interactions in TRPGs. You need SOME way to resolve it fairly.

Also, how do you avoid people either god moding or getting hurt feelings without something impartial like dice? Like, if I am playing an ace pilot and I roll three "1"s in a row and the DM says I crash in a one in a million freak accident, that seems fair. If there were no dice and someone proclaimed my ace pilot crashes I would feel singled out, but at the same time if I always flew perfectly wouldn't other people resent that?

You are your own GM, but godmodding will usually lead to being ignored by the other folks in the RP, or flat out being kicked out of the group.

You just handle your own stuff. Just like you claim is the best way to handle social stuff. Just apply that logic to LITERALLY EVERYTHING.
Freeform.

[Talakeal]

You need to demonstrate the claim that a floor always means a ceiling. And bear in mind that even one example where that isn't true will blow this out of the water.

So for instance, to use one of my favorites as said counter-example:
In-character goals from Stars Without Number.
They can be whatever you want. (Including things like getting medical training, overthrowing a particular government, getting closer with another character, saving one's home planet, etc.)
They are worth real XP.
There is no upper limit to how many you can have, but they do recommend avoiding 10+ goals for practicality reasons only.
Goals are as broad or specific as you want them to be. (I had a character desire to contact her family. That was it. It wasn't worth much XP, but she got it.)
You may alter/add goals at any time.


This has no ceiling. (Hell, I'm fairly sure the limit of 10 was my homebrew rule about it to keep my own bookkeeping down since I have to track their goals as well.)
It rewards roleplaying your character.

Show me the ceiling that is BUILT INTO this system. That means:
"GM can abuse this" is not an argument. GM can abuse any system.
Neither is "Players can abuse this" for basically the same reason.

Note that I didn't say that every game had a ceiling. I said that every game that mechanically enforces RP has a range of acceptable behavior. If the rewards are strong enough to encourage people who normally RP below the bottom of the range (a floor if you will) to rise into it will also encourage people who normally play above the upper limit of the range (the ceiling if you will) to drop down to it.

The system you describe (and keep in mind I am only going by your description, I am not familiar with this system myself) does indeed not have a ceiling. It also doesn't have a floor, or really anything else. It is more or less a non-system. It boils down to "do whatever you want and get XP for it" and will not encourage anyone to role-play. Any limits are completely self imposed. The high RP guy can change his goals to whatever he feels his character does at the time, and the low RP guy can simply assign himself goals like "kill the bad guys and take their stuff," that he would be doing anyway to "win the game" regardless of what character he was playing.

Honestly I don't see the point of it, everyone is just going to do what they would normally do, but with the extra added book keeping and tedium of needing to constantly keep track of and adjust your goals.

You say you don't want me to talk about how exploitable such a system would be (which is certainly true), but I actually have the opposite view; to make it work the players and the DM are going to need to heavily house rule it to make it serve any purpose at all, and such a system would almost certainly have a "floor and ceiling" as I described above.

You can't fathom someone wanting to run around in the woods pretending to be a knight and being willing to spend time and money on that hobby?

Can you also not fathom camping?

Sure I can. That sounds fun.

But Floret is talking about renting castles, building animatronic dragons, having costumed people playing every NPC (including non-humanoid monsters), wizards putting on pyrotechnic displays, and requiring players to put enough time and money into their costumes that they can convincingly look like people of different races, sexes, or body types. He is also saying that people who are really into the hobby will learn whole new skill sets, drastically change their appearance and mannerisms, etc. That is a ton of time, money, and effort for what is still a fairly limited experience. I can see how it would be fun, I just can't see it being fun enough to justify such massive costs.

Like I said in the post you quoted, I can see something akin to paintball or SCA or spending a weekend camping without breaking character being reasonably fun and not cost prohibitive. I would do that if I had friends who were into it (although I wouldn't give up tabletop for it), but what Floret is talking about is something on a whole other level.

You are your own GM, but godmodding will usually lead to being ignored by the other folks in the RP, or flat out being kicked out of the group.

Isn't being ignored by other people actually cheating given the rules Floret described?

And who draws the line at what god-modding is? If I am, for example, playing a master cat-burglar, how often should I decide I fail to pick a lock or accidently trip an alarm? 1/3 times? 1/10? 1/100? 1/1,000? With dice OR statistics (you wouldn't even need both) you could have some sort guideline, but without any rules I honestly would feel totally lost.

The exact same reason you can't parse making this interaction fair is the same one we have for social interactions in TRPGs. You need SOME way to resolve it fairly.

You just handle your own stuff. Just like you claim is the best way to handle social stuff. Just apply that logic to LITERALLY EVERYTHING.
Freeform.

Did I actually say that? I don't remember ever talking about social skills being used on players (at least not in this thread) and if I said I think freeform is the best way to handle social stuff I must have not been thinking / typing clearly because that isn't a view that I hold.

However, I will say that doing social interaction freeform is a lot easier than physical stuff because it is fairly simple to just act out. You don't require props, people's natural abilities play a smaller role, people generally know what they are talking about, and it is unlikely that anyone will get hurt.

[DracoknightZero]

Just a note on the "Metagaming Stigma", i feel there is two sides of this extreme.

First side is the ones that we all fear would come to the game, the one that take his game knowledge and inpose it on his characters making him know things he should not. Like he would know that there is 3 human warriors on the other side of this door due to the notes he read over the GMs shoulder, or the pieces that the GM just pulled out. Or knowledge about the world that would not make sense for the character to know, like about a hidden cult, the leaders names etc, or the plot of a adventure path.

This is the stigma of the metagame... however there is the other side of the coin.

The other side of this is the ones that are trying too hard to not metagame and enforce the "ban" of metagame to a fault halting the game to a standstill, ofcourse thats a hyperbole of the extreme, but lets see of a lesser variant. You have the people who are so afraid of being marked as "metagaming" that they play their characters as children that is basically just learned how to walk. You have the wise monk that cannot draw from his wisdom that its "a bad idea to open that door with the unholy symbols" or the fighter that cannot walk around his enemies to set-up a flanking position as a basic combat tactic because "the fighter only have 7 int, its not like he is that smart". What if fighting is the only thing he knows?

And now you dont have the issue in the first example where you have a player trying to make his character what he shouldnt be able to do, but instead a 3rd party of another player dictating how another player how a character functions because he label his action as "metagamey".

[ComradeBear]

Note that I didn't say that every game had a ceiling. I said that every game that mechanically enforces RP has a range of acceptable behavior. If the rewards are strong enough to encourage people who normally RP below the bottom of the range (a floor if you will) to rise into it will also encourage people who normally play above the upper limit of the range (the ceiling if you will) to drop down to it.

The system you describe (and keep in mind I am only going by your description, I am not familiar with this system myself) does indeed not have a ceiling. It also doesn't have a floor, or really anything else. It is more or less a non-system. It boils down to "do whatever you want and get XP for it" and will not encourage anyone to role-play. Any limits are completely self imposed. The high RP guy can change his goals to whatever he feels his character does at the time, and the low RP guy can simply assign himself goals like "kill the bad guys and take their stuff," that he would be doing anyway to "win the game" regardless of what character he was playing.

Honestly I don't see the point of it, everyone is just going to do what they would normally do, but with the extra added book keeping and tedium of needing to constantly keep track of and adjust your goals.

You say you don't want me to talk about how exploitable such a system would be (which is certainly true), but I actually have the opposite view; to make it work the players and the DM are going to need to heavily house rule it to make it serve any purpose at all, and such a system would almost certainly have a "floor and ceiling" as I described above.

The floor is: Your Character Must Be Self-Motivated and Have Their Own Agenda.
For many players, that is a step upwards in terms of RP.
There's your floor. Now where is the ceiling that goes with it?
It should be noted that the amount of XP any given goal is worth is determined by the GM based on how difficult the activity in question is based on the circumstances when the goal was created.
I had a.character wanting to get in contact with her family. Because it was as easy as sending a space-email, it was only.worth about 5xp. (Messages in SWN take a few days or weeks to arrive and return)
I had another character want to take over the Exchange, which was the basic infrastructure that keeps a sector running. That task was worth 250,000 xp. Because it would be literally years of in-game work time.

Sure I can. That sounds fun.

But Floret is talking about renting castles, building animatronic dragons, having costumed people playing every NPC (including non-humanoid monsters), wizards putting on pyrotechnic displays, and requiring players to put enough time and money into their costumes that they can convincingly look like people of different races, sexes, or body types. He is also saying that people who are really into the hobby will learn whole new skill sets, drastically change their appearance and mannerisms, etc. That is a ton of time, money, and effort for what is still a fairly limited experience. I can see how it would be fun, I just can't see it being fun enough to justify such massive costs.

Like I said in the post you quoted, I can see something akin to paintball or SCA or spending a weekend camping without breaking character being reasonably fun and not cost prohibitive. I would do that if I had friends who were into it (although I wouldn't give up tabletop for it), but what Floret is talking about is something on a whole other level.

Many of these groups have paid entry, as they've been described to me.

Isn't being ignored by other people actually cheating given the rules Floret described?

Not once youve been identified as a God-modding.
Kinda like how shooting people is against the law, right up until they try to kill you. (Obviously not on the same scale, but a similar concept of bad things becoming okay after other bad things happen.)

And who draws the line at what god-modding is? If I am, for example, playing a master cat-burglar, how often should I decide I fail to pick a lock or accidently trip an alarm? 1/3 times? 1/10? 1/100? 1/1,000? With dice OR statistics (you wouldn't even need both) you could have some sort guideline, but without any rules I honestly would feel totally lost.

Generally this is avoided by not having characters who are perfect at things and having good dramatic pacing with things going wrong when it is thematically and narratively appropriate.

Did I actually say that? I don't remember ever talking about social skills being used on players (at least not in this thread) and if I said I think freeform is the best way to handle social stuff I must have not been thinking / typing clearly because that isn't a view that I hold.

However, I will say that doing social interaction freeform is a lot easier than physical stuff because it is fairly simple to just act out. You don't require props, people's natural abilities play a smaller role, people generally know what they are talking about, and it is unlikely that anyone will get hurt.

Freeforming it without rules is the easiest way for someone to feel patronized to, as I illustrated in previous posts, and freeforming the social part runs into all the same problems you have for combat, but does so about different topics.

[Segev]

A system which rewards certain RP behaviors has a "floor" in that it gives guidance that is not counterindicated by the system. It lacks a ceiling in that, if you wish to step outside that guidance or go beyond it, you can.

If the fact that the system might penalize some in character decisions makes a ceiling, then every system that lacks social mechanics has a ceiling inherently, since "selling" another character's social influence or eve your own character's vices with nothing to mechanically enforce it nor reward/counterbalance the negatives means that the ceiling is inherent. You can push beyond it with effort, but only by playing the game part of the game deliberately worse.

[Max_Killjoy]

Just a note on the "Metagaming Stigma", i feel there is two sides of this extreme.

First side is the ones that we all fear would come to the game, the one that take his game knowledge and inpose it on his characters making him know things he should not. Like he would know that there is 3 human warriors on the other side of this door due to the notes he read over the GMs shoulder, or the pieces that the GM just pulled out. Or knowledge about the world that would not make sense for the character to know, like about a hidden cult, the leaders names etc, or the plot of a adventure path.

This is the stigma of the metagame... however there is the other side of the coin.

The other side of this is the ones that are trying too hard to not metagame and enforce the "ban" of metagame to a fault halting the game to a standstill, ofcourse thats a hyperbole of the extreme, but lets see of a lesser variant. You have the people who are so afraid of being marked as "metagaming" that they play their characters as children that is basically just learned how to walk. You have the wise monk that cannot draw from his wisdom that its "a bad idea to open that door with the unholy symbols" or the fighter that cannot walk around his enemies to set-up a flanking position as a basic combat tactic because "the fighter only have 7 int, its not like he is that smart". What if fighting is the only thing he knows?

And now you dont have the issue in the first example where you have a player trying to make his character what he shouldnt be able to do, but instead a 3rd party of another player dictating how another player how a character functions because he label his action as "metagamey".

I've come across gamers (GMs and players) who seem to earnestly believe that PC competence = metagaming, and that the only way to engage in "true" roleplaying is to have a character who is somewhat to totally inept.

They consider a character who would genuinely be smart/skilled/experienced enough to generally avoid bad situations, make the right tactical call, see trouble coming, recognize common pitfalls, etc, to be an attempt to excuse metagaming on the part of the player.

In my experience, these are also often the people who say "We're playing a horror game, and in horror fiction, people do things like go into the basement alone after three other people didn't come back, so not going into the basement alone is breaking genre and metagaming based on player knowledge". And thus, one source of me being absolutely OVER anything in an RPG that attempts to "emulate genre" -- "emulate genre" has become, in my mind, a fancy way of excusing hackneyed eye-roll-worthy tropes, and browbeating players.

[Floret]

@ Floret:
About floors and ceilings:

I would not actually be able to say anything beyond what Segev and ComradeBear have already said, so: What they said
It lines up rather well with what I think.

But: I also find the point of maybe worth stressing, as it aligns pretty much with my mostly preferred system, or at least the system I play in aside from FATE which one COULD interpret as having such a system - but no inherent ceiling in my view, aside from limiting how often you can change your aspects/personality.

About LARP:

I don't doubt that it exists, I just can't fathom why anyone would put the required time / money / and effort into it for such little payoff. Anything more involved than sitting around the campfire talking in character or something akin to a paintball / SCA hybrid would require an amount of time, money, effort, and number of participants that it boggles my mind.

Frankly if I had the resources and discipline that it required I wouldn't bother with games, I would go out and get a PhD, land a six figure job, and spend my free time dating models or traveling the world.

Also, it would seriously tax my acting ability. Like, say for example, I am pretending to be someone who is orders of magnitude more skilled and coordinated than myself, at the same time I am pretending to be injured when I am fine IRL, but my injured character is doing her best to ignore her injuries and fight to the best of her ability. That is a situation that comes up all the time in table top, but if I was trying to LARP that I wouldn't have the first idea how to do it, and it would be such a challenge that I wouldn't have any time for enjoyment or immersion.

Floret is talking about renting castles, building animatronic dragons, having costumed people playing every NPC (including non-humanoid monsters), wizards putting on pyrotechnic displays, and requiring players to put enough time and money into their costumes that they can convincingly look like people of different races, sexes, or body types. He is also saying that people who are really into the hobby will learn whole new skill sets, drastically change their appearance and mannerisms, etc. That is a ton of time, money, and effort for what is still a fairly limited experience. I can see how it would be fun, I just can't see it being fun enough to justify such massive costs.

Like I said in the post you quoted, I can see something akin to paintball or SCA or spending a weekend camping without breaking character being reasonably fun and not cost prohibitive. I would do that if I had friends who were into it (although I wouldn't give up tabletop for it), but what Floret is talking about is something on a whole other level.

The time, money and effort are possibly not as gigantic as you might imagine, and the payoff not that little
Larp as I experience it, and in fact the way it is in most cases done where I live (Germany) is not organised by groups in the way that TRPGs are. So you don't actually go ahead and meet regularly with the same people to charter the adventures of your group of heroes. Instead, there are "Cons"/Conventions, organised by Organisers, which usually are Clubs or Societies, but sometimes minor corporations, who think up the plot/setting/scenario, who advertise the event, who rent out the castles (or whatever location, most cons aren't at one. But you'd be surprised how cheap castles can be to rent for groups upward of maybe 30, 40 people), build the dragons, props, sometimes provide the food, and so on. The players, and indeed also the Non-players then pay money to attend these events. (Non-players being used for every NPC-role you'd require, quite often playing multiple roles over one event, then with different costumes according to role, and paying quite a lot less in the vast majority of cases.) Over the fees they usually (except for the corporate ones, they do make a profit) make their money back.
As a player, you spent the "entrance fee" for the event, and provide your own epquipment and character. As an NPC, you get your character(s) provided for you, and quite often your equipment as well. Everything else is already organised. And then, you play. A day, a weekend, or sometimes a week. With anything from a dozen to several thousand participants. Ever had a rain of arrows go down on you? Really makes your heart sink. Even though you, at some point in your heart know that those have foam tips.
Sure, I could have spent the money I have spent on it over the years differently. But... looking back I wouldn't change a thing. Because the intensity and magic of the play were worth every penny. I'm not doing this for lack of options. I am doing this, as I imagine most people are doing with RPGs, because it is just so, immesurably and incredibly fun^^

As for the acting thing: If you get into character, get into the flow of things, you don't actually notice those. Maybe I am vastly more skilled at acting than you (I highly doubt it), but I have pulled off what you describe. Maybe not the "vastly more skilled and coordinated". As I said, Larp places certain limits on character ability, which one has to be fine with for it to work.
Most people don't actually play characters of sexes or races different than their own (Aside from orcs, elves, dwarves and the like), and stick with their own body type. I was just pointing out it being possible, not that it was common. Sorry if it came across that way. And yes, since I picked up Larping I learned sewing, for one character regularly write saga-style poems, learned card counting and the like. And it is a major motivator for me staying in shape. Running in chainmail requires certain limits to be possible. As for mannerisms... In character. People don't actually change who they are (just for the game, at least), but their characters will talk differently and behave differently from them, sure. Your TRPG characters don't?

Minor note: "She is also saying". You couldn't have known, but I like these things to be correct

About Freeform:

Again, I just don't think I get it.

Say, for example, we are playing an X-Men RPG. I am playing Colossus. Obviously, a regular guy can't hurt me with a punch. Why would I show a reaction if he did? At the same time, if The Beast attacked me, I might show a reaction, I actually have no idea. If we were using numbers and dice I could (for example) see that beast has a d20+8 damage modifier and Colossus has a Resilience Rating of 25, meaning that The Beast could hurt Colossus roughly 15% of the time (numbers just pulled out of the air here). How would you actually resolve this in a free form setting?

Also, how do you avoid people either god moding or getting hurt feelings without something impartial like dice? Like, if I am playing an ace pilot and I roll three "1"s in a row and the DM says I crash in a one in a million freak accident, that seems fair. If there were no dice and someone proclaimed my ace pilot crashes I would feel singled out, but at the same time if I always flew perfectly wouldn't other people resent that?

Aside from CBs comment:
In TRPGs I would never touch a free-form game. At the scales of Colossus vs. anyone (or at other scales only possible in TRPGs, one of the reasons I still play them), you have lost what I consider a scale that they work well at, given that the rulings would be far outside of the realm of experience where you can semi-accurately judge. And, yes, for the reasons you describe, I consider rules to be a great boon to have in a TRPG. I am one of the stern advocates for having rules for social stuff.
(Playing fair and "no godmodding" are usually required, though. No free-form game I have ever seen actually skipped on making "no godmodding, you control your own character(s) and only them" a rule)

At the point you get to Free-form Larp, you can't godmode. Like, literally impossible. The impartial third party is in part the world that exists around you (Yeah. You tripped. That happens insanely rarely, but it happened now, so... tough luck.).
For points where you hit or interact with other people, you just generally assume good faith. The other player won't just ignore your blows, and if they don't collapse as you think they would've, maybe there's a good reason for that. They aren't down yet, next blow, or defend yourself!
For points of social stuff - i mean, you either are convincing, or you aren't. Your character can, in that respect, not really exceed you, as always with there being no rules for it, though being a character with significant social leverage (A noble or sth) can get you an edge. Yeah, Larp comes with limitations, freeform Larp with less in some respects, but more in others.
If someone behaves like an ass, someone will take them aside and explain why they are making it worse for everyone. If they don't learn, they get thrown out of the game, though this rarely if ever is necessary.

[Talakeal]

The floor is: Your Character Must Be Self-Motivated and Have Their Own Agenda.
For many players, that is a step upwards in terms of RP.
There's your floor. Now where is the ceiling that goes with it?
It should be noted that the amount of XP any given goal is worth is determined by the GM based on how difficult the activity in question is based on the circumstances when the goal was created.
I had a.character wanting to get in contact with her family. Because it was as easy as sending a space-email, it was only.worth about 5xp. (Messages in SWN take a few days or weeks to arrive and return)
I had another character want to take over the Exchange, which was the basic infrastructure that keeps a sector running. That task was worth 250,000 xp. Because it would be literally years of in-game work time.

I think we both need to step back and take a breath; it seems to me like at this point you are so determined to prove me wrong on a technicality that you are ignoring what I am actually saying.

I was talking about systems that encourage or enforce player behavior and reinforce how they go about accomplishing their goals, not having goals themselves. Sure, these are (vaguely) the same thing, but not really what I was talking about. Yes, if you look at it in a certain light you can find a way in which it raises the floor for RP (and I am sure I could find a way to define it as having a ceiling as well, unless the game is totally free-form from both a mechanical and setting perspective), but it isn't the type of system I was ever talking about. It feels like having a discussion about the fastest sports cars and then someone wants to bring race cars into it.

Now, I personally wouldn't enjoy such a system, I am too much of a perfectionist and too competitive. I hate having to play a weaker character than the rest of the people at the table (and I don't like the idea of playing a stronger one) or of permanently damaging my character because of how I set my goals.
In all of the groups I have ever been in people all have their own goals and are always fighting for spotlight time to resolve them, if actual XP was on the line I can see this getting really ugly. I remember the last major campaign I DMed I had a couple players who would constantly complain that the main plot didn't give their characters a chance to resolve their personal goals, I imagine that if they lost out on XP as a result of that they would have left the campaign (and rightly so), meaning that if I wanted to keep them as players I would have had to drastically change the nature of the campaign (and even if I did that other players would no not be able to accomplish their goals).

Freeforming it without rules is the easiest way for someone to feel patronized to, as I illustrated in previous posts, and freeforming the social part runs into all the same problems you have for combat, but does so about different topics.

I am actually not quite sure what you are trying to say here.

I think you are saying something like "If players are always in control of their characters one player cannot use social rolls to force another player to act in a certain manner, which would be just as bad as if they were fighting and had no way to actually injure one another," but I am not sure.

As I said, I don't remember talking about this issue. It is a discussion we could have, but I don't remember actually saying anything about it one way or another.

[Max_Killjoy]

I think we both need to step back and take a breath; it seems to me like at this point you are so determined to prove me wrong on a technicality that you are ignoring what I am actually saying.

So that makes for at least two of us in that boat...

[georgie_leech]

I think we both need to step back and take a breath; it seems to me like at this point you are so determined to prove me wrong on a technicality that you are ignoring what I am actually saying.

I was talking about systems that encourage or enforce player behavior and reinforce how they go about accomplishing their goals, not having goals themselves. Sure, these are (vaguely) the same thing, but not really what I was talking about. Yes, if you look at it in a certain light you can find a way in which it raises the floor for RP (and I am sure I could find a way to define it as having a ceiling as well, unless the game is totally free-form from both a mechanical and setting perspective), but it isn't the type of system I was ever talking about. It feels like having a discussion about the fastest sports cars and then someone wants to bring race cars into it.

I think the point is that the bonded portion isn't necessary to encourage rp, so 'systems that encourage rp disincentivize going above and beyond' doesn't follow. Sure, it's possible to write Encourage RP rules that do so, but it's also possible to write Combat rules that are bad, so I'm not sure how much of an objection that really is.

[Talakeal]

Minor note: "She is also saying". You couldn't have known, but I like these things to be correct

Darn, I noticed you didn't have a gender symbol in your profile and was working so hard to only use gender neutral language, but I guess a few of the English "androgynous = male" slipped in. Sorry about that.

I think the point is that the bonded portion isn't necessary to encourage rp, so 'systems that encourage rp disincentivize going above and beyond' doesn't follow. Sure, it's possible to write Encourage RP rules that do so, but it's also possible to write Combat rules that are bad, so I'm not sure how much of an objection that really is.

Of course it is possible to encourage RP without limiting you; I never claimed it wasn't. I wasn't even the one who came up with the whole floor / ceiling thing, I merely agreed that it was a good analogy when someone else (Quertus?) suggested it.

What I said was that systems that reward you for acting in a certain way for the purpose of encouraging rp will by definition discourage you from RPing in a way that falls outside of said certain way.

But even something as simple as "At the end of the session the group decides who the best RPer was and gives them a cookie," is going to cause people who want that cookie to make sure to do their best to RP in ways that are dramatic, obvious to the rest of the group, and inline with what other people's expectations of them are.

[Floret]

Darn, I noticed you didn't have a gender symbol in your profile and was working so hard to only use gender neutral language, but I guess a few of the English "androgynous = male" slipped in. Sorry about that.

No hard feelings^^ I did leave the marker off my profile, after all. (I mean, I do have a female avatar. But that can mean nothing, and the only thing I said was "I can pull off both in LARP", which I admit doesn't help to clarify matters )

On a sidenote: Have my explanations made "my style" of Larp any more fathomable for you?

Of course it is possible to encourage RP without limiting you; I never claimed it wasn't. I wasn't even the one who came up with the whole floor / ceiling thing, I merely agreed that it was a good analogy when someone else (Quertus?) suggested it.

What I said was that systems that reward you for acting in a certain way for the purpose of encouraging rp will by definition discourage you from RPing in a way that falls outside of said certain way.

But even something as simple as "At the end of the session the group decides who the best RPer was and gives them a cookie," is going to cause people who want that cookie to make sure to do their best to RP in ways that are dramatic, obvious to the rest of the group, and inline with what other people's expectations of them are.

Yeah, seems like you kinda became a Quertus-replacement for the discussion through agreeing with some of their arguments. My main problem with the argument given was the inevitability of a ceiling. I actually agree with the terms being rather useful, to be honest.^^
It seems we are all more or less on the same page, in actuality.

Systems as the one you describe I find the most terrible way to do things, as those are too vague to provide any usable guideline, and so usually boil down to favouritism, flashy and dramatic actions, or trying to "educate" and "train" people into the "right" way of RPing for rewarding it. Which I find a horrible practise. If someone's style doesn't jell with yours, trying to goad them into using the "better" one instead of just parting ways seems like the way more frustrating option to me.

[ComradeBear]

I think we both need to step back and take a breath; it seems to me like at this point you are so determined to prove me wrong on a technicality that you are ignoring what I am actually saying.

If I come across as wanting to win, I apologize. I do a lot of debating, and so I tend to point out faulty logic as what it is, and will point out simple things like "making an Always/Never claim is a bad idea unless you're 100% certain there are no exceptions." Which is what you were doing. (All RP rules introduce a Floor AND a Ceiling.)

I don't mean to seem aggressively pursuing being RIGHT, but I tend to expend effort on defending my position and pointing out logical errors in alternative positions. Which, yes, is pretty close to trying to win. But I can only say that's not my intent.

I was talking about systems that encourage or enforce player behavior and reinforce how they go about accomplishing their goals, not having goals themselves. Sure, these are (vaguely) the same thing, but not really what I was talking about. Yes, if you look at it in a certain light you can find a way in which it raises the floor for RP (and I am sure I could find a way to define it as having a ceiling as well, unless the game is totally free-form from both a mechanical and setting perspective), but it isn't the type of system I was ever talking about. It feels like having a discussion about the fastest sports cars and then someone wants to bring race cars into it.

If you mean here "You did X behavior so here is a cookie," then yes. It will have a ceiling. But that is only one way to encourage RP among many. (Also literally the worst way.)

Now, I personally wouldn't enjoy such a system, I am too much of a perfectionist and too competitive. I hate having to play a weaker character than the rest of the people at the table (and I don't like the idea of playing a stronger one) or of permanently damaging my character because of how I set my goals.
In all of the groups I have ever been in people all have their own goals and are always fighting for spotlight time to resolve them, if actual XP was on the line I can see this getting really ugly. I remember the last major campaign I DMed I had a couple players who would constantly complain that the main plot didn't give their characters a chance to resolve their personal goals, I imagine that if they lost out on XP as a result of that they would have left the campaign (and rightly so), meaning that if I wanted to keep them as players I would have had to drastically change the nature of the campaign (and even if I did that other players would no not be able to accomplish their goals).

The thing about SWN is that a lvl 1 character can pretty easily kill a lvl 5 character with the right weapons. Combat is super deadly. A Lvl 5 character will have more points in their favorite skills, but there's a lot of those and overlap will be hard. If you are a lvl 1 Warrior, a lvl 5 Expert specializing in Mechanics isn't going to step on your toes at all. Granted, you get XP for completing jobs as well. Most goals end up being side things, and if you assume players playing in good faith, there's no problem.
If you assume every player being the worst kind of player, then yeah. It will go horribly wrong. And for 0 reasons related to the system.
Combat systems can be exploited and cause huge problems as well.

I think you are saying something like "If players are always in control of their characters one player cannot use social rolls to force another player to act in a certain manner, which would be just as bad as if they were fighting and had no way to actually injure one another," but I am not sure.

That's pretty much what I was saying, yes.
Essentially that the se vagueries and issues will come up for things without rules, regardless of what we lack rules about.

As I said, I don't remember talking about this issue. It is a discussion we could have, but I don't remember actually saying anything about it one way or another.

I don't think you said anything on this, either. I was simply making my point because I do that.

So that makes for at least two of us in that boat...

One last thing:

Spoiler: Ref?

Show

Character attacks aren't arguments. Please stop.

[Cluedrew]

Actually I think this debate actually stems from people using the word "ceiling" (and probably floor) differently.

On one side we have it been used at a "hard ceiling", a cap that you cannot go beyond or are punished for doing so. On the other we have a "soft ceiling", which is more like a point of diminishing returns. I did a quick skim over the last little bit and the arguments on both sides seem to make sense under that light.