D&D General The adventure game vs the role-playing game

[Desdichado]

I prefer roleplaying to OSR-style dungeoncrawling, but I prefer roleplaying characters who are in fast-paced action movies, not roleplaying tea with the Duchess, or an exhaustive shopping trip in the town market. Not sure what that means with regards to the two camps you're defining!

I don't think that this goes back to "I played AD&D in the 80s therefore, I play a certain way" kind of thing, though. Years ago, James Maleszewski coined the term "the Hickman Revolution" which suggested that while the very early game was basically an expanded use of a tactical miniatures wargame, that there was a lot of pent-up demand for more roleplaying type material as early as the early 80s, at least, and that once the supply for that kind of product was offered, it quickly swamped almost everything else that TSR was doing. I think the split has less to do with how long you've been playing and more to do with the vector from which you entered the hobby. If you came in as a reader and fan of fantasy fiction before you ever played, you probably had a different expectation of what the game was going to be like than if you didn't, and you probably found all of the weird 10-foot poles, dungeoncrawling and pixel-bitching a very tedious and strange activity.

 

[iserith]

I prefer roleplaying to OSR-style dungeoncrawling, but I prefer roleplaying characters who are in fast-paced action movies, not roleplaying tea with the Duchess, or an exhaustive shopping trip in the town market. Not sure what that means with regards to the two camps you're defining!

It means you're roleplaying (as is everyone) likely with an emphasis on portraying established characterization, but prefer particular content/challenges presented by the DM, specifically, anything that isn't procedural dungeon-crawling and likely a preference for combat and social interaction challenges over exploration (though exploration is unavoidable since it encompasses so much).

 

[el-remmen]

I do have to say that in my groups, speaking generally, we are role-playing the entire time we are exploring or fighting because the way we approach these things both mechanically and thematically is based on the specific character being played and the dynamics of everyone involved.

 

[Desdichado]

It means you're roleplaying (as is everyone) likely with an emphasis on portraying established characterization, but prefer particular content/challenges presented by the DM, specifically, anything that isn't procedural dungeon-crawling and likely a preference for combat and social interaction challenges over exploration (though exploration is unavoidable since it encompasses so much).

No, what it really means is that I like action, intrigue, and mystery like The X-files or a good spy thriller set in a fantasy setting, and I thoroughly reject the conflation of pixel-bitching with exploration, or dungeons with anything at all other than a handful of cells where prisoners are kept.

 

[iserith]

No, what it really means is that I like action, intrigue, and mystery like The X-files or a good spy thriller set in a fantasy setting, and I thoroughly reject the conflation of pixel-bitching with exploration, or dungeons with anything at all other than a handful of cells where prisoners are kept.

Right, action, intrigue, X-Files, spy thriller - that's chiefly going to be the pillars of combat and social interaction with some exploration. But it's not procedural exploration as in old-school dungeon-crawling. It's exploration that involves more moving about environments and investigation which then leads to more action-oriented (combat or social) scenes. How are you communicating your roleplaying? First person? Third person? Both? Do you stick to established characterization?

 

[Desdichado]

Y'know, normally I resist having my descriptions of what I do cast into labels that I don't make myself in order to fit someone's model of game theory or whatever, but... honestly, yeah. That's close enough. In any case, my specific response was in regards to the split that the OG poster outlined, where his model has to be morphed a bit to make my preferred manner of play fit into it. But that's mostly because the early discussion specifically conflated adventure with sandboxing and dungeoncrawling, which I don't do, nor do I see sandboxing as anything other than an equally unappealing endpoint on the same spectrum as railroad.

 

[Jack Daniel]

Setting aside the conflation of role-playing with play-acting already touched on earlier in the thread — it's so pervasive that I've almost given up fighting it, and I tend to call what I do at the game-table adventure gaming rather than role-playing just to drive the point home for any new players I take on — I don't think it's fair to say that the adventure game enthusiasts are the same crowd as the tactical wargamers and the character optimizers. There will always be overlap, but for most part these are all separate aspects of the hobby. (Or in some cases, separate hobbies outright.) You have players want to explore a milieu, players who want to build strong characters, players who want to play out fights with minis, players who want to act in character and do voices, and players who want to method-act and get into a character's psychology.

For me, whether playing or refereeing, the whole point is exploration. The other stuff adds variety when used in moderation, but "pixel-bitching" a dungeon (I know that's a pejorative but I'm hereby officially reclaiming it) square by square and mapping a wilderness hexagon by hexagon is where the fun is at. If I'm the referee, I want to set up mysterious, atmospheric, dangerous places for the PCs to discover and "solve," and if I'm a player, I want to be discovering and solving mysterious, atmospheric, dangerous places. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

D&D should be 60% Myst, 30% Morrowind, 10% Diablo.

 

[Greg K]

I wasn't exposed to non-dungeon crawl fantasy until I went to college. My introduction to playing was Holme's Basic which my friend receive on Christmas of '78. We quickly fell in with an AD&D 1e group a few months later. As kids, we only had modules to go by and so everything was the dungeon crawl and combat. Town was simply where you went to buy equipment and that pretty much got handwaived.

In college, I fell in with a Rolemaster group comprised of drama students and medieval reenactors whom also contributed to one of the RM supplements. They introduced me to a whole new way of approaching fantasy rpgs. There was combat, but no dungeon. It wasn't a railroad to a pre-planned story which looking back kind of seems strange given they were drama students (I would have expected the experience to be more like a LARP I played in that was run by this one scriptwriter I know). There was interacting with NPCs, each other, and sessions around player goals and motivations.

Since my experience with that college group, I prefer a campaign that focuses outside the dungeon and on the characters, their goals, and the consequences of their interactions (e.g. crossing the local wizard's guild results in a new enemy). I don't mind the periodic short dungeon crawl, but I have a strong dislike for megadungeons, adventure paths, and kick in the door (or other heavily combat focused) campaigns.

I think the following is a fairly good indication of my preferences, but Method Actor is a little high. I took the quiz multiple times with similar results except Method Actor was, usually, in the 70's and specialist in the sixties. Also, if Robin Laws 4e player types were included in the quiz, I would probably rate extremely high as Explorer which fits me better than Method Actor.

You think that gaming is a form of creative expression. You may view rules as, at best, a necessary evil, preferring sessions where the dice never come out of the bag. You enjoy situations that test or deepen your character's personality traits.
Method Actor: 83% Storyteller: 75% Specialist: 75% Tactician: 42% Powergamer: 25% Butt Kicker: 17% Casual Gamer: 8%

 

[Greg K]

If you came in as a reader and fan of fantasy fiction before you ever played, you probably had a different expectation of what the game was going to be like than if you didn't, and you probably found all of the weird 10-foot poles, dungeoncrawling and pixel-bitching a very tedious and strange activity.

Agreed. My friends and I came in expecting King Arthur, Robin Hood, and Harryhausen Sinbad movies. Archer: Fugitive from the Empire (a.k.a Archer and the Sorceress), Dragonslayer, and Excalibur, which were all released in 1981, were also influential on my friends and I and many others with whom I would game in the 80's . Heavy Metal (the Taarna and Den segments) and Clash of the TItans were also released in 1981 and had some influence on us (Taarna became the basis of a major deity in one of my campaigns).

 

[Desdichado]

I've always found that Robin Laws quiz an interesting activity, but I'm a little stumped by what it means exactly, given that my results appear on the face of it to be kind of paradoxical. I tend to get highest in Storytelling, whatever exactly that means (although usually when people describe what they think that activity means in game, it's not really what I like) and then as close second, I'm tied between method actor and butt-kicker... which kind of seem to be almost opposite ends on the spectrum from each other. In third place, I have a near tie between specialist and tactician, although I disagree that I'm any sort of either. And then tied for last place with very little coverage I get casual gamer and power gamer. That might be more or less correct there, at least.