this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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Do people run lower roleplay focused D&D? (lemm.ee)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by flashgnash@lemm.ee to c/dnd@lemmy.world
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Whenever I hear about D&D more often than not it seems like people go to great lengths to stay in character and roleplay

This is great and makes for some very interesting stories but I tend to find myself more interested in just going on an adventure with a group of friends, solve a few puzzles win a few fights, complete a few quests etc

I'm also a big fan of character optimisation and mechanics but get the feeling that can be frowned upon by much of the community

Difficult to describe what I mean here but as an example in baldur's gate I barely roleplay at all, my character has no personality except for the fact they make the decisions I would make, but I find that more fun, not having to worry about what my character would do and just making the decision I want to make

I realise not having a fleshed out character in D&D detracts from the immersiveness of the story because the DM can't weave your character into the story but at least at the moment that doesn't sound too bad to me.

Just wondering if there are people out there who run lighter roleplay campaigns

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[–] ekky@sopuli.xyz 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

There's always been the balance between war gamers and role players (not limited to DnD). War gaming can be fun, but I don't think DnD is especially geared toward it. Likewise, role playing is nice, but those hardcore no-meta (at all, there is no way to have a laugh ooc) aren't my thing either.

When starting a new campaign, I like to ask whether the players prefer role-playing or roll-playing. This also serves as a nice ice breaker for discussing meta.

If you have problems finding a proper DnD group with little role playing, you might want to check out other game systems which focus less on it. Warhammer (including the Pen and Paper systems) seems to focus more on the numbers and strategy aspect.

Not that you can't roll-play in DnD, you just need to find the right group and campaign. A friend of mine once made a campaign where we started in the room we were currently sitting in, but with the stats on our papers, where our world was being invaded by demons. So it's definite possible to be yourself.

[–] chillhelm@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago (4 children)

War gaming can be fun, but I don’t think DnD is especially geared toward it

Isn't like 90% of the rules for DnD just rules for combat and treasure? Literally every single class in DnD is a combat class. And when people talk about their DnD characters they say "I played this Dragonborn Cleric..." or "Multiclassed Tiefling Mage/Rouge" and not "I played this Dwarf that had really good proficiency in Persuasion and 'Use Rope'". [Btw is 'Use Rope' still a skill in newer DnD editions?].

[–] WarmSoda@lemm.ee 6 points 10 months ago

DnD started as a war game

[–] Strit@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show 5 points 10 months ago

Btw is ‘Use Rope’ still a skill in newer DnD editions?

No it's not. :)

[–] Sentrovasi@kbin.social 5 points 10 months ago

Yeah I was going to say: D&D is a lot more geared towards numbers and combat encounters than many other TTRPG systems. My main issue is actually finding players who want to engage in the co-creation of story rather than combat optimisation (not that they preclude each other, but oftentimes if you've built your character as a hammer, everything can start to look like a nail).

[–] ekky@sopuli.xyz 3 points 10 months ago

The current DnD system does definitely have a combat system and enough rules to get you started, though it's way less rule-heavy than most Warhammer, Shadowrunner, and even previous DnD PnP systems I've played. It feels more like starting guidelines than a proper system.

I've considered playing stars without numbers and Fate Core, which should apparently be a very rule-light PnP system, though haven't gotten around to them yet.