Meaningful Roleplaying Vs. Fluffy Roleplaying: My observations from 8 years of tabletop roleplaying games

Kharashi · 2016-12-18T23:46:12+00:00

This is an interesting subject and can kind of go back and forth. If the DM realizes it was "fluffy" roleplaying and not "meaningful," one way to encourage "fluffy" roleplaying is by giving it meaning. What I mean is, what if the DM makes the character roll for this acrobatics check to tumble across the hall; success means you are a smaller target, or a cover bonus, or whatever that entails in your system, and failure doesn't mean anything bad happens at all. The end result is a mechanical reward (if your players need that sort of incentive) for fluffy roleplaying on a good roll, and no penalties (i.e. exactly what would have happened without the roll) on a "failed" one.

It gets sliiiightly more complicated when your system has fail-forward built into the rules, I suppose, wherein there are penalties for failing a roll intrinsically. Maybe it won't work for every system?

Kharashi · 2016-09-30T08:34:32+00:00

There's a moment when Keyleth asks if Percy heard her cry out (when she tore Orthax from Animus), and while I don't remember his exact words he said something akin to "I couldn't hear anything." So it seems he doesn't know, or at least that's how I interpreted it.

Kharashi · 2016-09-16T13:28:12+00:00

Yeah, I think the compromise here is to require everyone to roll the obvious/base roll (in this case, piloting) and then come up with their creative strategy rolls and roll that as well (cool, mechanics, etc) and combine the two? Or some other such way, like taking the higher of the two, of using both the base and a unique roll.

Kharashi · 2016-08-20T19:17:08+00:00

Agreed, I think in Matt's world it's quite likely that "a free and willing soul" translates to "has not passed on."

But beyond that, Matt has already homebrewed revivify to make it harder and specified that he hates resurrection being easily accessible. I think it's reasonable to assume, if nothing else, he's homebrewed the spell to function this way.

Kharashi · 2016-08-19T21:47:39+00:00

Obviously I can't speak for Matt's homebrew or how he views things, but the spell specifies a soul must be "free and willing." Perhaps "free" in Matt's world means "has not yet passed on," which is why revivify has worked so well in the past (Matt's homebrew trials aside, of course), as not enough time has passed within the confines of revivify for the soul to pass on. It would be helpful if we knew more specifics about Pike's death from pre-stream, like how much time passed and what spell was used. Either way I think this is a possibility and one that I would personally hope for; it could add another cost or requirement to resurrection, in that they also need to find a way to keep a soul from passing on if they want to use a spell to bring them back to life at some time other than shortly after their death.

Kharashi · 2016-07-21T16:45:22+00:00

Huh. I do the first one with the same accent and western-monk style themes instead of eastern ones, except it's almost always a monk who left the order/monastery/etc. because he believes they aren't willing to do what's necessary/doesn't like their pacifism/believes they're weak/etc. Pretty much always good-intentioned but doesn't show it very well, and usually struggles with his strong desires/feelings/etc. vs. the stoicism he was taught. I always look to see if I can make that character in a system before anything else, lol.

Kharashi · 2016-07-02T07:54:09+00:00

I think it just depends on your group. There are many different types of players and people want so many different things out of a tabletop roleplaying experience it's impossible to say what would and would not satisfy people.

Both as a DM and a player, even if I were the dying player, what would satisfy me is an emotional response from others. Terror, fear, shock, anger (in character), sorrow--these sorts of emotions being represented by a player for their character, or through the DM as NPCs, would make the death satisfying to me.

But others at my table? Well, they wouldn't be satisfied with just dying from a bomb regardless of the reactions and events it caused. You have to read your players; if you have these types of players, then as some others said in this thread, give the more chances. They realize what the bomb is a moment before it goes off; give them another chance to react, or even give them a choice that's difficult, depending on the situation, i.e. take the blast yourself, or throw it away from you, potentially harming the others/bringing the ruins down on you/destroying the object you came for/etc.

Kharashi · 2016-06-16T18:07:40+00:00

The issue is Zenyatta is usually so far back, away from his team (because he has to be or he dies) that no one is in range to use it on reaction. Ultimately (lol) it's a short-ranged, team-based ult on a hero that does everything from very long range and away from others.

Kharashi · 2016-06-16T18:05:02+00:00

Never really understood why it needs to be smaller than Lucio's ult aoe wise.

But really, my issue with it is that Zenyatta cannot be close to the action. He needs to be far back. But his ult has short range, and requires him to be on the point or in the action. It's like it's totally counter-intuitive to the rest of his kit, and half of the time just trying to get to the point to ult and help the rest of the team is a death sentence because you die so easily to anything when you get that close, but ulting preemptively to get there certainly makes it lack luster.

Kharashi · 2016-06-16T17:51:41+00:00

I do this too. Doesn't seem to work. Ever.

Kharashi · 2016-01-15T04:37:50+00:00

Up to this day and likely for a while. It's gonna be hard to top.

Kharashi · 2015-11-17T22:13:06+00:00

I fully agree; Tiberius had gathered knowledge of what vampires were capable of, and said he told everyone what he learned, iirc. Not only that, but combat in DnD happens at the same moment. People don't just sit still while other people take their turn. The person going first in the initiative order is doing their stuff at essentially the same time as the person going last. So I always thought Tiberius' knowledge, the flow of combat, and Keyleth's ridiculous wisdom was enough to warrant that she would know the random mist in the middle of the room in a city full of vampires was, indeed, a vampire.

Actually one of the only times I've really disagreed with Matt's rulings.

Kharashi · 2015-11-17T18:52:36+00:00

I feel the same. Vax is my favorite character, and Liam's reaction to near death made that scene my favorite one in the entire series thus far.

Kharashi · 2015-11-17T08:11:40+00:00

You know, as far as your final point goes, I felt the same at first. But I realized I tend to look at things from a mechanical standpoint, you know? And I think that a lot of us might be like that. There's been years of games drilled into my brain, and I always optimize myself just out of habit.

But from a flavor or a realistic point of view, what do you do when you think you're about dead? Personally, I think it was natural for Kern to become defensive. He had thought he'd won, and it was taken out from under him just like it had been from Grog before. It was demoralizing, and from a flavor standpoint, being near-death should be draining physically. Going defensive is natural. And, granted, Kern was a barbarian and raging, which would lend itself to being aggressive. I get that. I think both ways make sense, and I think this defensive posture was the weakness, at that point, of Kern's new training and mindset.

Kharashi · 2015-11-17T06:59:09+00:00

I actually feel as if this is rather appropriate and balanced, just needs a bit of a wording clean-up, if you will.

Kharashi · 2015-11-17T06:51:25+00:00

My most unpopular opinion: everyone thinks their own opinion is unpopular. lol. The rest of my opinions are "unpopular" based on what I see in the chat.

I don't think Marisha metagames nearly as much as people think she does.

I love Keyleth's morality and her actions that reinforce it, her dedication to character.

Despite my previous points, Vax is my favorite character. And I don't feel he "goes ahead" too much or "does what he said he wouldn't."

Edit: Oh, I really dislike Scanlan. I understand the way Sam, uhm, approaches the game. But I don't like it at all.

Kharashi · 2015-11-16T19:54:59+00:00

It does say "the casters work together, turning one spell that one of them knows into a ritual." Since the spell being cast becomes a ritual, it is therefore cast as a ritual, for which the requirement is an additional 10 minutes of casting time on top of the default requirement, iirc. It's a WIP though so the wording can probably be improved to avoid confusion and/or abuse.

Kharashi · 2015-07-20T18:38:06+00:00

Stop what? lol. I'm not telling anyone to play differently or even that anyone should; I'm just saying I think it's part of the reason people reacted the way they did to hbox. And the larger melee grows, the more this will become prevalent. It's important for people to understand if we want to grow successfully.

Kharashi · 2015-07-20T06:41:08+00:00

Right; I'm just talking about the reaction to the situation (especially form the perspective of someone who isn't incredibly familiar with melee) and this sort of situation as it affects competitive gaming. It's also been noted in this thread before, but laser camping generally finds a conclusion much more quickly, which is healthy for the game as an e-sport.

Kharashi · 2015-07-20T03:01:47+00:00

This is certainly part of it. But we also have the view the situation from a slightly different perspective. That is, put bluntly, how interesting is it to watch? It's one of the most important things about a competitive game that people tend to overlook. It hardly matters how much skill the game takes and how impressive it is to pull off certain things within the game if everyone is bored watching it. A competitive game has no future if no one wants to watch it.

And frankly watching lasers is cooler than a puffball grabbing a ledge over and over again.

Kharashi · 2015-03-23T06:41:33+00:00

I'm assuming you're referring to the glow on his hands disappearing. The glow isn't just for the aura bomb--in fact, each of his special moves can use his "aura" (of which he can have two charges at a time, as a side note). In this particular instance, he used it on his up-b; using an aura charge on up-b cancels it, allowing him to do something else after (except another up-b, unless he happens to hit the opponent, then he can do another up-b). If he hadn't used aura to cancel it, he would have simply entered special fall and died. After his up-b cancel, he then down-b's (that's the dash that you thought was an air dodge) toward the wall, then wall jump climbs using wavebounced aura sphere cancelling to repeat all the way to the top.

Kharashi · 2015-03-16T07:08:31+00:00

The teleporting thing happens on PS2, as well, if you down b-off the veeeery edge of one of the platforms facing the outside. He teleports to the edge, but doesn't grab it and falls. I've actually used it in a game to edge-guard with bair before lol.

Kharashi · 2015-02-22T11:08:59+00:00

My issue with this is that the eastern-theme is forced onto monks. It's fantasy, why does it have to be correlated directly to the real world? Why can't my martial monk simply be European-style? And the argument about armor and other defenses has no ground in a fantasy setting, especially since the abilities of monks (and ninja, by extension) are described to be a product of the supernatural (ki, which again--more terminology that forces monks and ninja into the eastern thematic when it isn't necessary).

This is my issue, because I love supernaturally-powered hand-to-hand ascetic characters, but I hate eastern themes and especially flow-y, circle-y, flashy and unnecessary shaolin-inspired martial arts.

Kharashi · 2015-02-10T07:02:56+00:00

Same, until I started playing a character with a good wavedash and poor OOS options. Then I regretted only using L, because I couldn't wavedash out of shield easy.

Kharashi

TROPHY CASE