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
I would argue that most D&D games are roleplay light - it’s MUCH easier to just run a mechanical game than one with lots of roleplay.
I can give you session after session of dungeon crawling, or low level story stuff, but trying to put together a campaign with good (consistent) characters with motivations and personalities is incredibly difficult.
The reason you hear about all the roleplay heavy ones (critical role etc, or even stories from other people’s campaigns) is because they stand out as being special, exceptionally well done games.
You might be interested in Pathfinder Society.
Basically they’re Pathfinder pickup games with a pre-approved set of rules run at game stores and conventions. The games tend to be focused almost exclusively on mechanics and puzzles with almost no role play.
It’s not that I don’t want roleplay, I’m not sure if I’ve figured it out in my own mind yet in all honesty
Just want the roleplay not be taken too seriously if that makes any sense, characters don’t need to be too deep, breaking character for a joke isn’t frowned upon etc
I guess what I’m really describing here is just a lightheaded campaign here aren’t I
I have played different tabletop role playing games on and off for a few decades with dozens of people and only a few tried to stay in character beyond basic consistency with a character’s choices. One or two tried a voice or way of speaking, and barely kept it consistent.
A lot of people just played themselves even if they said they were going to play a certain character concept.
Its all up to the group. Most groups I have been in did not have any particular requirements. Some folks roleplayed more than others. If a group is big on roleplaying there are plenty of ways of making a character that just does not interact much. From the silent types who just take action to dumb brutes who don’t get all this talky talk. Honestly I find most folks don’t rp all that much. If you do play by discord its so hard to keep momentum going that often rp is a bit limited. people can talk your ear off but typing your eyes out is much harder.
D&D 4e was designed for you! It did away with most RP mechanics and focused heavy on dungeon crawling and perfecting character stats.
You may also want to consider other game systems that have much less emphasis on role playing and are primarily strategy-based, such as Battletech.
Oh absolutely! I’ve heard the term “power gamer” used to describe people who love building the perfect, 100% optimal character that is multiclassed just so with such and such items, who can do X amount of damage per round, and so on. I think some people use that as a derogatory term but I don’t see it that way. It’s just how some people like to play, just as some people like to play characters who are this race with this color hair and an elaborate backstory, stats be damned.
There are absolutely people out there like what you’re asking for. Lots of combat, exploration, puzzles, and roleplay is restricted to basic narration (“my character asks where the bad guy is” “ok, roll persuasion”). They have a presence online as well, for example r/3d6 on Reddit, but it’s a bit smaller/less vocal than the RP folks I think.
It’s not even about building the perfect character, just seems like a waste of a mechanic to intentionally not make your character as strong as you can.
Think it would also be cool to do a normal campaign with roleplay and all that’s just all power builds and the DM balances it accordingly
That’s my group’s Sunday nights. Sprinkle in joke characters or based off characters from shows or movies here and there, and that’s how we’ve been playing together for 8y or so
Why play pen-and-paper games rather than computer games if you’re more interested in combat rather than roleplaying? Pen-and-paper combat is tedious and feels like work when compared to computer-game combat. I see it as a necessary evil in a roleplaying campaign; I’m not sure why someone would want it for its own sake when computer games exist.
(Edit: just to be clear, I’m not trying to tell other people what they’re allowed to like. I love character optimization myself - I’m the kind of guy who used to be obsessed with planning my Path of Exile skill tree. I just don’t understand why some people do that sort of gaming the old-fashioned way when they could do it on a computer.)
Because I do want some element of roleplay, I’m not solely interested in the combat, but my ideal campaign is one where I’m not really changing my personality much or at all to play a character
I think you can get a lot more entertaining stories when they’re spontaneous like D&D is, games are fun but they very much don’t feel alive in the way D&D does
I see… I think my confusion comes from the fact that I consider what you’re doing to be roleplaying too. “My character is pretty much me except that he’s also a barbarian warrior” is IMO perfectly legitimate as a character background and I wouldn’t call it “lower roleplay focused” as long as you’re still interested in actually engaging with the fantasy world and telling a story.
Sure! I’ve run plenty of them over the years. It’s good fun.
It can be hard to get a group together that all have the same preferences, but you’d be surprised how many people want at least an occasional “hack n slash” session, even if they don’t want it every session.
I gotta say that I tend to prefer the more role play than roll play most of the time, even as forever DM. But I still enjoy just breaking open a random encounter chart and going ham, or pulling out my heroquest stuff for a more board game one-off session.
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.
