Here's why I roleplay, and why I now prefer the older, simpler kinds of D&D over the new, slickly produced versions (my ideas about why I prefer D&D over other RPGs will have to wait).
1. I like to have fun with my friends when I game. I'm not looking to create some amazing story, or some amazingly in depth character, or anything like that. Just have some fun.
2. Older versions of D&D, especially my edition of choice, BECM, are simple games to prepare. In an hour or less I can whip up a 12-15 room dungeon, with monsters, traps, and treasures. And it only takes me an hour because I'm a little rusty with the rules. With 3rd Edition, that one hour would likely have been spent on one or two rooms only (haven't tried DMing 4th, only gave it one play-test as a player so far).
3. In my experience, those older, rules light game systems tend to create more and better roleplaying. If every Fighter is mechanically the same except for Ability scores and magic loot gained, then it's up to the players to roleplay to make the two Fighters distinct. With more 'skillz & powerz' type systems, I've noticed that people tend to distinguish characters by what they do in game, mechanic-wise, rather than by personality.
4. I'm a father and husband, and am currently working 1 full time and 3 part time jobs. I don't have time to mess with rules heavy systems with a ton of splat books coming out all the time. Gimme some short, simple rules that I can tweak to my liking, and I'm good to go.
5. I've got nothing against newer games if I'm a player, but I almost always end up the DM, so I'll stick to the old TSR stuff, with my house rules.
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Yes; and in my experience, when there is a mechanic or a modifier for every action in game, then the game becomes about all of those modifiers and mechanics rather than about player choices.
ReplyDeleteI was a player in a 3e game a number of years ago, and one of my major dissapointments was that I could not do anything effectively unless it was written somewhere on my character sheet. So if I (as a player) said, "I want to search under the bed" or "I want to try to follow the NPC down the street while trying not to be noticed," I had to roll dice based on my character's abilities instead of describing my actions and having success or failure determined by choices that I (the player) made. So there might have been all sorts of important stuff stuffed under the bed and even though I (the player) might be the only one to state that I looked under the bed, the player with the highest modifier who said, "I search" and rolled well found it. It was a real barrier to feeling like my choices (other than in character creation) made any difference in play.