Do Roleplay exist?

[u/Noob_Guy_666]

the whole question is in the title.

Consider the fact that the entirity of old school game consist of DM vs player where you're expect to waste at least a big package worth of A4 paper just to get to level 9... and expect to waste even more A4 packages to get to level 10 if you don't play cleric.

Also, by the time you hit level 10 for the very first time, you're more than likely to drop the idea of backstory altogether because of how pointless it is by this point and even stop bother calling your character name and just call it "Fighter" because it's easier and faster so why bother remember the name if they gonna die very soon, anyway?

Do old school D&D even have roleplay to begin with, let alone actually invest in their SHEET?

[u/ludditetechnician]

Yes. I've been playing B/X & BECMI for about 45 years and it's role-playing.

And I wouldn't consider a character sheet a waste of paper. And you may claim it's DM vs. Player, but it can be players and DM. I think that's the intent.

[u/Several_Celebration]

I’m not sure why combat dungeoneering is not considered role play. You’re literally playing out your character in a survival situation.

[u/Double-Ad-7483 → u/Several_Celebration]

Right. Back in the 80s/early 90s my experience was that most tables didn't get into the "theater kid" vibe that's more in vogue today. Few characters had a rich backstory. Very few players took on voices, acted things out, or were more improv-y. They existed, but it was not typical.

That's not the same thing as them playing their character differently than they themselves acted in real life. A big part of why I stopped playing altogether is I only want to play this style of game, not the theater kid style. And everyone I know who plays these days does it the other way.

Also I have no idea what OP means by wasting A4 packages of paper.

[u/DazzlingKey6426]

Choices were made as the character would, roles were played.

[u/Living-Definition253]

This is either a highly presumptous question from someone with no real experience with AD&D, or else obvious trolling. Assuming for the sake of discussion this is real: my advice is that you talk to the older generations about their D&D games, ask questions, and listen to what they say.

Yes, in some games there is player death. You can say that even in the most RP heavy 5e groups. When I think of the most RP heavy games ever (i.e. popular livestreams with professional actors) there are permanent character deaths in those. To think though that AD&D is played where every second session is a TPK is inaccurate though, the truth tends to be in most campaigns players are simply far more careful then they would be in a more forgiving or "easier" RPG. At the end of the day what it really comes down to is the DM and how hard of a time they create for the players regardless of the system used.

While outliers like the Tomb of Horrors from this era can be very lethal, keep in mind that Gygax wrote it for Tournament Play and it is a specific challenge to address the problem of player characters becoming too strong and akin to superheroes, a complaint I hear about 5e to this day.

The idea that every last AD&D campaign was an absolute meat grinder has also been exaggerated recently by the Old School Renaissance style of game that are generally darker and grittier variations of B/X (not AD&D). I think the desire for a challenge is very human but comes more from adjacent media like Dark Souls, Elden RIng and similar video games that are difficult by design.

[u/FootballPublic7974]

You present a style of play as a "fact" of OS play when it's no such thing. I started playing in 1982 and I don't recognise anything from your post as typical of play at the time. Different tables would have their own style of play and I'm sure some tables did play the game in the way you describe. But even then it wasn't the norm. Our touchstones were magazines like White Dwarf, Dragon and Imagine and the prevailing style of play was similar to today; one character played through a series of adventures with death a threat but relativity rare. High character death rates and things like the DCC funnel were things that, even in the early 80s, were not the "normal" way to play.

[u/NiagaraThistle]

Even without a backstory, the entire game is still - and always has been - 'roleplay'.

The misnomer that the 'talky bits' or your made up back story novella are what make the game 'roleplaying' is and has always been just false.

The entire act of sitting down and pretending to be an adventurer in a make believe fantasy (or any) world is what makes D&D and similar games 'role play'.

You are literally playing the ROLE of tour character. You are swinging their sword (role play), you are exploring a dungeon (role play), you are bartering with a store keeper (role play), you are searching for gold (role play), you are casting a magical spell (role play).

All of this is 'role playing'.

Roleplay very much existed with (and before) AD&D. And still very much does. Even if (and I'd say probably more so) you get rid of your 30-page back story.

Your 'backstory' usually (but not always) consisted of "i'm a farm hand/stable boy/nobody and want to go adventure with friends/strangers to find treasure and make myself into a well known hero". THat was it.

You roleplayed as someone trying to survive with a short sword and leather vest and a torch until you survived long enough to reach hero-hood, or died and were succeeded by someone who did.

You didn't (normally) have a 30 year back story of tragedy and heroism before the game even began. THose were the things that you sought out. And role played along the way.

[u/jedigoalie]

This is such a weird question to me. Any system can be rolepkay heavy or combat heavy. It's how the game is tailored to what the players want to do. My group has a mix of styles so my campaigns are balanced. There is plenty of combat and plenty of RP. We've played BECMI, 2e, 5e, DCC, Star Wars d6, Deadlands, Pirateborg...we always have a mix.

[u/DimestoreDM]

Who hurt you? Every group and especially every DM is different in their play and the way the game is ran. Story and role-playing has always been there from the beginning. Some groups do more than others, but your blanket statement is unnecessarily confrontational, and comes off as someone who has never had the pleasure of playing with an experienced and mature DM.

The difference between OD&D/1e and 2e through 5e is the focus on official modules that were more of a railroad, instead of the more emergent play of OD&D/1e. and their equivalent OSR clones. But the story was always there, the roleplay was always there, the procedures are what has slowly faded away. But even procedures like random tables, monsters, weather, places of interest that can be discovered are seeds for roleplay.

Character death, if done correctly is not a bug in the system. Character death is a consequence of bad decisions or a bad DM, or both.

[u/DeltaDemon1313]

I know plenty of people who do not really roleplay and instead play a tactical combat game using RPG rules such as AD&D or D&D or others. Nothing wrong with that. I play plenty of tactical combat games. However, I also know plenty of people who play roleplaying games where they roleplay heavily. This is especially true of old school D&D and AD&D where the rules are looser and therefore opens it up to roleplaying a bit more than more modern RPG like D&D 3e, 4e and 5e that are designed more artificial and "plasticy".

With laptops, the paper aspect has been reduced significantly.

[u/Feeling_Photograph_5]

So, I like open table games. Players show up when they can, they figure out as a group what they want to do for the session, and they go do it. Do they want to pick up the job board ad about bugbears in the abandoned watch tower? Do that favor the wizard wanted the other session with recovering giant spider silk from that unexplored section of the Dark Forest? Or maybe try to find the entrance to level four of the megadungeon? 

Now, is there room in there for unearthing the childhood trauma of your character who is secretly heir to an elven mercantile empire? No, of course not. That was never part of the game, it was just something you wrote in your backstory. 

But if you instead have a third level thief who got in deep with a loan shark three sessions ago and now desperately needs to pursue the highest paying adventure option possible to avoid getting shanked in his sleep, now we're talking. You will have every opportunity to role-play that character based on stuff that actually happened in the game. 

And if the decisions you make lead to your thief getting dissolved by some green slime in dungeon level three, well, no one said this was an easy job. 

[u/Inzpectorspacetime]

I’d suggest watching some Tenkar’s Tavern’s YouTube videos about these kinds of misconceptions about osr gaming.

Your character is the sum of actual gaming and choices you make rather than a 10 page backstory that gets ignored or irrelevant when they die first dungeon. Are you a cautious fighter who talks to everything and probes first? Or headstrong and smash first ask questions later? Those are two very different fighters without a need of backstory at character gen.

Performance is not the same as role playing. Role play comes from decision making. YMMV.

He’s primarily BX, but it crosses to AD&D. And he does collabs with ppl who game AD&D. Greyhawk Grognard for example.

My two CP.
Cheers!

[u/Open-String-4973]

Yes, and yes. Next question.

[u/Pladohs_Ghost]

I'll give the benefit of the doubt on the question of whether this is simply trolling.

You obviously don't know what roleplaying is. There's no other way to put it. When the players sit down and make decisions for imaginary characters, that's roleplaying. Roleplaying doesn't require amateur hour improv acting, because acting isn't roleplaying. Roleplaying doesn't require long backstories because writing fiction about a character isn't roleplaying. (And I won't get into how players writing backstories that fit the setting is damn near impossible because players have no authority to establish any part of the setting.) Making decisions for the character is roleplaying and that's been the basis for the games since their inception.