[MUD-Dev] What is an RPG? [Was: Playing catch-up with levels]

[Darksuit]

Sean Middleditch Wrote:

> To be honest, a true role playing game have absolutely no ability
> development at all, or even any measurable abilities _to_ improve.
> A lot of interactive fiction (See the newly released book "Twisty
> Little Passages" for more information on IF) falls into this
> category.

I dont find this to be true at all.  What it really breaks down to
is Role Playing Vs. Roll Playing.

When playing a Role it is all about advancement in some way. Whether
thats through the use of a story or the advancement to different
abilities and adapting to different situtations, and exporing those
situtations through the eyes of the Character. The lack of a ability
in a game master and the players to help foster this should not be
dumped on the the game system itself.

An example in the Group I was with we had some very good Role
Players, however we aquired a Roll Player, who could only percive
themselves as the one character type and class and never varied from
that, this player would always take the same spells and react the
same way to every situtaion. Had this player done this in a fashion
that was in character and played this up, I would not have had to
much of a problem, but their constant break to go look up this rule
or that rule to make sure that the player was always right and that
it was technically correct had me classify them as a Roll Player.

There was an article some years back in Dragon magazine aptly named
Role Playing Vs. Roll Playing. Which talked exactly about this.

What happens is that People forget that they are playing a character
and are just trying to shoot for the min/max best that they can do.

When I was playing an a group, one of the things that we used to do
to help bring us into the fold of playing a charater, is that we
might take a flaw of sometype or have a background randomly
generated and use that to form the character and help conceptualize
that character.  While I find it far more fun to play that Druid
with only a 4 con that has to Stop every so often mix tonics, Or the
Paladin Who is now a Girl be HE wish to have a unicorn as a mount
not realizing that you needed to be a female Virgin, Or The Battle
Cleric who Quizes you about the battle before healing you. While
these are concepts and good leaping off points. However the lack of
Role Playing is almost always saddled on the Role Player themselves,
and a lot of them turn out to be Roll Player.

The job of the Game Master and the System is only to present the
oportunity to give the Player a jumping off point for thier
imagination. How the player uses that is up to the player.

-- Darksuit
   Role Playing for over 20 years and going strong.
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