Quote from: Omega;741893The argument many have against RPing on MMOs is that the people arent RPing unless you really stretch the term. "Lets form a group and raid instance 12" is not RPing. Standing around a guild room and chatting in character is more or less RPing. Varies a-lot and it has little impact on the game world. but can impact the group.

Even MMOs based on RPGs like Champions tend to be appallingly lacking in actual role playing.

You are 100% correct in the fact the players can alter their physical environments in a substantial form. However you are also 100% wrong about the roleplaying. Because there is one very important part of the game they can impact and that is the social network the connects the players.

However what is different, especially today, is the type of social interaction and connections that are made.

A large segment of social interactions are very similar to the drama that takes place among participants in a sport league. MMORPGs share many characteristics of amateur sport leagues. It is a competitive environment with what in theory are hard and fast rules that people do for fun solo or in teams.

This used to be a segment of tabletop RPGs when it was the only game of its type around, but now this audience has been lost to First Person Shooters and MMORPGs.

MMORPGs particpants are roleplaying just not in the same way that tabletop RPGs emphasize. It is roleplaying because unlike sports league (and first person shooters) everything the person does is through the character, and the character defines the limits of what the player can do.

Note that First Person Shooter differ from MMORPGs in that the heart of a FPS relies on the physical skills (mostly dexterity) of the player. That what character options exists are in the form of equipment. In MMORPGs the games has character progression as well as gears. So a beginning character has limitations that no amount of physical skill can overcome. (Although it certainly does help).

The same thing with LARPS versus sport-like reenactments.  The live-action physical combat and/or social interactions allows a person with natural talent to excel at  the game but only to a point. A start LARPs character has limitations that can't be overcome by the physical (or mental) talents of the player.

Hey guys, we made Reddit.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;742041Hey guys, we made Reddit.

This thread is better.

I can't speak to issues of Pathfinder - too many entangling commitments as I'm sure you all understand.  Those kinds of questions should be answered by Paizo, not by me.  

Quote from: Mistwell;741839Why not put in a 15 year expiration on it (or some other, perhaps longer, number on it)? Do you really think companies would have stayed away from producing content knowing that they only had 15 years before the license ended? I don't.  I think, given the mentality of 90% of the d20 publishers, 15 years would have been viewed as so far down the road as to not matter anymore.

Yes, I think it would have materially affected the impact and use of the license if there had been any meaningful restrictions placed on it.  The environment was too toxic to have negotiated a series of "except", "but" and "until" conditions.

Quote from: RSDancey;742048Yes, I think it would have materially affected the impact and use of the license if there had been any meaningful restrictions placed on it.  The environment was too toxic to have negotiated a series of "except", "but" and "until" conditions.

Ryan is totally right here. This could have had a simmilar impact to any licensing deal publishers make for movies or other IP. When that deal expires or goes south you can end up left with unsellable product. It has happened to me, it has happened to TSR, it has happened Decipher and to others.

Publishers would be potentially intensely wary of a "this is good only for XYZ years" allowance. The longer the term the less problems one would have. But it would still have impacted choice to opt in or not.

Quote from: estar;741932You are 100% correct in the fact the players can alter their physical environments in a substantial form. However you are also 100% wrong about the roleplaying. Because there is one very important part of the game they can impact and that is the social network the connects the players.

However what is different, especially today, is the type of social interaction and connections that are made.

A large segment of social interactions are very similar to the drama that takes place among participants in a sport league. MMORPGs share many characteristics of amateur sport leagues. It is a competitive environment with what in theory are hard and fast rules that people do for fun solo or in teams.

This used to be a segment of tabletop RPGs when it was the only game of its type around, but now this audience has been lost to First Person Shooters and MMORPGs.

MMORPGs particpants are roleplaying just not in the same way that tabletop RPGs emphasize. It is roleplaying because unlike sports league (and first person shooters) everything the person does is through the character, and the character defines the limits of what the player can do.

Note that First Person Shooter differ from MMORPGs in that the heart of a FPS relies on the physical skills (mostly dexterity) of the player. That what character options exists are in the form of equipment. In MMORPGs the games has character progression as well as gears. So a beginning character has limitations that no amount of physical skill can overcome. (Although it certainly does help).

The same thing with LARPS versus sport-like reenactments.  The live-action physical combat and/or social interactions allows a person with natural talent to excel at  the game but only to a point. A start LARPs character has limitations that can't be overcome by the physical (or mental) talents of the player.

Hypothetical -
So if you were playing in a table top RPG that was particuarly free form say a diceless game where resolution mechanics were made based on sympathetic activities- so to climb the wall you need to do 40 push ups in a minutes, to shoot the guard you need to throw 5 of of 8 pingpong balls into a pint glass etc
Would that be roleplaying ?
The limitations of the character are defined by your physical and mental limits.
You are still interacting with a shared imaginary space through an avatar and reacting as you would expect that avatar to react to given phemonena.

(the bolded bit is my base defintion of roleplaying.)

Quote from: jibbajibba;742060Hypothetical -
So if you were playing in a table top RPG that was particuarly free form say a diceless game where resolution mechanics were made based on sympathetic activities- so to climb the wall you need to do 40 push ups in a minutes, to shoot the guard you need to throw 5 of of 8 pingpong balls into a pint glass etc
Would that be roleplaying ?
The limitations of the character are defined by your physical and mental limits.
You are still interacting with a shared imaginary space through an avatar and reacting as you would expect that avatar to react to given phemonena.

(the bolded bit is my base defintion of roleplaying.)

er... I have a solo RPG right here that does essentially that... The strength of an attack was the number of pushups you could do. Healed by doing sit ups etc...

Quote from: jibbajibba;742060Hypothetical -
So if you were playing in a table top RPG that was particuarly free form say a diceless game where resolution mechanics were made based on sympathetic activities- so to climb the wall you need to do 40 push ups in a minutes, to shoot the guard you need to throw 5 of of 8 pingpong balls into a pint glass etc
Would that be roleplaying ?
The limitations of the character are defined by your physical and mental limits.
You are still interacting with a shared imaginary space through an avatar and reacting as you would expect that avatar to react to given phemonena.

(the bolded bit is my base defintion of roleplaying.)

That sounds like weird live action roleplaying to me. I played mostly boffer LARPs but I knew of groups whose events were basically sitting around, roleplaying, and using a simplistic physical method of resolving conflict. World,of Darkness larp used Rock Paper Scissors at one point.

My call is that group is roleplaying but it is hybrid between a LARPS and tabletop.

Quote from: estar;742065That sounds like weird live action roleplaying to me. I played mostly boffer LARPs but I knew of groups whose events were basically sitting around, roleplaying, and using a simplistic physical method of resolving conflict. World,of Darkness larp used Rock Paper Scissors at one point.

My call is that group is roleplaying but it is hybrid between a LARPS and tabletop.

Table LARP.

True Dungeon at GenCon uses dexterity games to resolve combat and live puzzles a-la Crystal Maze. I've been in some table sessions where GMs brought in real prop puzzles for the players to solve. Or groups that RP at the table in costume. Only seen that once though. But talked to others at cons who do it too.

Quote from: Omega;742085Table LARP.

True Dungeon at GenCon uses dexterity games to resolve combat and live puzzles a-la Crystal Maze. I've been in some table sessions where GMs brought in real prop puzzles for the players to solve. Or groups that RP at the table in costume. Only seen that once though. But talked to others at cons who do it too.

The way I view it is that there is a core that each form of roleplaying coalesces around. However hybrids are possible and are regularly done by the hobby. This is especially prevalent between story-games, wargames, and tabletop roleplaying games where the boundaries are a long grey smear rather than being clear cut.

Quote from: jibbajibba;742060...
The limitations of the character are defined by your physical and mental limits.

You just described Dagorhir.  It has no classes, no levels, it's just you, your gear, and your persona.  Though I'm sure some other fight Larps might argue as to whether it counts since it's almost exclusively battle focused.  Having done it for a while (though I'm currently in a long hiatus) I'd say it often does.

Quote from: Brander;742136You just described Dagorhir.  It has no classes, no levels, it's just you, your gear, and your persona.  Though I'm sure some other fight Larps might argue as to whether it counts since it's almost exclusively battle focused.  Having done it for a while (though I'm currently in a long hiatus) I'd say it often does.

Dagorhir lies between the hard core reenactment of the Society of Creative Anachronism and fantasy oriented boffer LARPs like NERO.

I always considered them a "chilled out" version of the SCA. Don't get me wrong there are good people and jerks in both but Dagorhir is easier to get into and more laid back.

But then again some of what they do at the SCA is simply amazing compared to anything else.

One other thing of note is that Dagorhir was developed before modern LARPs around 1980. So it part of a different era than the World of Darkness, and the NERO style boffer larps.

It wasn't until the late 1980 that live-action roleplaying games truly came into their own. Mostly because it took a while for people to come up with rules and techniques that works both as live-action game and a roleplaying game.

Before then it was either too sports like (SCA, Dagorhir), too much like improvised theater without much of a game, or were too restrictive like IFGS (International Fantasy Gaming Society).

But by 1990 a number of groups figured how make live-action games that were free-form, an interesting game, and above all were safe to play.

Quote from: estar;741932However you are also 100% wrong about the roleplaying. Because there is one very important part of the game they can impact and that is the social network the connects the players.

In an MMO, I can, at least usually, ignore other players and go about and do my own thing.

Those other players can only impact my social network if I allow them to.

That's not the case in an RPG.

Quote from: kythri;742288In an MMO, I can, at least usually, ignore other players and go about and do my own thing.

Those other players can only impact my social network if I allow them to.

That's not the case in an RPG.

Yes that true if you are in a PVE server otherwise it still does whether you like it or not. With PVE you are using the MMORPG software as you would a CRPG.

Even then you are still roleplaying as you would in a CRPG.  Still acting as your character and limited by what your character can do.

Quote from: estar;742308Even then you are still roleplaying as you would in a CRPG.  Still acting as your character and limited by what your character can do.

I don't much play "CRPG" style games anymore, but when I do/did, I roleplay(ed) in those as much as I pretended to be Sonic the Hedgehog.

I'm sure others play differently, and that's cool, but for me?  Button-mashing ain't roleplaying.