Quote from: Doom;733978I think the hate is coming from the "everything must have a precise mechanical benefit, or it's worthless" paradigm of more recent rule sets.

Just play the character already, you shouldn't need a freakin' "+2" to justify your behavior.

From my perception at least, such mechanical weight behind behavior/personality actively distracts from the very thing the rules are trying to encourage.  Could be that I have been blessed with friends who care about giving their PCs a personality.

Quote from: Old One Eye;733991From my perception at least, such mechanical weight behind behavior/personality actively distracts from the very thing the rules are trying to encourage.  Could be that I have been blessed with friends who care about giving their PCs a personality.

all that rule is, is a carrot to try to get people to roleplay their PCs.  If someone needs a mechanical bonus to roleplay, then they can leave my table.  The fun of role-playing should be reward enough

Personally I found aspects to be tiresome. It really pulls me out of the game.

If you have traits or flaws that simply add/subtract a bonus on certain occasions because of your personality, or loyalties, or religious devotions, I'm game.

If you want to communicate your flaws to a group, you can write them down, and then let the GM help interject situations into the game that highlight them. You also should be playing flaws up. After all, BA Baracus's fear of flying would be less funny if they weren't flying all the time. Look at all the hilarious trouble they had to go through to get on a flight. :-) In a case like this, general "bennies" are probably better, so you just reward what you want to naturally happen without having to force it with specific mechanics.

I think rules like this one are meant to assist new DMs which works for me. 3E and 4E had a lot of focus on rules. Shifting the focus to character, worlds, and good adventures works for me.

The attached bonds etc. are already in the playtest so I might try this out to see if I want to use it or not.

Such reward mechanisms tend to influence play too much. Players end up losing focus on what is happening in the campaign while worrying too much about their next stunt to earn a metagame beggin strip.

Not a fan.

While I would never use the rule in my own D&D games, having an easily discarded option for people who want it is applauded.

I'm used to gm's who essentially have this as a table rule, regardless of game, but you can only get the bonus once a session. Works fine for us, and essentially takes the place of "did you do role playing good" bonuses the system might suggest.

It's just a bonus for doing a thing that you want to do, and you said the character would do.

Its certainly more playable than the AD&D rules to affect training time and costs based on roleplaying, which if I recall referred to roleplaying the class not even the PC (cowardly fighters need not apply). And we all ignored those as well

Quote from: Exploderwizard;734025Such reward mechanisms tend to influence play too much. Players end up losing focus on what is happening in the campaign while worrying too much about their next stunt to earn a metagame beggin strip.

Not a fan.

Dude its advantage on one roll.... its not a free horde of dragon treasure and a +5 sword.
If you choose to play it and follow hte guidelines the folks who are roleplaying their PCs most consistently will be hitting this fairly regularly the folks that forget to roleplay and only do it to get this FANTASTIC BONUS will get it very occasionally.

If you want a roleplay reward this is better than a bennie mechanic because bennies get stored up and can be applied to anything so become more meta-gamey.

Quote from: jibbajibba;734036Its certainly more playable than the AD&D rules to affect training time and costs based on roleplaying, which if I recall referred to roleplaying the class not even the PC (cowardly fighters need not apply). And we all ignored those as well

Yes, I ignore those as well.  Every game system seems to have cruft to ignore.

Quote from: Old One Eye;734041Yes, I ignore those as well.  Every game system seems to have cruft to ignore.

Yes, and all too often edition warriors like to ignore this bit of information.

Quote from: jibbajibba;734039Dude its advantage on one roll.... its not a free horde of dragon treasure and a +5 sword.
If you choose to play it and follow hte guidelines the folks who are roleplaying their PCs most consistently will be hitting this fairly regularly the folks that forget to roleplay and only do it to get this FANTASTIC BONUS will get it very occasionally.

If you want a roleplay reward this is better than a bennie mechanic because bennies get stored up and can be applied to anything so become more meta-gamey.

The nature or power level of the reward isn't the issue. The issue is one of an action/reward mechanism occupying a primary focus in the minds of the players.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;734167The nature or power level of the reward isn't the issue. The issue is one of an action/reward mechanism occupying a primary focus in the minds of the players.

Again I have to say in play i can't really see it being a big deal.

If a PC's flaw is stubboness and as a result he keeps trying to prise the gem out of the eye of the demon statue even after the rest of the party have fled due to oncoming balrog horde and the DM gives him advantage on the last attempt, the overall affect on the game will be minimal.
The major concerns of the game and the focus of play will still be the usual, killing things taking their stuff etc, there will just be a few corner cases where a player says "hey can I get advantage on my roll to seduce the princess as Lothario is my main trait?"
As I said up post implementation is key. If you only allow intersting traits and stuff then this will be useful, if you allow junk then more foll you.

Or ...just ignore it I mean it's a 1 paragraph rule in a 400 page book.....

Quote from: jibbajibba;733938but surely you have also played in plenty of games where caricature is miles in advance of what the players are doing which is being themselves with pointy ears

Don't really have a problem with "themselves with pointy ears," would much rather have a player who treats the world as real than a player who invents a deep character.

Quote from: Daztur;734206Don't really have a problem with "themselves with pointy ears," would much rather have a player who treats the world as real than a player who invents a deep character.

For sure.  I definitely prefer people who are into exploration over being literary or play-acting any day of the week