Re: Social aspects of DnD

On Sep 5, 7:37 am, Hadsil <forum...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 4, 3:33 am, Gas Spore Paladin <rob_mur...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



Social aspects of DnD/4ed musings

In a seperate clear change of thoughts - here on this NG and elsewhere
- like in the 4ed rules development saga, folks tend to focus on
rules, stats and the integration of system and approaches.

But - is any thought being put in to new ways of actually improving
social, table-top play? I don't mean background music, computer help,
silly hats or drugs - I was more thinking of ideas along the lines of
"The Players dont have a character ***, just a list of what items
they own" or "experience is only awarded for role playing - not point
scoring by defeating more critters" - i.e. improvements to the way of
playing.

I know that this is a diametrically opposed take to the current WotC
debate - ie making DnD more like a video game, not less....

I'm not against new systems - I'm looking forward to seeing in print
the new stuff, its just that we sometimes miss what makes playng
actually fun - its the social interaction...

This should be left to the individual gaming groups to decide how they
want to play the game. Nothing should be "official".

Now (v3.n ) [kill monsters => XP] is standard. The rest,
non-combat encounters, mission goals, roleplaying(!), is listed
as a variant to gain XP in the DMG.
The proposed ratio for story awards if you use them is 50/50.

So, if in v4.0 nothing is official, the game would be more
role- and less roll-play than the current default.

I would like to see an official rule saying that combat victories
have an XP value, combined with a better (crunchier) XP rule
for non-combat situations and the explicit request to decide
in the gaming group to agree on the ratio from
100/0 == hack 'n slay roll-playing
to 0/100 == storyteller role-playing

Another option would be different ratios for different classes
or even players. Bards and Rogues could fare better with a
ratio of 25/75 while Ftr and Brb go with 90/10 or something.
That way roleplaying is encouraged even for the latter, as they
might try to "warmonger" and vituperate to create as much
fights as possible. :)

LL

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