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Do people run lower roleplay focused D&D? (lemm.ee)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by flashgnash@lemm.ee to c/dnd@lemmy.world

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Whenever I hear about D&D more often than not it seems like people go to great lengths to stay in character and roleplay

This is great and makes for some very interesting stories but I tend to find myself more interested in just going on an adventure with a group of friends, solve a few puzzles win a few fights, complete a few quests etc

I'm also a big fan of character optimisation and mechanics but get the feeling that can be frowned upon by much of the community

Difficult to describe what I mean here but as an example in baldur's gate I barely roleplay at all, my character has no personality except for the fact they make the decisions I would make, but I find that more fun, not having to worry about what my character would do and just making the decision I want to make

I realise not having a fleshed out character in D&D detracts from the immersiveness of the story because the DM can't weave your character into the story but at least at the moment that doesn't sound too bad to me.

Just wondering if there are people out there who run lighter roleplay campaigns

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[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Why play pen-and-paper games rather than computer games if you're more interested in combat rather than roleplaying? Pen-and-paper combat is tedious and feels like work when compared to computer-game combat. I see it as a necessary evil in a roleplaying campaign; I'm not sure why someone would want it for its own sake when computer games exist.

(Edit: just to be clear, I'm not trying to tell other people what they're allowed to like. I love character optimization myself - I'm the kind of guy who used to be obsessed with planning my Path of Exile skill tree. I just don't understand why some people do that sort of gaming the old-fashioned way when they could do it on a computer.)

[–] flashgnash@lemm.ee 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Because I do want some element of roleplay, I'm not solely interested in the combat, but my ideal campaign is one where I'm not really changing my personality much or at all to play a character

I think you can get a lot more entertaining stories when they're spontaneous like D&D is, games are fun but they very much don't feel alive in the way D&D does

[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 3 points 10 months ago

I see... I think my confusion comes from the fact that I consider what you're doing to be roleplaying too. "My character is pretty much me except that he's also a barbarian warrior" is IMO perfectly legitimate as a character background and I wouldn't call it "lower roleplay focused" as long as you're still interested in actually engaging with the fantasy world and telling a story.