The PC: Avatar or Individual?

[Kalarion]

My eyes can't focus properly right now, I'll read through the thread tomorrow.

I like the PC as individual. I enjoy trying to play out different builds/character designs and thinking "what would my character do in this situation". I don't mind as avatar, it's good for games where I want to focus on tactics/meta power (TB tactics/RPGs and blobbers, for instance). But my preference is to make up a character in my head, and then play him out straight to see what the results are. It's how I participate in LPs/CYOAs too.

[WhiteShark]

It's how roguelikes handle player meta-information from spoiling games, I don't see why it can't be equally applied to pnp. Unless you think meta-information is good.

Should creature stats and appearances also be randomly swapped every campaign? That would certainly clamp down on all the filthy metagamers who remember that goblins and kobolds are low HD monsters that fight with traps and ambush tactics.

[rusty_shackleford]

It's how roguelikes handle player meta-information from spoiling games, I don't see why it can't be equally applied to pnp. Unless you think meta-information is good.

Should creature stats and appearances also be randomly swapped every campaign? That would certainly clamp down on all the filthy metagamers who remember that goblins and kobolds are low HD monsters that fight with traps and ambush tactics.

If it's a giant hulking kobold which would suggest it has high strength, sure.

[Acrux]

Should creature stats and appearances also be randomly swapped every campaign?

What I've found is that the trick is to not doing every campaign, but only sometimes. It becomes like operant conditioning where the learned response is actually stronger if the stimulus isn't presented every time.

[Ratcatcher]

Meh. There are already creature variants that can easily do what you want. Desert Trolls are fire resistant and you need water to stop their regen. Sea trolls regenerate ultra fast but only when in contact with the water so it's more of a noob trap for those groups that throw the bodies overboard a ship for example.

Then there's the whole D&D 3.5+ system of various restances for extraplanar creatures, some harmed by silver, other by cold iron...

This is a gameplay problem. What is the problem? Everyone and his mom knows what a troll is and how it works in D&D derivates. Again, what I'm telling you is not that you cannot make it work by swapping its vulnerability each time. It's about the cringe factor, being cheap and understanding that as a GM you are expected to come out with creative solutions.

'ooh I wonder how we must harm papa Rusty's trolls tonite, I bet it's cotton candy this time!'

Won't keep an experienced group entertained for long, I assure you.

What you should instead do is deconstruct the idea of the troll itself. Tanky monster that, if underestimated or fought unprepared, can reset an encounter and have the party waste resources again. This is all a frickin' troll is. Everything else is fluff. Why must you bend yourself backwards and force your players to suspend disbelief (big nono in pnp) because you fixate yourself on writing an encounter not only 1974 style (nothing wrong in that) but also demanding they are challenged by that old piece of design as it was shiny and new? Again, cheap, lazy, uncreative.
Can it work? Ofc it can, hammers work too.

Since the thing itself is also a minuscule part of campaign prepping, unless you want to have substances and vulnerabilities hunting be a big part of your setting, I'd say a properly written, unique monster or some sort of variant on the classic ("It's a Troll b-but someone d-did m-magic on it!1! It doesn't burn!") would be much better than keeping your party hostage for whatever time you deem necessary until they discover that it is, in fact, dirty socks that are the ultimate anathema of Trolls in your campaign.

[rusty_shackleford]

you're doing the exact same thing I'm suggesting except naming your troll a llort and saying it's different

[Ratcatcher]

Nah.

[rusty_shackleford]

"ehmm it's not a TROLL you've encountered... it's a... FOREIGN TROLL. Exactly like a troll except it has a different weakness, this definitely isn't precisely the thing rusty was suggesting"

[Ratcatcher]

this definitely isn't precisely the thing rusty was suggesting

Nah.

I'm going to address you again about this topic when you stop trolling and decide to actually read what I wrote. Writing this just so it's not spam, mind you, the quote would suffice.

[maidenhaver]

Avaturd.

[ArunnyE]

Those are all different individuals and one should strive to play them as such imho.

To be honest, I can see both sides of the argument. Allow me to link the pdf that got me thinking about this topic again recently. The whole thing is an enjoyable read, but the relevant part is titled Dungeon Master Foo and the Thespian. I think it makes a compelling case for avatar theory, at least for that style of play.

Dead link, sorry. ^^;

[Emphyrio]

using meta knowledge is cheating btw

if using metaknowledge would hurt the game, that's the gm's fault

[Acrux]

Those are all different individuals and one should strive to play them as such imho.

To be honest, I can see both sides of the argument. Allow me to link the pdf that got me thinking about this topic again recently. The whole thing is an enjoyable read, but the relevant part is titled Dungeon Master Foo and the Thespian. I think it makes a compelling case for avatar theory, at least for that style of play.

Dead link, sorry. ^^;

It's not dead unless @WhiteShark reuploaded it. You should have access to the Vault since your mod is hosted there. @rusty_shackleford ?

[rusty_shackleford]

To be honest, I can see both sides of the argument. Allow me to link the pdf that got me thinking about this topic again recently. The whole thing is an enjoyable read, but the relevant part is titled Dungeon Master Foo and the Thespian. I think it makes a compelling case for avatar theory, at least for that style of play.

Dead link, sorry. ^^;

It's not dead unless @WhiteShark reuploaded it. You should have access to the Vault since your mod is hosted there. @rusty_shackleford ?

It works for me. Download access is public, it's just upload that's restricted.
When I say you guys can do whatever(within bounds of the AUP...) with the stuff you upload, I mean it.

[Tweed]

The only kinds of people playing 5th edition are avatar players which is why they keep making the game easier and dumbing it down. Since the player is nothing more than an extension of themselves just better they get very upset if anything bad happens to them. The avatar player is the one who can't separate fantasy from reality.

[maidenhaver]

The only kinds of people playing 5th edition are avatar players which is why they keep making the game easier and dumbing it down. Since the player is nothing more than an extension of themselves just better they get very upset if anything bad happens to them. The avatar player is the one who can't separate fantasy from reality.

I have thousands of avatars, across hundreds of worlds, and I love them all like my children.

[ArunnyE]

To be honest, I can see both sides of the argument. Allow me to link the pdf that got me thinking about this topic again recently. The whole thing is an enjoyable read, but the relevant part is titled Dungeon Master Foo and the Thespian. I think it makes a compelling case for avatar theory, at least for that style of play.

Dead link, sorry. ^^;

It's not dead unless @WhiteShark reuploaded it. You should have access to the Vault since your mod is hosted there. @rusty_shackleford ?

How odd! It was not working when I tried it yesterday, but now it is! Must have been a fluke! Sorry about that! ^^;

[loregamer]

I like self inserting and playing a blank slate character

[DemoGraph]

I like to play as a thread necromancer!

"What would Joe the Straight White Male Player do if he were in John's shoes?"

Defending this is like defending that actor should play himself rather than his character. This is a sure sign of noobs or people that should play action-rpgs instead of roleplaying games.

I see no evidence that anyone advocates or has ever advocated that the GM play the characters under his control as avatars.

This is actually quite a cool idea... or maybe an everyday occurrence in a wargame where people play against each other to win instead of telling a story.

[TKVNC]

I read it wrong.

Anyway, I always try to imagine what my character might do in that situation.

[DagothGeas5]

Same here with preferring to imagine what my character would do. I had no idea people would make or put themselves in video games before seeing it being done by some people on Youtube, but, those I saw at least, I always loved how much fun they were having I myself tried a few times, but am utterly incapable of doing something like that and, if I try, I just end up detatching from the story and treating it as a sort of checkbox to complete and am unable to fully immerse in the game, as if the concept that it is a game overrides the story and setting by being put front and center if I don't have a character to follow the story of.

[gerey]

I view myself as the moral compass of the PC - he does what I would do in that situation, if I had his powers and skills.

I don't necessarily need the PC to be (like) myself, but he certainly will make decisions that I can live with.

[A Chinese opium den]

Hes literally me...

[gatorized]

The prevailing trend for a long time now has been to play the player character, as far as can be managed, as a totally separate person from the player. Thus arise the concepts of 'metagame knowledge', 'that's what my character would do', compulsory mental disadvantages, and so on; thus we have situations where a player deliberately directs his character to act contrary to both common sense and his own self interest. Playing the PC in unwavering accord with his individual personality is considered to be the essence of roleplaying.

However, I have observed for a few years now that in some groups, especially OSR circles, the player character is treated as an avatar of the player. When confronted with a dilemma the question is not, "What would John the Straight White Male Fighter do?" but rather, "What would Joe the Straight White Male Player do if he were in John's shoes?" Here metagame knowledge is not considered a problem and a source of temptation, its very use a sin against roleplaying, but rather a valuable and hard-won asset, the mark of a veteran player. Here the PC never acts, except in cases of magical compulsion, in any way but that which the player himself deems the wisest. Roleplaying is defined as interacting with and exploring the fiction through the avatar and entirely unrelated to acting.

So, roleplayers of the HQ, which one is correct and true roleplaying?

So let's consider the example of a fight with a troll, and suppose I'm a thoroughly anti-metagaming player in this scenario. My character, Joe Dungeons, has two relevant items : a sword and a torch. Joe has never encountered trolls, knows nothing about them, has never even heard the word "troll" in his life. As an anti-metagamer, I know that immediately switching to my torch would be bad roleplaying, so I attack with my sword instead.

Next round, assuming Dungeons is still alive, he, by which I mean I, have to make the same decision again. Is it still bad roleplaying to switch? What about the round after this, or the next one, or the next one? Where is the threshold, and why? What method do we use to determine it? How do we know that that is the correct method to use?

Of course, the point of this example is that it doesn't matter. You already noticed that at no point in this example did I actually use Joe's knowledge to decide whether to switch. Instead, I only used out-of-game knowledge, specifically, knowledge about how to avoid metagaming. The entire time, I have been metagaming in order to avoid metagaming.

Suppose instead I roll a d6 and decide that I'll switch to my torch if it comes up even. I still decided to use that method on the basis of my knowledge about the game system and my desire to avoid metagaming. It doesn't matter how I try to avoid or solve the problem, since any solution* will by definition rely on my knowing the problem exists in the first place, and since the problem is on the meta level, knowledge about the problem is also on the meta level.

*There is a solution, but it can't come from the player, at least not unilaterally. Stop using rule systems with exhaustive lists of possible opposition and a built-in expectation that everything they face will come from these lists. This solution can generalized to other types of metagaming : If the players really do only have access to the same information as their characters, then metagaming is no longer possible. All of this, of course, presumes that metagaming is undesirable in the first place. It may be at some tables and not at others. We don't have to agree about how to use our imaginations.

[DrSneed]

Actually, you should play your RPGs like battle shounen. Everyone shouts out their abilities name, and whenever they get an advantage, they read their ability text out loud.

[Tweed]

Actually, you should play your RPGs like battle shounen. Everyone shouts out their abilities name, and whenever they get an advantage, they read their ability text out loud.

Good games do that anyway. Once you get into it you're all like "FIREBALL!" "CRITICAL HIT!"