Roleplaying or just rolling the dice

From: Mikko Rintasaari <rintasaa_at_mail.student.oulu.fi>
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1998 22:43:18 +0300 (EDT)


> First, I want to say I've only seen HW in the pages of the digest.
> Without seeing it in action I think Status Point mechanic sounds great,
> I like the idea of better mechanics for debates, persuasions, etc...

hmm... I hope I'm getting something wrong here, but...

What is so great about having mechanics for persuasion, bargaining, Debating(!), etc...

One rarely needs dice for such. Surely these things are handled by roleplaying... If my character tries to convince somebody about something or haggle with a merchant, I'll be very surprised if a GM tells me to roll some dice instead of _having_the_conversation_ with my character, in the person of the NPC.

Personally I always tought that the personality trait system of Pendragon was a bad idea. It's passably good to have a way of writing down the concepts and psychology of a character, but to rely on mandatory dice rolling to determine if ones character is, for instance impressed with somebody, or perhaps angry enough to kill, is silly.

Surely I don't need to have a game mechanic to tell me when my character is scared... One very much feels what the character is feeling, when playing... at least I do. Hmm... a question. How often have you found yourself crying, as your character was?

As said, I like having a way of writing down reminders of the main lines of a characers psychology... I use descriptive sentenses and GURPS-style advantages and disadvantages but the pendragon traits work quite well. It's the weird mechanic of rolling to check which impulse the character is following at the moment that I dislike. Surely such traits are just guidelines, and in the play the character follows the much subtler and somewhat more unpredictable ways of a living mind... roleplaying, yes?

  ---

*sigh* It's getting late, and I don't even have a spellchecker handy. I hope somebody could make out what I was on about.

waiting to see if I started a barbecue party,

        -Adept

"thinker, dreamer and adventurer"


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