Upon the release of 4th edition we started playing keep on the shadowfell and now the thunderspire labyrinth. No one was exactly willing to DM on a regular basis using homebrew campaign arcs and so we rotate DMs at the end of each campaign module. I'm not a fan of pregenerated modules but a half-decent DM can give it life because I've seen it done before. However, that's not the case in my group. For all intents and purposes our sessions are essentially D&D miniatures battles that just happen to be vaguely connected by storyline.
I definitely enjoy battles but it gets boring when that seems to be the sole focus of the group. I thought the problem was player A who DMed the first module shadowfell. He skipped most of the fluff and just rushed us along to the encounters. Player B is now dming the second module and he and I are like minded in enjoying the role-playing aspect of D&D. However, player A now plays a fighter who essentially has his player's strong overbearing personality. I doubt it's a coincidence that the character shares the same personality. That would be fine if it weren't for the fact that he's just fixated on "Cleaving" and loot.
The other players just pretty much follow his lead which is kill first and not really bother with questions afterwards. Player B (now DM) pointed out that unfortunately any role-playing would essentially boil down to just him and me interacting. Player A will eventually get irritated with that and just push onwards to move to the next battle encounter. For better or worse, Player B has admitted to me that our group pretty much "sucks."
So to recap it feels like I'm playing World of Warcraft and not D&D. Other than look for a new group I'm not sure what to do(The downside is I've known these guys for about six years). You can't really force players to role-play. The other guys just tend to go with the flow. They pretty much don't care one way or the other. Player A's strong overbearing personality just dominates the group and so we hack and slash through everything.
That post was too long. Thoughts?
In a nutshell, my group does little if any role-playing. We only have "roll-playing."
Upon the release of 4th edition we started playing keep on the shadowfell and now the thunderspire labyrinth. No one was exactly willing to DM on a regular basis using homebrew campaign arcs and so we rotate DMs at the end of each campaign module. I'm not a fan of pregenerated modules but a half-decent DM can give it life because I've seen it done before. However, that's not the case in my group. For all intents and purposes our sessions are essentially D&D miniatures battles that just happen to be vaguely connected by storyline.
So to recap it feels like I'm playing World of Warcraft and not D&D. Other than look for a new group I'm not sure what to do(The downside is I've known these guys for about six years). You can't really force players to role-play. The other guys just tend to go with the flow. They pretty much don't care one way or the other. Player A's strong overbearing personality just dominates the group and so we hack and slash through everything.
That post was too long. Thoughts?
There isn't really a right or wrong way to play. Most people like a campaign that goes down the middle between story and action, but some people love story games where nothing ever seems to happen and some love all action. If you aren't enjoying it, tell the DMs and see if you can work out a way to meet in the middle. If you can't, well let them play as they like and look for ways to find some players that play more like your style. The game is so open ended it can be bent into nearly any shape, the trick is finding a shape the whole group can enjoy.
That's going to be the advice anybody here is going to give you most likely.
Try talking to this "overbearing personality." Get the whole group involved. Explain your feelings. See how things pan out.
That's going to be the advice anybody here is going to give you most likely.
Yup.
Does your group have access to the Dungeon Master's Guide? Whichever of you is DMing should read through the whole thing, as should any player is not wholly against the idea of being a DM some time in the future, if none of you really think you want to be doing it (reading it might change your mind about DMing). There is a lot of advice and many tricks for running a game with different players and goals.
There's a very large difference between a player "running a module" for the group, and a DM "using a module" for the players. The attention put into it, or the ability to naturally improvise situations is the difference between just reading flavor texts and instructions, running monsters 2 dimensionally or exactly as written in the adventure, and actually being in a "campaign." If the DM doesn't want to be DMing, most everybody at the table can feel it and will behave differently.
I would point out you don't have to run your games as "Player A runs this module all the way through, then after that Player B runs that module all the way through." Groups often take turns by week or meeting, so one game is this week, the other game is the week after, and then back again. Each game is run by a different DM and with different PCs. There are essentially two separate campaigns. Progress through an adventure is halved of course, but it gives more time for the DMs to also be players, and for different situations, settings, classes and experiences to be enjoyed.
When it's your turn again, or "Player B's," you can simply spell out at the beginning of it that you would like to try more roleplaying during the adventure, and gradually ease the others into it. This is part of the "setting expectations" phase of DMing. If you're mostly done with the current adventure, it might not be worth trying to change the flow of it significantly at this point.
Having roleplay turn into dialogs between one player and the DM is not the optimal situation of course. You don't have to turn on the RP faucet "full force" though. Roleplay smaller situations, like NPCs telling the party information, giving them jobs, or asking in-character questions relating to events (especially when everyone at the table personally knows the answers). "You defeated the Gnolls? Really? Wow, how did you do it!?" Try to make sure that there is plenty of fighting for those that need it, but that the reasons or consequences for the fighting are clear, or reiterated several times in different ways.
Try to keep NPC interaction to 5 minutes or less, as opposed to a half hour or more of back and forth roleplaying.
Well, there's all sorts of ways to elicit roleplaying from players without much experience, but I don't want to start writing pages of it right here. Chances are, a read-through of the DMG and maybe a few pointed questions or forum searches could get you more than enough info.
Upon the release of 4th edition we started playing... For all intents and purposes our sessions are essentially D&D miniatures battles that just happen to be vaguely connected by storyline.
So you want more RP.
Your A overbearing player does'nt want RP. He wants battles.
So you and B tell him in character: "Whoah, slow down, Conan! Live longer."
He keeps saying "he's bored." Good, he's roleplaying.
He's just roleplaying a very combat focussed character.
Get the DM that is the best at describing things. Involve the other guys in RP, by asking them:
"Jolan, what do you think we should do about the warrior over there. His rushing through this place.. we might hit traps, or lose a party member. What do you think?"
Confront the sword-swinger, and tell him "Your rushing around is gonna get one of us killed."
Don't break character, just roleplay it out.
Your A buddy wants to wargame.
Really you need to play a different edition, (Like 2e, or something) because it's set up to be a tactical Minis wargame with D&D slapped on as a name.
Your buddy likes it. Seems like you don't.
Good luck, it might be time to break from your group, whether you like it or not, for happiness...because you are not willing to play 4e the way it was designed to be played, and it seems the majority of them do:
For all intents and purposes our sessions are essentially D&D miniatures battles that just happen to be vaguely connected by storyline.
Detractors, have at it.
So you want more RP.
Good luck, it might be time to break from your group, whether you like it or not, for happiness...because you are not willing to play 4e the way it was designed to be played, and it seems the majority of them do:
So "the way 4E is meant to be played" is with little to no roleplay, just a huge focus on combat?
In a nutshell, my group does little if any role-playing. We only have "roll-playing."
Upon the release of 4th edition we started playing keep on the shadowfell and now the thunderspire labyrinth. No one was exactly willing to DM on a regular basis using homebrew campaign arcs and so we rotate DMs at the end of each campaign module. I'm not a fan of pregenerated modules but a half-decent DM can give it life because I've seen it done before. However, that's not the case in my group. For all intents and purposes our sessions are essentially D&D miniatures battles that just happen to be vaguely connected by storyline.
I definitely enjoy battles but it gets boring when that seems to be the sole focus of the group. I thought the problem was player A who DMed the first module shadowfell. He skipped most of the fluff and just rushed us along to the encounters. Player B is now dming the second module and he and I are like minded in enjoying the role-playing aspect of D&D. However, player A now plays a fighter who essentially has his player's strong overbearing personality. I doubt it's a coincidence that the character shares the same personality. That would be fine if it weren't for the fact that he's just fixated on "Cleaving" and loot.
The other players just pretty much follow his lead which is kill first and not really bother with questions afterwards. Player B (now DM) pointed out that unfortunately any role-playing would essentially boil down to just him and me interacting. Player A will eventually get irritated with that and just push onwards to move to the next battle encounter. For better or worse, Player B has admitted to me that our group pretty much "sucks."
So to recap it feels like I'm playing World of Warcraft and not D&D. Other than look for a new group I'm not sure what to do(The downside is I've known these guys for about six years). You can't really force players to role-play. The other guys just tend to go with the flow. They pretty much don't care one way or the other. Player A's strong overbearing personality just dominates the group and so we hack and slash through everything.
That post was too long. Thoughts?
I'm sorry World of Warcraft has much more social interaction then your apparent group. I don't play wow anymore but your entire post was basically just a "4ed sucks it's just like wow" post in disguise.
The edition of the game you're playing doesn't change the player/DM behavior, because you can play ANY other version just as easily with the "screw story fight/loot" mentality.
If the group doesn't want to roleplay, there is nothing you can do.
I would like to point out to you that the way they are playing D&D is the EXACT way it was explained in the original boxed sets.
"You adventure to gain treasure and loot that increases your power to do more (harder) adventures for better treasure and loot for which to do even more difficult adventures to what? That's right get more awesome loots."
Every RPG of the Fantasy nature from the dawn of cavemen writing their campaigns on cave walls has been about getting better loot to kill tougher enemies.
I wish I could help you find the type of game you want but unfortunately short of getting a more mature or roleplaying intensive group you're SOL.
My groups do both quite well, and at the moment all my groups are purely RPGA groups which means we "play" to advance in power to play. As per your groups standards. We just know how to roleplay while doing it I guess.
DMing well takes time and you shouldn't blame the first DM for following the adventure as written (there really wasn't that much "fluff" in there) when you yourself stated that *none* of you wanted to do the work to make a homebrew campaign.
Plus, killing things is fun. A good story trumps it, but when your source materials are so shallow, it's hard to go that direction. So, to summarize, try a different published adventure or write your own.
At any rate, back to the OP: If you want something to change, you need to take the reigns and DM. You'll have the power to RP with Player B and ease your other friends into it. Eventually Player A will come around.
You are the one taking the time to complain discuss what you dislike, not player A. If you want something done, then man up and DM. And don't think of it as a job, think of it as a means to grow your party beyond Hack n' Slash.
I hope you're successful, if not there's always the want ads :P
EDIT: If you're up for a little conversion, I've heard the 3.5 Adventure Red hand of Doom is great for newbie DMs!
4th edition is simply 'eeeeeeasier' to run battles in.
It's not that it is like WoW, get it straight, WoW is like 4th edition. D&D was around long before any MMO was ever even thought up.
I don't play pre made modules, I run every single game as the product of my imagination.
You can force the player that wants fight fight fight to realize that his brawn won't solve every last bloody situation.
Go watch Conan on film more slowly, you'll notice he isn't killing something every 5 friggin seconds. Point that out to the player. There's a plot, and some of it requires thinking, and some of the thinking is being done by the guys that don't revolve around killing things.
Conan wins the day WITH the help of his friends.
Best way to get the fighter to slow down, give him more than he can chew.
"Gee Conan, it looks like there's quite a few of em eh, maybe you should have listened to the rogue and the mage back there".
By the way, my son plays WoW all the time. I think he considers if a chat program with a game attached.
So "the way 4E is meant to be played" is with little to no roleplay, just a huge focus on combat?
I tried to get one of my friends to play D&D, the other night he said about D&D, "It takes too long between fights."
I'm not going to pretend that it's going to be automatically simple to get it solved, or even that it's going to get solved. One combat monster will be flexible and another will never ever bend.
However, the people saying that D&D is just a combat game need to realize that the designers of this 'combat game' not only thought about this problem, but even offered suggestions on how to resolve it.
Also, for those among us who are fans of the roleplaying, I would like to emphasize, most strongly, that you can roleplay in combat! Describing your character, acting out his actions, using a funny accent, etc. are things you can do in a tense diplomatic mission, or in a fight in the catacombs. They aren't mutually exclusive.
Maybe if you can get the combat monster to describe his actions more cinematically, you can both get him to realize that roleplaying is fun, and you can get a bit more roleplaying yourself.
After a few games, see how they react to having combat toned down to an 8 or so on the scale instead of stuck at 11. If they're having fun, see if someone else is willing to give it a try. If not, at least you gave it a shot.
Also, roleplaying doesn't have to stop just because miniatures are on the table.
It's not just rulings mechanically and making up creative elements ala left brain, right brain workouts. It's alot about moderating, perceiving social tones and textures, innuendo, etc.
The DM is not monitoring "his" game. He needs to put the leashes on this problem player because this person is trying to flex msucle in typical alpha male style BS. It's egocentric, very selfish. He is not considering the other players, only himself. He needs a reminder to put it politely.
Isn't it, "1 bad apple (this guy) spoils the whole lot (the entire campaign)"?
And, you can RP in combat. This is usually where descriptive narratives come into play, typically in horrific $.50 words to give depth to extensive trauma and bizarre/alien wounds. He is only considering conflict resolution w/ XP as a reward system and trying to gobble up as much as he can w/ no consideration for the other players and their wants/needs.
Essentially, player 'A' is a Pavlovian dog. Watch, listen. At the hint of a fight, see how he reacts. Just like "ringing the bell". People this simple and lacking in such creative vision are often more easilly played. Work that end as direct confrontation (their prefered style, or, a fight on their terms) usually results in a very stubborn and abrasive demeanor w/ poor results.
You may want to find another group if you'd like to RP and can't talk this out/don't want to DM yourself.
Perhaps you should consider DMing and bringing this missing element to the table yourself. I know that you'd probably rather play but it is just a thought.
You may want to find another group if you'd like to RP and can't talk this out/don't want to DM yourself.
Ah, the high road; lead by example and all that. Probably the most effective & credible means to your end, but the catch is, "you're taking 1 for the team." ie)You're no longer a PC, which, can, and often does, suck...
The upside is the gain often outweighs the cost. Other PCs will take note as well and remember good mechanical and RP situations which provide precident. To that end, gaming is alot like law in that precident is pretty damn important.
That and you get to call the shots; DM has final say, so if he wants to blow you lip, he can either leave, man up & accept the hand he's dealt, or DM himself. Whining and powergaming are not optionable when it's at eveyrone else's expense (including the DM). Wastes game time which is everyone's time.
Welcome to 4th edition! :D No roleplay, only rollplay.
Considering you are the one with a thread complaining about the inability of one of your players to role play in 3.5, I would think that you would realize that role playing ability is dependent on the players and not the system.