I play a lot of 4th Edition D&D, and while I don’t haunt boards or rp sites at all, I do think about all the topics my very forum-happy DM of a boyfriend brings up.\u00a0 Lately, he’s been doing a lot of 4E defense – saying yes, you can roleplay using that ruleset, yes, you can have involved stories, no, it’s not “just like an MMO” because someone might say “tank” instead of “defender” at the table once in a while.\u00a0 I’m paraphrasing here, and maybe making some stuff up.<\/p>\n
It took me a few sessions in one of my ongoing games to realize how I had to approach roleplay in 4E to make it worthwhile.\u00a0 This is heavily informed by the aforementioned boyfriend’s brilliant “Roleplaying with Miniatures”<\/a> article, especially this:\u00a0 “Step four: make your character do whatever your character would do. Fuck tactics.”\u00a0 Provocative, yes.\u00a0 Something to discuss with your other players so you don’t end up with two people in Super ZOMG Tactics Mode and two others running around hitting evil statues on the nose because their characters are “fun.”\u00a0 There’s a balance to be struck.<\/p>\n I started thinking about mechanical ways to make this part of the game itself, as opposed to a potential social contract that may not work in play.\u00a0 What I came up with, for lack of a better term, is “chosen limitations.”\u00a0 Detriments, challenges, etc.\u00a0 Everyone in the party chooses something – some facet of tactical play – <\/em>to be a limitation in combat.<\/p>\n Choose it right at the beginning.\u00a0 Make it an explicit part of character creation.\u00a0 Have a pretty strong vision of what these limitations might be.\u00a0 You don’t want it to be like a Secret Santa exchange at the office, where everyone spends $5 and That One Guy spends $30.\u00a0 In the same vein, you don’t want lots of little limitations and then the guy who says “I wear an eyepatch on my left eye, so if a bad guy hits me from the left, I’m automatically dazed!”\u00a0 Too big.<\/p>\n