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Old May 19th, 2008
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soltakss soltakss is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Birmingham, UK
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Harshax View Post
If you are the only person who gets to decide what your character thinks or feels, you're a wargamer, or powergamer. Yeah, powergamer is probably what I mean. If your character can be influenced to react in the same way that a character can be struck down with a sword, mechanically or no, then you are a role player. I can decide on a label and also decide that I'm not trying to make you believe it, or attempt to alter an opinion held of yourself or your playmates.
I just don't get this.

I've never needed a rules system to make me roleplay. Some systems force you into certain actions or change tactics because of the rules systems, but roleplaying is entirely independent of rules systems.

Look at RQ, it's a system that isn't particularly friendly to roleplayers, at least that's what a lot of people say, but it has spells that change your emotional state (Fear, Madness, Demoralise, Fanatacism, Berseker) and spells/effects that change how you feel. It also has a rich level of cult/assoaciation membership that influence how you should feel and what lifestyle your PC leads. So, according to your definition, RQ makes everyone a roleplayer not a powergamer. That can't be right, surely.

Perhaps it is, although D&D does much the same thing - you play Alignments and certain character classes define how you play the game - play a Paladin and you play in a certain way. That changes how you think and act.

But, to me, a roleplayer is someone who takes on a role and plays that role in a game. It's as simple as that. How you do it is completely personal. I roleplay in a different way to other people in my group, but we all manage to have enjoyable games.

I just don't get all the theories of roleplaying. You do it to play a game and have fun. Anything more is too complicated for me.
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