Ok, first of all, you don't need to be condescending, which is an unfortunate trend when having any discussion about role playing. You may think my idea of explaining regenerative health is 'silly and contrived', but really, what is so different about adding a piece of fictional history about my character when you can search these forums and find pages and pages of detailed backstory for hundreds of characters by players? Are you saying all those people don't really know how to roleplay either? We're all apparently amateurs that just don't understand how to really play an RPG game.

"For a game to be effective in offering rp potential, it needs to respond to those decisions a player makes". I'm sorry but I don't agree. For a game to have RP potential, it needs to provide rules and guidelines sufficient to create your RP. The PLAYER then responds to the limitations by...roleplaying. It's not the game that provides a satisfactory RP experience, but the knowledge and decisions provided by a person with a vibrant, original idea.

The game is not the fantasy. The RP is. All the game does is provide a canvas, one with rules and guidelines but empty without the player's decisions and playstyle.

Its not a big deal, its just a fun little thing that I am going to miss.
If I were a PC player I would probably mod in a simple little cosmetic feature that lets you select your classes name at character creation that would then be displayed somewhere on your stat screen.

I'm personally not annoyed about role-playing, I'm annoyed that the game is becoming easier.

I find it interesting that you separate those two things. As the OP suggested, many people consider them the same thing. You're pretending to be your role.

Like in pen-and-paper games.... there are the "roll" players, who are all about the game rules, dice, tables, abilities, and skills. And then there's the "role" players, who're busily talking in-character and doing improvisational acting - yes, using the rules as a framework, but frequently just stomping over them when they get in the way. Taken to the extremes in LARPing, which has a minimum of "rules" and maximum improv acting. (and, of course, the RollPlayers think the people talking in character/accents are weird, and the RolePlayers think the guys obsessed with dice & rules aren't getting into the spirit of the game.)




...me, I've always been more of a "roll" player in my tabletop RPGs. I'm terrible at improv. :tongue:

Ok, first of all, you don't need to be condescending, which is an unfortunate trend when having any discussion about role playing.

You may think my idea of explaining regenerative health is 'silly and contrived', but really, what is so different about adding a piece of fictional history about my character when you can search these forums and find pages and pages of detailed backstory for hundreds of characters by players? Are you saying all those people don't really know how to roleplay either? We're all apparently amateurs that just don't understand how to really play an RPG game.

"For a game to be effective in offering rp potential, it needs to respond to those decisions a player makes". I'm sorry but I don't agree. For a game to have RP potential, it needs to provide rules and guidelines sufficient to create your RP. The PLAYER then responds to the limitations by...roleplaying. It's not the game that provides a satisfactory RP experience, but the knowledge and decisions provided by a person with a vibrant, original idea.

The game is not the fantasy. The RP is. All the game does is provide a canvas, one with rules and guidelines but empty without the player's decisions and playstyle.

I respectfully disagree. The reason Skyrim is a roleplaying game is because it gives us tools to roleplay. That's the very definition of a roleplaying game.
By your definition, any game could be an rpg because we can just pretend.

People are getting riled up because the options given to us for roleplay in previous games are slowly being taken away. Since the game is a roleplaying game, the complaints are valid.
Again, I didn't roleplay eating and drinking in Fallout 3 because you couldn't starve or become dehydrated. I did roleplay eating and drinking in New Vegas because the feature was there.

And what purpose would that serve? None whatsoever.

I think that by the inclusion of Smithing, cooking, Enchanting, etc...the RP potential is in fact increased. And the lack of classes and attributes will be more a matter of getting used to it than anything else.

Frankly, I'm more concerned about the Dragonshouts that anything else, as they make every character a "magic" user and kinda removes "pure" non-magic classes (or at least that's what I feel about them). I know every class has starting spells, even the most pure warrior, but the Dragonshouts only makes things worse in that matter. Hope I'm wrong and they fit somehow...(for the sake of my 1st char, a pure Warrior).

Every time a new change is announced, one of the first responses I see is "Great, now I can't RP the way I want because X is gone".

Disappointment is understandable, especially when it comes to this series because we are all so close to it. Most of us have put hundreds of hours of gameplay into TES and have certain expectations. But please...stop using roleplay as the excuse. I'm starting to turn into Inigo Montoya every time I see this in a thread- "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means".

Roleplaying is PRETEND. It's the fantasy you create with your character. In that fashion, if you are decent at role playing, you should be able to role play ANYTHING. Remember when you were a kid and the floor in the living room was hot lava? Seriously, just because mom moved the comfy chair doesn't mean that the role play was doomed, it meant you had to find a different pirate ship to get across the lava!

As a fan of role play myself, I am constantly surprised at how limited some of the TES fans are. They took birthsigns out of the game, your roleplay is now broken? You can't roleplay that you are under a certain sign? Really? There is now slow regen of health. You can't role play your character has had a special gift since birth, bestowed upon him/her by a mysterious cleric who visited your mother in a dark winter storm? Come on, I just made that up like, right now.

So, if you want to be disappointed in game mechanics and changes, have at it. But please, stop using pretend as an excuse. Because what it really sounds like is "I'm not that imaginative and can't pretend my way out of this simple scenario".

Thanks

It's just not the same without game induced limitations and features. In Fallout 3 I didn't roleplay eating and drinking. In New Vegas, it was easy. Why do you think there are so many RP mods out there for Oblivion?

The reason Skyrim is a ROLE PLAYING GAME is because it provides tools to allow us to RP. By your definition, Call of Duty is a role playing game because we could pretend that tamriel had a massive industrial and technology movement and that we are mages with guns.

Where did you play your copy of Skyrim?

If you have ever Larped, then you know it isn't shooting for that sort of experience. The "live" is automatically taken out. And some do and will play their game in such a way and most rpgs make it possible to do so. Are you bothered how others perceive or play their game? It surely won't bother you and how you play.

Label cans, not people.

Yeah, I agree completely. Maybe that's the problem with planning your RP too early, before we know everything about the game. Design your RP within the bounds of what the game offers, not what content you wish there was. You can't RP as a battlemech in a Lord of the Rings world, and you shouldn't complain that you can't. I'm looking forward to learning all I can, playing around with a few styles in the first couple of days, then choosing and sticking to an RP scenario. Can't wait!

Any condescension was directed entirely at your implication that people just weren't pretending hard enough.

Back stories serve the purpose of helping a player formulate the personality and preferences of a character. They might establish which weapon a character will use, what factions they join, which the avoid, which the attack on sight, etc. In and of themselves, they are only valuable if the game actually recognizes a back story. For instance, if you had the option to choose "enemies" or "rivals" for your character at creation which would either unlock certain quests or random encounters, then the back story would matter within that context.

Those are your definitions though. By saying their only purpose is to establish what tangible skills a player has, you are shutting the door on what many people use as the motivation for their characters, a primary part of their roleplay experience.

As it is, it's pure fluff. The game doesn't give a [censored] what happened to your character in the past. He could have single handedly blown up the universe and then reconstructed it by hand, but it doesn't matter. The game will not recognize any of that. Without the game recognizing and responding to these decisions and choices, you have the bare minimum of what's required for an RPG (if even that).

It may be unnecessary for tactile, physical gameplay, and that seems to be the only thing you care about. You imply the only practical roleplay is one that utilizes the game mechanics to make every single aspect of your roleplay have an actual consequence in-game. That's not everyone's style.

I didn't say you couldn't role play, I said it didn't offer an effective system that engenders role playing. You are forced to fight against the limitations of the system instead of work with them. That's not conducive to good role playing and is a weakness any way you turn it. So, this comes down again to you thinking that pretending stuff is preferable to the game recognizing and encouraging your role playing.

I respectfully disagree. The reason Skyrim is a roleplaying game is because it gives us tools to roleplay. That's the very definition of a roleplaying game.
By your definition, any game could be an rpg because we can just pretend.

People are getting riled up because the options given to us for roleplay in previous games are slowly being taken away. Since the game is a roleplaying game, the complaints are valid.
Again, I didn't roleplay eating and drinking in Fallout 3 because you couldn't starve or become dehydrated. I did roleplay eating and drinking in New Vegas because the feature was there.