In what way? The die tell you success rate so you can’t just say “I succeed at everything” and you use your creativity to bring it all to life.
Your comment as written, especially with the clear example in my first comment, reads like “I’m not creative enough to work within the system”. I’m guessing that isn’t your point but I’m not sure what else to read it as.
You have to abstract something for a game, though. So are you saying you want it less abstract in that you want less of it to rely on dice (and thus more role playing), or do you want it less abstract in that you want more crunch and mechanics for, like, pooping?
I was more thinking about the abstraction of things like character classes and levels. “I’m a knight and can only more in L-shapes.” or “I’m a seventh level human.” That’s what I mean about it being more like a board game than an RPG. Compare “I’m a third level barbarian” to, eg, Call of Cthulhu and “I’m a pilot who was a POW in WWI which is when I picked up fluency in German.” One of those is a potential character, the other is just a playing piece.
That’s all up to how you play the game, then. I’ve been in games that are both; ones where I played a “human wizard” and ones where I didn’t know what the other characters’ classes were because they were just, like…Zaraaraasnaan, dude. You know, Z?
Edit: And some games that turned from one to the other, honestly.
That’s a character in the PF2e game I’ve played every week for the past year. I know he’s a gnome because he and the other gnome in the party are total buddies and talk about gnome life all the time. And he’s very sneaky and stealthy, but he also does some magic stuff and is very loud and opinionated. So maybe he’s a rogue, but honestly I couldn’t tell you.
Well good. I feel like you shouldn’t (easily) be able to tell. My question was about me, though. What character class am I? I’m good at soft people skills, cooking, archery, carpentry, languages, project management… am I allowed to wear metal armor? Can I cast spells?
My point isn’t that D&D is bad, it’s not, but it’s also not for me. Different people like different things and that’s great. If you like knowing that someone is playing a cleric or a barbarian (and therefore you also know all the associated limitations and specials of that character), I’m not trying to piss on your picnic. But for me it’s too much like ‘I play a knight and can only more in L-shapes’. Like I said, game pieces, not characters.
There are other games with fewer mechanical rules where you can go crazy with this kinda stuff. D&D is one of the most mechanically crunchy ones out there
![Dual Wielding [Dungeons & Dragons]](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/cac0f467-f0d7-4bd4-a82d-65eace9616a2.webp){kind=link}
… and this is why I don’t play D&D. It’s all abstract. It’s more like a board game than an RPG.
[Obviously, this is just my opinion, and it’s subjective, and it’s probably wrong. But, we are where we are.]
In what way? The die tell you success rate so you can’t just say “I succeed at everything” and you use your creativity to bring it all to life.
Your comment as written, especially with the clear example in my first comment, reads like “I’m not creative enough to work within the system”. I’m guessing that isn’t your point but I’m not sure what else to read it as.
You have to abstract something for a game, though. So are you saying you want it less abstract in that you want less of it to rely on dice (and thus more role playing), or do you want it less abstract in that you want more crunch and mechanics for, like, pooping?
I was more thinking about the abstraction of things like character classes and levels. “I’m a knight and can only more in L-shapes.” or “I’m a seventh level human.” That’s what I mean about it being more like a board game than an RPG. Compare “I’m a third level barbarian” to, eg, Call of Cthulhu and “I’m a pilot who was a POW in WWI which is when I picked up fluency in German.” One of those is a potential character, the other is just a playing piece.
That’s all up to how you play the game, then. I’ve been in games that are both; ones where I played a “human wizard” and ones where I didn’t know what the other characters’ classes were because they were just, like…Zaraaraasnaan, dude. You know, Z?
Edit: And some games that turned from one to the other, honestly.
Zaraaraasnaan sounds more like a real person than a game piece. What character class am I?
That’s a character in the PF2e game I’ve played every week for the past year. I know he’s a gnome because he and the other gnome in the party are total buddies and talk about gnome life all the time. And he’s very sneaky and stealthy, but he also does some magic stuff and is very loud and opinionated. So maybe he’s a rogue, but honestly I couldn’t tell you.
Well good. I feel like you shouldn’t (easily) be able to tell. My question was about me, though. What character class am I? I’m good at soft people skills, cooking, archery, carpentry, languages, project management… am I allowed to wear metal armor? Can I cast spells?
My point isn’t that D&D is bad, it’s not, but it’s also not for me. Different people like different things and that’s great. If you like knowing that someone is playing a cleric or a barbarian (and therefore you also know all the associated limitations and specials of that character), I’m not trying to piss on your picnic. But for me it’s too much like ‘I play a knight and can only more in L-shapes’. Like I said, game pieces, not characters.
There are other games with fewer mechanical rules where you can go crazy with this kinda stuff. D&D is one of the most mechanically crunchy ones out there
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