Why, yes! You would be able to roll for it in one of my games!
Speaking of… I’m looking to run a oneshot this weekend. A quick 3-4 hour adventure. I’ve run it before and everythings prepared, just gotta find the players for it! So if you’re available to start a session between 5-8PM EST on Saturday or 1-8PM EST on Sunday, then check out my thread below!
I don’t know exactly where I fall on this spectrum.
on the one hand obviously you want to be encouraging to your players and create an environment where everyone is having fun.
on the other hand if I wanted to play a game solely based on its mechanics I would play something else. the R in TTRPG is there for a reason.
some of my favorite moments in games I’ve run have been when players improvise something in character and completely derail.
I don’t think I’ve ever run a game where we didn’t have more fun when players act like they are their character rather than act like they are controlling their character.
to be fair though I moved away from 5e and Pathfinder and other crunchy games for that reason, I just have a lot more fun with games that are less heavy on the rules and more involved on the story were telling together.
so could just very well be my gaming groups preference that leads to that experience rather than not.
For me, I’m cool with barebones.
A player once wanted to persuade a government official to basically not do the paperwork, I asked him how he wanted to do that, and he sat for a minute trying to figure it out. What I ended up doing is just asking him how he’d like it to go, and he ended up saying something like “I want my character to just be suave and say something to make the guy swoon a bit”. Called for a roll, he did alright, so I narrated the scene like I would an NPC and that was a success.
My player needed the idea, but that doesn’t mean he needed to act out the idea. Without even knowing the idea it’s “I want to roll persuasion. Does a 19 work?” and that’s boring, but he didn’t need to roleplay to succeed, either.
yeah I feel like that is the minimum I am okay with.
like if a player just wants to roll dice but does not want to be involved in the story itself at all I don’t know why they would be playing a role-playing game.
knowing what they’re trying to get out of the situation or at least how they are sort of going about it is the bare minimum.
I will say though that makes it less fun for me personally. I am just more into the heavier character focused stories and if there is no role-play involved it just feels like basically playing a board game.
I like board games but that’s not why I play TTRPGs.