Sunday, March 6, 2011

Exploring Characters

So one of the latest (or am I two weeks too late on this one) mantra is "We explore dungeons, not characters."  In the immortal words of Tony Stark from Iron Man "is it too much to ask for both?"

I like exploring characters.  I guess this means I am a "role-player" more than I am "Dungeon Crawler".  I like to explore my characters, figure out what makes them tick.  I'd rather loose to a monster in way that advances the plot or characterization than kill the monster and get the treasure in what was otherwise a roll of the dice.

I guess that is just one more hit to my old-school street cred.

8 comments:

Pontifex said...

BURN THE HERETIC!

You forgot to put up your 3-year anniversary of Gygaxian Passage post as well.

How can you even show your face?

Alex Osias said...

How dare you -- oh, burn the HERETIC.

Sorry, I thought you were threatening innocent witches on this blog.

Carry on with the burning then...


Seriously though, I do enjoy explorations of character as much as I do explorations of dungeons.

And in both cases, if boring, I tune out.

Needles said...

Burn The Heretic.. Oh never mind some folks beat me to it. I never understood the whole,"We explore dungeons & not characters." thing. But then I'm weird that way I like plot & exposition in my dungeon crawling.

Stefan Poag said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
5stonegames said...

Old school games are actually great for character driven roleplaying. In fact some of the most intense sessions I have ever run came in Early AD&D 2e, a rather Old School style system.

The lack of personality mechanics is actually an asset here, no need to fiddle with points or anything else, just play.

Also its not really heresy , old school means a lot of things including playing a roll.

After all exploring dungeons can get downright tiresome.

Aaron E. Steele said...

First one, then th'other.

Gaming Ronin said...

I thought the crawl was old school and the character exploration was some new age hippy style of gaming.

Anonymous said...

Both kinds of exploration are fun. I am not sure if one needs to be placed over the other as both have their own time and place.