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2022-11-13, 02:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
I find it strange that you decided the game wasn't an RPG without having decided first what defines something as an RPG. "This game doesn't feel like other RPGs I'm familiar with, I wonder why?" is certainly reasonable. Jumping to "hmm, this must not actually be an RPG, even though it calls itself one, people play it as such, and I'm not totally sure how to define what is or isn't an RPG" is the part that's confusing me. Maybe my brain works backwards from yours.
Certainly the amount of effort to learn and run the game seamlessly varies from system to system. However, this is an entirely subjective bar that I don't think can be used to establish a universal boundary between "RPG" and "not RPG". Some systems are ridiculously complicated and detailed, others are bare-bones simple to the point of barely being a "game". They can all still be a role playing game. Obviously, we are talking about pen&paper, table top role playing games - not computer games or books or card games -it isn't useful to bring those things into the discussion. We're talking about examining the qualities of games which are designed and intended as TTRPGs. If a TTRPG uses a (non diagetic) card game as a resolution mechanic in some situation, is it no longer an RPG? Is "Dread" not an RPG, because it uses Jenga to decide what happens? When you're poking the blocks on the tower, you aren't exactly role playing, are you?
It is completely fair to say "when engaged in the combat portions of this game, it is hard for me to continue role playing- it feels like a board game instead". The fact that you are not alone in that sentiment does indicate a problem in the system's design- however there are people who feel the same about tactical combat in 3e, 5e, and any game at all that uses miniature tactical combat rules. So again, I don't think we can say that the inclusion of complex or detached-from-fiction and "gamey" tactical combat rules make the game overall not an RPG. At worst, we can say that the game might be seen as an RPG with an attached tactical battle game that often occupies a lot of the table time for groups. I would say, based on my reading of the PHB, that 4e has far too many mechanical powers that are detached from specific fictional actions, and there is no good specific fictional reason for limiting certain actions to "encounter" or "daily"- that's one of the reasons I didn't like it. In the terminology of "The Alexandrian", there are too many "detached" mechanics, and even though its supporters like that you can "fluff" these powers any way you want- I don't like this design. On the other hand, I also love tactical battles, and wouldn't have minded trying 4e if someone else was running it (I just never had the chance).
This is why I used the comparison to Mechwarrior and Battletech. Battletech absolutely is not an RPG, it was designed as a tactical battle board game taking place in a specific sci-fi setting. Mechwarrior is the RPG which you can use to follow the personal exploits of Mech pilots when they aren't fighting in a mech battle. In practice, this looks like playing an RPG for part of the time, and then when it's battle time, you might spend hours or an entire game session playing out a big mech battle with the battle game rules. You are still role playing the pilots, they have goals and motives established by the role playing portions of the game, the battle is taking place in the same fictional setting and there are stakes and consequences that persist after the battle. You've got a lot of moving parts and things to keep track of that is impossible without everyone knowing the rules and using the mech sheets. It's not super hard to learn how the system works, but there are a lot of details that can make it hard for new people or people who aren't good at tactics to succeed in a Battletech battle, especially if they are kitting out their own mechs without some degree of system mastery. Is the group no longer role playing when they play out the battles? maybe, maybe not? I don't think the line is so simple to draw, it is highly subjective, and depends on how the GM runs things and the way the players behave. Could your pilot hop out of their mech in the middle of the battle and run someplace and do something other than shoot mech weapons? Yes, they could, there are rules for it and the GM should know how to handle that- you will shift back to Mechwarrior RPG rules to do that sometimes.
Since 4e intends even the battles to be considered part of the role playing, and the GM is given guidance on how to adjudicate improvised actions, there's no reason that any given table's battles couldn't feel like role playing, depending on the familiarity with the system possessed by the GM and players. The only thing that makes it feel more "board gamey" than 3e or 5e combat is the handful of "detached" combat powers that each character has at their disposal and the listing of speeds, ranges and areas in "squares" instead of feet or meters. This might be a big deal to some potential players- I certainly didn't like it - but obviously it doesn't impede others.
I think your statement about people never opening the book or looking at a character sheet is telling. This is a condition I think very many, if not most, games billed as RPGs would not fulfill. It is certainly a valid preference- to have a game simple enough that all the mechanics can be managed by the GM from behind the screen, simple enough to explain to the players without them ever needing to open a book or write anything down or do math, and have them be able to succeed in the system based solely on narrative description of their actions without any mechanical or mathematical considerations on their part. Certainly, it is possible for some RPGs to function this way, hypothetically, but the work load on the GM would make it impractical in almost all cases. If the ease of running the game as a black box for the players is a threshold for classifying it as an RPG, how do you measure that "ease of play" in an objective way? Again, the best you can do is say "this game doesn't meet my threshold for ease of use.", rather than saying it fails as an RPG in general.Last edited by Thrudd; 2022-11-13 at 02:43 PM.
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2022-11-13, 02:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
Last edited by Tanarii; 2022-11-13 at 02:59 PM.
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2022-11-13, 03:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
Knowledge brings the sting of disillusionment, but the pain teaches perspective.
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2022-11-13, 03:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
But Quertus, this question is remarkably easy to answer from the 4E rulebooks. Just take a look at Page 42 in the DMG (which shows the expected damage of "roleplaying actions") and compare that to the average damage of an encounter power of the same level (the expected damage of "button presses"). There's your incentive.
The point is, there is no practical difference between a game that doesn't allow out-of-the-box actions (such as Monopoly), and a game that has the DM adjudicate them and the DM never makes them have an effect (such as RPGs with an overly strict DM and/or overly railroady adventure).Guide to the Magus, the Pathfinder Gish class.
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2022-11-13, 03:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
Because what was really wanted, to be a bit uncharitable, isn't to have lots of button presses. But to have more, and more powerful, button presses. There's actually a quote from one of the 4e devs about the repeated, hard fought battle to not have wizards be naturally the most powerful class. That was such a baked in assumption with the playtesters that it took a lot of work to teach them that no, it's supposed to be a level playing field and other classes can get nice things that wizards don't get.
Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
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2022-11-13, 03:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
Eh, I mostly agree with you. I've even done an analysis of the various effects you can do at just first level.
But I think there's a valid point here. Unlike previous editions, all classes handle their *resources* in the same way. You get daily powers, and x number of them a day. y number of encounters, z number of dailies. It's not like 2e or 3e where barbarians got x number of rages a day, while wizards got a totally different set of spell slots to manage.
While the abilities themselves have a pretty good variety of things, I think, the structure of how you get/use/manage powers is pretty damn samey."Gosh 2D8HP, you are so very correct (and also good looking)"
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2022-11-13, 04:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
That's true, but consider 5e casters which all follow largely the same pattern for resources - and are often using the exact same spells regardless of class.
Quertus - One way to dispel the impression that this is just about 4e and instead some global definition of roleplaying games would be to identify another game that is marketed as a tabletop RPG but would fail your test. If you can, that would probably mean that this definition has a bit more bite to it.
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2022-11-13, 04:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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2022-11-13, 05:30 PM (ISO 8601)
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2022-11-13, 05:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
Right, real meaningful choices, rather than just "a lot of choices" or "no real choices". It's one thing to have a hundred spells for every situation, and only ever use 10 of them, and another to have only one option you can never deviate from.
I do personally feel they succeeded in providing some classes with a fair number of real choices. (I remember there were quite a few ways to build a Paladin at least.)Knowledge brings the sting of disillusionment, but the pain teaches perspective.
"You know it's all fake right?"
"...yeah, but it makes me feel better."
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2022-11-13, 06:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
The point is, there is no relationship between a overly railroady adventure and a DM that only allows actions specifically covered by the rules or a board game. Overly railoady adventures can allow a lot of out-of-the-box no-rules-cover-it decision making by the players, with DM adjudication to how they resolve. They're just not allow to get off the rails and explore elsewhere.
Unless you're using some special definition of a railroad adventure that I'm unfamiliar with. Denying player agency on a strategic level is not the same thing as only allowing decisions within existing rules so that it works the same way as a board game.Last edited by Tanarii; 2022-11-13 at 06:40 PM.
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2022-11-13, 11:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
I guess, except for all of the psionic classes (even monks, with their full discipline powers), or martial e-classes, or out of turn actions, or every class's class features.
But I still dispute that being able to do the same number of very different things makes them feel the same.
I also dispute the assertion that they are being done in the same order every combat. That is, I don't see that someone is likely to be effective if with every combat they use, in order, one daily, all their encounter powers, and then spam at-wills. A lot of the dailies and encounter powers need some setup to be effective, and some are out of turn powers; IME the odds of them going off in order like that are pretty slim, except maybe for high-op builds.
Except that is it player choice that causes a railroad to go off the rails, like attacking NPCs the adventure doesn't want attacked, opening doors it doesn't want you to open, going to places it doesn't want you to go, not going places it does want you to go. That is the commonality with an inflexible DM; player agency is removed.
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2022-11-13, 11:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
Denying "that will take the adventure off the rails" strategic agency and denying "theres no rule for that action" tactical agency are two different things. As such, there's no reason to assume a DM doing one will be prone to doing the other. Nor does it follow that a DM doing the former is turning the game into "not playing an RPG any more". Attempting to conflate the two is like trying to talk about Orange Marmalade when the discussion has been all about Apple Pie.
Last edited by Tanarii; 2022-11-14 at 12:12 AM.
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2022-11-14, 06:28 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
Oh, as do I. But I think there's a decent number of people that value the "power chassis" variance more than I do, and probably more than you do. I find more interest in "what can I actually do on my turn" than I do in "how do I manage these resources" (yes, they're related, others reading this), but others are opposite.
No, that's true, however in terms of effectiveness your priority is generally to try to kick off however many dailies you want to use in the encounter, then all of your encounter abilities, and then go to at-wills. That's not always viable, as you said, but it's usually the goal.
I really wish that the encounter/daily powers were less flat out better and more situational. That's one of many complaints I have with 4e (which, again, I did actually like overall).
There's some commonality, but they're only the same at the 10,000 foot level.
In even the most railroad game, there are boundaries. However, within those boundaries the players are able to do things that are not explicitly pre-defined by the rules.
That's not true of a board game.
Some level of player agency is removed in every game, in one way or another. Chess offers unlimited agency, so long as you start with the pieces and move them in the allotted way. A railroad offers a lot of agency, unless you try to get off the rails. Even sandboxes generally limit agency, either by inherent limits of the genre, social factors, etc.
So "removes agency", at the 10,000 level, isn't really a useful thing. Every game limits agency in some way. What can be interesting is the ways in which agency is limited - and a boardgame removes your agency to do things not directly covered by the rules, whereas the most railroady railroad to ever rail a road doesn't (though it does limit your agency to do things, covered by the rules or not, which would invalidate the rails)"Gosh 2D8HP, you are so very correct (and also good looking)"
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2022-11-14, 06:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
Quertus, how often have you dived through the various semantic theories? Given how complex semantics is, it feels like it may be helpful.
I'm vaguely familiar with prototype theory, that might be a good starting point to dive through the various ways meaning can be described.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_theory
I concur with others that going through a list of things and determining which are, which aren't, and which sorta are RPGs might help elucidate the definition you seek. Though really it's more like trying to reverse engineer/justify a definition for something that is simply defined by how you assess them.A neat custom class for 3.5 system
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94616
A good set of benchmarks for PF/3.5
https://rpgwillikers.wordpress.com/2...y-the-numbers/
An alternate craft point system I made for 3.5
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...t-Point-system
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2022-11-14, 06:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
Which was the point I was trying to make. That "roleplaying" and "game" are really two different things. There's lots of examples of roleplaying where you aren't even playing a game (go take a turn picking a character out of a hat at an improv sometime, it's fun). There are lots of examples of games in which there is no roleplaying. I was just making it clear that the "in the box" game mechanics are not what makes a game a Roleplaying Game.
Correct. Where I was trying to go with that was that while you can roleplay while playing pretty much any game at all, we only tend to label games "roleplaying games" if a measurable (significant even!) portion of the game session/scenario resolution does revolve around roleplaying characters. And the game rules themselves have some methods for resolving those actions, whether they are "in the box" or "outside the box". And yeah, I'd go a step further and say that it's not a RPG unless there are within the game rules, "rules" for handling outside the box actions based on players "roleplaying" their characters in some way.
Yeah. I don't find CRPGS to be much more "RP" than paying the "Role" of the car in Monopoly. You're still following a set of rules, making moves, and the entire time staying completely "in the box" in terms of actions/outcomes. As I gain properties and cash (and get out of jail cards), those could be considered equivalent to gaining levels, HPs (money soaks up the "damage" from an unlucky roll, right), skills, and items (or plot points) in a CRPG. Still not really a RPG IMO. If the only thing you are "gaining" while playing is measurable quantities of defined game objects, it's not a RPG. It *can* be a RPG, but none of those things are what make it a RPG.
I think at this point you have to make a distinction between what the "game" is though. There's the game system you are playing and game rules, and there's "how the person running this particular game is running things". A "game" (system) can absolutely be a RPG, but have a particular GM running a "game" (scenario) in which the players are not allowed to make any decisions of import with their characters other than the ones that are written into the scenario itself. So basically playing a CRPG at the tabletop.
That certainly makes that game session not really a RPG, but I don't know if I'd say that this make the game system not a RPG. The GM has just removed the potential for RP to have any influence on the game session.
It's possible that I misunderstood you, but you seemed to be arguing that the restriction on rules to handle "out of the box" situations meant that it isn't a RPG. My counter was that as long as there is a "general rule" for handling things "out of the box", then it *can* be a RPG (and I believe several people have already posted rules snippets that show this is true). What makes it an RPG or not at that point is whether the game itself revolves around players playing "roles" and that how they play these roles impacts the movement/direction of the game session(s). And from my understanding (full disclosure, 4e is the one edition of D&D I've never played), is that this is just as true as it was in every other edition of D&D.
And yes, just as in every other edition of D&D, it's still entirely possible for the GM to run a very railroady scenario and provide players few or even no RP choices, or ignore attempts to RP, or allow NPCs to be influenced by RP in any way other that those written into the scenario itself, but as I pointed out above, that doesn't make the game system itself not a RPG.
Is that what 4e D&D restricts the players to? Not by GM decision/fiat, but actually written into the rules themselves? If we bring the Monopoly example back, no amount of me roleplaying the top hat how I wish allows me to change the fact that I have to roll two dice each turn, and move that many spaces clockwise around the board, and follow the instructions on the board. I'm not allowed to make a deal with another player and decide that instead or rolling, I can just hang at their place rent free for this turn because I helped them with their gradeschool homework 10 years ago or something.
I'm pretty sure the 4e rules don't mandate that, nor prevent "out of the box" actions in the same way that Monopoly does.
I literally have no clue what you are talking about, or why. When trying to discuss things and come to some sort of understanding, it's usually useful to trim things down to the essentials, so that we can talk about what really matters. You seem to want to add more unrelated things to the conversation to muddy the waters or something.
Here's trimming things: Do the rules of 4e allow for GMs to run a game in which the players can choose to run their characters with different personalities, allow them to run those characters based on those personalities, and have the decisions they therefore make with their characters have an influence on the game? Do the rules allow for situations where a player may tell the GM that he wants to do something, not written into the scenario, and for reasons that may be completely personality driven, and require that the GM in turn perhaps roleplay the NPC response to this unanticipated action? if the answer is "yes", then you are playing a roleplaying game.
I don't know. I've never played 4e D&D. Are you saying that it does, in fact, discourage this? How? From what I've read (on this thread and elsewhere), I suspect that it's more that 4e D&D more clearly codifies the spell/ability actions in the game itself (My understanding was that the entire point was to attempt to resolve the "fighters are linear, wizards are exponential" issue with previous editions). So yes, the rulings on written down abilities and spells were more constrained perhaps, but this isn't what "roleplaying" is about (which loops us back to my original point). The fact that "ability X" written on your mage's sheet is very similar to and uses the same game mechanics as "ability Y" on the party fighter's sheet, does not at all mean that your ability to "roleplay" is being infringed.
Again. RP is the stuff that is outside the well defined rules. Now maybe you're arguing that since 4e more strictly defined the "in the box" stuff, that this suppresses roleplaying, but that then leads me right back to my initial impression that you were somehow equating roleplaying with "cleverly using spells/abilities in the game to do things outside of how those were intended to be used". Which makes this more of a game mechanic issue and not a roleplaying issue.
Again though, you need to show that the changes to 4e D&D did, in fact, impede or "soft-ban" roleplaying choices. And again, it feels to me like you are really looking at how flexible the interpretation of game mechanic rules are, and not really looking at roleplaying and how it influences outcomes in a game.
Finding clever ways to use game mechanics to your advantage isn't roleplaying. That's rules lawyering.
Again though that doesn't say anything about "4e D&D" as a game, but "Joe the GMs table" as a game. Two different concepts for the word "game".
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2022-11-15, 06:06 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
I would also like to know what game that is commonly referred to as an RPG (in the vein of D&D, not a videogame) doesn’t qualify to you, Quertus.
Or is 4E the only one?I have a LOT of Homebrew!
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2022-11-16, 07:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
Quertus, consider the following definition:
A role-playing game is any game commonly considered a role-playing game by most of its players, except for D&D 4e.
I'm not asking if this is what you mean; I know it's not. I'm asking you where it fails to accurately sort what you call rpgs from what you don't call rpgs.
I can't find a counter-example. Can you?
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2022-11-17, 08:39 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
I actually asked Quertus that question in a previous thread on the topic and he could not cite any other counter examples. Now there were also a bunch of "I haven't played that" responses to the various suggestions so theoretically many could exist, but we don't know of any others.
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2022-11-17, 03:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
I think the "4E isn't an RPG" thing is a bit ridiculous, but some really interesting questions have come out of the discussion. I played in a short 4e campaign years ago, and it was fine. I don't remember all the details, but I do remember moving some furniture to block a door, which was in no way a "Push button" ability on my character sheet.
I actually really like this answer as the tie-breaker. While reading through this thread, I remember playing some board games with people who would roleplay their character, instead of making "gamey" decisions.
"What happens when you do something not covered by the rules" determining what's an rpg matches the intuition in my head in every case I can come up with, provided it follows the other criteria of being both a game and roleplaying.
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2022-11-17, 03:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
It's been a few days I've been at this reply; doubtless, the thread has moved some since I started.
I have no problem with the idea that “the reason I said 4e wasn’t an RPG” might indicate that other games wouldn’t feel like RPGs to me, either.
Where do we draw the line between a “river” and a “stream”? Something isn’t a “River” just because it has a flow of water - there’s a certain threshold it must cross to move beyond “stream” into “River”.
So long as you think in black and white on/off terms like “has an engine”, and assume that the definition must sound like that, you’ll struggle to accept limit-based “has enough to be a River” definitions as sounding valid.
You’re the third person to say something like this (Although one person indicated kinda the opposite). This “go” at things is the first time people have understood my definitions enough to give such feedback (progress!), and that feedback is 3-to-1 (not counting myself) that I’m just wrong about 4e.
You've met (otherwise sane) people who felt that 2e killed the fun of 1e in the name of balance?
You may want to take a step back, and drop your preconceptions. Several people have successfully used this new metric; granted, 3-out-of-4 (as of when I started this post days ago) have used it to say that I'm wrong, but that's nonetheless very different from what you're describing.
That would be strange.
“People keep saying ‘4e isn’t D&D’, I wonder why?”
Then I evaluated the claim, decided 4e was D&D, but wasn’t an RPG, but struggled when attempting to articulate why.
Do people have shirts and shirts have buttons, or do buttons have shirts, and shirts, people? Do you talk like a normal person, or a database developer? Whichever you choose, I'll doubtless "think backwards" at times, because I can think both ways.
Regardless, one can be unable to define what a human is, while still declaring that a tree isn’t that. (And, yes, it’s my own danged fault for using the word “defining” in the thread title. I'm horrible loose with my words.)
This is a possible “Confundus” to my efforts: it’s possible none of my irl sources on 4e are properly “skilled” at 4e (and I’m certainly not). But, when the person being asked isn’t me, it’s hard to ask, “are you an ignoramus?” and get a reasoned response.
Ah, no, here I’m pretty sure you’re just wrong. Plenty of people have tried to call CRPGs and even “choose your own adventure” books “roleplaying games” of the same ilk as TTRPGs. Which means that there’s some fundamental disagreements on just what “roleplaying” means. So it’s important to say, “if you think that a volcano is cold, we’re not communicating”. Especially given how poorly I’ve communicated in the past, and how many complete misunderstandings of my prison there’ve been.
I’m not even evaluating this beyond “that is outside the scope of the current question”. Like if I said, “you can’t be a biological man and be pregnant”, I don’t really care about other traits of manhood when evaluating that statement.
Whew. My senility really hurts my ability to respond to some of this, but… if I called that “disassociated mechanics”, would you say that’sa valid name for your “detached” mechanics?
But, while I’m not a fan of such, and may have even argued about their relationship with roleplaying in the past, that’s not what I’m talking about in this thread. Here, I am exclusively discussing the comparative effort between adjudicating button-presses and outside-the-box actions.
So, it really sounds like you get what I'm saying, that I'm measuring the ease with which one can adjudicate outside-the-box actions, the ease with which the GM can adjudicate "playing the character", rather than just "playing the system". Well, to use your words, I'm measuring the difference between white-box and black-box, not just measuring black-box. Clearer?
And, sure, I have my own personal threshold of "not an RPG". My question is, would that at long last mean that if I said, "4e is not an RPG", you would understand what I meant by that phrase? That the difference between white-box and black-box play is just too great for me to consider the game to facilitate roleplaying? Do those words make sense?
You clearly haven't read the same threads I have - the major common criticism I've heard in that vein involves a comparison to how different the power schedules in 3e are, how it was hoped that Bo9S was a preview of 4e, to indicate that 4e intended to extend that trend, whereas 4e came out with such boring samey AED scheduling.
My complaints run to far more than just that, but IME if anything gets to be called the "majority", it's that.
Yeah, it's pretty universally accepted these days that the scheduling of the powers in 4e is samey. I think there's something like the "8 aesthetics of fun" going on here, where some people can see that the powers have diversity, whereas others (like myself) are color-blind to that, and see even the powers as samey.
I think 4e would have really benefited by not just varying the resource management schedule more, but by also understanding this "color-blindness", and making abilities that seem cool to those of us who don't operate on the seemingly monochrome 4e wavelength.
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2022-11-17, 04:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
Given that you aren't personally familiar with 4e (my bad), these are likely the most like "load-bearing structures" I can find.
So, it's absolutely not about rules lawyering (your definition or mine). It's about (as the easiest example) acting in ignorance of the rules, not manipulating them to your advantage.
The metric is about how much harder outside-the-box actions are to adjudicate than system button-presses. That's one half.
The other half is my claim that 4e rates unnaturally poorly in such a metric. That matches your "you need to show" bit.
But you've kinda got to understand the first half - the "what is being measured" - to make heads or tails of the "and here's why I think it doesn't measure up", no?
So I'd suggest starting there: I'm measuring just how difficult it is to adjudicate outside-the-box actions compared to adjudicating system button presses.
Now that we've got multiple people seemingly understanding the metric, they can apply it, if they so desire. I don't. But, for things that other people claimed were RPGs that I got the "not an RPG" feel from, you'll note I keep talking about 4e, "choose your own adventure" books, and CRPGs.
So... sure, 4e is alone among TTRPGs in me 1) bothering with it enough to 2) get that "not an RPG" feel. Some others that I 3) dropped too quickly to evaluate, or that I (*gasp*) 4) only ever played as a war game via button presses may also have been able to meet that criteria.
Did these rulings produce systems for adjudicating the actions that you feel could be written into 4e rules books without seeming out of place? Would they be "5e lava" level of "every table produces completely different and incompatible results"?
My local pool found 4e (at the time) uniquely unacceptable to make rulings for. There's some pushback from the Playground that that makes them (in my words)... word... "unskilled", unsuited to making a determination about 4e's suitability for outside-the-box adjudication.
I like that wording. Do you feel that how comparatively arduous it is to adjudicate something not covered by the rules does.should have any bearing on how suitable to being played as an RPG something is, or do you feel that I'm off base in making that particular connection? Which specific bits of "what happens" would you call out as being most related to a game's suitability to being played by roleplaying?
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2022-11-17, 05:06 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
So I'm not familiar with 4e, but, by point of Contrast
5e's system for adjudicating "You try to do a thing" is: Make an ability check with whatever stat seems most relevant, against whatever DC the DM feels like setting, applying a relevant proficiency if one is available.
It's not an especially ROBUST system, but it covers probably 99% of cases, and I'm having trouble imagining that 4e didn't have something similar.
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2022-11-17, 05:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
Which is why I said "in the vein of D&D, not a videogame" to exclude CRPGs, because while those bear similarities to a tabletop RPG, they are distinct.
And I've never met anyone in my daily life who, to my knowledge, considers a Choose Your Own Adventure Book a tabletop RPG.I have a LOT of Homebrew!
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2022-11-17, 06:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
I'm not sure what that has to do with roleplaying though. Whether one doesn't know the rules to use, or knows them well and chooses to manipulate them, doesn't at all change the fact that a player saying "My character is going to try to block the door with a couch, then light the couch on fire to make it more difficult for them to move, and create smoke to conceal our escape" is describing what he's trying to do. If the game system has specific rules for each of those actions, then it does. If it doesn't, then the GM has to come up with ones.
Let me be clear. What makes something "roleplaying" is that you play a role. It's honestly less about actions like you keep talking about, and more interactions with NPCs (and to some degree the game world). As a mechanical measurement, we can say that it's about "out of the box" actions (and distinguishes TTRPGs from CRPGs IMO). But it also really includes "out of the box" interactions even more. We decide to go talk to the stableboy and pay him 2 gp to keep an eye out for whomever has been breaking into the Inn and stealing stuff. Nothing in the rules covers this exact choice and action. You may not have even considered it when writing the scenario. But your players have said that's what they're doing, so you as the GM, have to now "play the role" of the stableboy and decide what he'll do in response.
And *that's* what makes a game a RPG. And I see nothing about any edition of D&D (not even 4e) that says this sort of interaction can't happen.
Is it harder though? That's what I was asking you. And again, you are focusing on mechanical action resolution. That's not really what makes a game an RPG though.
You didn't actually define the metric though. By what yardstick are you measuring this? And again, this isn't actually about roleplaying at all. You're absolutely free to say that you don't like 4e because it's too focused on strict "in the box" resolutions and you prefer to have more "out of the box" ones. And you may even be absolutely right. But that's about action resolution, not roleplaying.
Guess I'm just not getting what your complaint is. If I were to speculate, I'd think that this has very little to do with roleplaying and more to do with you preferring to come up with "out of the box" actions, hoping to throw the GM off his game, influence his decision in a way that allows your character to do more than he should, and gain an advantage in some way. And 4e, by having more strict controls on those actions, makes it more difficult to "play the game". If a proposed action is "out of the box", it's a lot easier for the player to argue what skills/stats/abilities apply, or how easy/difficult it should be, and thus be able to be more successful at things. If the game system has a "grab rug" skill, and rules for pulling people off their feet using a rug, then you, the player, can't fudge things in your favor.
Again. I'm purely speculating here. I don't know exactly what the rules mechanic differences in 4e are. I'm just basing this on what you have posted so far about it. So far every example you've provided has been about trying to use "out of the box" actions to achieve some benefit in the game, so I kinda have to assume that's what you are focused on.
Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure the "pay the stableboy to be a lookout" scenario is just as possible in 4e as it is in every other version of D&D (and pretty much every RPG as well).
You can't measure something without first defining a unit of measure. That's the "metric" I questioned you about that you haven't defined. What exactly are you measuring, and what method are you using to measure it?
Again though. You aren't actually measuring anything. At least not that I've seen in this thread. Is it really "more difficult", or does the fact that more rules already exist mean that there is less "fudging" that can be done?
Is it actually more difficult from the POV of the GM? Or from you as a player? I don't know what experience you have playing this edition, so I can't say. What I can say as a long time GM is that having more codified rules in no way makes things more difficult for me to adjudicate things. If anything, it makes it easier (more skills/mechanics to tap into if nothing else). What it can do is make things more difficult for the players, because maybe in a previous edition deciding if a PC could do X was rolling a stat against a DC, and now there's an actual skill for X, so PCs that didn't take ranks in that skill aren't going to be as good at it as they would have been in the "out of the box" arbitration in a previous edition.
Is that what you are talking about? If so, then that's not even remotely about roleplaying. It's certainly something you can complain about, but one could also look at it as you being able to get away with doing difficult tasks more easily in previous editions instead, due to a less robust rules system. Haven't played 4e, so I can't say though.
And this still confuses me. The game still has the same stats, right? It has the same (similar at least) class system, level system, experience system, etc. I'm sure there are differences in specific skills, spells, abilities, etc, but I'm struggling to see how this could possibly make it more difficult to make rulings.
Perhaps provide a specific example of something that came up, where in a previous edition the GM was able to arbitrate it easily, but in 4e, it was hard? That might help.
Again though. it's not like the same "pick a stat and roll against a DC" doesn't still exist as a final fallback in 4e just as it does in every other edition. Do the game rules actually say "any action not defined by these skills/abilities/whatever can't be attempted"? I'm reasonably certain that it contains rules for handling things that are not covered by the rules (someone posted this earlier IIRC). So I'm still trying to figure out where this belief is coming from.
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2022-11-17, 08:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
Yeah, I'm the senile one, here, RE "detached" vs "disassociated" lol but you knew what I meant.
What I don't understand is in what way, specifically, you're having trouble with 4e's mechanic. 4e's mechanic for adjudicating all actions, both prescribed powers and improvised, is identical. Roll a d20, add a modifier, try to hit a difficulty/defense number. If a player wants to do something not prescribed by a power or rule, the DM has to decide what the effects of the action will have, assign a difficulty or defense and have them roll. So, on that level, at least, the difference between prescribed and improvised actions is nil- there's no way that could be "too great" to overcome. The fact that a few of those prescribed powers, mostly "martial" powers, have no specific reason for being limited to one attempt per encounter or day does create a different sort of problem that I have. But I don't think this could disqualify the game from facilitating role playing in general- there are just these very specific moments in the game where things won't exactly make sense.
"Playing the character" vs "playing the system" sounds like a distinction relying mostly on the prevalence of disassociated mechanics, in general. Or does the number of prescribed actions, whether associated to fiction or not, also contribute to this metric for you? I can see how you might say that a game with too many "buttons" may threaten to turn the game into "seeking the optimal button" for players, rather than being immersed in the fiction in a first-person character stance. Is that what you mean about 4e? I can see an argument for that, although actually the total number of those "buttons" that each player has access to across a character's career is fairly low. How many is too many is again an entirely subjective thing.
When you say "4e is not an RPG", that sounds like a claim about the game universally- something which you believe to be true no matter who is playing the game. If you said "4e doesn't work for the style of RPG I prefer", it would be supportable. This is all based on your subjective experience of how difficult it is to use the system for the sort of roleplaying game you like to play.
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2022-11-17, 09:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
Let me see if a game of “suppose” can clear things up.
Suppose I said that every GM I played with, always responded to white-box actions with “stop roleplaying and pick a button on your sheet to press!” Suppose these GM’s never had any issue with white-box actions in any other system. Would you, under those circumstances, understand why I might feel the way I do?
Suppose every GM in the world did the same thing, always banned all white-box actions. Would you agree that, at that point, the game was sufficiently unsuited to roleplaying as to not be an RPG?
Now, obviously that’s not fact (well, I suppose it is fact for CRPGs and “choose your own adventure” books), but can you see the direction?
So, why 4e?
Well, let’s hit the obvious (if arguably unimportant) bit: tight balance, “the math just works”. If I let a 3e half-Minotaur Barbarian Intimidate using strength… who cares? The Diplomancer has been trading shiny rocks for kingdoms for half a dozen levels now, and the BFC Wizard has Tainted his soul to where opponents only aren’t caught in his machinations on a “20”. But the feel of 4e is supposed to be different, it’s supposed to be this mathematical beauty (quite unlike 5e lava). So, by virtue of the game paradigm / metaphor / whatever, one should be much more stringent on just what rules and math one adds into a 4e game. That is, in 4e, it matters just what Burning Hands targets, more so than in other games / editions, no? Well, that’s the impression I got at any rate, and I feel I wasn’t alone.
Perhaps more importantly, there’s a balance to AEDs - you don’t have characters with Daily abilities that are weaker than their At-will abilities, do you? So, when you’re evaluating “pull the rug out from under the orcs, and use it to block the door to slow down reinforcements”, is it an At-will, Encounter, or Daily power? And how effective should it be compared to a published “button” at that level?
Oh, but if you’re trying to set fire to Treants, that should be more effective, right? So you can’t balance the effectiveness of the white-box action against this encounter, but against a neutral one (like orcs), right?
CaW is all about using the Strategic layer; CaS considers that “cheating”. Well, IME, 4e players and the 4e rules-set made “white box” actions feel like cheating.
So there’s a few examples, with which one can lose the forest for the trees. But suppose 4e really intended white-box actions to feel like cheating, the way CaS makes deliberately changing the level of challenge to feel unsporting. Would you understand my sentiment then?
But, again, I’m just asking how hard it is to make rulings for white-box actions that match and feel like the existing rules, compared to adjudicating button presses. And if my personal experience was with GM’s who felt 4e was too picky about such things for adjudicating white-box actions to be acceptable, that colored my perception of 4e, leading to my “not an RPG” determination.
Suppose I said all that. Would you understand what I meant? Or would you still think that it sounds like a question of “the style of game I like to play”, rather than one of the ability to roleplay a character? Which half of this do I need to address (or, Spanish Inquisition special, some third half?).
@gbaji, same question.
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2022-11-17, 10:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
What is that threshold?
You may want to take a step back, and drop your preconceptions. Several people have successfully used this new metric; granted, 3-out-of-4 (as of when I started this post days ago) have used it to say that I'm wrong, but that's nonetheless very different from what you're describing.
Missed the fourth one, could you point me at them? Or skip straight to listing off the preconceptions that are the problem.
* And at a different point, used it to show that no edition of D&D was a role-playing game. It has been a lot of refining since then.
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2022-11-18, 12:52 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
I think I've said this three different ways in two threads, so I'm not sure if you are counting me more more than once.
I'm not vouching for the sanity of anyone I argue with on the internet, but yes, when you parse the ranting that is one of the complains. Which is ironic, given that 2e removed a lot of the annoying fiddly rules that arguably made 1e more balanced that 2e, on account of the fact that most 1e players probably ignored them.
Sure. Except for many of the e-classes, which did away with dailies and most encounter powers. And monks, which had the "full discipline" variation. And divine characters, with their "channel divinity" powers. And the other psionic classes, which had no encounter powers but instead had power points. And every class's class features.
I do agree that the designers could have done a better job of differentiating the classes from each other, so that you didn't have to learn about it through play. Thing is, I'm not certain the designers knew that the classes played that differently, let alone that option selection within a class could make different builds play so differently from each other. They always seemed to try to differentiate the classes purely by virtue of flavour text - which flavour text was often at odds with the way the classes operated in practice.
I understand not many of them played 4e in their spare time. It shows.
Player choices, character options, and player skill can lead to wildly different power levels from baseline, so if you want an unbalanced game the CharOp boards can show you how to do it. But generally the openly published math of the baseline game makes it easier to improvise, because you can make up pretty much any power on the spot.
Strictly speaking, you would not have to compare the "pull the rug" action to any type of power, because it does no damage. As I stated elsewhere, the most obvious adjudication is to treat it as a Strength based attack against the higher of Fortitude or Reflex defence, perhaps with some ad hoc tweaks as to whether the second line of orcs would be effected if you didn't manage to dislodge the first line.
Holding the rug up against the door would provide total concealment (-5) against attacks against everyone in the room not holding the rug, and partial cover (-2) against attacks on the guy holding the rug (his position is given away because he is holding the rug, but the heavy rug provides some protection from attacks, although I'm going back and forth on whether he was also have partial concealment for another -2). I would probably have the orcs try to bull-rush the guy holding the rug in order to clear the door, which they could probably attempt without penalty because they don't have to hurt him, they just have to plow into him.
A better example for comparing to AED powers would be to push a brazier over to try to hit your enemy with hot coals. That would probably be a Strength or Dexterity based attack made against Reflex defence, depending on the physical characteristics of the brazier. Damage would be similar to an encounter power, because it is repeatable (you can do it more than once a day) but does not have unlimited use (since it depends on there being a brazier in the correct position in relation to you and your targets). If it was a boulder being rolled down a cliff I would have it do damage like a daily, because boulders perched where you can drop them are pretty rare, and boulders are big.
I regularly substitute one ability score for another using skills, such as subbing Strength for Charisma with Intimidate.
It is true that you don't tend to have daily abilities that are less powerful than at-wills. Well, except for some daily item powers. But isn't that the trend whenever a power has limited usage in any edition?
I do agree that despite having simple, express rules for improvization, the presentation of 4e gave the appearance that you had to play inside the lines. They really wrote crappy adventures, and the focus on organized play pushed a lot of uniformity.
If I threw the brazier at treants and deemed them to be vulnerable to fire (wet wood may be less flammable than you think) they would take a predictable amount of extra damage, generally expressed as 5/10/15. Odds are that would already be baked into their stat block, though.
It wasn't the rule-set, it was the presentation and culture, and the dominance in discussion groups of people heavily involved in organized play.
Very easy. The brazier attack above, if it was in a first level dungeon, could be written as "Attack: Dex vs Reflex; Close burst 2; Hit: 2d6+3 fire damage; Miss: the target is pushed 1 square". I added the "pushed 1 square" to reflect that fact that the target who is missed is probably jumping out of the way to avoid being hit.
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2022-11-18, 04:16 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Quertus fails at defining roleplaying games again
If every DM you've played with said "stop roleplaying and pick a button", then I think I can say they were factually playing the game other than the way it is written, and certainly not in line with the assumption of the designers that they expressed in the less mechanical bits of the book. Maybe those DM's never read the parts about ability and skill checks and adjudicating improvised actions? Or maybe they weren't saying that exactly? did they want you to at least be aware of the different "buttons" you have available to press, so you can inform them both of your character's fictional action and also the mechanical ability, if any, that applies to that action? Of course, there is an expected period of time for players to learn a new system, and playing for the first time you can expect to have to look at the mechanics and character sheet more than you will after having played the system for a while. So it's easy to see situations where a DM has not yet memorized everything, and is learning what abilities exist along with the players- and naturally won't be so confident at improvising things yet. Certainly not yet capable of giving you a "black box" experience (meaning you as the player don't need to see the rules/mechanics), where they can pick what rules/mechanics represent your actions from behind the screen, keep track of your meta-game resources for you, and allow you to play completely "immersed". I'm guessing almost nobody plays any RPG like that any more, but I agree 4e is definitely ill-suited for it. But again- having too many "buttons" to run as a "black box" isn't unique to 4e among RPGs. It at least applies to the other WotC D&D editions, and many other games besides.
The underlying d20 system of abilities and skills is almost identical to that of 3e and 5e, and is easily used for all general role playing scenarios, socializing and exploring and whatever. Pick a target number, add a modifier- in combat, roll a damage die, sometimes apply a condition that persists for some amount of time or until another condition is met. That's how everything gets resolved- improvised actions will generally mesh very closely with the predetermined abilities- it's all a d20 against a target number. Anything not limited as E,D or U by the rules is "at-will". How much trouble a DM has in deciding what effects of actions should be is a rather subjective thing- that all the DMs you played with treated this subject in a similar manner may reveal a flaw in the system's design or in the manner in which the writers communicated their intentions. But that system is, in its basic mechanic, so similar to the other editions that calling into question this one's suitability to roleplaying would be to do the same to all WoTC D&D editions, at the very least- being that there is more in common between these systems than there is different, to my eyes. That the combat powers are balanced across classes doesn't materially affect one's ability to interact with the fictional environment in any way you can imagine, nor puts any specific constraints on how a DM can adjudicate those things. There's guidelines for the DM for improvised difficulties and damage according to level, and whether it should be comparable to an at-will attack or something that does "massive" damage. If I were DMing, I'd have that table printed out and on the back of my DM screen for quick improvising that fits in the "balance" boundaries set by the designers. I don't get the impression from my reading that they intend improvised actions to feel like "cheating". Everything you do outside of combat is pretty much using skill and ability checks at-will. I don't think there's anything that says "perfect mechanical balance must be achieved at all times", regardless of what the people you played with decided must happen. There's not much restricting how a DM might rule on the "rug pull" example, outside the fact that they will be using the d20 system, just like in other D&D. I think a lot of people just don't actually read all the advice on how the game is supposed to be run, or even all the rules - in this edition or any other.
If the DM, or the module they are running, formats the game as a series of large set-piece battles, in between which players can only role play in order to find their way to the next battle, then finding a way to skip or trivialize the battle would be discouraged- this could be the source of some of the consternation for DMs about allowing some type of "CaW" type strategic action you are attempting rather than a desire for mechanical balance. Of course, this is a problem with adventure and encounter design, rather than the system itself- which does not specify this as the expected or only way to design adventures. The advice the system gives about designing encounters does put a lot of value on "choosing threats appropriate to the characters", which is also the case with other WotC D&D. It does lend itself toward pre-planned encounters, designed according to the expected difficulty for a specific party of characters, which might disincentivize DMs from allowing their carefully planned encounters to be skipped or "out maneuvered"- since the process can be rather time consuming. However, the 4e DMG also says adventures should be a blend of combat, problem solving, investigating, role playing- not that it should only be combat. What the designers say and what the rules lend themselves to may not mesh. Again, this is a problem in all modern D&D, not just 4e.
But even if it was intended to be a series of set piece battles with little else, there are other RPGs which have similar format- because that is appropriate to the genre which they are emulating. For instance, an action movie RPG I know is structured like an action movie or TV show, with players role playing their characters as versions of trope-filled action movie stereotypes and describing cool combat scenes and coming up with one-liners. Not an RPG? It's pretty "railroady", by design, sessions structured as a movie or TV episode - you know there's going to be fights in interesting locales likely chosen by the GM, hopefully give all the characters chances to shine in their specific roles in the connective scenes between fights, and everyone is going to at least survive until the big, climactic scene of any given episode, when it is dramatically appropriate for characters to die.
So - I'd say this type of adventure design, focused heavily on balanced combat encounters with low or no chance of death for the characters in most cases, lends itself to a genre more like this than what is found in TSR D&D and OSR games. but it also relies heavily on how a particular DM structures the game, the system doesn't demand it. I know a lot of people who think of D&D as being mainly about cinematic fantasy action, and structure their adventures as such- they think of it like a movie or a cartoon.
"The ability to role play a character" means different things depending on the context of the game and genre. Playing a character that doesn't belong in the setting or genre of the game is going to create problems- any given game can't be expected to facilitate that. A character's "belonging" can be a function both of their physical existence in the setting as well as the mentality you bring to it. If you are playing a historical ancient-world game, it would be contrary to the setting and genre for your character to possess modern scientific knowledge that they use to create chemical explosives, for example, even if you personally know how to achieve it with the raw materials they have at hand. If you're playing an action movie genre game, you aren't going to be allowed to find ways to stop the bad guys without an action scene happening. The point of the game is role playing through action-filled fights and generally acting like a bad ass. you'd be advised against choosing a character who runs away from all conflicts, but to embrace the genre and pick a cool action character to emulate.
Did the 4e DMs you played with see the game this way, being primarily about the fights? I'd say that's a "style of playing the game" - especially since the 4e system itself doesn't require or advise this. 4e could be run as mostly improvised skill challenges and socializing with NPCs, with combats that are smaller scale and mostly improvised, or with big battles that only happen very occasionally. Many people wouldn't like this, but the system absolutely supports it, at least as much as other D&D editions.
The game says it is an RPG. The writers describe what they think that means and how they expect players to do it (which are pretty standard), give rules for adjudicating non-combat actions with abilities and skills, tell you to design adventures with a variety of typical role playing game activities (not just combat). Some people still like the game and find it works great for them- I don't think you can discount their experience in analyzing how this game performs. Your anecdotal experience doesn't outweigh theirs as evidence of anything. So I'd say that it must be an RPG, in an objective and universal sense. A game can use "CaS", and still allow role playing. The players just need to accept that this is a feature of the game's genre. A game with a lot of mechanical "buttons" that are too complicated or disassociated from specific fiction might be making a design mistake that leads to players overly relying on the buttons instead of thinking of the fiction first- but not everyone finds this to be an insurmountable barrier. Too many disassociated mechanics in general might lead the players to taking an "author" or "story" stance vs "character" stance in situations where those mechanics are prevalent - but some RPGs actually encourage this and people find it desirable. It's a different sort of role playing than experiencing the game exclusively through the eyes of a character, in more or less first-person POV.
So yes, it all still sounds like a "style of game you like to play" discussion, from my perspective. It's not "cheating" to bypass the preplanned fight, if the fight is the main point of the game - it's more like "trying to avoid playing the game". If you haven't bought into the genre implied by "CaS" type mechanics and adventure design, and this isn't communicated to you, I can see how it would seem like you aren't being allowed to role play the character. You haven't been told the type of game or story you are supposed to be playing in, and brought some setting and genre assumptions that might be inappropriate for what the DM has designed. Also, every system has design flaws that make one aspect or another awkward or require homebrewing, or is written in a way that important rules and principles of play aren't clear to players or even has a design which doesn't live up to the designer's intentions. An imperfect RPG is still an RPG. Specific GMs might discourage the type of role play you prefer, design railroady adventures and aren't good at improvising, or are just inexperienced with the system and don't know how to adjudicate your actions. I don't think you can blame a system for this, entirely. At least, not to the point where you accuse the designers of false advertising.