This for sure. Some of the best roleplay can happen in combat, and I honestly love both. DMs can encourage this by awarding inspiration for good RP and crafting combat scenarios that allow players to express their characters. Some examples: Do you KO or kill the baddies? Do you go stealthy or charge in? Are they honorable combatants or do they pursue victory at any cost? Even if the players often make these decisions without considering characterization, the DM can reconteztualize them as character beats instead of meta-level decisions. Also, the classic of having players describe their own crits or killing blows can use this method as well.

I agree with you. The Three Pillars of Role-Playing, according to the Player's Handbook: **Combat, Exploration, Social Interaction.** These are **ALL** "RP" and they should all be performed in-character and creatively.

Click clack go the math rocks.

I think the "I move and attack" stuff can get boring, especially if it's _slow_. Like, if the players are speedy about it then you're basically playing a board game, and that's fine. I start to lose patience when you get the "can i move here? oh i can only move 30 feet. what about here? oh that will provoke. maybe if i cast misty step? oh i can't cast two leveled spells in a round. Can I hide first? Oh that takes my _action_? Sorry I usually play rogue. Uhhh I guess I just shoot them." mode. I also kind of really want to spend more time in systems where the talky parts have rules, too. D&D tends to be just "wing it' and "DM decides". If you're at the noble's ball and try to make a big speech to convince the duke to flee before your army attacks, there's not really a lot of structure there. It _can_ be fine to just "talk it out, man", but that runs into the problem where my character on paper has CHA 20 but me in real life rocks a solid 10 CHA. Or the other case, where the fighter with 8 CHA has a salesguy for a player, and he punches well above his on-paper skills using his real life personality, where I'm sidelined. Honestly, just removing all the social skills from D&D would normalize the system. But there's also games like Fate, that handle social conflict and sword conflict with the same rules. Stab someone? Roll fight vs whatever they defend with. Stab someone with your _words_? Roll Cruelty vs their Composure. In either case, if your dice come out on top enough then they don't get to go on. I think some peopel who want more RP would hate this, since it gamifies it. But I'd rather have it than the aforementioned "real life sales guy hogs the spotlight" problem.

>It can be fine to just "talk it out, man", but that runs into the problem where my character on paper has CHA 20 but me in real life rocks a solid 10 CHA. Or the other case, where the fighter with 8 CHA has a salesguy for a player, and he punches well above his on-paper skills using his real life personality, where I'm sidelined. There is another. I've found that being (imo) charasmatic, and being a charasmatic character, means DMs just talk to me, rather than ever asking for any rolls. Sure, my argument is convincing, but I still want to use my numbers!

It goes the other way around for daddy.

My favorite group I have ever DMd for was at a convention, it was 2am, and nobody had ever met before except the two couples in the mix of 9. I just ran part of a campaign I was working on for a different group. I barely had to interact with them for RP stuff unless it was to drive the plot, or play a character they convinced to join them. It was great seeing a large muscular guy dressed like a Dwarven blacksmith role play a halfling, and the smallest person there was playing as a half-orc barbarian from the plains of icewind dale. And of course since it was a convention, and some of them had LARP gear with them, a friendly competitive sword fight broke out during a rest and instead of rolling, they just went ahead and used foam swords and stepped away from the tables. And borrowed dialogue from the princess bride. Most groups definitely prefer combat, and to be honest so do I unless I'm running the game. Maybe I just haven't played with the right group or character, or more likely I just suck at it. Either way... I think everyone has "that one group" they wish they could play with forever and never have scheduling conflicts...

This made me miss srgrafo's stuff on reddit. He's the artist who made the original. https://srgrafo.com/ i really like reading the white rooms.

I have the math kind of autism so I prefer combat

I love DnD roleplay, it tickles my brain very well

Combat can be fun, but DnD in particular reeaaally drags sometimes. An excellent DM helps, but even Dimension 20 takes a full session for a big combat encounter, which is usually just exhausting IMO. I much prefer systems like PBTA that keep combat pretty breezy and improv-friendly.

the fireball dice?

It isn't just D&D. I've picked up Cyberpunk RED recently - combat is more streamlined, but it can still drag.

Yeah fair, most of the more granular systems go that way. I know Pathfinder fights can take a minute as well.

Any dice

> I also (don’t lynch me) think that combat should be an RP experience. That could be my love for certain systems where you get bonuses for good, accurate descriptions and not simply, “I roll. I hit. I do X damage.” Combat should be a RP experience regardless of system. What you're describing is one where *proactive* roleplay is a mechanical system, and I'll be honest, as someone who's never entertained a theatre career, fuck that god awful fucking noise. But the choice of what to do, and how you react after the roll should be informed by the fiction of the game and the fiction of the combat, and *that is roleplay*. The fact that much of the discourse around the games and resources available to players is focused on min/maxing number munchers is a social problem, not a system one.

this is exactly why I switched to pbta systems. the combat is role play!

D&D 4e was unpopular but honestly I loved how streamlined it made combat. I wish they hadn’t entirely done away with it when making 5e.

this is why you don't have to just "i hit for 3 damage" motherfucker i _roll between the bandit's legs and slash at their ankles with my tetanus daggers, barely missing the tendons but slicing moderately deep, and they feel the grit from the pockmarked blades salt their fresh wounds_ for 3 damage this has the side effect of encouraging the DM to keep the turn # snappy lol

I've played a lot of different rugs, and I've noticed that combat drags the most in games that care the most about tactical combat. Interestingly, the game I've played that dragged the least in combat was GURPS, despite each round lasting for 1 second of game time. I think this is because the tight time window on your turn means you get to do exactly one thing on your turn, and if you are doing something intensive like casting a spell you might be spending several turns doing nothing but the occasional step or defense roll. Contrastingly, Shadowrun 5e had a 2 second turn, and combat slowed to a fucking crawl whenever someone wanted to do something more complex than moving and hitting due to the amount of dice being rolled and decision fatigue; we even banned grenades at one point because the chunky salsa technique was just too tempting to exploit.