Legends & Lore: Getting With The Times

Before I get into the whole Mike wanting to convince us that 5th Edition has any uniquely positive traits thing, I want to address his statement that "plenty of games call themselves RPGs that don't require or even particularly encourage roleplaying". I understand why Mike might feel this way, because what he—and I am sure many, many others—narrowly interprets as roleplaying is in fact not the universal definition.

With that out of the way Dungeons & Dragons has puttered along for decades without any hard rules forcing—or even really encouraging—his particular brand of social roleplaying, and I do not even think it has exactly suffered from it. But that is all about to change, because 5th Edition will feature...some social role-playing guidelines with no mechanical impact?

The meat of the article showcases examples from one of the backgrounds, which "probably won't exactly match what you see in the final game" (because I guess they are still tweaking them?), and are intended to "highlight the unique traits that make D&D different from other types of games".

First off, being able to add a personality to a character, establish goals, etc is not anything new for Dungeons & Dragons. At the absolute latest it is in 4th Edition's Player's Handbook (pages 23-24, with a sidebar on alignment versus personality on page 19), but I am guessing it is somewhere in 3rd Edition, and I assume that the topic has been addressed in Dragon magazine on more than a few occasions. The only difference with this is that it looks like they are going to devote a more substantial chunk of page count to it, which is kind of step forward.

Second, this does absolutely nothing to "highlight unique traits". If you have never read or played FATE, Mouse Guard, Dungeon World, and who knows how many other games out there, then yeah, it might seem pretty unique. Actually, those games also provide a mechanical incentive for playing your character as established—tagging/compelling aspects, XP for alignment/bond resolution, etc—so I guess the lack of that might make Dungeons & Dragons unique, just not in a good way.

On that note, I also think that some of the traits are too extreme. Like, "I always try to help those in need, no matter the cost" (which seems to clash with Mike's statement that these will "have only as much effect on how you play your character as you want them to"), or "I quote (or misquote) sacred texts or proverbs in almost every situation" (which sounds like it could get annoying). This is where an incentive could come into play: you do not require the players to do something, but give them a reward when they do.

For example in Dungeon World you would not "always have to help those in need", but if you did you would gain 1 XP, while in FATE if you have an aspect of Helping Those in Need, you could spend a Fate point to either gain a bonus on a skill roll or re-roll all of the dice, as long as the check was applicable to the situation.

Again, to be fair, I still think this is a step forward, albeit a small one. Assuming there is a section on writing your own stuff (like how FATE and Dungeon World tells you how to write good aspects and bonds respectively), I think it would also benefit from being required, having an incentive, and less "always/must" examples.