Whenever I hear about D&D more often than not it seems like people go to great lengths to stay in character and roleplay
This is great and makes for some very interesting stories but I tend to find myself more interested in just going on an adventure with a group of friends, solve a few puzzles win a few fights, complete a few quests etc
I’m also a big fan of character optimisation and mechanics but get the feeling that can be frowned upon by much of the community
Difficult to describe what I mean here but as an example in baldur’s gate I barely roleplay at all, my character has no personality except for the fact they make the decisions I would make, but I find that more fun, not having to worry about what my character would do and just making the decision I want to make
I realise not having a fleshed out character in D&D detracts from the immersiveness of the story because the DM can’t weave your character into the story but at least at the moment that doesn’t sound too bad to me.
Just wondering if there are people out there who run lighter roleplay campaigns
I would argue that most D&D games are roleplay light - it’s MUCH easier to just run a mechanical game than one with lots of roleplay.
I can give you session after session of dungeon crawling, or low level story stuff, but trying to put together a campaign with good (consistent) characters with motivations and personalities is incredibly difficult.
The reason you hear about all the roleplay heavy ones (critical role etc, or even stories from other people’s campaigns) is because they stand out as being special, exceptionally well done games.
You might be interested in Pathfinder Society.
Basically they’re Pathfinder pickup games with a pre-approved set of rules run at game stores and conventions. The games tend to be focused almost exclusively on mechanics and puzzles with almost no role play.
It’s not that I don’t want roleplay, I’m not sure if I’ve figured it out in my own mind yet in all honesty
Just want the roleplay not be taken too seriously if that makes any sense, characters don’t need to be too deep, breaking character for a joke isn’t frowned upon etc
I guess what I’m really describing here is just a lightheaded campaign here aren’t I
Oh absolutely! I’ve heard the term “power gamer” used to describe people who love building the perfect, 100% optimal character that is multiclassed just so with such and such items, who can do X amount of damage per round, and so on. I think some people use that as a derogatory term but I don’t see it that way. It’s just how some people like to play, just as some people like to play characters who are this race with this color hair and an elaborate backstory, stats be damned.
There are absolutely people out there like what you’re asking for. Lots of combat, exploration, puzzles, and roleplay is restricted to basic narration (“my character asks where the bad guy is” “ok, roll persuasion”). They have a presence online as well, for example r/3d6 on Reddit, but it’s a bit smaller/less vocal than the RP folks I think.
