Okay so take your roll, plus the buff you got two rounds ago, plus your feat bonus...

Tabletop RPG question.

When you play, do you like to focus more on the number crunching aspect or the story/character interaction aspect? Or both?

Really I don't like fiddling with numbers too much. Anytime I play I usually let my more experienced friend put together a cookie-cutter character and we roll from there. When I GM usually I don't focus hardcore on the gameplay rules as much as just making it a fun experience.

I think for me it has to do with being really awful with crunching numbers in my head. I've always been bad at it, so sitting and having to look through tables and such to do something that should be relatively simple is a pain to me.

That's also why I'm a pretty big fan of Dice Chucker.

I hate number crunching too, and dealing with all the little details (food rations anyone? >.<). Though my group has little experience as we barely do anything, but my friends were way too into number crunching and getting the most 1337 character that character back stories, and plot took a back seat in almost all of our sessions.

Character all the way. I hate power players.

I hardly ever got to play when I was involved in these but it was always a balance of both, really. Myself, I'm actually more interested in how awesome a person's character is in terms of stats. At the same time, it's hard to stick to beefing up your dudes when there's no story, plot, or anything driving the game. I can't have one or the other; it's got to be both for me. If not, I'd be better off writing a story or playing a video game.

Most of my group tends to power gaming and number crunching, the guy who moved here from California is more into the RP/character part, and gets all moody and complaintative when they die, the rest of us just make a new character. So I like killing things, fast and in unique ways.

Character optimization, definitely. My characters always end up being the quiet, mysterious type with no past because I can't roleplay worth a damn. They always end up kicking ass in combat, though.

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Originally Posted by The Unknown Guru

Character optimization, definitely. My characters always end up being the quiet, mysterious type with no past because I can't roleplay worth a damn. They always end up kicking ass in combat, though.

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Yeah anymore I would do the mysterious quiet type too, cause in my group that thinks role playing is arguing about the rules, just cause it's easier. I've tried playing a character with an actual personality, everything from blindly heroic to chaotically evil and reckless just to cause mayhem. I always get plenty of "WTF" cause I attempted to role-play for a change. Then again cause I never cared much for the stats and didn't really care if I played a wizard who could out melee the other melee classes, and take better hits then the tanks. (True story.)

I like doing both, though I prefer the RP aspect.
Otherwise all you are doing is rolling dice. If I wanted to do that I'd go play craps.

My friends and I usually don't have too big of backstories. Our characters are usually just extensions of ourselves dealing with situations where we have a chance to have fun. I make up most of the story as we go along, throwing in whatever works with the flow of the game.

A bit of both. I like to roleplay my characters, but when you power play you could end up in really amusing situations that make for good roleplaying material.

I usually play World of Darkness though, so the amount of number-crunching is somewhat limited.

In the current campaign my friend is playing a 6'5" naked Druid with an INT score of 8, and he's RPing it well.

I like a bit of both. I'm fairly knowledge able on the intricacies of the D20 system, especially where and how it falls apart, so I like to encourage a certain level of power-play so that I don't have to worry as much about throwing something the party can't handle at them. I'm always willing to help with builds, and I certainly don't require nor encourage uber-optimization (I'm invariably the DM), but I try to help people be mechanically sound.

The roleplay aspect is something I definitely enjoy and encourage though, but the mechanics have their place. I'm looking forward to D&D 4th Edition, if they do what they say they're doing a lot of the number-crunching will be streamlined, which might take more focus off stats.