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.

I have played different tabletop role playing games on and off for a few decades with dozens of people and only a few tried to stay in character beyond basic consistency with a character’s choices. One or two tried a voice or way of speaking, and barely kept it consistent.

A lot of people just played themselves even if they said they were going to play a certain character concept.

Its all up to the group. Most groups I have been in did not have any particular requirements. Some folks roleplayed more than others. If a group is big on roleplaying there are plenty of ways of making a character that just does not interact much. From the silent types who just take action to dumb brutes who don’t get all this talky talk. Honestly I find most folks don’t rp all that much. If you do play by discord its so hard to keep momentum going that often rp is a bit limited. people can talk your ear off but typing your eyes out is much harder.

You may also want to consider other game systems that have much less emphasis on role playing and are primarily strategy-based, such as Battletech.

There’s always been the balance between war gamers and role players (not limited to DnD). War gaming can be fun, but I don’t think DnD is especially geared toward it. Likewise, role playing is nice, but those hardcore no-meta (at all, there is no way to have a laugh ooc) aren’t my thing either.

When starting a new campaign, I like to ask whether the players prefer role-playing or roll-playing. This also serves as a nice ice breaker for discussing meta.

If you have problems finding a proper DnD group with little role playing, you might want to check out other game systems which focus less on it. Warhammer (including the Pen and Paper systems) seems to focus more on the numbers and strategy aspect.

Not that you can’t roll-play in DnD, you just need to find the right group and campaign. A friend of mine once made a campaign where we started in the room we were currently sitting in, but with the stats on our papers, where our world was being invaded by demons. So it’s definite possible to be yourself.

The strategic min-maxxer is a vital part of any dnd ecosystem. While not as fun as the Chaos Monkey or as cute as the Enthusiastic Noob, the strategy focused Min-Maxxer remains essential to many parties, especially if there is an Item Hoarder in the group.

Surely we all have a responsibility to care for our parties. The future balanced gaming and indeed, all life in Faerûn, now depends on us.

This is David Attenkokra, thank you for watching Forgotten Planet.

Sure! I’ve run plenty of them over the years. It’s good fun.

It can be hard to get a group together that all have the same preferences, but you’d be surprised how many people want at least an occasional “hack n slash” session, even if they don’t want it every session.

I gotta say that I tend to prefer the more role play than roll play most of the time, even as forever DM. But I still enjoy just breaking open a random encounter chart and going ham, or pulling out my heroquest stuff for a more board game one-off session.

D&D 4e was designed for you! It did away with most RP mechanics and focused heavy on dungeon crawling and perfecting character stats.

At my table, we have high role play but we are not concerned about breaking character. Often the best humor is to be had when you mix incompatible states and simply roll with it.

I currently DM a game (going on a couple of years now) where most of the story is developed through encounters and travel time. It’s just the kind of game my players like at this point as it’s a much needed break from everyday life. The characters do get to explore their backstories through stuff that happens and people they meet though.

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.

Have you considered trying out some of the older editions? AD&D (1st edition) tends to be less focused on roleplay and more about cooperative problem solving and dungeon delving. Of course it comes down to your DM and how they run their game. If you want I can post a link to a public discord and you can see for yourself.

Why play pen-and-paper games rather than computer games if you’re more interested in combat rather than roleplaying? Pen-and-paper combat is tedious and feels like work when compared to computer-game combat. I see it as a necessary evil in a roleplaying campaign; I’m not sure why someone would want it for its own sake when computer games exist.

(Edit: just to be clear, I’m not trying to tell other people what they’re allowed to like. I love character optimization myself - I’m the kind of guy who used to be obsessed with planning my Path of Exile skill tree. I just don’t understand why some people do that sort of gaming the old-fashioned way when they could do it on a computer.)

That’s my group’s Sunday nights. Sprinkle in joke characters or based off characters from shows or movies here and there, and that’s how we’ve been playing together for 8y or so