Hot answers tagged roleplaying
51
As a gamemaster: Cheat. Use out-of-character knowledge. If the players surprise you with a plan, have a contingency plan for the NPC materialize even though you hadn't actually thought about it beforehand. Just make sure that you hide the "seams" caused by these cheats, and that you don't make the NPC seem smarter than they're intended to be.
As a player. ...
51
There are several ways to approach a drunk and disorderly player.
Standard drunk person handling techniques. Not really on topic for this site; Google it. Wheedle them, redirect them, you know, like you'd do with a kid. Go with it. "Roll the die, you get to take a shot!" Probably best if you're all drinking and just farting around. Some RPGs are called ...
48
On Going Beyond Stereotype
One of the ways the authenticity of female characters in movies are judged is called the Bechdel test. Essentially, if a movie has only one female character, or if it has more than one but they only talk to each other about men, it fails the test.
This is a good lesson to keep in mind when trying to fairly portray women in a ...
46
Everyone in my gaming group has gone through this gaming evolution at some point. Finding the joy in playing a dumb character is all about getting into your character's mindspace (or lack there-of) and not taking yourself too seriously.
Make sure you are willing to make mistakes. Part of not being very bright is that your character can be confused, taken ...
39
Here's a technique I've used. When I invite people to a game I tell them that the game we're playing is a homebrew system called "Valadil's Game" which is loosely based on D&D.
This does a couple things. Firstly, it scares off rules lawyers who want to play RAW. I figure those players aren't compatible with my games anyway and I'd rather just nip ...
38
Play more. Read more. Watch more. Expand your library of tropes. Once you have dozens of different innkeepers bouncing around in your head, your next innkeeper will probably be a collage of these tropes.
Another idea is to take a page from creative writing exercises. Take a bunch of adjectives - tall, fat, jolly, glum, one-eyed, nervous, red-haired, ...
33
Speaking as a Rules Lawyer (I try to think of myself as a good guy, i.e. "how can the rules let you do what you want to do"?) and the occasional TD, I've found a couple simple rules work out.
No checking the rules on your turn. Look it up while you're waiting.
That includes the DM - if you ask the DM if you can do something, you get their best guess; we're ...
33
I've used several techniques to make my improv a bit more random; these are:
Preparation names always get me so I always make several pages of names with personalities, brief schick or quirk, basically a whole page of one line NPCs, the names are randomly generated along with the description, I just add in the quirks onto the page.
Cross the streams ...
31
Don't play with drunk people.
Seriously. If she's so blasted that she's being irrational and uncooperative, then--sorry, sister, thanks for playing, go sleep it off.
I have a very low tolerance for the inebriated, so I avoid hanging around them. Likewise, the OP might wish to define his/her tolerance for drunkenness at the table and say, in no uncertain ...
29
If your character is truly Intelligent, then the DM should help that character by offering INT checks and challenges that your character can solve with a DC check (or however that works in your game system).
You should collaborate with your DM and have him/her feed your character solutions to puzzles or extra information that your character can share with ...
28
I play female characters about 25% of the time (and about 100% of the time as a GM), so this is something I've worked on/thought about over my gaming career.
Depicting Your Character
First, there's the general "How do I depict anything different from myself at the gaming table?" This is often a problem not just with crossgender play. I remember an ...
27
An effective command and control structure uses decentralized authority to give decision-making capability to those with the most facts at the appropriate level of granularity.
In modern military thinking, there is the idea of what I call articulation* decentralized authority1, 2. Roughly speaking it's that officers are not lords and masters, but that they ...
27
Based on the Turkish proverb "Pinch yourself before you punch the other guy" 1
Upset player's perspective
You mentioned that she thinks that particular die roll is a no-win situation for her character. She may be protesting that she is getting robbed of her agency, and being railroaded into your story against her will, and that roll is just there to ...
25
While I think it's awesome to award experience for in-character behavior, it's also very hard to quantify role playing into experience (how much gets you 100exp?)
On top of that, in DnD, exp translates very observably to combat prowess - so it also makes sense to give other types of benefits.
Good role playing should give good role-playing benefits. If the ...
24
This entirely depends on your game, and your gaming group.
What you are referring to (acting as yourself instead of your character) is called "meta-gaming" and involves making decisions that are outside of the purview of your character's personality or knowledge. Whether or not this is an acceptable practice depends in part on your group and in part on the ...
23
Don't worry about it. Relax.
Work out the character's motives, likes and dislikes.
Ask your girlfriend or friend who is a girl to review.
Never try to do a voice ;)
I believe that regardless of gender if you give an NPC realistic motives they will appear a realistic character. Good luck :)
22
If the other players are sympathetic to the situation, I'm guessing that drunkenness isn't uncommon at your game table. There's nothing wrong with that, if that's the way your group enjoys playing. The point is to have fun after all.
So without criticizing the player, the solution is really pretty simple. In most cases (including yours, from the context of ...
22
What I've found works realistically is not to always misinterpret things but to simply fail to put things together. When the rest of the party comes up with a four part plan, the stupid character won't see how the parts fit together to accomplish anything.
This method is less amusing than always being wrong, but it lets you play a dumb character who isn't ...
22
This is a system transition issue, not a creativity issue.
4e is a very different system and that's okay, but it's not for everyone. There's a gap between the player and the system and your job as GM is to help facilitate bridging that gap. Your goal in this should not be to make the player conform to the system, but to help the player understand the ...
21
From the player's seat
Offer something the other character wants. The player knows what to do here, and she just needs an excuse to do it. Supply one. A little bribe or rationalization is all she needs and you'll be off and running in no time.
Get the GM's permission to figure stuff out in-character. That means more than just knowing yourself, but rather ...
21
The answer depends on just how stereotypical one wants to get.
Male noble stereotypical traits:
Take charge
might-makes-right attitude.
Women are divided into several groups:
Women of quality & virtue for marriage
Women of quality but not virtue for flirtation and/or fornication
Women of Virtue but not quality. Typically in habits and cloistered. ...
21
How do you roleplay a first exposure to killing?
As an acting technique, you have three major choices.
Go with the obvious- Loud: Freak out, run around, wail, wave your arms, cry, scream, etc. You've just be exposed to a horror beyond horrors: death. It's grip over your own mortality is frightening and disparaging. It twists at your very soul and ...
21
The Players May Not Want To
Part of fantasy role playing for a lot of people is being able to be larger than life for a bit. They may not want their characters to feel fear at all.
Now, in a novel this may be a bad thing, since a character that isn't believable can disrupt the suspension of disbelief. But in an RPG its not necessarily a bad thing to ...
20
This answer comes from a MMORPG-oriented roleplaying group, but it's a good one!
There's this technique called a character diamond. Basically, you choose four words that define the personality of your character: for example, my fighter Collin is modest, taciturn, gullible, and underwhelming. You're looking for things that don't overlap; the link provides a ...
20
The most important thing I do to achieve this, I think, is to communicate to my players that, while I am responsible for handling the actions of their enemies, I am not their enemy. In fact, I am on their side, because what we are all working to do is enjoy ourselves and put together some bits of story worth remembering.
A lot of factors go into this, from ...
20
Welcome and great question! You have two major paths you can try.
More Social Characters
One of the joys of roleplaying is trying out things different from yourself. And personality types are as much a part of that as being an elf or a dwarf. You can do research (read How To Win Friends and Influence People, watch some of those personal-makeover shows, ...
20
Differences that arise from different ways of perceiving and interacting with their environment are the easiest things to draw on for alien mindsets. (Harder are psychological, history-influenced sociological differences.) In this case you have an easy point of differences: they have no eyes, and sense their environment entirely via the Force.
Consider what ...
19
I'm going to go against the prevailing advice here:
If the other players won't let you play a character that you find interesting, because that character won't "pull its weight" in combat, they're violating Wheaton's Law.
If you want to play a character that is ineffective in combat but effective in other situations, that is your right as a player. You ...
19
The problem with in-game solutions to out-of-game problems is that the players can as easily catch the whiff of metagaming as the GM can (and there are more of them to "roll Sense Motive"), whether it's actually metagaming or not. If it is an out-of-game problem, them detecting subterfuge by the GM to bring them back in line can make them resentful of the ...
18
I've never seen any "official" guidelines, but in my group we handed out 1-2 poker chips to each player. Throughout the session, they could give those chips to any player that had an instance of exceptional role playing. At the end of the session players could hand in their chips (only those received from other players, not those given to them at the start ...
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