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Pushing my gestalt game (the one that a lot of my questions are based on) to the back burner. I decided to create a hedge witch and be the healer of the group when I get us to our first game. I decided I wanted to have her speak in rhymes. It will be a common part of speech pattern. I think I'm decent at rhyming, but I don't know how easily I could rhyme consistently and often.

How do I make this work without annoying the others or making my role playing too difficult?

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This will get gimmicky and old pretty fast if you're not careful, and you run the risk of burnout.

That said, there are some ways to make it work.

  • Pre-plan a few lines you know will get used.

  • Prepare some fairly generic rhyming words you can use in a pinch to put a few lines together.

  • Do not solely use couplets! Mix up your rhyme scheme with limericks and other more-than-two-line rhymes.

Finally, and most importantly: When a rhyme would be super-forced, you can't come up with anything, and/or you're a few sessions in and it's starting to get old: Describe the rhymes instead of saying them. This is a trick I suggest often to roleplayers, who tend to get stuck in a "RPing means I have to say everything my character says" mindset, which is entirely not true.

Instead of trying to find a fifth rhyming word for the name of the town you're traveling to, "[Character name] mentions that the stone bridge should be the right way. [Bard and/or high-Linguistics character name] doesn't think the word she rhymed with Sandpoint is an exact rhyme, but it's probably not worth starting an argument over." works great.

[Witch] uses a subtle double entrendre to remind the party that she's pretty much out of spells. [Chaotic character] has to repress a smirk.

The crone's face indicates intense concentration. Either her true seeing spell has uncovered something very important, or she's still trying to find a word that rhymes with 'Urgathoa'.

And, of course, when she absolutely must break character:

[Witch] sighs with resignation. "Why the [expletive] [deity] does it have to be orange?"

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    \$\begingroup\$ "Anathema" rhymes with "Urgathoa". \$\endgroup\$
    – Thomas Jacobs
    May 16, 2015 at 9:04
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    \$\begingroup\$ Also note that remarks about whether things rhyme or not are inherently meta if you're following the common convention that your in-game language is rendered as English but isn't really English. Who says there's no rhyme for "orange" in Common? Of course the same applies to puns, and most authors and roleplayers don't worry about this, but for example J.R.R. Tolkien and Umberto Eco have both written in detail on the subject of translations in/of their work. \$\endgroup\$
    – Steve Jessop
    May 16, 2015 at 13:56
  • \$\begingroup\$ @SteveJessop It doesn't necessarily have to go meta, provided that your convention calls for contextual translation rather than literal translation (which avoids a lot of problems, not just this one), and provided that you are willing to hand-wave the translations working out smoothly and accurately to an unrealistic degree (again, avoids a lot of problems, not just this one). It just means that the translation transparently accounts for the differences in what rhymes. \$\endgroup\$
    – Matthew Najmon
    May 17, 2015 at 19:47

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