Fifty Percent of RPG is Ninety Percent Mental

[dellanx]

It is Friday, tomorrow is game Night.

How do you guys deal with role playing. I am amazed at how good my players are at this roll playing bit. The things I have done to their characters have prompted most unusual and in-character responses.

How do you encourage you're players to respond to the stress of campaigning? It has to take its toll.

Please share your thoughts. Thanks!

[Trenloe]

Roll playing (i.e. doing everything by the roll of the dice) or role playing (playing the character role)?

[dellanx]

Roll playing (i.e. doing everything by the roll of the dice) or role playing (playing the character role)?

Opps.. I mean Role Play, me bad. Thanks Trenloe!

[Valyar]

If the question is how you stimulate players that are not seasoned and comfortable to roleplay, this requires some work from the GM. He should open conversations via NPCs and ask the players to formulate what they want to achieve and how and roleplay it. Don't ask "give me diplomacy roll"... This is OK in the end if the player is very bad or shy or simply incapable, but if the roleplay is great, there is no need to have such roll or make it just for the sake of the roll with advantage, bonuses or whatever the system allows to make it easy, as reward for good roleplay.

I have seen people saying "I will convince him with XXX check". Well, in my games this does not work. Such people watched too much braindead streams of people that are playing boardgame and not roleplaying game.

[Fear Grounds]

There are players that are great at roleplay, and there are players that prefer to skip that part. Most groups are comprised of a mixture of the two. (Overly generalised statement I know)

For players that enjoy the roleplay: the best way that I have found to keep it running smoothly, is to simply roll along with whatever they introduce. Be it a good idea for your story or not, let it run it's course and see where it leads. You may find a newer more interesting way of getting your characters to a location, or you may add a whole new layer to your story, that you hadn't even considered before.

For the players that would rather not be in the spotlight, we have the whisper mechanic in Fantasy Grounds. I can't tell you how valuable this is to me, both as DM and as a player. The whisper allows characters to stop and think about how their character would respond to something, without the feeling of being put on the spot. As well as, allowing players to do things that they don't necessarily want the entire party to know about.

Treat every character as their own individual, and recognize that each one may have their own goals or ambitions. In my longest running game of VTM, I'm running somewhere around 5 different stories at one time, only one of which all the characters are actively involved in. By giving the characters enough to be excited about, I find my players roll playing more and more.

A couple of my players have taken to writing character journals as well. They write up a a session synopsis strictly from their character's point of view. One game they are doing it as a personal diary. In another, characters are writing letters to friends and family, just in case they never make it home. These are story gold, as it let's the DM/GM/Storyteller see more personal details about the character.

Let's not forget the characters back story either. Characters are never born as adventurers, and it's easy to forget that. Take a characters back story and weave pieces of it into the story. Locations, people, holidays, whatever it may be; take it and use it to tie the characters into the story. Make the backstory mean more that the space it takes to write down.

[LordEntrails]

One thing I do in 5E is at the end of each session, the players get to pick one player who gets inspiration. This way they encourage each other to do 'good' things. I don't get in the way at all except to facilitate their discussion/vote if needed. (I also allow them to store up to 3 inspiration each, so they don't feel like they have to use it).

[GavinRuneblade]

I ask questions. In combat I often ask "what does that look like?" or when they are using a charisma, strength, or dexterity skill I ask them to describe it. When I need a list of things, I ask everyone to give me one item for the list instead of using a random table. When the party splits up, I have people from the not-active group describe what the NPCs are like and what they are doing as the active group takes its turn.

But I also have a player who is a roll player. Very committed to the game, very in touch with what's happening. But doesn't want to roleplay. That's not fun for him. His fun is building the characters, and rolling the dice and especially the tactical/strategic side of combat.

Gotta meet everyone where they are at. This video is great at explaining it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YCVHnItKuY

[dellanx]

I ask questions. In combat I often ask "what does that look like?" or when they are using a charisma, strength, or dexterity skill I ask them to describe it. When I need a list of things, I ask everyone to give me one item for the list instead of using a random table. When the party splits up, I have people from the not-active group describe what the NPCs are like and what they are doing as the active group takes its turn.

But I also have a player who is a roll player. Very committed to the game, very in touch with what's happening. But doesn't want to roleplay. That's not fun for him. His fun is building the characters, and rolling the dice and especially the tactical/strategic side of combat.

Gotta meet everyone where they are at. This video is great at explaining it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YCVHnItKuY

That is a great video, explains a lot.

[srbongo]

But I also have a player who is a roll player. Very committed to the game, very in touch with what's happening. But doesn't want to roleplay. That's not fun for him. His fun is building the characters, and rolling the dice and especially the tactical/strategic side of combat.
Gotta meet everyone where they are at.

This is what I feel like is the most challenging at times. When I introduce a new system within the game, such as a race mechanic that has new 'rules', I have three players for which the description of the event is enough for them to react well and quickly in-character, for the other player it is far more necessary to understand the rules (i.e. what rolls will be made and other strategic considerations) to make character choices. It's not even so much a meta-gaming issue as a play style characteristic - the player just wants to know as much as possible before he feels comfortable making a choice. Occasionally, I find descriptions where all four give quick in-character actions that are well role-played, most times I don't.

[GavinRuneblade]

This is what I feel like is the most challenging at times. When I introduce a new system within the game, such as a race mechanic that has new 'rules', I have three players for which the description of the event is enough for them to react well and quickly in-character, for the other player it is far more necessary to understand the rules (i.e. what rolls will be made and other strategic considerations) to make character choices. It's not even so much a meta-gaming issue as a play style characteristic - the player just wants to know as much as possible before he feels comfortable making a choice. Occasionally, I find descriptions where all four give quick in-character actions that are well role-played, most times I don't.

My Roll-player is like that but he makes the decisions anyway or jumps to conclusions and goes and doesn't understand why it didn't work out like he thought. An example being wanting to swap warlock patron because of meeting entities capable of being a patron and not thinking "you literally just pledged to serve this thing's enemy yesterday (in game time)… it won't appreciate you even discussing this right now". But because it's a story element and not a mechanic element, he doesn't pay that much attention. Which is hilarious because he is obsessive about every detail of story and lore in Computer RPGs when he plays them. Like he can talk about every facet of lore in the Elder Scrolls Universe or Final Fantasy for HOURS. Lol.

We just meet halfway. Sometimes I ask him to make a skill check and then I give him not advice exactly, but context based on his roll. 1-5 is something that should have been obvious (there is light coming through the window, you are not in a dark room right now) that I think he missed: "that thing is a lot more evil than I as the DM think you as the player realize". 6-10 is a little bit refined (the light is only illuminating this room, not the hallway) "That thing is an enemy of what you just pledged to yesterday and that thing Is evil". 11-19 gets a couple minor reminders (there's windows in that hall and it is noon on a sunny day) "when you pledge to a warlock patron, abandoning them is a big deal and they don't like it, there are consequences and with some patrons it's not possible" 20+ I'll give a pretty blunt reminder (If you can see in this room because it is sunny outside and not in the hall, that means something is blocking the window or blocking the sun, and that is a very long hallway) "If you betray your patron, remember that when you negotiated with it the first thing it did was send you to murder someone who betrayed it, so who will it send after you?"

Numbers for the DC are based on the standard difficulty thresholds (simple, easy, medium, hard, etc) except I like the round 20 rather than 21. This seems to help.

With pure indecision, I work with them to get into character, "ok, Drogon is standing in the temple, there are two big windows with light streaming in, and a dark hallway that should be lit up just as brightly but isn't. How does that make Drogon feel? He doesn't see or hear anything but he knows that's not how sunlight works. What is his natural instinctive reaction to this?" If he keeps hesitating or asking questions, then I say, ok so Drogon is investigating how is he investigating, is he peering into the hallway (perception) checking out the windows (perception) and figuring what's different in this room vs the hallway (investigation), thinking about all the things that might do this (history, arcana, religion)?"

That usually gets things moving as other players step up and then he goes with the flow.

[dellanx]

We were getting int a bit of a slug-fest, spells flinging this way and that, much melee. All the NPCs thrown at the party dying one by. Only One NPC left, she was the leader Kilkara the Wise, she attacked the PC Sorceress and realizing that she was dead meat, and hoping to parley she dropped to her knees and surrendered. The my group convinced her to lead them to her leader, she did and the group found that her leader was dying from some sort of slow death curse by their Arch Nemesis. They felt wonderful in finally learning that their Nemesis has contacted this leader and has cursed her with a death curse.

They also found out that there is a portal out of this city that may be activated with a key that may lead to their Nemesis supporters layer. The dying leader did not know where the portal is, but someone else may, perhaps another leader in a different location.

The unexpected twist was more rewarding then a cartload of treasure, for the Players and GM.