Forum

[Merkuri]

I love to roleplay my characters. One of the things I really enjoy about D&D is the ability to put on somebody else's skin and explore the way someone else might think and act. I loved "playing pretend" as a little girl, and D&D is my grown-up version of that. Doing things that are true to my character's personality is very important to me.

At the same time, I believe in the idea that the players have to meet the DM half way. The DM takes the time to prepare an adventure, and it's my responsibility to motivate my character to get involved. If being true to my character and playing the adventure are mutually exclusive then it's time to rethink my character. After all, this is a game, and I belive that you have to play along at some point to get the most out of it. Being able to completely derail an adventure and go way off track is one of the glories of D&D, but I believe that a player should at least try to become motivated to go through the material that the DM has prepared as a courtesy to the DM.

I recall that there was one time in the last campaign that I felt like my character would not want to go on the adventure that was being presented to us. The exact details are foggy as it was a little while ago now, but I believe we were being asked/threatened to go to a far off continent and gather artifacts for a person we had just met and whose motivations were unclear to us. I as the player wanted to go, but I felt like my character would want nothing to do with it. Out of character I asked the other PCs to convince me, and we did a little roleplaying to finally convince my PC that this was the best course of action.

That, to me, was fun. I wasn't just saying, "my character wouldn't do that!" I was saying, "my character wouldn't do that without a good reason... help me think up one!" I got to be true to my character and go on the fun adventure. You're usually able to do both at the same time if you're determined enough to make it work. I feel like people who just say, "my character wouldn't do that" and leave it there probably have other motivations in mind, like acting out about the above-mentioned feeling that they cannot affect anything in the game world, or they have picked the wrong character for the game they're playing.