D&D 5E Roleplaying in D&D 5E: It’s How You Play the Game

[Hriston]

The rules of 5E give this definition of roleplaying:

Roleplaying is, literally, the act of playing out a role. In this case, it’s you as a player determining how your character thinks, acts, and talks.​

The passage goes on to say that roleplaying “is a part of every aspect of the game,” and that there “are two styles you can use when roleplaying your character: the descriptive approach and the active approach.”

That roleplaying is present throughout the game is also made clear by step 2 of the basic pattern according to which the game unfolds as given in the “How to Play” section of the rulebook's Introduction, “The players describe what they want to do.” This is the players giving voice to their roleplaying. I.e. they determine how their characters think, act, and talk and then describe to the rest of the group what they have thus determined. This is the players’ sole contribution to the game, the other two thirds of the basic pattern belonging to the DM, and is the only way that the players can be said to actually be playing the game.

 

[Oofta]

What's the point? This kind of comes off as one true way-ism, that you must do things a certain way or you are not really role playing.

There are many ways of playing the game, I'm not going to pretend that the way I prefer or my interpretation of this editions rules are the way to play. People can be totally immersed in their PC's life, or a PC could just be stats on a page, a paper avatar that goes from combat to combat while people hang out with friends.

Or maybe I'm just missing the point you're trying to make.

 

[Shiroiken]

People don't agree with my way of playing?!?

 

[Charlaquin]

What's the point? This kind of comes off as one true way-ism, that you must do things a certain way or you are not really role playing.

There are many ways of playing the game, I'm not going to pretend that the way I prefer or my interpretation of this editions rules are the way to play. People can be totally immersed in their PC's life, or a PC could just be stats on a page, a paper avatar that goes from combat to combat while people hang out with friends.

Or maybe I'm just missing the point you're trying to make.

I could be wrong, but my guess is this is saying, “as long as you’re deciding what your character thinks, says, and does, you’re roleplaying.” It’s the opposite of one-true-wayism, saying that you don’t have to act in a particular way to be roleplaying, so long as you’re making decisions for your character. But then again, maybe I’m misinterpreting. The opening post doesn’t really have a thesis that I can identify, it’s just kind of stating what the rules say.

 

[Bill Zebub]

What's the point? This kind of comes off as one true way-ism, that you must do things a certain way or you are not really role playing.

There are many flavors of roleplaying, some of which are emphasized or de-emphasized in various game systems.

One-true-wayism is a claim that one is innately superior to others.

Seems to me @Hriston is just saying that D&D 5e emphasizes one of those flavors.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

Not really sure what this topic is about. Is this something unique to 5e? Maybe I'm not understanding the post. I thought the game was a collaboration for storytelling, not a tasked assignment where players are only expected to do one thing and DMs something else. Let me see if I can find something relevant from another source...

The DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game is, first and foremost, a roleplaying game, which means that it’s all about taking on the role of a character in the game. Some people take to this play-acting naturally and easily; others find it more of a challenge.

Your character is more than a combination of race, class, and feats. He or she is one of the protagonists in a living, evolving story line. Like the hero of any fantasy novel or film, your character has ambitions and fears, likes and dislikes, motivations and mannerisms, moments of glory and of failure. The best characters blend the ongoing story of their adventuring careers with memorable characteristics or traits. Jaden the 4th-level human fighter is a perfectly playable character even without any embellishment, but the personality of Jaden the Grim—brooding, fatalistic, and honest—suggests a particular approach to negotiating with townsfolk or discussing issues with the other characters.

A well crafted personality expands your experience of the game dramatically. The DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game is a roleplaying game but not necessarily an exercise in improvisational theater. Sometimes, the role you play is defender or leader; the character you’re playing is engaged in combat and has a job to do so that your team comes out victorious. Even in combat, though, you can interject bits of personality and dialogue that make your character more than just the statistics on your character sheet.

 

[Lyxen]

My perspective is that 5e is minimalist in many ways, enabling it to propose a version of D&D which is streamlined in many ways, easy to read, and therefore interesting even to non-geeks, and that has been confirmed by its popularity. These "definitions' of roleplaying, like many parts of the rules are actually very vague and extremely open, and just giving general guidelines about what roleplaying could be when you are a beginner, and it's actually not necessarily an easy concept to grasp, today there are many videos like Critical Role who at least give some views as to what it could be. Moreover, like the rest of the rules, its completely subject to a table and a DM's interpretation. I just think it's a fine thing that D&D actually insists that it's a roleplaying game and that roleplaying permeates every part of the game, including combat.

That being said, like almost all the rules in the game, there will be people who try to use simple sentences out of context to try and justify OneTrueWayism (and I've seen people on some forums do exactly that saying that by definition in D&D, roleplaying was only "how your character thinks, acts, and talks"). Like all these attempts, it's actually a rather pathetic attempt at controlling others and "being right", but I don't think that this thread is about this so it's fine.

That being said, I would argue that "the players decide what they do" is not really about roleplaying, because it's exactly the same thing in a board game. Even the "how your character thinks, acts, and talks" is not necessarily about roleplaying, especially if it's not consistent from one moment to the next for various reasons. It could be argued that the "playing our a role" is actually the only part of the original post that actually speaks about roleplaying. There are however a few complements in the rules, such as "Drawing on your mental image of your character, you tell everyone what your character does and how he or she does it." or "When you use active roleplaying, you speak with your character's voice, like an actor taking on a role. " But note that these two sentences from from alternative sections about how to roleplay, once more showing the real open nature of the game.

 

[Lanefan]

The rules of 5E give this definition of roleplaying:

Roleplaying is, literally, the act of playing out a role. In this case, it’s you as a player determining how your character thinks, acts, and talks.​

The passage goes on to say that roleplaying “is a part of every aspect of the game,” and that there “are two styles you can use when roleplaying your character: the descriptive approach and the active approach.”

That roleplaying is present throughout the game is also made clear by step 2 of the basic pattern according to which the game unfolds as given in the “How to Play” section of the rulebook's Introduction, “The players describe what they want to do.” This is the players giving voice to their roleplaying. I.e. they determine how their characters think, act, and talk and then describe to the rest of the group what they have thus determined. This is the players’ sole contribution to the game, the other two thirds of the basic pattern belonging to the DM, and is the only way that the players can be said to actually be playing the game.

The bit you've bolded is the key here.

It could - and arguably should - be worded differently such as to get the word "characters" in there somewhere, but consider the ramifications of these two alternate wordings:

"The players describe what they want their characters to do."
"The players-as-characters describe what they want to do."

The first promotes pawn-stance, the second promotes immersion. The wording they actually used promotes neither, and thus leaves it open-ended. For a game trying to be the biggest tent it can, this is an impressively good little piece of writing in terms of achieving that goal.

 

[Mannahnin]

I could be wrong, but my guess is this is saying, “as long as you’re deciding what your character thinks, says, and does, you’re roleplaying.” It’s the opposite of one-true wayism, saying that you don’t have to act in a particular way to be roleplaying, so long as you’re making decisions for your character. But then again, maybe I’m misinterpreting. The opening post doesn’t really have a thesis that I can identify, it’s just kind of stating what the rules say.

This is how it reads to me as well. The rulebook makes clear that first person or third person description and decision-making, speaking in character voice all the time, sometimes, or never, to all be roleplaying.

 

[pemerton]

The rules of 5E give this definition of roleplaying:

Roleplaying is, literally, the act of playing out a role. In this case, it’s you as a player determining how your character thinks, acts, and talks.​

The passage goes on to say that roleplaying “is a part of every aspect of the game,” and that there “are two styles you can use when roleplaying your character: the descriptive approach and the active approach.”

That roleplaying is present throughout the game is also made clear by step 2 of the basic pattern according to which the game unfolds as given in the “How to Play” section of the rulebook's Introduction, “The players describe what they want to do.” This is the players giving voice to their roleplaying. I.e. they determine how their characters think, act, and talk and then describe to the rest of the group what they have thus determined. This is the players’ sole contribution to the game, the other two thirds of the basic pattern belonging to the DM, and is the only way that the players can be said to actually be playing the game.

I've bolded a part of your post that - especially in light of some other recent threads - I think might be controversial.

Suppose (for the sake of analysis) that the game contains rules roughly of the form if a player declares that their PC does X, then mechanism Z is invoked to determine what happens next in the shared fiction. Then one contribution that the players make to the game, beyond determining how their PCs think, act and talk, is to invoke mechanisms via rules of the sort described.

Furthermore, such rules, if they existed, would constrain what the GM is allowed to say when "The DM narrates the results of the adventurers’ actions" (the wording is quoted from p 3 of the Basic PDF). Thus another contribution that the players would make to the game would be to (indirectly) generate those constraints.

Now it seems that there is no consensus on whether or not D&D 5e does contain rules of the sort that I've described. But I think there is some evidence that it does, to be found especially in (i) the class write-ups, (ii) the stuff about travel and PC roles while travelling, (iii) the chapter on combat rules, and (iv) the rules for casting spells.

None of the above casts any doubt, at least as far as I can see, on your account of what roleplaying consists in for 5e D&D purposes.