How do you remember to rp your character and not you?

[poppin_fresh]

As a player what steps if any do you take to remember to roleplay how your character would react as opposed to how you would react?

I was thinking of making a 3x5 note card with character traits on it, and to try reading it before my gaming session.

As a DM what steps if any do you take to remind players that they're playing as a character and not themselves?

If for example the player's character was supposedly afraid of being alone, yet suddenly he/she decided to set off from the group by him/her self?

I don't know what to do, I don't want to say no you don't go.

 

[Elf Witch]

I don't have an issue remembering how to role play my characters. Partly because our group encourages a detailed backstory and we get extra XP for journals.

I have really good idea of how my character thinks and how she is going to react to something.

When I DM and I think a person is doing something way off from what I think their character would do. I ask to speak the player privately and find out their thinking on and why they see their character doing it.

For example my players were faced with what to do with some goblins who had surrendered to them. Half the party wanted them dead the other half was opposed to it. One of the players who was for their death had put in his backstory how he had been friends of a band of goblins who had been slaughtered my a party of adventurers.

We went to the kitchen and I reminded him of this and how I thought he was metagaming a little to much and not playing his character. We talked and he agreed and we went back to the table and he switched sides in the argument.

 

[Umbran]

As a DM what steps if any do you take to remind players that they're playing as a character and not themselves?

If it is in a game like D&D, where their personality does not impact character generation, I take no steps. I don't enforce personality. It's their character, they do with it what they please. If they originally told me the wanted the character to be agoraphobic, but they don't play the character that way, I don't really care. If they change alignment, then I note that change for how they interact with alignment magics, but that's it.

Some games give advantages in character generation for personality flaws. I vastly prefer forms where you get rewarded for playing the flaw, rather than punished for not playing it, or restricted entirely.

Classic Deadlands, for example, has Fate Chips (which are kind of like D&D Action Points and XP rolled together). If a player has a behavioral flaw on the sheet, and they play it up so that it puts them in danger of makes the character's life difficult, then they get a chip for doing so. If they don't play up the flaw, they earn no chips.

 

[poppin_fresh]

If it is in a game like D&D, where their personality does not impact character generation, I take no steps. I don't enforce personality. It's their character, they do with it what they please. If they originally told me the wanted the character to be agoraphobic, but they don't play the character that way, I don't really care. If they change alignment, then I note that change for how they interact with alignment magics, but that's it.

Some games give advantages in character generation for personality flaws. I vastly prefer forms where you get rewarded for playing the flaw, rather than punished for not playing it, or restricted entirely.

Classic Deadlands, for example, has Fate Chips (which are kind of like D&D Action Points and XP rolled together). If a player has a behavioral flaw on the sheet, and they play it up so that it puts them in danger of makes the character's life difficult, then they get a chip for doing so. If they don't play up the flaw, they earn no chips.

The Dresden Files has a similiar system, and encourages people to take and invoke their flaws(aspects in game) in order to gain the bonus fate chips. Have you tried implementing the fate system in a D&D game?

 

[TerraDave]

In a game like D&D, it is probably best that role playing is its own reward, and the DM only steps in if the rping is causing some kind of problem.

Of course, the DM can still give the occasional verbal support to in charecter behaviour. or mockery for out of charecter behaviour. But more for their own entertainment then any other reason.

 

[howandwhy99]

As a player what steps if any do you take to remember to roleplay how your character would react as opposed to how you would react?

I recognize there is no such thing as a character and I am always acting as I wish to. I understand many people like to perform a fictional persona, but the games I play in are more about accepting a fictional situation, a fantasy world, as if it were real. That alone means I am expressing a fictional persona. Developing a whole new personality is always available to me, and I do like doing so for games, but I realize the games I play in are not designed for that purpose. They are designed for strategically interacting with that world. Role playing includes both.

As a DM what steps if any do you take to remind players that they're playing as a character and not themselves?

None really. It's the same as above. I have never seen the need to remind a player to "de-character" after a game, but I've never seen anyone go the Tom Hanks route either. Yes, I would definitely start trying to bring them back to reality, if they did so.

If for example the player's character was supposedly afraid of being alone, yet suddenly he/she decided to set off from the group by him/her self? I don't know what to do, I don't want to say no you don't go.

I can't tell when a person is playing in character or not. They are that character's creator. If they stop acting afraid of being alone, then perhaps they overcame it? Maybe they were not remembering to be afraid? Maybe this is a breakthrough for them once they recognize what happened?

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

I don't have any difficulty staying in-character. I've played only slightly less freeform rp (online and in meatspace) than tabletop, and the style of freeform I've mostly done involves switching characters on the fly and being able to IMMEDIATELY make clear to the other players who you're taking over.

(If you want to practice staying in character, give this a try. Challenging, but a lot of fun.)

I'm less likely to stay in character in D&D than, say, Dresden, simply due to the priorities of the system and what play experience I'm getting from it, but if I do something "out of character" it's almost always going to be a deliberate choice and not a slip.

As a GM, it's not my place to keep PCs in character.

However, my preferred systems (Mutants and Masterminds and FATE) both have mechanics to reward players for playing to their characters' personalities, and those mechanics are fairly central to the gameplay. So - I hand out Fate Points or Hero Points when appropriate, and use them for Compels if I think the player is missing something the personality he's established indicates he might want to do.

(I'm considerably less Compel-heavy than many FATE GMs, though. Not sure if that's good or bad.)

 

[pawsplay]

Staying in-character is not the same as being consistent. Real people are not consistent; fictional characters are not ALWAYS consistent.

 

[Quickleaf]

As a player what steps if any do you take to remember to roleplay how your character would react as opposed to how you would react?

I wear green tights and spock ears when I'm playing my elf. What?

As a DM what steps if any do you take to remind players that they're playing as a character and not themselves?

Electrodes in the viking beer helmets, controlled by remote from behind the DM screen. When gaming with minors just up the voltage

If for example the player's character was supposedly afraid of being alone, yet suddenly he/she decided to set off from the group by him/her self?

I don't know what to do, I don't want to say no you don't go.

Not all of us are cut out to be method actors, and for lots of players D&D is simply power fantasy with a dash of RP for humor. And there's nothing wrong with that, just so long as the group is on the same page.

"I'm playing Redgar the grizzled fighter and I fight with a fullblade called claymore. I have a violent streak which I try to keep under control, but sometimes it comes out when fighting evil monsters. Oh, and I can do 80 damage on the first round!"

And for some players, that's as deep as it needs to go. DMs just need to accept this and find the good in it.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

For myself as a player, I usually have each of my characters have a particular accent or set of mannerisms; that way I can go in and out of character at the table and everyone can easily follow what I'm doing. And these accents and mannerisms should not be too over the top otherwise they just end up being a distraction - just enough to let everyone know I'm in-character. When driving to a game, I'll try to imagine forthcoming events related to what has already happened in game, even to the point of developing a couple of lines or clever quips that can be used at the table.

As a DM, I prefer characters to not be overly limited or flawed; the autophobic character you are talking about would be very interesting as an NPC with a limited stage-life but could get a little tiresome as a PC. Anything that is going to distract from the fact that the players are acting as a team is going to become a pain after a while. I had a player play a gnome who when faced with an even chance decision between two similar options, physically could not make a decision. A fork in the road would have him indecisively sitting there until someone else came along and assisted. It was fun when it occasionally came up but on the whole it did not distract from the campaign.

In regards to your situation with the character going off alone... let them. You then have an opportunity to reinforce why that character has that phobia with some particular kind of nastiness happening to them bringing them most likely back to the group. Again though, the phobia might be somewhat mild and you can just let it slide or alternatively you can give them a penalty while they are alone (the shaken condition in 3.x or -2 to appropriate checks and defenses in 4e) if you want to mechanically represent the phobia.

If however, the problem is that you think the player is just playing as a player and not worrying as much about in-character, out-of-character interactions, then that may be a problem that needs to be dealt with outside of a game session in a nice casual environment. Address with them that their game style is slightly at odds with the rest of the group and try and work out a solution from there. Sometimes you just have to let these things slide and accept that people will play how they play, and as long as everyone's having some fun, you're doing it right.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise