How do you plan role playing?

[Truename]

Anyway, combat encounters and roleplay encounters are really the same kind of beast. Conflict. Many games have a lot of combat and rules for combat because its pretty easy to set up a conflict with combat as the way to resolve it. Just add some bad guys that want the PCs to die. The PCs, being stubborn types, want to not die. Conflict!

Roleplaying encounters are the same. If there's no conflict, its not really interesting. Its like fighting orcs that don't fight back. Roll to see if you hit. If so, dead orc. If you miss, try again. Not exactly a thrilling encounter. Most people would prefer if the GM just said 'okay, you slaughter the orcs'.

So if the PCs go into the shop to buy some rope, and the merchant says "Why yes my good man that will be 30 silvers". Not very interesting, and if there's other stuff to be going on, it can easily be skipped.

But what if there's a conflict? The merchant sees the PC and recognizes him as one of the heroes that took on the thieves guild next week. He says "Oh no! If I deal with you the Guild will hit my shop. Sorry, but I can't sell you rope or anything else. Please leave before they see you!" We have conflict! The PC could deal with it in a variety of ways. He could try to convince him that he isn't the one the guild is after. He could promise protection to the merchant from the guild. He could try to offer a greater price for the rope. He could try to take it by force. He could just leave it.

Great stuff.

 

[Blackbrrd]

"generic in town RP"

This is an apt description I think and a lot of people have it in their games, even simply based on inferences in this thread. Maybe most or all people have it. The problem is that I don't like it. It's boring and not fun and really serves no purpose. My players have standing orders to simply purchase/sell anything they want without even bothering me. By anything I really mean non-"plot" items. Obviously, there will be some things I don't really want sold, but that will be obvious because (a) the players will know they're special and (b) I won't have given a price.

I simply don't want to waste even twenty seconds on:

Player: When we get to town I got to the <insert store here> and buy <insert item here).
DM: Okay.

Any other "generic RP" events like this that I can get rid of entirely? I'd much rather spend the time on more fun things. Maybe another question, however, and I'm sure someone out there reading this is aghast, is it really worth it to spice up (try to save) all such generic RP?

Personally I think you are missing some really good RP and immersion situations. I'll give you and example:

We just entered a large city with an Egyptian-style market. In other words, if you didn't haggle you ended up getting swindled out of your underpants.

Our Minotaur Fighter who has portrayed himself as a bit simple when it comes to earthly matters wanted to get himself a nice big +1 chainshirt. He had two regular size chainshirts +1. Somehow, he came up with the idea of going to the market himself. Oh great. He starts haggling with the merchant who tells about his 18 children and 4 kids and that it's costly to feed them, etc. He ends up giving the merchant a +1 longsword, the two +1 chainshirts and says he will bring the last 4000gp of the asking price a bit later.

The whole time while he is haggling I am sitting in my chair nearly falling of because the player didn't understand he was being fooled until half-way through, and decided his character was this gullible. My character is the one that holds all the cash so he comes to me for the money. I ask what for and he explains the deal. I quickly turn to our cleric of Shinare (God of Trade among other things - Lawful at that). The Shinare Cleric gets all worked up and tries to reason with this merchant, but he doesn't budge an inch. A deal is a deal.

Now, two other characters gets a hang of the story and decides they can help out! They are kinda drunk but at least they are good at haggling. They find another merchant, gets a nice price (2000gp total) after a long session of haggling. Really, they worked their butts of getting a good deal and the DM played along. Now, right before they close the deal, they ask the Minotaur what he is going to use the oversized +1 chainshirt for. He explains that it's going to replace his current normal oversized chainshirt which he sleeps in, in case we get ambushed. In other words, he really doesn't need it. The two hagglers throw up their arms in disgust! All this work for THAT!!! They stomp out leaving the Minotaur there without a closed deal.

Now, in the mean time the Shinare Cleric has decided enough is enough after praying for some guidance and visits the merchant one more time. The merchant still doesn't budge going on about how it was a fair deal. The Shinare Cleric ends up casting Greater Curse on the merchant reducing his cha to 1 until he lifts the curse. He can lift it if he undoes the last 3 or 5 frauds (deals) he made.

Some time later, at while the party is at the inn the bartender comes over to the Minotaur saying that somebody came over with some chainshirts and a longsword...

The roleplay involved was some of the best I have ever seen by the party. People really got into the haggling and the over the top reactions when they found out that they had been doing it for no reason at all except the Minotaur's weird ideas of what he needs. The Minotaur hasn't tried to do any "shopping" after this, always asking one of the other characters.

... Now, I do agree that most mundane shopping can be pretty boring, but really if your players are up for it, it can really do a lot for getting to know the different characters.

 

[Markn]

I2K,

You could always take a cinematic approach. If you know the PCs need to roleplay with someone, figure out how to make it cinematically exciting that is tied to the story. Maybe the bad guys bust in, maybe a plot hook for the bad guys get exposed, maybe someone else steps in and throws a wrench into the PCs plans. The point is, go farther than just a mundane role playing experience. Make it exciting, like a battle, think of the terrain, the ojects in the area and how they could be important. Use all of this to tie it back to the story - forex, maybe they are talking to a merchant and he has a scale on his desk. Later in the campaign when they take down a villian, he has similar scales and they learn that they are a symbol to Erathis and can then piece things together. Essentially, use the roleplaying to provide clues that the PCs or even the DM can go back on and say, remember events A, B and C? See how they are all tied together. Without tieing the RP scene to the story then its not really necessary.

In my current campaign the PCs stole an item from a Raksasha and in the very next adventure they unbeknownst gave the item back to him. They knew the Raksaha as Inajira (a name I took from Ravenloft BTW). Well, after that adventure they wound up working for a lord in a nearby region who was trying to consolidate power, at first he was all nice and such but in reality he was the Raksasha. I introduced him as Fenwiir Arijani (which is Inajira backwards) and the PCs never noticed it. In future RP scenes, I made offhand remarks like "not likeing water", etc. In the end when they finally exposed who he was, I had drawn up a crest and put it in front of the players. It was only then as one player was looking at the crest, that another player who was across the table read it upside down and realized it said Inajira. That moment was pure awesome. After that session, I could talk with the players about all the other subtle hints I had given and they could see that the RP scenes all tied together.

Hope that is more to what you are looking for.

 

[Infiniti2000]

Thanks for all the very thoughtful and detailed responses. I'm sure alot more people than me can use the excellent advice here. I can see that essentially I've been missing out on some good stuff and I've failed to properly plan for my game. I have a little over a week to catch up and make some but please don't stop with the awesome post.

 

[LostSoul]

maddmann nails it; it's about conflict.

I think the easiest way in 4e may be to set up PCs with quests of their own - that is, the player defines the quest, with some input from the DM. Then, once you know what the PC wants, you can try to think up ways to oppose it that don't come down to combat.

A simple example might be: "I want to find and kill the orcs who burned my village and killed my parents." Cool. All you need to do is create some kind of NPC that might oppose the PC but isn't going to draw steel.

Maybe there's a peaceful village nearby who trade with the orcs, selling food in exchange for some of the loot the orcs gather (like farm tools or whatever). The orcs are happy because they have a steady source of food and the farmers are happy because they get good loot at low prices.

Now the PCs might come across these simple folk - who can't fight back (because if they raised a militia the orcs would have to put them down) - and the PCs can deal with it however they want. But the farmers are going to keep supplying the orcs because that keeps the orcs off their back; it's the only way they can defend themselves.

I can see a potential for lots of RP there, maybe leading to the PCs organizing a defense of the village against an orcish raiding party, maybe leading to the farmers selling out the PCs to the orcs.

edit: Relationship maps help out too.

 

[Hussar]

Ahh, the dreaded shopkeep conversation.

I've seen groups that got right into it, and ones that didn't. I fall in the latter category, but, unfortunately for me, in the group I play in, one of the other players and the DM both fall into the former. Sigh. Ah well.

There's a couple of things I think that might help with structuring a "talkey" encounter.

First off, keep the number of participants manageable. It's pretty hard to have a conversation with fifteen people, and keep the amount of NPC on NPC chatter to a minimum. Watching a DM monologue gets old fast.

It also might help to have a number of conversations going at the same time. Perhaps the party is in the Color Animal Inn, some are talking to that guy in the corner, others are chatting up the barmaid and others are doing something else. Ok, go with cuts. Tell the players that you are setting a hard five minute time limit and then you will switch to the next conversation. I suggest five minutes, but, hey, it's up to you. I find that most people can survive sitting around for ten minutes at a time.

Rotate around the room quickly. Maybe even cut to the next person to give the first person a bit of time to think. I've done this in the past and it seems to work pretty well actually. It almost becomes something of a mini-game as players try to keep the spotlight for the full five minutes.