In-Character versus Out-Of-Character

[diaglo]

Been a month. Any more opinions?

i stay in character as much as possible. even if it means a TPK.

i'm an old wargamer. but the current PC isn't. so although, i personally know a lot of strategy and have some ideas for what we should and shouldn't do. i never say them. ever. to any of the other players.

couple of players know i could give more advice. and have even asked me.

but i won't. it isn't in my (RL) character to go against character while i'm playing. and i gear myself up for playing my character before each session. when i'm playing, i am an close to being Fiddle "Dragonslayer" Skipstone as i can be without casting real spells.

 

[JustKim]

This poll is so exacting! I don't want to throw off the scientific accuracy by just guessing.

 

[Conaill]

Interesting distribution...

Can't remember any other polls where people were so spread out all across the board as this one!

 

[Raloc]

How much of the talking during your games that could be In-Character actually is In-Character?

What form does this In-Character talk take?

Do some players speak In-Character a lot more than others or is it fairly even among the players in your games?

If you're the DM, do you speak In-Character (when you can) at all?

If you're the DM, do you speak In-Character (when you can) a lot more than your players (or the reverse)?

If you're the DM, do you encourage your players to speak In-Character?

My main sessions are via ORPG (both one that I run as well as one that I play in) and save for during battles, most everything is either first or third person dialog by the players and DM (i.e. either Raloc: Magnus, you bastard, you've been ripping me off by 25% on magic this whole time! or Raloc says, "Magnus, you bastard, you've been ripping me off by 25% on magic whole time!" with actions being Raloc orders a tankard of ale.). During battles, we unfortunately get some metagamey OOC planning going, but we've stopped that recently due to how much it bogs down our combat sequences. The last session we restricted all but essential OOC to our IRC channel, and it was *much* faster than it usually is, and the log of the session is pretty much 100% IC, which is a nice change.

 

[Dragonbait]

I game with 2, possibly 3 people that have ADD/ADHD. I think its amazing that we maintain IC conversations at all, let alone between 40% to 60%.

My old group was about 80% IC

 

[Agamon]

Hmmm, I must be estimating quite low. I and my players usually talk IC whenever possible, but of all speech during the game, I guessed it's about 20% (that's 1 in 5 five sentences spoken is IC, that's fairly high, I thought.)

Of course, it'll be higher when my homebrew starts up again, probably closer to 33% (1 in 3).

 

[Conaill]

Hmmm, I must be estimating quite low. I and my players usually talk IC whenever possible, but of all speech during the game, I guessed it's about 20% (that's 1 in 5 five sentences spoken is IC, that's fairly high, I thought.)

Ah - but is that 20% of the talk that *could* be IC? That is what this poll is asking, after all.

"Usually talk IC whenever possible" sounds more like 80%+ to me, even if it only winds up being 20% of all talk during the game...

 

[Erratic K]

Mostly OOC:

DM: 10% IC (character being NPCs)- mostly descriptions and adjudication

Players: 25% IC- mostly 3rd person, clarification and description of action- the remaining % is the conversation.

We allow some jokes and allow some "take backs" to recouch statements or allow somethings not to be said.

Except we have a house rule: players with CHA penalty characters do not get "take backs" and anything they say during an encounter phase is said out loud...or all statements during encounters like that are assumed to be in character and to be said outloud, no takebacks.

There really is a penalty for low CHA all the time...

-E

 

[Psion]

It's an economy of time thing. I try not to squander time on prattling shopkeeps, but will shift into in-character mode with significant NPCs.

 

[dave_o]

I voted 80%. In my games the roleplayers level up considerably faster than the non-roleplayers, thus they sort of fell in line. The XP comes from effort, though, not effectiveness, so if you try you get rewarded.

As a DM I do lots of voices, postures, and stuff like that. I just enjoy the roleplay part of RPG a whole lot.