Is rewarding the best roleplayers considered Favoritism?

[akr71]

Ya, I would go for Inspiration. Its a reward, but doesn't throw the party out of whack, especially if the other players are amused by his roleplaying. Besides, one could feed into the other - player gets inspiration, succeeds on his parkour attempt because of it and continue to RP in that manner.

XP also works, but if the group is used to leveling at the same time, it could be problematic i the long run.

 

[iserith]

It may help to modify how you think of "roleplaying." Very simply, it's just playing a role. Therefore, all your players are roleplaying when they play the game. What you're looking for is a subset of roleplaying which is portraying specific personality traits or the like. The game already has a mechanic for rewarding this type of play - Inspiration. Play to your personality traits, ideal, bond, or flaw and the DM can reward you with Inspiration.

To remove the element of "favoritism" and to create less work for the DM, you might consider a house rule where players "claim" Inspiration. In this approach, players establish their personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws for their characters as normal. When a player feels he or she has adequately portrayed one of these personal characteristics, he or she can reveal the characteristic and take Inspiration. A reasonable limit in my view would be one Inspiration per characteristic type per session (or 4 possible Inspiration per session).

So, your player with the fighter might have a personality trait for the character that reads "I'm forever doing calisthenics to prepare myself for battle." Then, when he's doing his eighth set of burpees around the campfire, he can claim Inspiration. From that point forward, he would have to portray his ideal, bond, or flaw to gain further Inspiration since the personality trait was already claimed.

See also my post on The Case for Inspiration.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Good roleplaying is it's own reward.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Seconded. Inspiration is my go-to reward. I do reward various stunts in combat (like, say trying to shove an opponent into a bookshelf, so that it topples over and pins them), but beyond that, the effect is its own reward.


I shy away from XP awards for role-playing, though I will add some to the group total for it. I find individual awards, especially for role-playing, can make some players salty, and can be too subjective sometimes to quantify and justify.


As far as feeling bad for rewarding players that consistently role-play more than others, yeah sometimes I feel bad at that. I’ve taken to sometimes addressing those aren’t as extroverted in their role-playing, asking them things like “what is your character doing with all this nonsense going on?” Rather than thinking of Inspiration as a rare reward for exemplary RP, these days I try to actively look for an excuse to give it out for RP.

Ya, I would go for Inspiration. Its a reward, but doesn't throw the party out of whack, especially if the other players are amused by his roleplaying. Besides, one could feed into the other - player gets inspiration, succeeds on his parkour attempt because of it and continue to RP in that manner.

XP also works, but if the group is used to leveling at the same time, it could be problematic i the long run.

 

[Dausuul]

The reward for such story flourishes should be a story flourish in response. If he describes his attacks in a dramatic way, add similar drama to your descriptions of the results. He never just kills an enemy; he whacks off its head, catches it by the hair, and drop-kicks it across the room.

If the PC is actually trying to accomplish something extra, then give him some kind of check to do so, with failure resulting in a wasted action. Increased risk for increased reward. But if the goal is simply to look cool, the reward should be to look even cooler.

 

[iserith]

The reward for such story flourishes should be a story flourish in response. If he describes his attacks in a dramatic way, add similar drama to your descriptions of the results. He never just kills an enemy; he whacks off its head, catches it by the hair, and drop-kicks it across the room.

The issue with this in my opinion is the DM shouldn't be describing what the character is doing, just the results of what he or she wanted to do. So at my table, I could say that the monster is beheaded as a result of the action the player declared, but whether or not the character catches it by the hair and dropkicks it is on the player to describe. From observing other games, especially very popular actual play vodcasts, it's common for the player to give a terse description of what he or she wants to do at which point the DM fills in the blanks by assuming and establishing what the character does; however, I don't think that's in keeping with the basic conversation of the game. It puts an undue burden on the DM by relieving a player of his or her responsibility. It can lead to other problems as well such as the player objecting to what the DM establishes, e.g. "I would never touch a monster's severed head - gross!"

 

[Guest 6801328]

It's only favoritism if you use words like "best" to describe something that is inherently subjective....

 

[Tony Vargas]

5e provides the Inspiration sub-system if you want to reward a player for what you judge to be good RP.

 

[Kolvin]

Inspiration is a good reward for this, and it'll inform the other players that good rp is rewarded.

That being said if you wish to reward the player I suggest you reward him with good rp on your part.

Maybe a youngblood fighter has heard of his character's special move and seeks him out as a teacher. Or a rival fighter with his own special move wants to challenge him in order to prove his superior fighting technique.

Martial arts movie have really good material for you to pilfer in this situation.

 

[aco175]

I would not give out any bonuses, maybe he finds a cooler item at some point if it is done on the slide. I find that some people are more willing to get into character and roleplay, while others like to rollplay. It seems each person has varying amounts of shyness or willingness to put themselves out there and there could be many factors that go into this, but generally I do not try to favor one style over another.