Learning How To Roleplay Non-Hack

[jdavis]

It always helps if the people in the group are familiar with each other, I have gamed with the same people for 15 years, we are all friends outside of gaming. Nobody's afraid to ham it up a little and get into their characters personalities. It takes a certain comfort level with a group to let go and get into actually thinking as the character would instead of being yourself. It also helps that our main DM (we switch DM's from time to time for one shot adventures so he doesn't burn out as fast) is very discriptive about what is going on. You never say I went to the store and got a sword, you role play it out. He never says that monster so and so got a critical on you, he describes the action. Sometimes we do get sidetracked, going to town to get supplies can be a whole adventure but we know that going in, we don't have a lot of rules or structure to roleplaying situations out, it's just understood that you act how your character would, we rarely use dice at all except for combat.

 

[Umbran]

Re: Re: Learning How To Roleplay Non-Hack

I understand the "back to the dungeon" movement, and I recognize that dungeons are both easy-to-run and fun, but wilderness and social adventures are fun too -- and, if they're not as easy to run, isn't that a good reason to give more hints and examples of how to pull it off?

We might do well to remember that if they put in everything that anyone found vaguely relevant or useful, the book would be ungainly and costly.

The material under consideration isn't simple, really. It'd take a lot of verbiage, a lot of pages, to do a good treatment of it. While an article is nice, it's more the subject of a whole book on it's own. There's probably a number of good arguments for "if you can't do it well, don't do it at all". Add on top of that a certain pressure to keep the page count and costs down, so that they could still make a profit initially selling the book at $20, and it starts seeming less and less odd.

 

[ced1106]

IMO, A book how to roleplay would be a book unto itself!

RPGObject's GM Mastery series is doing this with their PDF books. I've reviewed their NPC Essentials and wish it were in hardcopy. Robin D. Law's "Robin's Guide to Good Gamemastering" (title misremembered) is useful but far too short.

Despite the "d20 glut", GM aids is an area of roleplaying that could use a few more products!


Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^

 

[mmadsen]

Re: Re: Re: Learning How To Roleplay Non-Hack

We might do well to remember that if they put in everything that anyone found vaguely relevant or useful, the book would be ungainly and costly.

When I said, "I am disappointed that there's no example of play in the wilderness or in a social setting," I don't think I asked for a 74-page chapter (like the one on magic items) -- and I certainly don't think an example of social roleplaying is merely "vaguely relevant or useful."

The material under consideration isn't simple, really. It'd take a lot of verbiage, a lot of pages, to do a good treatment of it. While an article is nice, it's more the subject of a whole book on it's own. There's probably a number of good arguments for "if you can't do it well, don't do it at all".

You can fit a lot of great advice and some evocative examples into a few pages. Certainly you could fit an example social encounter between the adventurers and the king's advisor into the DMG. You could also list a few dozen sample social encounters and what doing well or doing poorly would mean, when to roll for skills, etc. Why not put a few choice excerpts from La Morte d'Arthur or the Odyssey in, explained in game terms?

Add on top of that a certain pressure to keep the page count and costs down, so that they could still make a profit initially selling the book at $20, and it starts seeming less and less odd.

There's a lot of very vague advice on running a campaign and creating a game world that seems much less useful to a newbie DM than some good, solid examples of playing outside a dungeon. What's the point of world-building if you don't know how to run an adventure outside a cave system anyway?

 

[Joshua Randall]

All this may root down to experience points and awards as by 3e. You grab your sword, go into the dungeon, kill the monsters, you get experience, gold and magical items. You go to a dinner party and chat up the Dutchess - you get nothing.

My interpretation of the rules has always been that the PCs get experience points from overcoming challenges. Those challenges can come in the form of monsters to hack, of course, but they can also come in the form of the haughty duchess who will only respond to those engaging in the proper social niceties. The DM and PCs need to free themselves from the "XP can only come from combat" mentality.

Sadly, the DMG does not do a good job of explaining the non-combat facets of the D&D experience point system. I agree that an example of a social encounter would be useful in showing that there is more to D&D than hacking and slashing.

 

[F5]

I'm going to weigh in in favor of a how-to-roleplay resource book, too. Many of the best roleplayers I've known have had some kind of theatre background. A book with simple voice tricks, tips on getting in character, tips on CREATING a character that will be easy to play, that sort of thing, would be an excellent resource. You could have advice on pacing, plot-development, etc (director's tricks) for the DM. If the tips could be applied specifically to the d20 system framework, even better, but I suspect that would not be easy to do. SHARK, if you do decide to give it a try, be sure to let us all know. I know I'd be interested in checking it out.

 

[F5]

On another tangent, I have sat through some really terrible sessions that were supposed to be "roleplay" that just didn't go anywhere. If you're staging a fight scene, you don't tell the players "You're attacked by a monster". What kind of monster? How does it attack? But I've seen too many roleplay encounters that have used that same level of vagueness. A role-playing encounter has to give the players a direction to go in. You need a clear challenge, and a clear objective...otherwise it just degenerates into a mess.
I guess I'm just repeating what others have said before...to have a decent roleplaying encounter, the DM has to do some more homework in setting up detailed backstory to role-play around.

 

[sword-dancer]

I'm going to weigh in in favor of a how-to-roleplay resource book, too. .... SHARK, if you do decide to give it a try, be sure to let us all know. I know I'd be interested in checking it out.

He wouldn`t be alone.

 

[mmadsen]

I think the first thing that limits stuff your talking about shark is player knowledge. they don't know jack about the people they're supposed to be interacting with...

Exactly. And that's why I would find it perfectly natural to explain the basics of feudal society -- justice, war, shopping for goods, etc. -- in a book like the DMG. A few choice excerpts from Le Morte D'Arthur, the Iliad, and Shakespeare could probably convey quite a bit.

After all, there are some basic things players and DMs should know about a quasi-medieval world to run adventures. How do you get an audience with the king? What does the king expect of you? How do you enter the city? Are there guards at the gate? Is there necessarily a gate? How do you buy or sell arms and armor? Or gems and jewels? What's an inn like?

 

[Utrecht]

In my mind, the biggest motivation to move away from Hack & Slash is the reward system - after all people will respond to what rewards them and the default system HEAVILY favors combat as the reward mechanism.

I think that modifying the existing experience reward system is paramount here.

an interesting one that I just saw was Rel's from this thread

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30606

Where combat is part of it, but not the end all.

Thus if a Player is rewarded due to social situations, you will find them asking a lot more questions surrounding the social situation - making the DM's task much easier.