Learning How To Roleplay Non-Hack

[jdavis]

If a new DM doesn't want to find out about Medieval society from a outside source, would he want to read it in the DMG. It's not like he would have to read volumes out of stuffy old books, he could go rent a movie about medieval times or most fantasy movies and get as much as a couple of pages out of the DMG would give him.

 

[mmadsen]

If a new DM doesn't want to find out about Medieval society from a outside source, would he want to read it in the DMG. It's not like he would have to read volumes out of stuffy old books, he could go rent a movie about medieval times or most fantasy movies and get as much as a couple of pages out of the DMG would give him.

Certainly most players have a mental image of knights and peasants. That's not the problem. A dozen pages in the DMG could provide quasi-history wrapped around adventure seeds. Maybe you know that merchants formed guilds, but you don't know enough to make an adventure around it. If you have a few examples though...

 

[jdavis]

I thought that was what chapters 5 and 6 of the DMG were for. (Campaigns pg 141 dmg, 12 pages on establishing and maintaining campaigns) (World-Building pg 153 dmg, 12 pages on creating and fleshing out your settings, including sections on geography, demographics, economics, politics, social classes, religion, etc.....) There is other places with information in the same vien in the DMG too. I really think it does a pretty good job in this respect, of course I really doubt many new DM's even read half of it, they flip straight to the magic weapons part.

 

[warhookdm]

From my point of view, you can get them to role play alot outside of the hack-n-slash in a couple of ways. There are lots of good ideas and comments about the social interactions in previous threads, so I won't belabor them.
1 idea for XP awards in those situations that I have would be to look at the level of the NPC, and if the party successfully turns that NPC into an ally, award them the XP for defeating that CR beastie.
On a partial tangent, sometimes the key is to first get them to role-play in the dungeon. For this, we have a few basic house rules:
1) Players may not refer to any books other than PHB, and various class-specific books (Tome & Blood, Psionics Handbook, etc.) without DM's permission once play begins. Under very few circumstances will I let them look at the Monster Manuals.
2) Players' statements will be treated as PC statements or actions unless the player SPECIFICALLY states he is making an out-of-character comment.
3) Meta-gaming will be disallowed thru the liberal use of skill checks on knowledge (if necessary).

After someone pays a hefty price for a stupid statement in character (Paladin "The BBEG just surrendered? I run him through with my sword." DM: "He's dead. What next?" Paladin:
"I lay-on-hands to the Wizard for ..." DM: "Zero HP ...Warrior."), the players will begin to pay alot more attention to what they are saying. This forces them to role-play a lot more, and reduces unneeded and unrelated table-talk.

 

[kengar]

Great topic!

In Robin Laws' book on GM-ing, he brings up a couple points I thought I'd mention here.

One is that a lot of players aren't going to want to read pages & pages of background material on your game-world. Now, you may have the luxury of picking and choosing player for your group or you may not, but keeping it fun for everyone is a big part of the GM's job. Most groups are a mix of different kinds of players. Some are more interested in RP than others.

Another suggestion the Robin makes is that if you are using a prepared campaign setting (FR, Scarred Lands, Ravenloft, etc.), let your players read as much of the material as they're willing (barring modules and other DM-only material). Most games will recommend against this, but Robin's logic is that the benefits of the player's having a deeper sense of the world far outweighs any secrets that are given up in the process.

The issue of alternate XP is a big one to me. It's true the DMG does mention variant XP methods, but only minimally and with few to no examples. A better example of story-based awards can be found in CoC d20 as well as in the new LOTR game from Decipher. (I know there are probably other systems that do this too, but these are the ones I can think of offhand.).

 

[Snoweel]

Robin Laws' book is by SJ Games, right?

I can't find it anywhere in Sydney - is it good?

 

[mmadsen]

I thought that was what chapters 5 and 6 of the DMG were for.

How much useful information did you find in chapters five and six? And did you find any solid examples (of just about anything) to plug into your game?

 

[Deadguy]

You know, reading through this, I realised that this is an area where the various GURPS supplements come up trumps. Wnat to know about Imperial China? Then pick up GURPS China. Want to know about the mediaeval world? Then pick up GURPS Medieval. Of course, TSR did do something similar for 2e, but somehow they just didn't have the meat that the GURPS books do.

Clearly there is a market for books that look at societies from the point-of-view of the role-player. They don't have to be (indeed mustn't be) academic treatises. What we are looking for is a little verisimilitude and some plotting ideas, not 'the truth' (in so far as we even know the truth!). The easiest way would be to take the GURPS texts and rework them for D&D3e, though I suspect Steve Jackson might be a little annoyed! I say this because whilst much of the book ought to be generic, having examples couched in the terms of the system you play is easier. Maybe there's a niche for Natural 20 Press here?

 

[jdavis]

How much useful information did you find in chapters five and six? And did you find any solid examples (of just about anything) to plug into your game?

Well um, actually you got me. I never read them till they came up on this thread, but I did find much of the information that would of actually been very useful for a newer DM. I found lots of stuff in there that would of been very useful to me 20 odd years ago when I first started trying to run D&D. Most of the information in there was pretty useless to me now as I figured alot of things out on my own along time ago, as I figure it is pretty useless to anybody who has been playing for years and years, although there was a couple of things that caught my eye and a couple of charts I found very useful. I know how to start and maintain a campaign and how to handle my NPC's already, I learned through trial and error. As for Chapter 6, I took the time to learn about world settings and history already but I can see where many younger players just starting might not know anything about political systems or social class issues. I will give you that there wasn't enough written on the examples for adventures Ideas page (DMG 138-139) for that matter they could of thrown in more stuff in just about every chapter. They also could of done more to flesh out the varient experience rules but most people who have figured out they want more than the general hack/slash have also figured out how to incorporate and flesh out house rules, or they have moved on to another game.

For a long time we used a house rule that stated that when you sat down to game any comment you made was considered as coming from your character. This really helped with roleplaying and got us thinking as our characters instead of just being guys roling dice. Looking at any book but the Players handbook during a session is also frowned apon.

 

[jdavis]

You know, reading through this, I realised that this is an area where the various GURPS supplements come up trumps. Wnat to know about Imperial China? Then pick up GURPS China. Want to know about the mediaeval world? Then pick up GURPS Medieval. Of course, TSR did do something similar for 2e, but somehow they just didn't have the meat that the GURPS books do.

Clearly there is a market for books that look at societies from the point-of-view of the role-player. They don't have to be (indeed mustn't be) academic treatises. What we are looking for is a little verisimilitude and some plotting ideas, not 'the truth' (in so far as we even know the truth!). The easiest way would be to take the GURPS texts and rework them for D&D3e, though I suspect Steve Jackson might be a little annoyed! I say this because whilst much of the book ought to be generic, having examples couched in the terms of the system you play is easier. Maybe there's a niche for Natural 20 Press here?

There are setting books for all sorts of fantasy settings, why not setting books for real world history? Roman and Egyptian settings would be neat. There are enough different time frames and geographic areas to do a whole set of Medieval books.