I'm DMing a small (4+DM) group. Of the five of us, three are old hands at DnD, one has a fair amount of experience under his belt, and we have one newbie. The campaign's been going great so far (if only I could find a couple more regular players...), but I do have one or two problems.
The big one is getting the new guy up to speed. He's smart and 3.5 isn't really that hard to learn. He's had the usual beginner's questions and confusions but is mostly past that now. He's even up to the stage of trying to develop new tactics for combat encounters. My question is how to get him into actually roleplaying.
I like a good chunk of RP in my sessions and the rest of the group seems okay with it but the new guy doesn't really participate much. He asks questions and makes suggestions, but he hasn't tried to develop his character at all. I asked my players to fill out some character background questions (description, family, goals, etc) and got his back with jokes about his monkish vow of celibacy and not much else.
I suppose I should have seen it coming since he said during character creation that his dwarven monk was going to have an indian accent, but all the characters I've really enjoyed playing have had some sort of schtick to them. I'm just not sure how to get him to make the jump from playing the game to playing a character. If it were what everyone wanted (low RP, lots of combat/meta-gaming) I'd roll with it, but it's just the new guy. And I don't think it can be chalked up as 'his playstyle' since, this being his first RPG, he doesn't really have one yet.
So any suggestions on how to get a newbie to get in-character?
The big one is getting the new guy up to speed. He's smart and 3.5 isn't really that hard to learn. He's had the usual beginner's questions and confusions but is mostly past that now. He's even up to the stage of trying to develop new tactics for combat encounters. My question is how to get him into actually roleplaying.
I like a good chunk of RP in my sessions and the rest of the group seems okay with it but the new guy doesn't really participate much. He asks questions and makes suggestions, but he hasn't tried to develop his character at all. I asked my players to fill out some character background questions (description, family, goals, etc) and got his back with jokes about his monkish vow of celibacy and not much else.
I suppose I should have seen it coming since he said during character creation that his dwarven monk was going to have an indian accent, but all the characters I've really enjoyed playing have had some sort of schtick to them. I'm just not sure how to get him to make the jump from playing the game to playing a character. If it were what everyone wanted (low RP, lots of combat/meta-gaming) I'd roll with it, but it's just the new guy. And I don't think it can be chalked up as 'his playstyle' since, this being his first RPG, he doesn't really have one yet.
So any suggestions on how to get a newbie to get in-character?