Reward for Roleplaying?

[Thanee]

Yep, a good idea is also to give flat XP, not heavily dependent on challenges, and especially give the same XP for overcoming encounters without combat as you do when combat happens.

I also don't believe in XP for roleplaying. That's only a reward for the more well-spoken players, which seems unfair to the others mostly and doesn't really do anything positive.

Encouraging roleplaying, by engaging in roleplaying yourself, is more likely to work. Leading by example.

Bye
Thanee

 

[arwink]

One of my players put it best when he said "Getting roleplaying rewards for roleplaying in an RPG is kind of like being given bonus runs just for being at a game of baseball."

These days I tend to give a set amount of XP based on the session, regardless of events and challenges.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Yep. They encourage acting, which is not the same thing.

Actually, they're precisely the same thing, as far as I can tell.

But I would agree with the original statement anyway, i.e. that XP rewards for roleplaying do not encourage the better playing of roles (acting).

. . . in my experience, anyway.

 

[IronWolf]

I gave out RP awards when I was DM'ing. Mine were a combination of how things went in the gaming session and how much input you had one the message boards between sessions in the IC threads. (the message boards did not count for as much since some people didn't have the time to hang out on the message boards too much). Not so sure they were really RP awards, but that's what I called them. I think they existed in my game as a reminder that you didn't have to kill something just to get XP. The fact I awarded RP xp helped reiterate that.

 

[Thanee]

Actually, they're precisely the same thing, as far as I can tell.

How about PbP? That's also roleplaying, but hardly acting.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Romnipotent]

ask each player who they thought did the best in the session, give them 250 XP or their choiuce of the Mystery box.

OOOOH Mystery Box!

 

[Aus_Snow]

How about PbP? That's also roleplaying, but hardly acting.

I'm not familiar with PbP and PbEM (is that the right acronym?), so yes that was an oversight in trying to get across the gist of something there.

But hey, I'd still say it's acting, albeit in a written form. Either that, or it's a close analogy, at any rate.

Do people write 'in character' for PbP's? Well, I've already assumed they do, actually. Correct me if I'm wrong.

If so, it'd be a fine line. I guess the process of writing in character could be seen as more 'removed' than being in character, in person. Not having tried PbP, I don't rightly know, and would like to maybe even try it some day.

 

[Wombat]

Intriguing. I've always rewarded for good roleplaying, back to my very first (serious) game in 1976. If someone does something remarkable, either good or bad, because "that is what my character would do", they get XP. Of course they have to be consistent, but there it is.

In my campaigns with my current group we have a standard issue extra -- if a player does something with their character that makes someone else in the group feel more excited about the scenario, makes people laugh (while remaining in character), or otherwise goes above and beyond, a player (not the GM) will call out "Roleplaying Point!" while pointing at the other person. The person pointed to will automatically be rewarded with (current level x10) XP. It's a small thing, but it works well; usually 2-3 such awards are given each session, and no one player has really recieved more than any other. This has helped bring some of my players out of their shells, convinced one that thinking in a metagame framework is not the best way to go, and has encouraged everyone to add to the world, rather than just worry about killing monsters, scouring for treasure, and the like.

We prefer the world to breath, rather than just come down to a series of combats. Giving XP for roleplaying really makes our sessions come alive.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

I think XP bonuses definitely help RP. That's been my experience. Sure the active RPers and the non-RPers might not change, but the people in between do. It also helps to pull people out of the computer game mentality where everything done must be done for a reason or else it doesn't get done.

Giving an XP bonus is a helpful way to let players know that doing things their characters would do, even if it means an inconvenience or negative result, is a good thing.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

The real question is what you want to encourage when you say you want to encourage "role-playing."

Do you want to encourage players adopting hideous accents and spending entire sessions in the bar trying to pick up the wenches? Or do you want to encourage players choosing "Victory or Death!" or risking the extra AoO to banish the good ousiders who are attacking them rather than killing them, or choosing whether or not to sell the expensive magic weapon they found (that none of them would use) to the highest bidder who happens to also be evil and up to no good. In other words, do you want to encourage acting out or role-playing? (For those who were debating the distinction earlier on the thread, it can be summed up in this: acting out is converting the game into bad impromptu theatre without a plot (and usually making lots of fort saves to avoid getting drunk); role-playing is taking on the character's persona and making decisions from the character's perspective within the world and plot framework provided in the game.)

There are different ways to encourage both kinds of activity. A "role-playing" xp award usually encourages the first. IME, people see it as an incentive to play flamboyant characters and a disincentive toward stoic characters as well as an incentive to do everything they can to derail the plot and stop the action of the game. To encourage the second, the best thing you can do is not to offer additional rewards for "role-playing" but rather to craft the encounters so that they demand choices of the players. Any situation where one kind of character will make a different choice from another kind of character is going to generate role-playing of the second type. For instance, in the "selling the magic weapon" scenario I mentioned earlier, any character who plays it will have to decide whether money or conscience are more important to them. (They'll also have to decide how cautious they are about their sales--if they're not cautious, they might not even discover that the buyer is evil). Similarly, a character who is chasing the bad guy when the bad guy tramples innocents underfoot and leaves them in negative hit points (bleeding out) will have to decide whether to save the innocents or continue after the bad guy.