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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TornadoCreator" data-source="post: 5539774" data-attributes="member: 6672078">Right, as someone who's been GMing multiple systems for a while now, D&D included, and someone who'd introduced at current count 10 people over the past 6 years to roleplaying I find there are a couple of techniques that work well.The first technique, and my personal favourite, I call it "Think Fast". It's based on the same method my Dad use to teach me to swim, he held me in the water and explained the motions once, and only once, then once I said I understood he literally threw me into the deep end... it's sink or swim. Now sure, I was within a couple of foot of him and not in any real danger, but it worked. When your choices are "learn to swim" or "drown", you learn to swim pretty damn fast. To explain how this works in roleplaying I'll give an example.DM: You're group in in the tavern looking over the contract you've been given. You have a royal charter that allows you to be adventurers, which doesn't come cheap, but it means you're allowed to carry weapons and even use magic if you're able. No normal commoner would be allowed such privilages. But obviously with the charter costing so much you need to earn back some gold, so your group have taken on your first contract from one of the noble houses, to find the nest of the "Goblin hoard" that raided his caravan on it's way into town and stole one of his prized posessions, the "ruby of the north", the second largest ruby known to exist. The caravan driver and two of the three guards made it back alive and are back at the guildhouse, but they're not willing to go out on the road again until the Goblins are dealt with. Naturally, the pay is good, but it'll take some work to track down these Goblins.DM: What are you doing? - it's at this point they sink or swim, either they sit blankly looking at me, expecting me to tell them what dice to roll, or they come up with an idea, I may prompt them by jokingly saying "Well? You have a job... are you planning on doing it or are you going to sit in the taven in silence all night?" or something to that effect. Eventually I get a response from someone.Player 1: I'm going to go find the Caravan guards in town.DM: OK, are you going to tell the rest of your group or are you going to just go alone.Player 1: Oh yeah, I'll tell them.DM: Go on then....Player 1: ..... - Again this is sink or swim time again, you want to get them used to talking not just to the DM but to eachother 'In Character'. Don't let them say "I'm going to ask the guard about the attack" actually make him ask.DM: ...well, the rest of the group are right here, you could tell them, ask their opinion, see if anyone else has any ideas or other plans.Player 2: We should check the road as well, see if they left any tracks.DM: *nod and stay passive at this moment, let them talk in character then interrupt*DM: Aye lads, you be lookin in to that caravan that got hit on the street, ye'll be wantin a stiff drink before you head out inta that. Plus me tavern don't pay fer itself and you lot have been sittin hear all lunch without orderin a damn thing. - At this point don't break character until they do, by the end of this conversation they'll have got the whole thing down and feel comfortable with roleplaying. I've used similar conversations before in different settings. All it takes is for them to start talking then throw in an NPC that either forces them to interact with him or forces them to move the plot along themselves, rather than waiting for the DM to do it. eg. in this example either they buy a round of drinks/meals and chat with the barkeep or they explain that they're going now and then they tell the DM what they're doing rather than the other way around.By using this method, the players tell the story, and you just throw up walls of interaction to steer them in the right direction. It makes them feel more attached to the characters, it incourages more method-acting based roleplay where they physically speak in character. In on of my games, it's got far enough that during a three way stand off, the players actually kicked the chairs out from under themselves and stood miming holding swords and hand-crossbows at eachother whilst trying to talk eachother down during a heated argument, this was ALL done with EVERYONE keeping a straight face, never breaking character and without any pre-planning. Immersion this strong is easy to do if you just coax it out of people using this method. Two of the three players involved in that standoff, where new to roleplaying when they campaign started and it happened in the third session.One golden rule to remember - If rolling dice would break the immersion, DON'T ROLL DICE! If the person is talking in character and explaining their idea/plan etc, and/or convincing an NPC of something, use their passive score (Skill +10) as a baseline and judge how well they're roleplaying the scene. After all, no-one wants to stop roleplaying to pick up dice, if they're roleplaying is good and convincing, let them win... it makes them want to do it more in the future and will make them want to try interesting and well throught out plans because it feels more rewarding when they work rather than the impersonal dice roll. That's not to say you can't use dice at all, but only when you really can't decide if something will work based on the roleplaying alone.This, like I said, is my favourite method. It has worked for me with multiple groups and with people who have never roleplayed before. It doesn't work so well with rather shy people though, but most roleplayers are quite confident (if geeky) people so this isn't usually an issue. If you want any other methods I have a few more, but this one is in my opinion by far the best.</blockquote>

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