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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Oryan77" data-source="post: 3859615" data-attributes="member: 18701">I've played with a lot of different gamers and I always mention how I'm a more roleplay/storytelling DM than a hack-n-slasher or powergamer. Everyone that I met always said they like roleplaying in D&D. The thing I've noticed is that very few of them ever actually roleplayed in the games I played with them. If an NPC spoke in character to a PC, I'd get responses like, "Sure", "Uh, I guess so", or "I'm attacking him!"I've realized that with my current group, since only 1 out of 4 players is big into roleplaying, I've turned into nothing more than a hack-n-slash DM....and I hate that. Doing this for almost 2 years has effected my ability to roleplay well. Now when I roleplay I feel like I'm really lame. The players don't respond much at all and that doesn't help me get into character either.Everyone enjoys the game & actually makes a great effort to attend every session. But I'm thinking now that the only reason they like my game is because it resembles a more elaborate chess game with cool miniatures. No one makes an effort to be involved in the campaign world and no one tries to give any life/character to their PC's. They just wait for me to railroad them into doing something. It's all about combat and how they can beat my encounters the easiest and metagame my actions as a DM. Events recently happened that have really grinded my interest with the game/group to nothing. I had a player kill last session (only my 3rd kill ever as a DM). The player is a huge powergamer which conflicts a lot with my DM'ing style. I've been trying to roll with it but he recently ruined a possible roleplay encounter (yet again) for the group and myself by basically saying "I'm not wasting time with talking...I attack him". It's like he thought he was going to get a strategic advantage by being the first to initiate combat. For roleplaying reasons the BBEG & his henchmen were going to focus on killing him first out of the group since he attacked them. They wanted the rest of the PCs as slaves. Since he's the powergamed tank, it was difficult to kill him via straight tactical combat. So I took another approach...try killing him by roleplaying.Long story a little shorter....after a long battle, the BBEG lied to the powergamer and told him if he gives up and removes his buffs & equipment, he will just be thrown into their prison cell until they figure out what to do with him. The player figured he may not have to die fighting and will live to see another day, so he gave up. After he was no longer a threat, the BBEG told his henchmen to slaughter him; which they did.I was dissapointed in this ending up with his PC dead because I had created a lot of sub-plots for his PC to try and get him involved into the campaign world more. But I was also sort of glad for the kill because his powergamed character was starting to get annoyingly lame. I hoped he might try to make a more interesting and less powergamed character. But nope, he makes an even more powergamed PC. This new PC is even harder to threaten in combat and that's without any buffs. In an attempt to try and tone it down so he's more balanced with other PCs who are higher level than him yet easier to kill than him, I told him he couldn't have a couple of magic items that he wanted since I never would have handed them out as treasure. Rather than comply and make different selections, he argued with me and said I'm "nerfing" his new PC. Then he has the balls to actually tell me that he roleplayed his last PC "so well that it got him killed". I'm still scratching my head about that one. The groups method of gathering information about a BBEGs plot is to just kill everyone and if any of them seem like they might be the BBEG, then they rest for a day and prepare Speak with Dead spells. I'm not sure if that counts as "roleplaying". The only time I can think when this player roleplayed is if I tried to give more life into a friendly NPC and initiated a conversation with him....and even then he struggled with the roleplaying. I'm feeling pretty burned out with the game now because nothing interests me in the campaign since all it is is combat after combat with no substance in between. Then I have to deal with players yelling at me when I try to make it more interesting for myself. Us DMs need to have our fun too!  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/nervous.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":heh:" title="Nervous Laugh    :heh:" data-shortname=":heh:" /> What do players think roleplaying is? I'm wondering if I just have a different interpretation of it from playing with my actual friends from my hometown. Do people think it's roleplaying if you occasionally shout out "Charge!" before a battle or if you tell the DM, "I'll try to heal Bob's unconscious PC with a cure wand before I retreat"? I mean, the particular player I mentioned won't even spend gold on beer or tavern food because it's a waste of money that could go towards scrolls. He just uses his rations & water and the player sits quietly & reads the Spell Compendium while other players are having drinking contests with NPCs in the tavern. I don't believe any well-roleplayed character would enjoy to live off of rations & water.  :\</blockquote>

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