Roll Playing & not just rolling dice

[Zelda Themelin]

Sometimes you game in game, where less you say is more to do. One of easiest way to ruin perfectly good roll is to try to act what your character is saying. This is people in general have different ideas what work. And this is especially true for at least two of my dm:s whose idea of workable social behavior is not exactly.. well workable. And when you don't say things well from their point of view, it affects your characters success negatively.

Their also fail to describe how their npc:s react to things or just lie about it (because you wouldn't know). When I play with these people, I just state what I want to accomplish (not even what I do or day) and roll the dice. Makes it much more fun for everyone.

Then there is dm whose games are all roleplaying, but unfortunaly they are really depressive too,
and it doesn't help his npc come with two personalities
1) Dark Brooding As***** out to ruin you life
2) Dark Brooding As***** who unstoppable ruins your life.
His idea of fun game is to make it really painful to his players. His plots are good,
but social situations start to feel futile, because they always end up more or less badly. Thats the basic setup, no changing it, so it would be preferable to just roll-play those situations and get of the hook more easy. Sheesh, I wish he one these days breaks out of that format.

It's really up to dm and group in general whatever to speak it or roll. And even when roleplaying it, it should be characters' charisma and skill that actually affects it. And if you roll really bad (like natural 1), I want to roleplay it failure too. It sucks that you say things succesfully, dm rolls in secrecy and you heard how awfully it affected everyone.

I don't like idea of giving out long speeches, that just eats time. I prefer them to to more like describtions of things character includes in his/her speech. Short speeces are ok though.

 

[Talon5]

Bah. If I wanted to be in drama club, I'd go back to high school.

Your one up on me there- I never was in drama club.

Just joking.

I game to be someone else, to reduce stress, to laugh and joke with friends. "Killing" stuff is cool (esp. when the cops don't come to your door) but its not why I game. I like the feeling that gaming is about being someone else.

While I agree- if your not an expert at something, then don't bother trying to give an attempt at BSing your way through it, I believe that we (gamers) should at least try to look as thou we know what the heck the character is talking about.

Have fun all, that is what gaming is suppose to be about.

 

[Hypersmurf]

I want to say that Mouseferatu was the first person to bring this up recently - anyway, this same discussion was going on about two weeks ago, and Mouse or another poster said this was their preferred tactic - let the roleplay emulate the result, instead of vice versa.

I don't know about Mouseferatu, but I tend to bring it up each time this topic comes around.

Once every couple of weeks sounds about right

-Hyp.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

Keeping in mind that there's a difference between speaking "in character" and "as the character", simply declaring a check or roll of some sort doesn't really cut it in our group. Keep it short or, in the case of a speech or some such, give the Cliff Notes, as stated earlier in this thread. But never just roll the die.

I'd say it's more a matter of keeping "meta-terms" out of it with enough description to actually add to the scene rather than simply being in it. Consider the following:

"I try to convince the guard the I'm part of the Duke's investigation into improving security." (Response: "Make a Bluff check.")

vs

"I Bluff the guard." (Response: "Why?")

These are the same as...

"I grab two bars and put my might into seperating them." (Response: "Make a Strength check.")

vs

"I'm going to make a Strength check." (Response: "Why?")

Record time: 5 minute circular discussion with completely inept player that just couldn't figure it out for the life of him. ("Because I'm bluffing." "How?" "With my Skill." "How?" "I roll the d20 and add...") Dense... Really dense.

 

[StalkingBlue]

Absolutely, this would not be for everybody. I just get sick of people only going one way on ther charisma route.
If they are a better negotiator, have more charisma, etc. then their character they get the benefit. But they don't go the other way of deliberately sabotoging themselves because their character is not Mr. Orator.
If your going to tout the 'roleplaying flag' you need to roleplay the negatives as well.

Actually, this is not penalising the shy types at all though. The roll is the roll. In game terms, the shy guy has the same result as the great orator. This just lets the roleplayer really sink his teeth be it a good or bad result of the die without penalizing the shy guy.

It wasn't the mechanics I was thinking of. Actually it would have been clearer if I'd said "punishes" rather than "penalises". No RP-shy player I know would feel comfortable at being dragged out of hiding and forced into a complex RP situation with the parameters already set for them by the result of the die roll - which after all is more difficult to pull off than just gulping a breath and saying whatever comes into their almost-paralysed brain at the moment.

Note, too, that I said not RP-shy, not shy. Lots of gamers are boisterous enough socially and in game situations that they find safe - but stop dead in their tracks when asked to think up a line of dialogue on the spur.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

I really like the idea of roll first, roleplay second. As noted, it penalises poor Cha characters, but still lets those players who want to talk get on with it.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Had a situation like that creep up last night. The party rogue found a pit trap that covered the entire passageway. He said that he wanted to disarm it and I asked him how he intended to do it. Immediately one of my other players spoke up and said that it wasn't fair to ask him to describe how he was going to do it since his character knew how to do things that he didn't. I didn't say that the player still wasn't going to make a dice roll, I just wanted a description for flavor. The Rogue used pitons to jam the door closed and we pressed on. Imagine a group's respons if the DM ran a NPC that way. Imagine if I said "The NPC wants you to go on a mission for him and gives you a few reasons. He makes a Diplomacy check and gets a XX so you agree to go for him". It seems like players have a double standard. They don't want to detail what they are doing in regards to a dice roll but they certainly expect it of the DM.