NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lonely Tylenol" data-source="post: 2699325" data-attributes="member: 18549">Using mechanics is not itself roleplaying, but it is an essential step in roleplaying: determining the limits of the character's ability so that you might play the role of that character.  If I can't come up with Dave the Barbarian's actual dialogue, not being a particularly intimidating guy, I can at least narrate what Dave is trying to do, and roll to see what happens.  I switch from 1st-person roleplaying to 3rd-person roleplaying, resolve the action in the 3rd person, and then resume 1st-person roleplaying again.I am roleplaying an intimidating character.  I cannot improvise all of his lines, which means that I need to default to a task-resolution system in order to continue to play the role.  Doing otherwise would mean that I break out of the role and say what I'd say instead of what the character would say.  I am certainly not saying that "since there are skill mechanics you don't want to have to roleplay him."  My premise, as I'm sure you're aware, is that I can't tell you exactly what Dave says or does, but I can tell you "Dave gives the guy a withering look that makes him seem pretty darn scary."  That's roleplaying, in the 3rd person.  I'm still deciding Dave's actions, still operating the character in the character's idiom, and staying more true to that idiom than saying in character, "Um, I'm gonna rip your arm off and, uh, feed it to, uh...I mean, hit you with it."  That would be breaking character, because Dave would never say something so lame with the intent to intimidate.In this case, using the mechanics allows me to better roleplay the character than if I doggedly stuck with the 1st-person narration.  The mechanics are there to allow me to roleplay a character that I can't ad-lib lines for.3rd person roleplaying is still roleplaying.</blockquote>

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