Sound Off: What is "Role-playing" anyway?

[S'mon]

How do YOU define role-playing in character?
Do you talk in the 1st person? With accent? Do you have intricate backgrounds? Form bonds with NPCs? What does it take to be a "true" role-player? What draws the distinction between rolls and roles anyway?

"Role-playing in character" optimally imvolves talking in the first-person in-character, yes. No accent required - I already have a British accent, just like all denizens of fantasy worlds. An intricate background is definitely not required, but _some_ kind of background is. Almost all characters will form bonds with other PCs and NPCs (unless they're psychopaths). A "true" rolpeplayer is someone who makes a decent effort to play a character as someone other than themself. "Rolls" are things you do with dice, like "roll a d6". "Roles" are personalities you play, like the role of the friendly blacksmith or feisty young heroine.

 

[crater]

What does it take to be a "true" role-player?

I would say its the realisation that the players are just as important to the developing story as the DM, aswell as the ability to forego metagame thinking.

 

[ForceUser]

I speak in 1st-person, often in accents (for those of you who dislike it when people use phony accents, I find that for me it heightens the role-playing experience rather than detracts from it). I often try to drop references to the campaign world - religion, geography, famous NPCs - in my dialogue to help create a sense of verisimilitude. My biggest pet peeves: someone role-playing in 3rd-person ("I tell him he better give me the gold if he knows what's good for him."), or breaking character to make jokes or out-of-character comments. That stuff drives me nuts. I am definitely not a "beer & pretzels" kind of gamer. I take the role-playing experience seriously - admittedly, too seriously sometimes.

 

[sparxmith]

Personal definitions only, YMMV, usw

Okay, I've been on these boards awhile, and I've managed to define some of the l33t speak such as :

IMHO: In my humble opinion

IIRC: If I remember correctly

But what the heck does YMMV stand for? Much less "usw"?

Quit confusing the newbies please. Oh, and my apologies for the minor thread highjacking.

For me Roleplaying is helping the DM create verisimilitude, whatever that may actually entail.

 

[Pbartender]

How do YOU define role-playing in character?

Every time someone asks themselves, "What would my character do?"... And then does it.

I don't require any of my players to be good at acting, or to even act at all, but they must play the actions of their characters consistantly.

Main Entry: role-play
Pronunciation: 'rOl-"plA, -'plA
Function: verb
transitive senses : act out <students were asked to role-play the thoughts and feelings of each character -- R. G. Lambert>
intransitive senses : to play a role

WWMCD?
Role-play.

 

[ForceUser]

Okay, I've been on these boards awhile, and I've managed to define some of the l33t speak such as :

IMHO: In my humble opinion

IIRC: If I remember correctly

But what the heck does YMMV stand for? Much less "usw"?

Quit confusing the newbies please. Oh, and my apologies for the minor thread highjacking.

For me Roleplaying is helping the DM create verisimilitude, whatever that may actually entail.

YMMV = Your Mileage May Vary

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Do you talk in the 1st person?

This is interesting. Normally when in character I do talk in the first person. But, I'm thinking I may need to change that, so that the other players think of my PC as an entity in its own right, rather than just me put into the D&D world. Because part of role-playing for me is playing a character that is *not* me.
For example, I played a female halfling thief (who was filling in as "acting hero" for her childhood friend the muscular human paladin dude). But I realized I had to say "She doesn't trust the wizard" or "Coral thinks that's a pretty good idea" - third-person - or else the other players would constantly refer to the character as "he." And when they did remember that Coral was female, they'd envision her as a 3-ft version of me with, um, more curves.

 

[shilsen]

For me personally, roleplaying means viewing and reacting to things from the perspective of my character, rather than from my own. It means divorcing player knowledge, beliefs, and expectations from the character's and only using the latter. Since my character is made up of a lot of numbers and attributes which don't match me in real life, roleplaying involves a fair bit of dice rolling too.

As for logistics, I prefer first-person dialogue. I can do voices but it takes a little more effort to do that than I care for, so I usually don't.

 

[loki44]

I actually find it easier in many ways to roleplay in a written form, e.g. play-by-email, than in many face-to-face games. I am not an actor, don't do accents willingly, and take umbrage with players who feel the need to impose upon others their god-awful, cliche ridden, embarrassingly unfunny, cartoonish melodramatic diatribes and monologues. I think the written word, especially when it is semi-anonymous, lends itself to thorough character development because it allows for a great deal of latitude and freedom of expression apart from the pressures of live performance. Having said that, I prefer the comradery of a live game and I like rolling dice. The most difficult thing for me is finding the right mix of people to play with.

 

[ichabod]

Most of the things I would have wanted to say here (concerning rollplaying as a derogatory term and the point of RPGs being to have fun) have already been said. However, one glaring error remains, and I cannot in good conscience let it slide, but rather must object and correct in the most strenuous terms. Everybody knows monks got the shaft!