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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ilbranteloth" data-source="post: 8189040" data-attributes="member: 6778044">While I agree that people will approach how they play an RPG or how they "inhabit" their character differently, I do think it's important to clarify something regarding your categories.Roleplaying is literally playing a role. It doesn't require acting, which is a different skill that can be applied. It's simply making decisions and choosing actions as if you were that person. This is the same if it's a roleplaying exercise in a training scenario at work as it is an RPG. Category A is definitely roleplaying.So Category B is only roleplaying if the role you are taking on is you. There's nothing wrong with playing a PC as if it is you within the presented scenario.--In terms of the fire and trolls, my only comment is that most of the time, those that argue that a specific PC won't know that trolls are vulnerable to fire is not considering the fact that within that setting it's likely that civilized people have been fighting trolls for thousands of years and it's not likely to be a secret. While a player might occasionally me ask whether they would know something or not, the only time that we ever comment that somebody won't know something is when the party is split up (it happens often), and a player (usually accidentally) acts based on info from the other group. It's very rare any of us call anything out because we feel the best person to determine whether their PC knows that "trolls are vulnerable to fire or not" or similar scenarios is the player themselves.If the player honestly believes that they would not know to use fire on trolls, and thus they choose not to, they are roleplaying their PC just fine.The second situation, "...for his sake I'll pretend..." is different. It's certainly not wrong from a gameplay standpoint if you are intending to benefit your fellow player. But it's no longer roleplaying by definition, because you aren't making the decision or acting based on that character that lives in that world. Instead, you are choosing a course of action based on what's going on between players at the table.That doesn't make it bad, so don't take it as a criticism. But if the goal is roleplaying, then really the only question you need to answer is, "what would this character do?"My general recommendation, which is largely lost in the current D&D (and other) rulesets, is to help players to better understand their characters as real people in a real world. The more you understand your character, the better you can roleplay that character. And within the context of the game, nearly everything that isn't directly interacting with the rules, can (and should?) be roleplaying. Combat is still roleplaying. When you engage in combat, how you engage in combat, the actions you take, everything is still roleplaying. The only part that isn't roleplaying is the mechanical resolution. How you react to that resolution is.</blockquote>

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