The Level of Roleplaying in a Game

[Meridian]

Let's be careful about attempting to influence the amount of role-play...

Tabletop gaming and Live-Action Role-Playing are separate approaches of escapist entertainment. I'll address this in its own thread, but for now, make sure that everyone in your gaming troupe is comfortable with and understands *your* idea of role-playing. The worse thing you can do, in my experience, is to make a hobby into a job or a chore if your intent is simply to have fun.

 

[fusangite]

There have been some good suggestions so far. I'll just add one: make things in your game analogues of what is going on in people's lives or in the public sphere. Have NPCs who are satires of real people -- sports figures, politicians, celebrities, annoying acquaintances, old friends, family members, etc. This kind of light treatment of role playing sometimes helps to ease people in to the practice.

 

[nopantsyet]

One thing comes to mind from my current campaign. Background is good. Background helps alot. But there is more to character development, and background is just a wireframe for that. I once had a player write a 20+ page background (which was excellent, I should add) but the character ended up very flat and displaced.

For my current campaign, I told my players to write half to one page about their character, and that it should include a few important bits of background, but that the focus would be on present motivations and future goals.

Taking that a step further, I told them that they had a life-changing experience and told them the general affects of this. Things like, you can sense something is wrong in the world that others don't see. But they had to fill in the details: what was the specific experience, how did it affect their life, their goals, their thinking, etc.

The result has been fantastic. Instead of being characters that adventure in a particular setting, they are interacting with and changing the world in ways that are not directly related to the main story arc.

Not that doing what I did would work for every player or group, but what I'm taking away from the experience is that you need to find some way to motivate the players to relate to and interact with the world on a personal (to the character) level.

When we were campaigning in the Realms, I think there was a sense of they could save the day here or aid some cause there, but in the end, they were still in the Realms. And that was in a campaign where they were involved in a muliple-arc plot that included wars, intrigue, adventuring, and uncovering secrets. It was fun, but it felt more like they were just in the world, not a part of it.

Now we're in a less intricate homebrew world and they're getting involved in the world on a much more personal and fundamental level. It's one thing to save the world, it's another to shape it.

Ugh...this was longer than I planned.

 

[Gothmog]

Lots of good suggestions have been made. I'd recommend one thing above all others- NEVER dock XP for not roleplaying, but feel free to give extra XP to those who do. Let the players who are good at roleplaying lead by example.

It also helps to give the PCs personal motivations for some of their adventures. Let them become friends and allies of NPCs, and have those NPCs change over time as the PCs do. Don't keep things static in your game- instead have changes occur slowly, and as events that would be meaningful to the PCs. This doesn't mean you have to kill and/or threaten NPCs all the time. For example, if the inn of an NPC the PCs are good friends with burns down, its a good motivator for the NPC to ask the PCs for help in rebuilding it (helping find materials, getting new trophies for the walls, etc). Basically, make the game world immersive and pull the PCs into it.

Finally, and I can't recommend this enough- DITCH THE CR XP SYSTEM IN THE DMG!!! When 3E first came out, we started a game by the books, and the CR system encourages the PCs to fight and kill (or defeat, etc) every opponent they meet. Players will take the path of least resistance, and if they are rewarded most for fighting, then they will fight in preference of roleplaying. When I started a second game and let them know I was not awarding XP for killing monsters, but instead for accomplishing goals, the players became more focused on accomplishing goals, and started roleplaying more. It has made a profound difference in the quality of play, and I for one will never go back to awarding XP for killing. Typically, the PCs gain a level every 3-4 adventures this way.

Here is the system I use:

1. First, find out how many XP it will take for a character to reach the next level. Example: going from 4th to 5th level would require 4000 XP.

2. Before running the adventure, designate a number of minor, lesser, and major goals the PCs are looking to accomplish. For example, the characters have been hired to investigate the disappearance of the inhabitants of a small town, find them if possible, return them alive, and remove the threat that caused their disappearance in the first place.

A minor goal is something that the PCs need to do in order to get to the heart of the adventure: in this case, investigate the town looking for clues, and following a disguised trail that leads from town to an isolated forest. Finding and disabling a trap that guards the corridor into a cave where the track lead would also me a minor goal. Typically I give 2-5% of the XP needed to get to the next level for accomplishing a minor goal. So for our 4th level party, it would be 80-200 XP each, depending on the difficulty of the task.

A lesser goal would be something the PCs do in the course of accomplishing the reason for the adventure. In this case, finding the missing townspeople being held in a cave by bugbear guards, and eliminating the bugbear threat and their aboleth master are both lesser goals. Lesser goals should net the PCs 7-10% of the XP nedded for the next level. In this situation presented above, there were two lesser goals, each worth 280-400 XP each.

Finally, a greater goal would be the main reason the PCs went on the adventure in the first place. In the example, bringing as many townspeople back alive as possible is the major goal. Major goals should net the PCs 15-20% of the XP needed for the next level, or in this case 600-800 XP each.

There can be multiple minor and lesser goals in an adventure, but there should usually only be one greater goal. You should adjust the XP recieved in each goal to match the difficulty the PCs had in overcoming it. Also, the more goals you have, the less XP you should dole out for each goal.

3. Roleplaying XP- I usually give 0-15% of the XP needed for the next level for good roleplaying, staying in character, and innovative problem solving. In this case, something around 0-600 XP for each character, which is nothing to scoff at.

Using this system, characters will advance at roughly the same rate for each level, even if there are characters of differing levels in the party. It takes 3-4 adventures for characters to advance a level with this system. The 4th level party mentioned above would get around 1600-1800 XP each for the adventure. And the big bonus is you don't have to mess with that wonky CR/XP chart.