The Strong Silent Type

[Gez]

The solution for roleplaying the silent type (strong or meek ) is to play in the third person rather than the first.

For example, this: "Lorgath sighs, then shrugs, then nods in approvement. He'll go on with the plan, though he doesn't seem to like it."

Compare to this:
"Well, that plan doesn't seem so good. But what other do we have? I'll follow it, until I'll have to improvise because it'll go wrong as usual."

They convey about the same informations, the first is silent and the other is verbose.

If you don't talk, act! And describe your actions, because RPGs are still a verbose game (for the players) even when it ain't (for the characters). Or LARP.

 

[Chimera]

As others have said, "So what's wrong with the strong, silent type?"

While I would prefer more role-play out of some people at the table, I have to be honest in that not every player or PC is well suited toward extravagant role-play. And that's the bottom line, isn't it? That only the extravagant, outgoing, sometimes over-the-top characters need be heavily role-played all the time.

There really is no need for the 'strong, silent Fighter' PC's player to spend a lot of time talking in character at the table. To be sure, I'd appreciate if the player would make the effort to put something into the character's nature, interests or background that can be used as hooks, or as something from/to which I can 'throw them a bone' from time to time, but there's nothing really wrong with the character per se unless it's just an excuse for the player to avoid any role-play.

And really, there isn't necessarily anything wrong with that unless they do that every session of every game; your gaming group is dominated by people who do that; AND you want more out of them. Then maybe you have to look at either changing your expectations, or finding new players.

That being said, I have four players in my game. One is a good role-player. One is a very gregarious fellow outside the game, but we're always on him about translating some of that to actually acting in character once in a while. (Really. A few sessions back in another game, he turned to the GM, pointed to another player and said "I tell him X". The GM was like "Yeah, so why don't you do that? Why are you involving me in this?") The third is extremely shy and difficult of speech. We don't expect any real role-play out of him. The fourth is new and I still haven't figured him out yet.

I'd like to see more role-play. But I know that at least one person isn't really capable of it and I'm not about to penalize him for it.

Today's session is going to start out in town, where they need to role-play some things in order to get information. As I said in my e-mail;

I expect that a major part of the session will be role-playing in town (and on the road), depending on how much and how well people respond. If everyone sits quietly, then I expect that I'll be doing a lot of role-play monologing and that important information will not be passed along where necessary.

 

[Hussar]

I guess I take Gez's approach more. While it's perfectly fine to play a quiet character, the game is not about sitting quietly. I would be ecstatic to see the player use lots of third person description for a strong silent type. No problems whatsoever.

Like I say, I'm not a strong storyteller. Not at all. But, at least give me something to work with and don't just sit there like a bump.

Granted, with new players, that's a separate issue. That's just part of the learning curve. That's groovy. I'm talking about people who've played for a significant amount of time and whose character is utterly forgettable, to the point where after six months of play, when the player announces that his character is actually female, no one in the group knew it.

 

[shilsen]

I've always figured that the third person approach is the best to take when playing the strong silent type (or weak silent, which is a viable but much less popular version). I generally don't play the type, since I enjoy verbally interacting with other PCs and with NPCs, and I primarily use first person when gaming.

But a couple of years ago I played an orc barbarian, who had strong and silent down to a "T" and was a very fun roleplaying experience. He was mentally very thick and not very self-confident (Int, Wis, Cha all 6), so he didn't speak much. At the same time, he was intensely curious and always doing something, as well as reacting to his companions' actions in physical ways. So I got to enjoy roleplaying him and also participated thoroughly with the other PCs. Amusingly, people who were at the table tell me that they remember him and the wizard's familiar as the two most memorable characters in the group.

 

[Crothian]

THe strong Silent type should do more then just sit there unacting. The archtype usually does things with expressions or a nod at the right time, a glare or looking of eyes. I understand not liking someone playing it poorly, but when done right it can be very cool.

 

[Vanuslux]

I've played the strong, silent type before. The key, as Crothian said, is in nonverbal expression. There's a lot more to our personalities than what we say.

 

[Glyfair]

I think we can do without the hyperbole.

Sitting at the table, saying nothing for hours on end would seem very boring to me, if I were to engage in similar hyperbole.

I'm by no means saying that you have to talk all the time. That's not what I said at all. However, IMHO, in a role playing game, you DO have to talk. You should interact with both the other characters in the game and the NPC's. At least a little.

I agree with this. However, that sounds like the strong silent type. Not interacting with the other characters in the game and the NPCs sounds like the strong mute type, which is something else altogether.

Now, it may seem that way in some games. I'm something of the more quiet type in a game as a character. I find that gets emphasized in games where the "method actor" type player tends to be common. These players feel the need to interact with everything. You get two in a group and you won't be roleplaying much, because they eat up all the time. If you aren't running the loud, obnoxious character, you aren't likely to get much spotlight time because these players are grabbing every opportunity.

Now, it can be quite fun playing in these groups without being that sort of player. However, it tends to be more "spectator fun" rather than "participant fun."

Of course, sometimes the strong silent type comes from players who just aren't interested in the character exploration of roleplaying or aren't comfortable. If they aren't interested in it, there isn't much you can do. If they aren't comfortable, it's best not to heavily push them into it, and slowly give them small opportunities for it and let them get more comfortable with it. Don't expect Robin Williams to come out of it, though.

 

[bento]

A few observations on this topic.

1) IME players who gravitate to melee experts (FIghters, Barbarians) gimp their Cha score to get better Str-Dex-Con. Then they use it as an excuse to play a SST and only light up when their fighting.

2) In real life, movies or books, when the SST DOES talk, he has something important to say. In a RPG environment, they are often ignored over the more heated discussions going on amongst the players.

3) I like the idea of anyone playing a SST to tell everyone at the table what he's doing as far as posture, facial expressions and so forth. Don't let them off the hook from needing to engage with the group.

4) Find ways to spotlight their characteristics where they have to be a little more "out-there" as a role player. Have them rescue a baby and take responsibility for it until the party gets back to civilization.

 

[Barak]

As long as the DM allows Initmidate checks without the character saying a word, SST are highly viable.

Note that characters with low charisma are not really SST.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I can think of several reasons why players should restrict themselves to things their characters are aware of. OOC knowledge is a big one. Why bother having knowledge skills if I'm up on my monster-fu? Why not shake down the thief because I the player know that he just robbed that merchant? Maybe I read a spoiler on that module you're running - can I act on that?

There's a dramatic difference, it seems to me, between metagaming which undermines the challenges which the DM presents to the players, and metagaming which contributes to the portrayal of the PCs and their relationships with the world and each other.

You use "metagaming" as a consistently dirty word, as if the two types were equivalent. I don't think that's so.

I also don't think you propose a valid dichotomy when you talk about the choice to react - "metagaming" - and the choice to not react - "that guy is playing with himself". I think it's a false dichotomy because it's not as simple as "that guy is playing with himself", given that it is possible for players to enjoy learning things about other PCs that their PCs do not know and may never learn.

For instance, I played in a long-running Planescape campaign and in a fairly long-running Wheel of Time campaign. In both instances, players learned about the other characters' backstories partly through witnessing events during play (both when their characters were present, and when they were not), and through bull sessions where we all talked about our characters' histories, plans, and reactions (emotional and active) to the events of the campaign.

Before anybody asks "What about secret elements of my PC's backstory?", both games also featured secrets that members of the party kept from each other and that players kept from the other players. In fact, it was doubly fun for me, at least, when I as a player learned which of the two other male PCs was a channeller (male channellers bad, apparently) in the Wheel of Time game, quite a number of sessions before my character learned which of them it was. The players in question had kept it a secret as to which of their PCs was the channeller, and both had secretive stuff to do which kept the suspicion on them equally, and I can't say that it would have been any more fun to have known all along which had the mojo or to have had it kept from me in-character. The revelation to the players came at the height of our speculation on the matter, and at a dramatically-appropriate moment for the campaign; much fun was had with "accidental" in-character comments and out-of-character jokes about the situation for the next few sessions until our characters learned about it.

There's just so much more fun to be had in a campaign than simply reacting only to what your character knows, and so much metagaming which is actually a good thing which contributes to the gaming experience, that I'm baffled that anyone other than people who cannot enjoy a game that isn't a deep-immersive exercise would have a closed mind on this issue.

I made the somewhat facetious example in the other thread of the Player saying that he'd like to punch the other player in the nose as part of his internal monologue. Should my character be able to react to that? At what point is the use of out of character knowledge acceptable?

Here's the way I would look at it: Does my character know that the other PC is feeling antagonistic towards him at all? There's a lot of fun to be had, as I mention above, in directing the shape of your in-character play towards producing consequences which are unknown to the characters themselves. I might lean towards continuing to aggravate the character "accidentally" from my innocent/ignorant PC's perspective, so that everyone around the table can enjoy the building tension until the other PC finally does something about this bastard who's been getting on her nerves, and my character can react in complete surprise even as the players enjoy the climax they've been anticipating.

(This is all, of course, presuming a healthy play situation in which no-one is using their PCs' actions to aggravate another player, but I have been fortunate in that only one or two people I've ever played with have been unable to happily and readily distinguish between PC-versus-PC antagonism and player-versus-player antagonism.)

So I think it's perfectly possible to react as a player to the revelation of something your character doesn't know by having your character respond to the revelation in all ignorance. It's the same kind of fun, I suppose, as when characters in Smallville ask questions about Clark Kent doing the seemingly impossible and he has to hastily construct an explanation or hurriedly change the subject.

I do appreciate, though, that people who only enjoy gaming when they're experiencing deep immersion in their characters and can't stand to be shown or told anything about what's going on other than what they know couldn't enjoy this way of playing. It seems to me, though, that deep-immersion as a motivator for disliking what I'll call "constructive metagaming" takes a distant backseat to simple traditionalism which automatically labels all metagaming as negative.