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Message: <blockquote data-quote="timbannock" data-source="post: 4787273" data-attributes="member: 17913">I get where you're coming from, but I'm not sure I understand this part.  If the character has a reason to do something that doesn't benefit the group...then why not do it?  If there's out-of-character pressures stopping the player, that's kind of sketchy to me.  The character has some motivation going on that doesn't include the group's best chances for survival -- whether it's a riskier maneuver, or the character just doesn't care about his teammates -- but I don't see why the player can't just do that?Other than that though, one thing I found to help improve RP during my group's 4e foray was to come up with a lot of potential "one-liners" for the villains.  I did that and it helped things out, but I noticed it could be better.  So I started thinking about this: "What doesn't the badguy know?"  Either about the situation, the PCs, or whatever.  And I started working in questions into those one-liners.I even had specific lines keyed to events that made it interesting.  For instance, once the dragon got Bloodied, he'd say "Who are you that has the power to challenge me?!"  It showed that the dragon was actually starting to become afraid.  Similar lines have been subtle signals to the Players that now they can use Intimidate to end the battle against lesser enemies.Essentially, scripting some lines and using them as a cue for different conditions or effects can add a lot to the proceedings because they are a roleplaying element that specifically ties in with the rules.  The right questions might reveal chinks in the badguy's plan, weaknesses, or might simply get the players talking in character.And the more extreme you are with characterizations, the more easily the players follow your lead.  I often will write down an actor or character in a movie that stands out and try to do an impression of them when running a specific NPC (all of my Dwarven bartenders are Gimli, for instance, and all of my creepy manservants are Igor from Young Frankenstein).  Please note that my impressions suck, but the key is that they are consistent ;-)Some really dumb examples that ended up creating VERY memorable interactions or characters:- using a Micky Mouse style voice (not easy!!) to portray a faerie dragon- playing the Seneschal of a castle as a flower-loving gay man (he was a ridiculously powerful wizard, too)- playing a Troll street samurai in Shadowrun that worked at a toll booth on a bridge.  He lived underneath the bridge during the day.  When he did his night shifts at the toll booth, he got extra money for running a sex therapy hotline (he had a ridiculous specialty rating in Sex Therapy)- a ghostly little girl that followed the characters...as she secretly grew in power, I deepened my voice slightly each time to show she was "growing up"- I recorded myself whispering weird phrases, and then played it back during a session as background music at a much slower speed, so it was really deep and weird sounding.  It was actually the chanting of some demented creatures hounding the PCs, and I would play it whenever the creatures got near (see Dungeon Magazine's adventure Meenlock Prison)- doing my best Sean Connery impression (which isn't very good) when playing an aging assassin who'd turned good and joined the PCsI don't know why I wrote all of that, but there you go...<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

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