What X gets in the way of roleplaying?

[Tormenet]

I try not to interrupt. My player's are far too entertaining for me to break in with mundane things likes the campaign.

As a DM, I have found myself doing one thing that breaks the moment. Sometimes, I'll mention something of what is going on behind the screen--such as the result of a die roll: "She won't respond to your Intimidation: your roll was really low." Stupid. It happens rarely, but I feel like an amateur when it does.

I try to never have situations where players who are expending their valuable free time at the table have to twiddle their thumbs. Everyone knows it comes up once in a while, but everyone at my game helps to make sure everyone has fun. If the party splits up for any reason I always cut back and forth so even if their just sitting around a campfire I can keep them somewhat involved.

Tormenet

 

[drakhe]

one example of what might anoy ...

I find that the social skills sometimes get in the way.

Great bits of roleplaying IME have been diluted to the point of uselessness because of an inopportune '3' rolled, despite a low DC of 15 and a charismatic character with a +11 to diplomacy/intimidate/bluff.

I guess that wouldn't be a problem about players/DMs interrupting or any problem produced by such; just the tyranny of the dice.

Actualy this is exactly what I meant (but kinda didn't realy get accross I guess). This is what I mean with dice rolling getting in the way. Not just the actual rolling that actualy interupts the flow of a "performance" but where the dice contradict the "performance". For instance: your playing a docter in a D20 modern scene and some other PC got shot in the leg and you take the time to explain (in character) how your going to treat the wound, clean it, remove the bullet, dress the wound, avoid infection and do a fully excelent job and then proceed to roll a 1 on your heal check....

 

[Thanee]

Well, you could also say, that the roleplaying got in the way there.

If you take the dice rolling as granted, then you should base the roleplay on the dice rolls, that is make those first and display the results in your roleplay.

The dice cannot base their results on your roleplay, they are random.

Either you ignore the dice and just roleplay (and base the result on your performance only (basically judging the performance and assigning a roll to it), but this method is discriminating, since it makes people who are not that good in acting "roll" worse on average), or find a way to incorporate the dice rolling into your roleplaying (see my above post for some methods).

Using both, dice rolling and roleplaying, in completely independant way isn't the best way to do the social stuff, because of the discrepancies you experienced.

Bye
Thanee

 

[drakhe]

Nothing ticks me off more than 1 PC stealing the session for himself by soloing. Instead of just buying and selling stuff like the rest of teh party during the "break" from adventuring, these people have to go off on another adventure by themself. During the middle of the session. WHile everyone else has to wait for their thing to be over.

We had a PC who would seperate from the party and do this sort of thing EVERY session. Lucky players brought laptops to play videogames, etc while greedy PCs hogged the table time to themselves, but I had no such convenience. I had to sit there and wait.

Instead of just saying, "okay, fine, I will run that with you when everyone else is done," the GM was basically saying: "okay, I will run and adventure for the whole party as soon as John gets to play for 3 or 4 hours by himself."

That is crap. A very long extension of the problem you dealt with earlier-- where our roleplaying is entirely cut off by someone else's.

That would be the extreme the other way arround (where roleplaying gets in the way of the game) but I see your point. Let me just add this: your absolutely right that one player hogging the spotlight is no good either, but there's one other aspect I've come accross. Picture this: new group, 5 players of which two are a) experienced players who b) are both very accomplished at playing in character. The campaign begins and after the second or third session it becomes apparent that only the 2 experienced players take the mike as it were. Point I want to make: beginning players often let themselves be intimidated by a more accomplished fellow PC. I guess it takes some time and probably the appropriate amount of determination to start playing with such players. Also, don't be afraid to interupt "IN CHARACTER". I mean, in real life people will interupt each other during discussions, the same goes for roleplaying, it's not a game of take turns, get into it!

 

[drakhe]

Bit more detail about the harp...

... As far as your situation, offhand, I would guess that someone had thought you'd gone on long enough. Especially the wording "but inside I was kinda anoyed that my "performance" was stumped, was cut short," makes me guess that you had gone a little long. ...

In that particular session, I don't think I went on too long. There was interaction going on (the rogue had not just taken my harp but removed the strings and hing the de-stringed instrument on the elf's backpack. It was on the elf's back I noticed my harp , so I was trying to make him explain what my harp was doing on his backpack) So I was surely not hogging the spotlight and we were perhaps going at it for a couple of minutes. The thing is, the DM asked for the roll (to see if the rogue had damaged the harp while removing the strings) and gave me and the elf player the nod to continue, but for me the "performance" was broken. We kinda continued on for a couple of minutes but the whole point of th e interaction was gone.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Nothing ticks me off more than 1 PC stealing the session for himself by soloing. Instead of just buying and selling stuff like the rest of teh party during the "break" from adventuring, these people have to go off on another adventure by themself. During the middle of the session. WHile everyone else has to wait for their thing to be over.

We had a PC who would seperate from the party and do this sort of thing EVERY session. Lucky players brought laptops to play videogames, etc while greedy PCs hogged the table time to themselves, but I had no such convenience. I had to sit there and wait.

Instead of just saying, "okay, fine, I will run that with you when everyone else is done," the GM was basically saying: "okay, I will run and adventure for the whole party as soon as John gets to play for 3 or 4 hours by himself."

I DM alot more than I play, and I agree that players who do this are...problematic. What they're generally trying to do is "get something" that they don't have to share with the group, be it XP, treasure, whatever.

My take is largely:

* Group sees a cave entrance. Some of them want to enter, some do not. I'm happy running those who enter for a finite time if those who do not are willing to wait. (This has happened recently in my game, as some PCs explored a minor tomb.)

* Group is in town. One character decides to head down into the sewers, telling no one. This has also happened recently in my game. I try to give everyone equal time, so that the one PC doesn't hog it all. Which can be tough, because I've got one fellow on a vision quest, another in the sewers, a third going fishing, a fourth getting his fortune told....

* Group in town, getting ready to head out directly, and one of them decides to go off on his own. Luckily, it's been a long time since this has happened. Usually, I just say, "You can't find X," and run the rest of the group. I usually prefer to make the person doing the splitting up wait while I deal with the other people first. It helps to curb this behavior.

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Actualy this is exactly what I meant (but kinda didn't realy get accross I guess). This is what I mean with dice rolling getting in the way. Not just the actual rolling that actualy interupts the flow of a "performance" but where the dice contradict the "performance". For instance: your playing a docter in a D20 modern scene and some other PC got shot in the leg and you take the time to explain (in character) how your going to treat the wound, clean it, remove the bullet, dress the wound, avoid infection and do a fully excelent job and then proceed to roll a 1 on your heal check....

One might argue that because you know what you want to do, it does not necessarily follow that your character has the same skills. Even assuming that the character has those skills (which is probably the case here), the GM can easily say: "As you remove the bullet, you discover to your horror that it nicked an artery...." or "As you are making the incision, a car in the street backfires, startling you...." Etc., etc. In real life, I often know exactly what I want to do, but it doesn't always work out the way I imagine.

RC

 

[Thanee]

Those routine tasks are also what Take 10 is for.

Make use of the rule! It's there for your convenience.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Raven Crowking]

What X Gets In the Way of Role-Playing?

Um...my Ex?




Just wanted to get that in there before someone else did!

 

[Three_Haligonians]

Actualy this is exactly what I meant (but kinda didn't realy get accross I guess). This is what I mean with dice rolling getting in the way. Not just the actual rolling that actualy interupts the flow of a "performance" but where the dice contradict the "performance". For instance: your playing a docter in a D20 modern scene and some other PC got shot in the leg and you take the time to explain (in character) how your going to treat the wound, clean it, remove the bullet, dress the wound, avoid infection and do a fully excelent job and then proceed to roll a 1 on your heal check....

One thing you can do is talk to your dm about circumstance bonuses. For example, in our game, I've got a relatively low bluff. Our dm lets us "play the bluff out" whenever it comes up. So, lets say I'm trying to bluff someone, in character, and I manage, on the fly, an awesome bluff. My dm then attaches a secret bonus to my role, based on my role-playing the situation out. Another character in the game has bluff as her major skill, so the dm tends to gloss over any rough points in her bluff attempt.

If your going to do this its important that you remember to keep your character in mind when roleplaying. If you've got a crap charisma, its important to factor that into whatever bluff your making...so that charisma doesn't become a "dump stat" and you figure "ah, well, I'll roleplay out a charisma that is higher than my sheet indicates". So, you'd have to consider if your doctor from the d20 game would, in fact, know how to treat a bullet wound properly.

Of course, rolling a 1 is still rolling a 1. But thats what makes the game interesting!

T from three haligonians