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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Myth Master" data-source="post: 7930704" data-attributes="member: 7020933">That is a very truncated view of role-play. According to Merriam Webster (my favorite on-line dictionary), “role-play” is an intransitive verb meaning … to play a role.It can also have connotations of physically enacting a role, like an actor performing in a play in a theater or those who play in Live Action Role-Play (LARP), but both of those are a great deal more involved than what goes on in tabletop role-playing games. Roleplaying for tabletop RPGs is much simpler.The bottom line is: as long as the players are getting inside the heads of their characters to examine how their characters’ personalities affect their decisions, AND using that as a guide for stating their actions in play, they are role-playing. When the point of role-playing is to address/confront some obstacle, this results in action-oriented decisions. When it is to explore a PC’s emotions, backstory, or psyche, it is most likely represented through conversation with other PC’s or NPC’s. Some dismiss the latter as “acting” or simply “speaking in character”, not role-play, but such a nuanced distinction isn’t productive. It's attempting to create a distinction where there is none.If the role-play required to even engage in improvisational “acting” (projecting oneself into the character’s shoes to decide not only what to say but how to say it) isn't the very heart and soul of impromptu role-play (the very medium through which the game is played), then role-play doesn’t exist. So, BOTH are clearly role-playing. The only difference between these two applications of role-play is that action-oriented decisions arrived at through role-play require a player to step OUT of the role in order to follow the GM’s directions for resolving that action by rolling the dice. Once the dice are in your hand, you are no longer role-playing. On the other hand, interaction between characters can be used to resolve some in-game matters without ever touching the dice.If you are saying anything “in-character" — and staying there for the duration of the conversation — then you are projecting yourself into your character’s shoes by definition (or at least coming close), i.e., you are role-playing.Affecting a (silly) accent is window dressing that has nothing to do with whether a player is role-playing or not. The players may do so, OR NOT, for their own amusement and/or perhaps that of their fellow players, but it is by no means required. Either way, its presence or absence doesn’t affect the quality of role-play at the table one whit.WHY the players engage in role-playing in the context of game-play, their aim or purpose in doing so, is simply irrelevant as long as the result is germane to the plot line or the characters themselves or their relationships to the game world or any of its denizens.</blockquote>

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