RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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I saw this post in the rant thread and thought that a response would help anyone in the gaming community who happens to share this particular problem:
my turn. I am completely sucky at roleplaying. I can never think of anything to say at the right time!
...I am getting better at planning my moves, but I feel like I just sit there the rest of the time. I love acting, but I was always horrible at the improve stuff. what do I need to do?
Now I present to you the following -
Fatespinner's Guide to Character Development
The first step to developing a character concept is determining where the character came from. Wealthy family? Son of a pirate? Raised in an orphanage? Spent entire childhood at a monastery? There are endless possibilities for what we will call your character's 'Origin.' There is no need to develop a highly-detailed and novel-like background for a character (though there are many out there who enjoy such things). For the beginning roleplayer, decide on a single sentence that describes your character's beginnings. This could be as simple as "He was raised by a kindly old wizard who taught him the ways of magic" to something as complicated as "He was the son of a pirate captain who left him to be raised by his mother in the city of Blahblahblah and eventually joined the thieve's guild in hopes that he could one day meet his father."
The next step is determining what event occurred that made your character decide to adventure. There are plenty of wizards, fighters, clerics, rogues, and bards out there. What gives yours the drive to face the dangerous unknown world beyond? We will call this point the 'Catalyst.' Again, K.I.S.S. (Keep it simple, stupid). One sentence is all you need. A couple examples might be "When his mentor passed away while he was still young, he knew that he would have to seek knowledge on his own and thus ventured out onto the open road" or "One day, he learned that his father had been killed by a rival pirate while on the open sea and thus he devoted his life to avenging his father's death, regardless of how long it took." This step involves a realization of truth or a dedication to a cause in most cases. Think about what kind of events would galvanize a person's personality and set the course for the rest of their lives.
The final step is called 'Proofing.' This is where you focus on the nuances of personality and determine how you want to portray the character you've developed. Look at your character's stats. Pay particular attention to any of them that are 14 or higher and also any of them that are 8 or less. For the high stat, think about how that stat presents itself.
- If it's Strength, does your character flaunt his hard-earned muscle? Does he downplay it?
- If it's Dexterity, does your character walk with a great deal of grace and finesse? Do they often do things (even without noticing) that most people can't, like rolling a coin across their knuckles or other such nimble displays?
- For Constitution, does your character believe themselves to be a 'tough guy' (or gal)? Do they attribute their health to a blessing of their god? Do they merely believe themselves to be very fortunate to have avoided illness?
- For Intelligence, is your character 'book smart,' cunning, or both? Does he often use an expanded vocabulary and express things in ways that others find baffling or is he simply a shrewd and pragmatic thinker, solving problems quickly and efficiently?
- For Wisdom, is your character very patient and reserved or are they the type to share their wisdom with others? Are they pious, zealous, both, or neither?
- For Charisma, is your character particularly attractive or are they just well-spoken? Do they make frequent use of their talents and control the conversations everywhere they go or is it more of a conscious thing where the character is only noticed if he wants to be?
Similarly, take a look at those low stats. They say a lot about your personality as well.
- If your character has low Strength, do they perceive it as a weakness or simply a part of themselves that they have not sought to develop in favor of other things (like magic)? How does this character respond to things that are obviously stronger than he is?
- With low Dexterity, is your character a klutz or are they aware of their poor coordination and thus operate slowly, taking great care to perform tasks that others do with ease?
- With low Constitution, does your character believe that they are frail and thus avoid confrontation or do they see it is a challenge to overcome, attempting to prove themselves in every situation regardless of danger? Does your character even acknowledge his poor health or does he simply believe himself to be unlucky?
- If you have a low Intelligence, does your character speak poorly or show other outward signs of mental deficiency or do they merely sit back and listen, having little of value to contribute to the conversations at hand?
- With low Wisdom, does your character often act without thinking or does he just tend to make poor judgements and remain generally unaware of the 'big picture?'
- With low Charisma, is your character especially ugly, rude, foul, or mean? Or are they a recluse, choosing to keep to themselves and say very little?
Once you've considered these aspects of your character's core personality, compare them to your character's alignment and skills to develop an overall image of your character's behavior patterns. Then, take a look at the following scenarios and decide on your character's reactions:
You perform a dangerous task for someone and they do not even so much as thank you for your efforts. Do you take offense? Do you demand payment? Do you simply shrug it off and continue on?
Similarly, you perform a small task for someone who wishes to pay you far more than the task should be worth. Do you accept the overpayment anyway? Do you turn it down entirely? Do you agree to accept only what you 'need'?
A rival begins slandering your name in town. Do you seek him out? Do you flee? Do you begin to do the same to him?
You recover an artifact that belongs to a family of dwarves far away from the hoard of a dragon you've slain. Do you keep the item for your own use? Sell it for it's marketable value? Do you seek out the dwarves and return it to them and, if you do, do you request or expect to be rewarded?
You witness an act of violence in an alleyway. Do you attempt to stop the assailants yourself? Do you call for the guards? Do you ignore it and move on?
Your companions have gotten themselves into trouble with a few brutish-looking men at a tavern. Do you try to talk the brutes down? Do you try to bribe them? Do you let them teach your companions a lesson? Do you slip out the door and fetch the guards in the confusion? Do you step in and fight alongside your companions against them?
Once you have answered these scenarios, you should have a fairly good idea of how your character feels in any given situation. You can then apply that attitude to just about any situation that arises from then on. Obviously, certain catalysts may occur over the course of the game to alter your character's personality, but these guidelines should help you establish a solid 'frame of mind' to portray your character from. Even if you're not the best at improv, you can still say "Hmm, if I felt this way, what would *I* do in this scenario?"
Hope this helps and I'm glad you managed to find this interesting enough to read it all. :)
Y'know, I actually saw a book called "D&D for Dummies".
I'm going to take a guess and say that Fatespinner and Fake Healer were both inspired by the same post to create "roleplaying help" threads so close together.
I think Fatespinner has really good ideas on figuring out who your character is both physically and mentally.
The advice I gave from my own experiences over in Fakey's thread can be summed up as "react or speak how you yourself would speak." Improvisation can be intimidating, but the real key is to stop trying to "write a script on the fly" and just be yourself. With roleplaying a D&D character, you can adjust your improv skills over time, modifying your vocabulary, speech patterns and accent to reflect what you think your character would be like. But to start, if your having problems figuring out how to talk and act, my best advice is to stop trying to do that, and just do what you would do... if you were a ranger, or rogue, or wizard or whatever.
Nobody's expecting you to be the Olivier of the Game Table immediately, so don't worry yourself or bend over backwards trying.
Then, over time, as you get used to just speaking and reacting to things, you can start to adjust your performance to better reflect the character you want to be.
Actually actors don't pin their character down immediately either, and improv master have to start from exactly where you are. Practice, and you'll get better.
Also, if you're really interested, check in your city for improv classes. You'll probably have to spend money, and depending on where you are that price range can vary wildly, but if you can afford it and the classes are available, take them. Improv is fun, liberating and enlightening, and can only help you improve your roleplaying.
If you're not located in or around an urban center or university of some kind, improv classes will be harder, if not impossible to find, so you might want to consider trying some improv exercizes with your gaming troupe. Google "improve exercizes" for some ideas. Some improv games are better for generating humor (and are more entertaining for the participants) but try to focus more on games that build characterization and/or story, rather than humor. Of course, this is best done with a trained teacher or guide, to offer helpful suggestions and give feedback and evaluation, but you may just have to make do.
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I'll offer a different philosophy for building a character that works better for me. (I don't intend to say that my way is superior to Fatespinner's for any person other than me, by the way; this is just offered as another choice.)
1. Decide what characteristics of the new character are most important to you. Perhaps you've been playing leader characters and now you'd like to play someone who is mostly interested in breaking things and taking stuff, and you'd like to let someone else do the thinking for a change. Perhaps this time you'd like to be the comic relief rather than the strong, silent type. Perhaps you really want to play a Spell Thief (brain damage can have that effect, I'm told). Or maybe you want to be a real hero instead of a cynical antihero for a change.
2. Roleplaying is a group endeavor; take a look at what everyone else is planning to play. Make sure that whatever you are doing works with what they are doing. Depending on the group, this might not have anything to do with the character classes, but if you want to play a mob enforcer and someone else wants to play a marine with no tolerance for deviation from the letter of the law, you'd better work out why your characters will not be at each others' throats from the start of play. (Or at least have some idea of how the game can survive such a conflict.)
Also, try not step all over someone else's schtick. If Fred is playing a Galactic Patrol member who is the universe's best shot with a blaster, it's probably a bad idea to play a Planetary Police member who is the world's best shot with a needlegun. It's tricky (and often not much fun) for both players and the GM to figure out how to spread spotlight time around in those cases. And it's really annoying to at least one of the players when one of the characters is just better at that schtick than the other one is. (And that usually happens.)
3. Pick a few notable details for your character. Perhaps he is really shy around the ladies, or always tries to wear a fresh flower, or speaks with a stutter, or buys a more powerful gun whenever he can, or never backs away from a challenge or dare, or is especially short. You needn't pick more than three or four; more will be lost in the mix anyway. It's probably best to pick different things than you've picked for other recent characters to prevent stereotyping. (If you're playing Hero or GURPS, these things will probably end up as quirks and disadvantages.)
4. Now that you have a picture in mind, think about what sort of a background might have caused the character you have in mind to turn out the way he did. Maybe he has a limp because he was kidnapped by faeries when a child and injured when he was rescued. Maybe he backs away from confrontation because he's afraid of unintentionally injuring or killing his opponent. Maybe the fact that everyone likes him has made him too trusting.
5. With all of that, now build your game character to match the fictional character you built. Note that as you build the character, your mechanical choices might influence your character background or vice versa. Perhaps that Dodge feat came about as a result of your having been a Smart Alec when you were young and getting lots of practice dodging thrown erasers and punches.
6. Once the character is complete, go back through and change and expand your background to match what you built. It's quite likely that you'll find that there are several things in that history that no longer make as much sense as they did when you put them there in the first place. Also, you'll probably see several places where you can add details that might turn out to be fun. There's no reason that you have to stick to something just because you wrote it down once. You wrote it; you can rewrite it. You'll be living with the character (we hope) for months; make it one you can live with comfortably.
Something that I find myself doing is thinking, "What would my character say about this situation?" It kind of goes to what was said before about just speaking as yourself, but I'll reiterate that sometimes it helps to not think about what your character would say in a situation, but what you would say.
For example, you just learned that the nearby village of Woodford is about to be invaded by a column of hobgoblins. Don't necessarily focus on trying to find a good piece of dialogue for Rothar, your gnome rogue; simply focus on "accepting" the "reality" that Woodford is about to come under attack, and respond as sounds appropriate. Unless you've made a particular speech pattern a prominant part of the character, you'll be fine.
I, too, have trouble with devising something good to say when I'm on the spot, for what it's worth. Trying to immerse myself in the "reality" of the world as much as possible helps me a little, removing a layer of separation between myself and the game.
Don't necessarily focus on trying to find a good piece of dialogue for Rothar, your gnome rogue; simply focus on "accepting" the "reality" that Woodford is about to come under attack, and respond as sounds appropriate.
Accepting reality is a big part of true improv. "Yes, and..." is one of the big rules, with denial being the corresponding big nono. Meaning, when someone else creates something -- an object, a location, a character of common reference (like a common relative, say), an event -- you must accept that new reality, incorporate it into the exercize and build upon it, frequently by saying "yes, and..." and adding some new reality of your own. "No," and other denial words are avoided as the deny the reality created by the other participants, and shut down improvisation.
In gaming, you accept the reality of the game as presented by the DM and build upon it by adding your own reality -- how you (as your character) feel and think about things, how events affect you. In any given encounter, you are presented with what the DM has prepared, you respond appropriately -- what do you (as your character) want in this encounter? Are you buying something? Trapped in a dungeon? Being attack by a mind flayer/beholder/dragon/jackalope? Have you ever seen one of these things before? Are you frightened byt it? Creeped out? Amused? How often has your character been in combat? Seen blood (your own or someone elses?)?
All of those questions are questions you'll answer for yourself as play goes on, but they all boil down to accepting the DM's reality, and building upon it with your own. And one of the purest ways to do that is by deciding how you (as your character) would think/feel/react to things.
One thing I do to help give my characters a little extra personality is think of phrases, sayings, or whatever that they would say frequently. I pilfer ridiculously anytime I hear anything that sounds appropriate to the character. I write them down on the bottom of my character sheet, and whenever I'm floundering it helps ground me back into the character's mindset and gives me something to say.
Our DM has us fill out a character profile questionnaire for each character with a lot of the stuff that Fatespinner was talking about. I'm pretty good at improv and I think that's incredibly helpful. The extra work up front really pays off in story later on.
Y'know, I actually saw a book called "D&D for Dummies".
DMing for Dummies too (I don't know if its actually called that tho...).
Y'know, I actually saw a book called "D&D for Dummies".DMing for Dummies too (I don't know if its actually called that tho...).
Both of these books do exist. In fact, copies of both reside on my bookshelf at home. My idea was to give them to people who wanted to learn what D&D was about before they spent any real time being 'sold' on it. So far, I have shown them to like 3 people and a couple of gamer friends want to borrow them for the same purpose.