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I've seen a couple threads lately about role playing and "did I go too far"? In one case it was a question about whether a PC was too "gimped" to be acceptable. Another case was a specific role playing activity which may or may not have been too focused on a single PC.
I am wondering if perhaps I crossed the line myself in what I had considered to be one of my best role playing moments.
Here's the scenario: My female archer druid was level 7. I had been playing her from level 1 in a slow advance game. In real life terms I had been playing her for almost five years. In all that time she had bonded with her original wolf animal companion. I role played that bond as being very important to her and did my best to present the relationship as a key part of her personality.
Well, as things go, the wolf was killed in battle. My druid was put in the position during the battle of having to choose between saving her wolf, or saving the party sorcerer. This was actually a very hard choice for her and it had serious consequences. In the end she chose to save the fully sentient humanoid party member, and could do nothing but watch as her wolf was quite literally eaten alive.
The party finally defeated the encounter and we ended our game session at that point, so I had some time between sessions to work out my druid's reaction to her AC's death.
I decided that she would be devastated. She took full responsibility for the death, even knowing that it was the sorcerer or the AC, she was wracked with guilt over choosing to save the sorcerer. As part of the encounter she slew the giant crocodile that had eaten her AC and recovered the corpse. So she planned an appropriate burial ceremony. Or, more accurately, I planned one for her. Including having my druid sing a farewall song for the AC.
Now, I understand that to play all that out at the game table might be seen as "hogging the spotlight" so instead I played this out in an email message I sent to the game group describing my druid's reaction to the death, the ceremonial burial and the performance of the farewell song. I did that specifically so that it didn't take up game time, but so that the entire party had a chance to understand what was going on, and if they so desired, offer their own condolences or participation.
I got nothing from anyone but the GM who said "awesome dude!" or something like that.
So at our next gaming session I reminded the party that the activities I had described in email would be occuring during the evening camp so that my druid wasn't going to be available for any other activities that night. Since we rarely role play our evening camp activities I considered this to be merely an informational aside to explain why I would not be having my druid participate in any in character tomfoolery at the camp that night, nor would she be taking any watches.
The reaction I got was pretty much "meh, whatever."
None of the other party members offered even the slightest expression of loss for the AC and in fact most of the comments about the AC were in-character comments that were actually painful for my druid to hear. Even the sorcerer whose life had been saved by the AC's sacrifice expressed no words of comfort and joined in the general jokes about how expendable ACs were and how I just needed to request a new meat shield and should spend the evening doing that instead of grieving for the lost one.
In the end I decided the event was so traumatic that my druid chose not to immediately summon a new AC as a means of atoning for her inability to protect her first one.
So my question to the group is this:
Was my role playing too much? Was it over the top? Was it inappropriate? How would you react to a player who had their druid spend an evening grieving over the loss of their first and only AC instead of immediately summoning a replacement?
Am I "That Guy" who role plays too much?
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Not as far as I can see. You did a lot via email, a perfectly acceptable way to RP things other players are not involved in. I know nothing but what you've said about the rest of your group, but it sounds as if they were the ones who kinda fell down here.
We cannot identify with wholly unbelievable characters or with characters who are completely unlikeable (to us). If these players are attempting to help you play your character as someone who considers their characters trusted friends, they clearly failed big in this instance.
But then, I tend to be sorta heavy on the RP myself, so it'll be interesting to read what others might have to say on this.
I think you hit it spot-on.
The answer to the question posed in the thread title is "any more than the rest of the players enjoy". You dealt with the situation your Druid was in very considerately (email rather than playing it out) and focused on the character's feelings more than optimisation (not taking a new companion). I can find no fault with it.
I think you handled things in the best possible way while offering a unique chance for your fellow players to RP in a way that was perhaps not always apparent to them.
If anything they dropped the ball, not you. I have always favored character RP even at times to the detriment of optimization. So good on you and alas for your poor animal companion.
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Personally I think that's a great bit of roleplaying and that you handled it well. Unfortunately it seems everyone else completely missed the boat in not taking advantage of what you laid out.
To me roleplaying is having your characters interact with the game world in a realistic way. Basically play them like they are real people with real thoughts, emotions and reactions. A druid losing their AC should be a major event as should a wizard losing their familiar.
That said it sounds like the majority of the group isn't as interested in that facet of the game. That's fine, some groups lean more one way or the other, but it shouldn't make you feel like you were out there in creating a great roleplay moment.
I do want to say that my game group is a very good group, very mature and nothing cruel or vindictive was said. It was just a lot of "Hey! Get a raptor this time, they rock!"
It was probably the complete lack of expression of any sympathy that surprised me. I thought it was a great opportunity for role playing for the whole table, and I was disappointed when nobody else demonstrated any attempt to explore their own character's reaction to the events. Regardless of how their characters felt about the AC, I felt there should have been some empathy demonstrated for the poor heart-broken druid.
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How cool was the wolf?
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I really enjoy people getting into their characters and your story is no exception. I'm honestly kind of surprised the people at your table (assuming they had played w/ you for 5 years?) rp'ed the scenario the way they did. One of the players in my group is way more interested in battles than RP opportunities, but even he would have said something along the lines of, "sorry your wolf died" and then probably zoned out until the next battle.
...considering how the party reacted, I think it would have been perfectly acceptable for your druid to leave the group when they reached a safe place again. Who wants to travel w/ a bunch of people who don't care about significant loses you have faced? I know I wouldn't, so why would my character?
Just my 2 cp.
EDIT: Just to clarify, I'm not saying you as a player should be upset w/ them as players, but it would be reasonable to roll up a new character considering how little it seemed their characters cared about such a tragic event for your druid. I reread what I wrote and wanted to make sure it didn't sound too aggressive, it wasn't meant to be.
I dont think you went too far. If anything I think your group was a little lame. In one game I play, my girlfriend familiar, who was central to her character for the first arc of the campaign died. We have spent parts of several sessions roleplaying out the reprecussions of that death in her, and with the other characters at first expressing concern for the familiar (he died away from the rest of the party) and then for her, as she took it very hard, and seems to be spiraling into alchoholism.
But then our dm also roleplayed the familiar and we had characters with speak with animals, and the interactions with him were alot of fun. And it appears that a new member joining the group, may be an oracle, and he might have the haunted curse...so who knows, Sir Reginold the Goat familiar might make a return to prominence in our story.
How cool was the wolf?
I thought the wolf was pretty cool. Our group plays with the understanding that players run their character's animal companions, familiars, mounts, etc. so I played the wolf myself.
I did my best to provide the wolf with a playful and believable personality, but also as a significant combat partner for his druid. The druid in question was half-dryad and in many ways considered herself more closely aligned with the wolf than with the humanoid party members. Her backstory included finding the wolf as a pup and raising it as a child, essentially growing up together. For much of her life, socially outcast as she was from the other full dryads, the wolf was not only her closest companion, but her ONLY companion.
But otherwise from game terms, he was just a standard wolf animal companion wearing cheap leather barding.
You know, maybe the "men don't cry" thing is relevant. I didn't think about that, I suppose compared to most men I've always been more willing than some to express my emotions, especially in role play.
Maybe that's it, they were just being typical guys trying to be tough...
Something to think about.
When I last played a druid, I would always command my wolf by name every turn and every time I performed an action. As consequence the party learned my wolf's name before mine. It came to a point that the party would make sure that my wolf wouldn't die during encounters and no one gave me grief when "Waffles" would retreat from combat after being severely wounded.
My wife plays classes with Animal Companions in both of our Adventure Path home games. I know our group would flip out if anything happened to either of them. Expect table variation?
Nonetheless, I don't really think this is at all on "too much" role playing.
Its hard to get other players to empathize with an imaginary person they are not personally attached to. For example I can become emotionally attached to my own character but not the other PCs', even though I may enjoy the way my character interacts with them. This is not the same (to me) as empathizing with the player who feels loss although that can fuel RP. That being said, given your effort and consideration, a smidgen of pretense (the good kind) on the part of your party members was called for. Even speaking a mere sentence of remembrance or condolence (even pouring out an ale!) would have been welcome.
In a campaign some years back, the PCs were brought together by common cause to defeat a villain. It took ten levels but we accomplished it. Around that time my character had heard of trouble brewing in his homeland. So, the villain being vanquished, I told my party that I would be parting ways with them to attend to affairs back home, and wished them well. Another party member said he would be honored to help me out and that he would help. Thats about as much concern for my character I feel I can realistically expect other players to have for my characters. It was a good thing they all joined me too, cause thats where the next chapter of our adventure took place.
You're playing a female character as a male player and asking the other players to share roleplayed grief with you. A lot of players will be uncomfortable with that----you're seriously confusing their reflexes insofar as processing grief are concerned. I've got plenty of experience with that sort of twist as a GM.
...yeah.
This had occurred to me as well, but I did not really want to go there.
Is playing a different-gender character really that rare?
The gender choice here was driven by a lot of work I did with the GM around coming up with a custom race. After going through a lot of options, we ended up both feeling like the half-dryad/half-elf custom race was the best defined, most flavorful and most unique of the races we had been playing around with.
It wasn't until the actual character creation that we both realized a half-elf/half-dryad raised in the forest pretty much had to be a female.
Role playing Females as a male is very hard. It is easier for me to believe the GM when she roleplays a man than it would be for a male GM to role play a female.
Lamontius,
A lot of us have ample experience having 'roleplayed' grief with actual women, e.g. our wives and children. Such experience informs my portrayal of female NPCs in my games.
Uh, okay.
I'm not sure what that has to do with me agreeing with your take on things.
Hmmm... I guess the one response I did not expect from this group was "dude, you're totally a dude playing a chick."
EWHM, I am mostly a GM too, so I've role played females routinely. I really have no discomfort from role playing a female, and despite the suggestions on this thread, I think discomfort on that front would have been expressed from other game events than a dead AC.
For what it's worth, the female druid in this case is extremely shy, introverted and somewhat overwhelmed by the civilized world. She's also the only member she knows of her race. In many ways she's decidedly asexual. Romance has not yet been a part of her life experience.
Hmmm... I guess the one response I did not expect from this group was "dude, you're totally a dude playing a chick."
Probably not boiled down to strictly that statement, but you have to wonder if it played a factor...
You know, I'm going to ask my group if they have any issues with a female PC. It never occurred to me that it might make anyone uncomfortable. I think I'm a pretty good reader of people's body language and emotions too, and I never picked up on any of that from any other context.
I don't think that's an issue here frankly. I think they would have reacted pretty much the same if my druid were a male.
Adamantine Dragon,
The way most men process grief with women is much different from the way they process it with other men. It's just the way we are.
Your portrayal of a female PC is likely reasonably credible in the eyes of the other players as long as you don't tread on areas like this one, especially in a non-abstracted form that is close enough to twig any real experiences with grieving loved ones that they might have had. Limits of simulation perhaps?
Well this commit is sexiest.
If it helps, I am equally uncomfortable around sad men as I am women. Furthermore my ways to comfort them have been very similar.
There isn't anything like 'too far'. There is 'inappropriate for the group your in' however. Really what it boils down to is 'are you ahving fun' and 'is your fun contributing, neutral, or hindering of other peoples fun."
In an ideal situation you are both having fun and your fun builds others fun. This is independent of group style, but reflective of it. For example, a group of Hard-core system geeks who barely bother to give their characters names are just as acceptable as the theater trope where every character needs to have a six-page backstory. Take a player from either of those groups and drop them into the other and they become the problem.
Now of course this is an idealized state. Most gaming groups are composed of different people with different interests and different levels and focus's of fun. Sometimes your fun does enhances anothers, and you want that more often than not. But sometimes it just kind of sits there, it's neutral. Me having my Dwarf set up a Blacksmithy in town and recruit a local human apprentice might be neat, but for some people it would just be something I was doing that didn't really add to their enjoyment of the game.
What you did sounds like it pretty squarely falls into this camp. You were really into something the other Players weren't, perhaps because they just don't want to deal with that sort of thing, perhaps because for them the 'fun' of the game lies elsewhere.
What you don't want is your fun occuring at the expense or cross-purpose to other peoples fun. I couldn't be in a group that considered using the word 'sub-optimal' in a sentence other than in sarcasm. I like the Role-playing and simulationist dials up pretty high on my RP experience. I try to play with people who are like me in that regard, but still, not everyone likes everything the same way.
Also, just for what it's worth, as a group we have had many conversations about the group's favorite characters in the years of our gaming.
Every time that subject comes up, my female druid wins the "best character EVAR" vote hands down.
@EWHM
Point out a difference. Give a male and female example.
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annnnnndd we are down the rabbit hole on a greased bullet train
I've seen a couple threads lately about role playing and "did I go too far"? In one case it was a question about whether a PC was too "gimped" to be acceptable. Another case was a specific role playing activity which may or may not have been too focused on a single PC.
I am wondering if perhaps I crossed the line myself in what I had considered to be one of my best role playing moments.
Here's the scenario: My female archer druid was level 7. I had been playing her from level 1 in a slow advance game. In real life terms I had been playing her for almost five years. In all that time she had bonded with her original wolf animal companion. I role played that bond as being very important to her and did my best to present the relationship as a key part of her personality.
Well, as things go, the wolf was killed in battle. My druid was put in the position during the battle of having to choose between saving her wolf, or saving the party sorcerer. This was actually a very hard choice for her and it had serious consequences. In the end she chose to save the fully sentient humanoid party member, and could do nothing but watch as her wolf was quite literally eaten alive.
The party finally defeated the encounter and we ended our game session at that point, so I had some time between sessions to work out my druid's reaction to her AC's death.
I decided that she would be devastated. She took full responsibility for the death, even knowing that it was the sorcerer or the AC, she was wracked with guilt over choosing to save the sorcerer. As part of the encounter she slew the giant crocodile that had eaten her AC and recovered the corpse. So she planned an appropriate burial ceremony. Or, more accurately, I planned one for her. Including having my druid sing a farewall song for the AC.
Now, I understand that to play all that out at the game table might be seen as "hogging the spotlight" so instead I played this out in an email message I sent to the game group describing my druid's reaction to the death, the...
I'm often "that guy" too. I keep copious notes and do journals after nearly every session in games where I'm a player. I've even started a book that is over 90,000 words at this point detailing the exploits of one of my PC's (and the rest of the PCs) during the campaign.
What I'm getting at here is that there are some of us who enjoy those RP aspects of the game much more than others. Personally, I think there should be more of us and enjoy that kind of in-depth character-delving RP, which really gets to the meat of what the PC is made up of. The soul searching, the raw emotion, and the ability to really relate the the PC in question are things I really enjoy doing. That IS character development.
Anyhow, I wouldn't be upset with the rest of your group as they probably had nothing better to add and might even had been a bit jealous over your ability to relay to everyone what your character was doing rather than the typical "I sit at the bar and drink an ale..." type of person.
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You consciously avoided hogging focus and table time for your RP and gave your fellow players the opportunity to simply ignore it if they felt it was excessive or over-emotional. Instead they turned it into a joke. That's... not cool.
My group managed to turn my druid's dead animal companion into a joke several months before the AC actually died (I can't remember how it started). As a result I felt completely unable to RP any reaction other than "right, I'm getting her raised."
Is your group usually supportive of RP or is it common for them to joke at other PCs' emotional moments?
If you, and not just your druid, feel hurt by your players' reaction, then you need to talk to them about this. If it's just your druid that's hurt it seems reasonable to RP someone who has been hurt by people she thought were her trusted friends (you might want to warn the group this is what's going on as it will damage IC group cohesion).
Was my role playing too much? Was it over the top? Was it inappropriate? How would you react to a player who had their druid spend an evening grieving over the loss of their first and only AC instead of immediately summoning a replacement?
Am I "That Guy" who role plays too much?
For what its worth I don't think you took roleplaying too far. In fact I think what you did was pretty awesome and doing it in a mature way, thinking about your friends before stealing the spotlight and the like.
"That Guy", to me personally, is the one who isn't thinking about other players. That guy who steals the spotlight or plays a gimped build and doesn't care for mechanics at all and puts his fellow players characters at risk, especially in PFS where there isn't a good way to deal with it. As far as I can tell that isn't you.
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Interesting. I find it harder to get into the mindset of an elf or a dwarf than into the mindset of a female human. Of course that's in part because there aren't any actual elves or dwarves to interact with to get a clue about their behavior.
This thread is going totally off the rails, but that's OK, I think I got what I was looking for, which I am interpreting this way:
1. Doing the role playing via email was the right approach to avoid potentially stealing table-time from the rest of the group.
2. The role playing itself was realistic, as far as realism goes in a fantasy world.
3. The rest of the group missed an opportunity to build on the role play experience for their own characters.
So I will take away the conclusion that, no, I did not go "too far". Indeed I probably played it pretty well.
Now, to this cross-gender role playing thing.
I am a writer. As a writer I have to write all of the dialogue and delve into all of the motivations, emotions and impulses of all of my characters, male, female or (in some cases) ambiguous or asexual. To suggest that it is difficult to role play a different gender is no different to me than suggesting that it is difficult to write scenes which involve a different gender.
To which I will respond as Neil Gaiman did when someone asked him how he manages to write such convincing female characters. His response was basically "I just treat them as if they are people."
That's what I do too.
Incidentally, this is off-topic, but you mentioned your wolf had regular leather armor. As somethng your half-dryad might consider for the future, masterwork studded leather armor is not super-expensive, even for an animal (you double the base cost of the armor, then add masterwork cost), and is totally worth it as like leather it has an armor check penalty of zero and reduces the chance of your AC getting hit that little bit more that might make the difference. My avatar character Zog paid to get his dog Ausk's MW studded leather enchanted to +1.
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I don't attempt to assist with anyone's grief in real life, much less in a game. Seriously, I don't ever bring it up in any way whatsoever, and I have no desire for comfort when I am experiencing it. If the topic of conversation turns to sickness, death, or feelings about death, I am wishing to either be somewhere else, or for the subject to change. When it is me, it is something I would rather think about privately and come to terms with on my own, and that attitude prevails in my interactions with others who are grieving. "Yeah, it sucks" is about the extent of the commentary you are likely get from me, and so that's why I usually say nothing.
Zog, VerdantSF,
I'm just amused thinking about another male PC trying to comfort the grieving druidess by offering to help obtain her next animal companion better armor. It's an archetypically male thing to do. It's just unlikely to provide any meaningful comfort to any but the most non-neurotypical of women.
Heh, yes. I doubt it'd directly comfort any men, either, although some at least would probably feel a little better that a friend was indirectly condoling with them (as per your post above).
However, not knowing the druidess in question, I wasn't offering her comfort. I was just throwing something out there for the player's consideration, especially if he wanted to roleplay his character's fierce determination to avoid such a death in future by taking some extra precautions.
Honestly, I have to say, my group would have been APPALLED at how you handled this. Absolutely, utterly appalled.
How DARE you handle such an important scene over EMAIL?! We all would have wanted to be a part of it, and probably participate in the impromptu funeral-- if not figure out how to pool our money for a raise dead of some sort!
But then, we're heavy role players. I'm sure someone out there is wondering why you didn't just grab a fresh stat block, or even just continue with the one you had, after calling a new, surprisingly similar companion.
Heh, I put plenty of hooks in the email to allow for role playing at the table. Nobody bit, so I didn't push it.
As it turned out she went without a companion for almost two levels. When she did finally seek out another companion I just allowed the GM to decide what was available in the area. She ended up with a mountain lion.
That one died too. But not for awhile.