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All the groups I have played in over the years have pretty much been the same. We roleplay encounters with NPCs and 'sometimes' talks within the group. This ok with me as I'm not that good at roleplay and am kind of shy. Although I wouldnt mind sitting in with a group who is more into roleplay to see how its done.
Years ago a friend of mine told me about a game hes was at where the group roleplayed the buying of equipment/supplies and a visit to the local bath house, 3 hours of real time with no real plot/story advancement.
What type of roleplay do you like?
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I can see how some like the all- inclusive rp, personally If the person im talking with literally doesnt have a place in the story i dont put that much emphasis on it. For example. John Q. Storeclerk at the weapons emporium. If he fell on his way home and was trampled to death by a speeding carraige would it affect the storyline much or would Bob Q Storeclerk be in the shop tomorrow? Or I guess in movie terms, I will rp with a minor charector, an extra? meh not that important in my eyes i have heroic things to do. But that is me of course.
I really like 50/50 games. The problem I run into when playing is that the GM likes the idea of role play but isn't well suited to what that entails. (This is probably a mixture of my non-representative sample mixed with confirmation bias.) I loathe the times when you arrive in a town and the module has certain pieces of information broken up where different NPC's have only partial pieces of useful info and absolutely no idea who else might be helpful. You wind up going to every little inn and shop asking about the headless horseman and 90% of people tell you "I haven't heard anything about that." REALLY? Cause your mayor posted reward signs in every tavern within 100 miles of here, look there is one ON THE WALL IN YOUR SHOP!!! "Oh, well, I did hear farmer Jenkins talking about how all his pigs turned up dead and he swore he heard hoof beats echoing in his barn." YOU DIDN'T THINK THAT MIGHT BE REALATED?!? Where can I find this farmer Jenkins? "Oh, Leroy sure does keep to himself, not sure where he lives. Might be able to find someone at Jenkins family pumpkin farm that knows where farmer Jenkins is though. It's right next door." ... ... ... ... ... You guys saw he left me no choice, right? He was too stupid to live. This is why I became murderhobo to begin with, it's just easier to answer questions afterward.
But for some reason every guard you try to bluff is a freaking savant poker player and gets to roll sense motive based on your tells for every syllable you say.
</tangent> I like to role play when the people I'm doing it with treat the experience as an in character conversation and the NPC has more to say than his prewritten stat block responses. When I run games I try to play my NPCs that way.
As a GM, I like to roleplay all of the encounters the PCs have with NPCs. If they go shopping, I RP as the store clerk. If they go to the inn, I RP the innkeeper. Most of these interactions are short.
I really prefer when the players RP among themselves. I really dislike it when the players simply assume all of the players are good and friendly simply because they are a player.
Example: 1 PC died one session. His new character that came in (and another new player's PC that joined our group) were met in the forest. One of the other players was ready to give one of the new PCs extra magical equipment he had. This player was saying things like "You picked a paladin right? Okay, so you can have this heavy shield +1 because I already have a light shield +1."
That's a clear example of not role playing at all.
As a player, I enjoy RPing with various NPCs and definitely with my fellow players. Much as when I GM, I hate it when I've developed a great story for my character, complete with goals, fears, personality, etc., and the other player's characters only description is what gear they're holding.
I would love to play in a game that was done completely in character. Except, of course, having to describe your actions. Instead of saying "I tell PC #2 that we should go investigate this rumor", I would love the players to look at each other and just say it in character. Of course, that's a bit different when playing over VTT, which is all I am able to play lately. There's quite a lack of RP when it comes to games played over the internet, in my experience. And that makes me sad.
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I enjoy a good deal of roleplay. I too would like to sit in on some game where everything is done in character and the GM rolls discretely before describing the swoosh of air as a character swings their sword in combat. It would be a nice change of pace, and I'd get a chance to see if that type of game would be better than the 50/50 ones I play now.
As a GM, I'd like to deliver that kind of experience to my players but I find it too exhausting. By the time I've got everything else lined up and ready to go, I tend to forget some of the neat RP twerks I had planned. As the night drags on, I find myself falling out of RP more and more.
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When I used to play 3rd edition with my sister and her husband, we would roleplay out everything. There wouldn't be magical handwaving of purchasing items, or automatically getting a room at the first inn you find. We rp'd purchasing things, from weapons to rope to inn rooms, and everything in between. It gave the world a more real feel to it. Lately, and I am sure it is just the groups that I have gotten in (and it being over VTT), but the "worlds", Golarion included, feel even less like a world than World of Warcraft. It's just blaze through everything to get to the next encounter. Even if the group advertisement says "50/50 rp and combat" or "more rp based campaign", they all end up almost 100% combat.
I preferred the way I used to play/DM with my sister and bro-in-law. I kinda enjoyed coming up with store names and names for the NPCs who ran them. Trying to make the world feel alive and like a world. I tried to DM Kingmaker somewhat similar, but the players just wanted to get to the next combat encounter (one even looked at the AP to figure out where everything was and such). I lost interest in it rather quickly and axed the game just after finding Nettles.
Maybe one of these days I will be able to find people who would be interested in such a game-type again, where they play in character, and no magical handwaving of mundane/"unessential" stuff.
My PF group tends to role-play a good bit. The DM tries to get more RP out of us, but it always looks like we miscommunicate a bit; the times he wants to slow down and RP more, the players are just trying to get something menial done and move on. The times that the players get into character and try to hash things out in RP, the DM is counting off initiative rounds and rolling dice.
My Star War group doesn't roleplay nearly as much as I'd like. All of the stuff I put into role-playing elements and things to do during downtime, the GM just handwaves and moves on. Things like repairing the ship, modifying/building gear, reprogramming droids, all done in a die roll and one sentence. I'm not asking for detailed code sheets for reprogramming, but a little ambiance and flavor would be nice.
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My most recent group was pretty good about roleplaying first-person in obvious RP encounters, but usually broke character in combat. Which is fine by me.
Because when they got on an RP roll, they just kept going.
For example, when the party first got to the city of Magnimar, it was the first time in the city for all of the PCs save one (who grew up there.) So the native Magnimarian gave the rest of the PCs a tour. They went to the Aquaretium and met Nireed Wadincoast, they went to several public parks, including Seerspring Garden, but ended up spending most of the day at the Lord-Mayor's Menagerie. And the players spent most of the session there. We actually had a blast, role-playing a bunch of adventurers playing tourists at the zoo. I ran a single round of combat when one of the PCs got pick-pocketed, but the rest of the time was straigh-up pure roleplaying. We had a blast, and it was one of the highlights of the campaign.
For months afterward, whenever the PCs encountered something disturbing or dangerous, the wizard would say, "I guess we could go in there... Or we go back to Magnimar and hang out at the zoo! Who's with me?"
Must be fun to GM those games. No prep, just ad-lib small talk for three hours.
Yeah. I'm gonna start doing that!
Lately, and I am sure it is just the groups that I have gotten in (and it being over VTT), but the "worlds", Golarion included, feel even less like a world than World of Warcraft. It's just blaze through everything to get to the next encounter. Even if the group advertisement says "50/50 rp and combat" or "more rp based campaign", they all end up almost 100% combat.
I don't think that's just the groups you have been in. I've noticed it as a trend for the last 15 years. The younger players have consistently been less and less interested in RPing and more interested in playing it like it was a video game.
Maybe one of these days I will be able to find people who would be interested in such a game-type again, where they play in character, and no magical handwaving of mundane/"unessential" stuff.
Best of luck. I'd settle for getting my players to RP on the important situations.
I've had a player refuse to call a PC lord "lord". The player thought it was degrading or something. Not "my character hates nobility and refuses to respect them" (which would be fine as an in-character explanation).
I've had players that would get antsy and attack random NPCs if it had been too long since their last combat (an hour, for example.)
The sad truth with groups is often that the players you have are not the players you would choose to play with, if you had your choice. And I'm sure some players feel the same way about their GMs.
My group really enjoys "smalltalk roleplay"; shopping for even the tiniest thing often leads into extended scenes. The fact these guys are also willing to haggle even when giving alms to the poor also adds to the matter.
And I have to say I love it. I'm not sure I'd love it with any group, but with these guys it really works and adds a huge amount of colour to the story.
Since I DM in a very open-ended style where the story is basically a proposal that leaves a lot of room for player agency, the guys try to squeeze every inch of flavour from the setting. Even though this usually forces me to improvise a lot, it's also a great way for new plot hooks and NPCs to spring to life unexpectedly.
It's not that our games are nothing but endless Thees and Thous, however; I personally favour a highly dynamic and cinematic style of DMing, filled with explosions, crashing ships, and dramatic villanous appearances, and the party loves playing those kinds of stories and give their best. However, at the same time there is no such thing as fast-forwarding, because my players try to use every single moment to roleplay the lives of their characters, be it discussing with the barmaids or debating amongst themselves (in fact, intra-party roleplaying often takes the bulk of the time).
I think it makes every moment of the game more memorable and allows for players to explore and showcase the more mundane aspects of their characters.
I love RPing with PCs and NPCs. I prefer to RP out most shops and inn encounters, though once in a while we'll fast forward if they've already done the footwork of making a relationship with that particular merchant in the past. Sometimes the party has so much loot to sell, not to mention misc types of loot, that it would just take too much of our precious game time to RP it all out, so occasionally I'll settle for a Diplomacy roll, hand wave a few in-game hours, and give the party a percentage of GP value for their loot.
Some of my best buddies are great RPers, but they have a tendency to grind the game to a screeching halt because their character insists on going off for a solo "mission". The rest of us end up twiddling our thumbs and playing ipad games because one person selfishly takes up large chunks of game time to show how independent their character is in town, or to show how mysterious they can be by making contacts and special purchases apart from the core group.
Love my friends, but sometimes their RP habits are obnoxious and counter-group fun.
It depends. I like a variety of approaches, but when I get wrapped up in one for a while, I tend to like the pendulum to swing pretty far in the other before it comes back to a more moderate position. For example, in a long-time group I'm in, we are playing a Mass Effect game using Star Wars Saga Edition rules (they work surprisingly well). It's a fairly combat heavy game.
The same group plays relatively ad hoc D&D 3.5 games when the Mass Effect GM needs a break or is out of town. We trade off GMing and either write or run short adventures so they don't take too long so we can get back to the main campaign. The last one I ran, I used a Paizo module (Feast of Ravenmoor) and took about twice as long as I expected to play it because we role played the hell out of it. And it was glorious! It was an important break from the combat heavier Mass Effect game and I don't think anyone was grudging about the extra time we took to play it out.
For me, the same rule applies for roleplaying "non essential" scenes as for jokes at the table:
It's good if it's good.
I will hand-wave as much time as my players fine with missing. A week of overland travel roleplayed is postponing the good parts at best, tedious and boring at worst. Shopping can be the same way, but if the GM can successfully add enough entertaining querks to each little shop and owner, it can be just as fun.
All the groups I have played in over the years have pretty much been the same. We roleplay encounters with NPCs and 'sometimes' talks within the group. This ok with me as I'm not that good at roleplay and am kind of shy. Although I wouldnt mind sitting in with a group who is more into roleplay to see how its done.
Years ago a friend of mine told me about a game hes was at where the group roleplayed the buying of equipment/supplies and a visit to the local bath house, 3 hours of real time with no real plot/story advancement.
What type of roleplay do you like?
I can enjoy good roleplay, though I have never seen it taken to that degree yet. Most players I know would get bored, and most GMs would get frustrated. Havent gone much farther than building relationships wiht NPCs in my character's off-time.
Edit: now that I think of it, smalltalk roleplay might actually be fun. I dont think any of my groups would be open to it.
Still, one of my current players is doing a good job RP-ing his character, I will admit it's nice to see.
What would a "No Role Play Allowed" play by post Pathfinder adventure look like, I wonder...
What would a "No Role Play Allowed" play by post Pathfinder adventure look like, I wonder...
Something akin to a page of chess game moves. Lets remember some people enjoy that :) Its fine, as long as its what the whole group wants.
Personally I enjoy entire RP sessions that can go past without even seeing combat (sometimes not even a rulebook), and also enjoy players writing in-character diary entries and things like that. We'll skip past town encounters sometimes if there's no story reason to have any conversation happening, but our games certainly come out more as a collaborative novel than anything else.
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Rolling the dice and saying, "I attack" with no other roleplaying being done is too little.
Chasing the GM through the house with a claymore while yelling "The orc must die!" is too much.
I would love to play in a game that was done completely in character. Except, of course, having to describe your actions. Instead of saying "I tell PC #2 that we should go investigate this rumor", I would love the players to look at each other and just say it in character. Of course, that's a bit different when playing over VTT, which is all I am able to play lately. There's quite a lack of RP when it comes to games played over the internet, in my experience. And that makes me sad.It's ironic, my experience has been largely the reverse. I've had some good RP groups at the table, but online has ALWAYS had fairly dedicated roleplayers.
Granted, a large portion of my sampling of VTT players tend to also be Play by Post roleplayers with a lot of experience roleplaying, so that likely corrupts my sample.
EDIT: as a note regarding player age, most of them have been between 16 and 30.
You must be pretty lucky, or I am very unlucky. I wish I had your luck in finding VTT groups that did a lot of roleplaying instead of just blazing through anything between combats.
My group really enjoys "smalltalk roleplay"; shopping for even the tiniest thing often leads into extended scenes. The fact these guys are also willing to haggle even when giving alms to the poor also adds to the matter.
Ugh. I'm in a group where one (mostly) or two of the players play like this.
The one especially, has to roleplay out every conversation to it's maximum, even when the conversation is clearly over, he'll extend it with small talk. Then, he will use things said or information gained to try to give himself mechanical advantages later, all the while the story does not progress. He also tries to insert himself into other's roleplay after his one on one session with the GM is over, sometimes retconning so he would be there, when clearly his character wasn't. It's incredibly frustrating.It's caused some issues to the point of causing player conflict.
I think the problem is he LARPs alot, so in his head roleplay = real-time exhaustive conversation. The other bits, I have no idea.
Any tips how to handle this would be appreciated.
My group really enjoys "smalltalk roleplay"; shopping for even the tiniest thing often leads into extended scenes. The fact these guys are also willing to haggle even when giving alms to the poor also adds to the matter.Ugh. I'm in a group where one (mostly) or two of the players play like this.
The one especially, has to roleplay out every conversation to it's maximum, even when the conversation is clearly over, he'll extend it with small talk. Then, he will use things said or information gained to try to give himself mechanical advantages later, all the while the story does not progress. He also tries to insert himself into other's roleplay after his one on one session with the GM is over, sometimes retconning so he would be there, when clearly his character wasn't. It's incredibly frustrating.
It's caused some issues to the point of causing player conflict.I think the problem is he LARPs alot, so in his head roleplay = real-time exhaustive conversation. The other bits, I have no idea.
Any tips how to handle this would be appreciated.
Have a private conversation,
Hey, Roleplayer McShakespear, I really like your enthusiasm with the campaign and you are really into it. I like the energy and it is pretty awesome. Some of the other players don't have your roleplaying ability and I need to give them some breathing room to try to play out some of their characters. Would you be ok that when I go to one on one time that I enforce that pretty rigidly, I want to give them a chance to shine and I am finding that none of them can compete with your naturally, high charisma.
To the Group,
Hey, Awesome Roleplaying Group Who Has Stupid Adult Responsibilities. I feel like our time to game is shrinking and when I GM, I am having a difficult time getting the stuff that I feel we need to get through to have a satisfying session. I am thinking that I will have to move some scenes along if they are going to long and we are getting to short on time. I figured I would give everyone a heads up. If you have a problem about it, lets talk about it.
The trick. Hold to this boundary, remind Roleplayer McShakespear what you said and go from there.
As to the mechanical bonuses, just say "no" the rules don't support that. Personally, especially if it ain't game breaking and you want the interaction, granting an occasional +2 to a skill check or something is not going to break the bank.
I know a lot of young people who like to role-play and really enjoy it. The thing is, they do it without playing D&D or an RPG. They free form role-play online in message boards and forums and while it is often tied to some kind of IP like Buffy, Harry Potter, Firefly, Star Trek, Naruto, or My Little Pony, I have found them more than willing to make their own stuff up when given a start. To them the idea of playing a game to role-play doesn't seem to jive. I've gotten everything from "why?" to "lets just skip the rules and get this thing going".
The problem I have found, is that the people interested in role-playing, often have no interest in playing modern incarnations of D&D and Pathfinder. They would rather play something rules-light or just use a story-teller game. The flip-side is that the younger players who are interested in playing games like D&D and Pathfinder (rules heavy) have been typically big video game players and are coming to table-top RPGs with the background of Dragon Age, Diablo, Skyrim, Mass Effect, and some-times World of Warcraft. So they are looking for a heavy rules system to work within.
For some of my friends, getting them to play D&D or Pathfinder instead of other games is like pulling teeth (and usually includes lots of eye-rolling and *sigh* okaaaaay) while a couple of my other friends are practically unwilling to play other games.
helpful advice, except...
I'm not the GM in this game, just a frustrated player.
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3 hours of real time with no real plot/story advancement.
This happens all the time in our games. We've had many many nights with no combat at all.
SOmetimes it's good, sometimes it's bad... but honestly 'Role playing' means getting into character and actually caring about the way the dude thinks and the little things. If the plot moves too fast, it reminds me of a movie where you walk out and say "who was THAT guy?? Why would I care what happened to him?!?"
Honestly haggling for 3 hours over equiptment would get tedious after every town, but sitting around the campfire or the tavern and playing the conversations is pretty integral to me.
As an aside, we've started taking a lot of these types of things and doing E-mail threads between two or more players to get some extra screen time. I LOVE those :)
Personally, I enjoy all aspects of role playing games. Some of the best enjoyment I've gotten out my characters recently is role playing them. I do find having to role play EVERY time I walk into a store to buy gear to be tedious, but if I were doing something that is completely social, like going to a bathhouse, I'd actually rather role play that a little because it's a nice way of getting to talk to the other pcs more in an environment where they aren't about to get killed. Combat itself is actually a really good way to play your character, too. Playing your character doesn't have to stop just because the dice come out. My character's bond with her teammates is actually showcased more in combat than it is outside of it. Saying to them that I've have their back is one thing, but going out of my way to take a hit for them, positioning myself between my teammate and my foe, or charging into the swarm of mooks to cut open a path for my team proves it.
helpful advice, except...I'm not the GM in this game, just a frustrated player.
Bad assumption on my part. Sorry.
That is kind of a sticky wicket.
You can still say kind of the same conversation with him, at least the first part. Either just pull him aside and say that you are frustrated that he goes all Role Play stomp through your interactions; or call him on it when he trips all over you.
If he just starts role playing small talk, we have a buddy like that too, the rest of us just leave on the adventure.
Or whenever he starts Role playing small talk or time travel, stare at him intently and periodically interrupt him with the phrase, "Annnnd Thhhhennnnn?"
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I think part of the issue with that in pbp terquem is you get people whom are too polite to say anything. They dont want to seem like the person taking charge or forcing others to do what they want. I have been in a worse option. Where you have two alpha rp'ers whom both think thier way is right and they bicker to the point no one wants to say anything.
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I've been in a couple of situations that I would describe as "too much roleplaying". In both instances the player became so heavily invested in playing a character as she imagined that character would behave that the player became upset and it became uncomfortable for the all other players.
In one of these instances, the player was me. The campaign had a Roman Empire-style setting, and my PC came from a rebellious region that objected to the imperials. I got into an in-character argument with another PC who supported the empire. It escalated so much that it nearly caused the other player to ditch his new character, in order to avoid having that character be constantly in conflict with my PC. I do not like party conflict, and I am still ashamed that I let myself get so carried away, even though this happened more than 10 years ago.
I also know an excellent example of too little roleplaying. I play regularly with another person who does not roleplay at all. This player's characters essentially disappear from existence when not in combat. They have no history or personality. The player's descriptions of characters are usually, "My character is a <race> <class>." Nothing else. The rest of the group refers to this player's characters as cardboard standees, behind the player's back.
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As a GM, I like what ever my players have fun doing.
In my Tatters of the King Campaign, we had multiple 6-8 hour sessions, where the plot of the campaign moved on little more that a page or two. For more than a year, playing once a month for that long, we saw only three combats.
The group got massively into the soap opera aspects for the characters lives, and the low key weirdness that was slowly starting to over take and destroy their characters lives.
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Narrative Imperative:
Does this encounter advance the story? If so then it needs to be played out. If not we can just skip it with a dice roll.
I love RPing and jumping into various character voices, but by the end of an RP encounter something should happen to move the plot forward: A new lead, more information or even just some backstory that will inform player choice in the future.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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I came into this expecting a story about how two players were roleplaying a scene where two characters were flirting and ended up physically making out at the table for an uncomfortable amount of time.
Not a personal experience, but certainly an example of too much roleplay.
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I ran a game where, when players went into the towns and visited shopkeepers, every shopkeeper was someone you could have a chat with, had their own (very brief) background and their own personality.
The players ran with it - they actually thought it was part of the written game to have these characters involved in part of the larger plot, though they weren't.
In the end, this ended up being a pretty significant waste of time. I don't think it really added much to the campaign except for making the world feel more 'real'. That was good, and that was the intention, but not for the amount of real-world campaign time it cost. It easily doubled the amount of time the campaign ran for, which was in the months-to-years range.
I came into this expecting a story about how two players were roleplaying a scene where two characters were flirting and ended up physically making out at the table for an uncomfortable amount of time.
Not a personal experience, but certainly an example of too much roleplay.
wat
Interestingly enough, I find that the 'out of plot' stuff is the stuff that I remember YEARS later.
Who the characters were, the friends they made on their journey, their loves, their losses... All things that had nothing to do with the actual 'written adventure'... but 10 years later when we sit around and laugh and remember the campaigns of years gone by... THOSE are the stories that we talk about.
Well, you know you it was a little too much when roleplay unintentionally turns into foreplay.
I hope to never see a player suddenly make out with a GM, but when passions flare it could happen.
O.O
I played with a player (as well as GM'd for him) for about a decade; a player who is a magnificent roleplayer. But over the past two years or so it began to change course to the point that he was no longer focused on the group story/adventure but instead on mundane "real-life" like concerns; roleplaying situations that have no use for a character sheet.
His Star Wars pilot was just interested in taking vacations on uninhabited planets, sight-seeing, and flirting with random "background" NPCs (while the whole of the party was reliant on his character having the ship, his character being the 'Han Solo' but lacking any impulse to propel the group's adventurous story forward).
His bard PF character was more interested in hanging around his house and playing instruments, entertaining his PC friends, than anything else. His druid character would avoid, at almost all costs, hanging out with the rest of the party when they were in town while focusing on courting a nearby farmer's daughter.
And during this 'descent' time period, OOC, he would express his boredom with adventuring -"because it's all we, as a group of real-world people, ever do"- and then express his non-adventuring desires (though never in a disruptive way and mostly 'off-table').
The flip-side problem was that if he wasn't the center of the GM's attention, then he would talk over player-GM conversations and usually with non-game related content.
So that was an instance of "too much roleplaying" but only because it was so, consistently, off-focus from the group's story line. And ultimately it lead to that player leaving the group (along with some other personality issues between me and him).
But on the other hand... I consistently feel that I fail at roleplaying NPCs, especially tavern owners and bar-maids/lads. Unless a central antagonist, I feel that every tavern owner or bar-maid/lad essentially comes across as identical individuals...and I've yet to make one a central antagonist. So I always feel I have roleplaying aspects to work on an personally make better, especially as a GM.
As a GM, I like what ever my players have fun doing.
In my Tatters of the King Campaign, we had multiple 6-8 hour sessions, where the plot of the campaign moved on little more that a page or two. For more than a year, playing once a month for that long, we saw only three combats.
The group got massively into the soap opera aspects for the characters lives, and the low key weirdness that was slowly starting to over take and destroy their characters lives.
I am actually just about to return to running this game, and I will be shifting the pacing. They have gotten to a point where the campaign picks up speed very quickly, and the focus shifts markedly. What is going to be really interesting is how I can target aspects of the characters lives, that they have invested in so heavily, to heighten the horror of the game.