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It depends on the players and the GM. Typically my friends and I don't stay 100% in character through an entire session, because we're not there to be actors, we're there to play a game with friends. But we do try to keep in mind "what my character would do" based on the personality we imagine for that character. However, we have had players in our group who never think of their characters as separate individuals; their characters are just stats on a sheet of paper.
The GM also has to encourage that type of roleplaying; if the GM just pushes the PCs from one combat to the next, there probably isn't much opportunity for players to think about what their characters would do beyond choosing their next action.
I can't think of a single player that I've ever known that always stayed in character. Most would only be in character when their PC was interacting with a GM controlled NPC.
Like Terquem said, yes and no. When interacting with an NPC and each other, then yes. But there's lots of "out of character" chatting going on, too.
It takes a lot of investment into a character before I can truly feel like i'm staying in character the whole night. I have to have a rich history to draw from whether that be an in depth back story or just played the character for a long time. I can fall into my oldest characters personality with ease. (I will still occasionally break character to crack wise.)
i know there used to be people that played first ed took some of their role playing to seriously i know, that can go with any hobbie,but do you guys stay in character as you guys play? or try to get into the head of your character
My (very limited) experience is kind of the reverse of that. We didn’t roleplay much in 0E/1E but try to more nowadays, no matter what system we play.
I think it’s more about RPG experience than system - what excites you at first becomes somewhat old hat so you try new ways of playing.
In my perfect world we’d all be in character the entire time (although none of us are very good at roleplaying, I enjoy it more when we try). The rest of the group have different tastes though so we tend to be more focussed on achieving goals than character interactions.
There were a lot of stories about that kind of thing, but all the evidence suggests that suicide rates among D&D players are lower than average; having a group of people to play with reduces loneliness, etc.
Staying mentally in character in a role-playing game is actually pretty hard. I'm not an elf in a fantasy land who goes around killing orcs and getting stabbed all the time, and it's not easy to imagine what that would be like.
i know back when dnd first ed was out and avanced dnd was out some of the bad storys was when a guys character died in a battle he was so invested in a character he commited suicide ( that was the 80s satanic panic thing)
There were a few overly invested opponents to D&D back then. Their tales of RPG culture weren't actually representative of what playing was like.
There was a story of one D&D player who went missing and there were a whole bunch of people who immediately claimed he'd "gone crazy" and wandered off into his town's sewer system thinking it was a dungeon or somesuch. Turned out, his disappearance had nothing to do with D&D - yet the story took hold and got repeatedly reported as "people say...." or "there are stories of...." and other pseudo-journalistic ways of promoting scandal without actually needing sources. (Plus ca change...)
As Matthew pointed out - looking at the evidence at the time showed D&D players were less likely to commit suicide (amongst a whole bunch of other benefits) but actual, evidence-based research never got the airplay of the more sensational anecdotes (no matter how true they turned out to be).
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When I started playing AD&D 1e back in the early 1980s, we role-played first-person sometimes, third-person sometimes, cracked a whole lot of out-of-character jokes, and ate a lot of Doritos.
Kind of like how we play Pathfinder now!
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There was a hell lot LESS time wasted on ‘optimization’ back then, when you saw undead you ran because Restoration was too high a level spell to cast by anyone, even the DM, and by the way what the DM said trumps what your player manual says! And there were none of these gamers that you young ones these day call Girls, and we had to WALK UPHILL to AND from Dungeon in Halfling height snow, and we liked it!
Now geeet OFF MY LAWN!
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Didn't start with 1st ed. but still used to take roleplaying a bit too serious for a time (meaning that I spent a lot more time on RPG stuff than I should have resulting in a major GM Burnout whose effects I still feel today that even affected the other parts of my life).
But no, I never stayed in character all the time, though I try my best to get in their heads. I'm going for kinda what some writers describe for their characters, that those suddenly come to life and make their own decisions that might not be exactly what the writer went for at the start, but to get there you must be intimately familiar with the character. Also the reason why I spend a lot of time for creating a character and often come up with a lot of background for them.
Doesn't stop me from cracking out of character jokes during gameplay sessions.
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I remember hearing DnD players have fewer nightmares. Basically when the giant monster shows up to terroizze you you draw your +5 vorpal sword and prepare to loot the body.
I don't speak in character at the game table, but I always try to stay firmly in my character's head, and act as he would, which is very often not the way I might in the same situation -- I don't always play the same alignment or culture, so clearly I can't always play myself. (And why would I want to? I do that every waking hour as it is.)
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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When I played 1e in middle/high school, we took our roleplaying Super Seriously. 8 hour sessions where we might not even touch dice because we were too busy interacting in character. Taking an entire year to get to level 4. Having the DM decide she was tired of the game and setting her campaign notes and our PC character sheets on fire between games and informing us next time.
We would have loved Vampire the Masquerade if it had been out at the time.
Then I got to college and fell in with a serous optimization and power gaming group. We still roleplayed, but there was a lot more emphasis on effectiveness mechanically.
Nowadays I play with groups who are a lot more casual about such things. We roleplay our characters, but we get distracted, we make out of character jokes, that sort of thing. The point is to have fun.
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I've been playing since 1985. When I play, I try to keep my character's experiences and motivations in mind when making decisions. If that's what you mean by "staying in character," then, yes, I like to stay in character.
I do not maintain that mindset for the entire session. I'm not my character. I just use that mindset when I'm making character decisions.
Also, I don't use voices when I'm playing or GMing. To me, roleplaying doesn't mean acting.
-Skeld