Roleplaying | Running the Game

a good friend of mine Chris Ashton and I were talking about the Last of Us one of the best games I've ever played certainly the best story I've ever encountered in a game and one I thought a lot about I felt like there was real meaning and subtext in there which is normally missing from video game stories even video game stories people really like and hold up as exemplars of the genre one of the things Chris and I enjoyed doing was talking about all these character moments in the game and how we each responded to them close to the end of the game the main character Joel has to attack a hospital to rescue a young girl who's about to be operated on killed by a bunch of doctors you can't get her out of there without hurting anyone but it's hard that's what Chris did he was curious how I got through that scenario and I said without batting an eye I killed every single one of them I just murdered them all immediately Chris freaked out how can you do that these were doctors there was some question I think about how much they knew about what they were doing or they thought they were doing the right thing but the point is they were unarmed doctors and you can meet that scenario without killing them so why did I murder all of them I shrugged because that's what Joel would do that's one of the themes of the game how much of a monster Joel becomes to protect this girl to me that's role playing that's sort of the Platonic ideal of role playing and it didn't require me personally to speak in character or do an accent and I don't think it's meaningfully different than what folks do at the table in a pen and paper RPG I felt like I knew who Joel was I had different ways to solve the problem so I chose to act in the way I thought Joel would very different from how I would act folks online have developed the habit of referring to people speaking in character or doing a voice as role-playing which they deem good and anything else gets labeled metagaming by which they mean bad I feel like I know why this is happening we'll talk about that but I think this attitude is a mistake and it sends the wrong message in fact I think we have several examples in my own games of how you can do an accent and speak in character and have it be pretty low quality role-playing fun fun to watch but not very sophisticated very characterful a gimmick mostly when we start out in the Hobby especially if we start when we're teenagers which as I think the perfect time to get into the game we overwhelmingly tend to play idealized versions of ourselves the person we think we are or wish we were us plus plus it may be somebody very different from you but different in all the ways you wish you were different that's normal it's not something to be worried about or fight against it's fun eventually though if you play enough you may start to get bored of that and branch out into playing other people and this can be a very subtle but transformative experience because it means you start wondering what other people think not what would I do I know what I would do what would Joel do this doesn't happen to everyone I've played with people adults who talk about how they don't like to read fiction because they don't like the experience of thinking someone else's thoughts or feeling their feelings they don't like empathy in other words they consider it weakness that is a real thing real people have told me in person so I don't want to hold up role-playing as somehow virtuous I see that a lot online people for whom D&D is a hobby and moreover a lifestyle I think I can say that's true of me as well but because their identity is wrapped up in it they want to elevate it it's not just fun it makes you a better person gives you empathy cures baldness it leads to democracy yeah I mean for some people sure some people sitting around the table with other people telling stories things can get intense and you can have deeply meaningful revelatory experiences but it is just as likely if not more likely that you'll end up just sitting around rolling dice and fighting dragons and collecting good memories and there are people out there who've been playing all their adult lives who are bigoted venal small-minded bad bad people play this game too and no matter how much they play they don't become good people so I'm not going to tell you that if you play enough you will eventually develop empathy and become a better person and it will change your life but I do think it is possible for one player to be a better role than another and I think someone who is not a great role player can over time get better at it and that's we're gonna talk about and it's gonna have a lot to do with character and mostly what you're going to get is not only my experience as a DM but also as a writer and a player but in order to do all of that we need to define our terms rhetoric 101 let's define our terms because we're all using the same words but we all mean different things and sometimes one person uses the same term to mean different things this is not a bug it is a feature of human language what is role-playing I've thought a lot about this I've been thinking about this on and off for about 30 years and during some of that time I was being paid to think about it that doesn't necessarily mean anything it's very easy for someone to think hard about something for a long time and consistently come up with the wrong answer but I don't want folks to think this is just something I came up with 30 seconds ago personally I use the term role-playing to mean two basic ideas I described them as role-playing lowercase R and role-playing uppercase R lowercase role-playing is making decisions about your character in a game with a persistent world where your character improves based on the decisions you made this is a very broad definition but I think it works because it does what a good definition should it includes all the things we agree are RPGs like D&D and Baldur's Gate and fallout in Skyrim and it excludes all the games we agree aren't RPGs like Super Mario and minecraft and rocket League League of Legends gets close your character doesn't exist in a persistent world the choices you make improve your character only for this match so it's more akin to a sport and minecraft my gear gets better my character never changes role-playing with a capital R I think of as the act of making decisions about what a character would do when that character would do something different than what you would do I know what you would do what would Joel do this is why I think someone who's playing D&D who's just deciding what their character would do is role playing that's role-playing it's not complex it's not sophisticated but as far as I'm concerned that counts it's just role playing with a lowercase R but once you start thinking about what your character would do as distinct from what you would do now your role-playing with a capital R it's more sophisticated is a complex process it requires you to understand the fact that other people are differently motivated than you and think and feel different things from you which I have learned is not something everyone's interested in so those are the two different ways I think about role playing people like to imagine that video game RPGs are in all ways lower quality role playing from tabletop games but I think for a lot of players especially new players the act of pushing around their little 3d model in a persistent world and making choices and leveling up and dialogue trees is not meaningfully different from pushing lead and deciding how their character is going to react to this NPC it's all role-playing just with a lowercase R which is fine if we accept that there is lowercase role-playing an uppercase role playing an uppercase role playing is more sophisticated and more meaningful how do we get from lowercase to uppercase how do we become better role players well I think the first and most obvious thing we need to talk about is character what makes a good character and once we know that how do we play them just like I think there's two flavors of role-playing lowercase and uppercase there are basically two kinds of characters one dimensional and three dimensional actually I guess there's a third and that's zero dimensional no character in fact I think that's pretty common there are lots of people playing zero dimensional characters they know what their character looks like they know their stats their class and ancestry and their name and that's it when you ask that player how their character reacts to something they don't know they shrug I don't know maybe they come up with something in order to please you but it's basically random they crack jokes but you're never really sure if it's them joking or their character maybe playing this character gives them license to be lewd or casually misanthropic in a way they couldn't get away with at school or work or whatever but none of that amounts to a character there's no consistency that's what folks pejoratively referred to as role-playing meaning all you're doing is rolling dice you're not playing a role we used to call this hack and slash role-playing those people are still having fun and there are whole tables out there full of those players who are not particularly interested in being told they're doing it wrong and I'm not going to tell them that if that's your style of play knock yourself out I worked with an art a while ago we became good friends and I really felt like we had similar experiences in the hobby growing up then his mom cleaning out their old house finds his copy of this game Warhammer Quest and sends it to him I had never heard of this and so he busts it out excited to show it to me it was basically descent or gloom Haven from 30 years ago it's actually one of the first dungeon crawling board games which is to say D&D without a dungeon master there are four characters you pick one you explore a randomly generated dungeon kill stuff get loot level up explore the next randomly generated dungeon no plot no meaning I thought it was neat and he smiled and said once this game came out my friends and I stopped playing D&D this was all we wanted wow that that blew me away it meant he and I were very different even when I was 16 I recognize that D&D could be a powerful dramatic tool but some people just want to roll dice kill zombies and level up zombie side very popular game but like Warhammer Quest or descent or gloom Haven full of zero-dimensional characters just stats and art that's a zero dimensional character or no character often their players are audience members they like your campaign and the adventure you are weaving but they are passive consumers of it still having fun I love some of these games but I never think what would my character do when I'm playing them so the first step in moving past no dimensions is to give your character one dimension a one dimensional character is just a character trait you know the Seven Dwarfs this character is always cheerful this character is shy this character is cynical this is not always a bad thing a lot of sidekicks in stories are basically one-dimensional and that's fine they're not the main character a lot of stories you have some Greek chorus character whose job is to contextualize the story for the audience they're not the hero they're the point of view character who is usually freaking out in panicking and asking all the questions the audience would ask so the hero can explain everything and look smart in that context to being the panicky coward very one-dimensional is fine that's not a bad character it's appropriate in that context and even with only a single character trait you can do some amazing stuff some great characters are perfectly one-dimensional and no problem Darth Vader is a suit and and if you see any scene with him in the first two Star Wars movies you've seen every scene with him great character Heath Ledger's Joker is just an agent of chaos he never experiences doubt or fear he's never anything other than what we see the first time we meet him and I think he's the greatest movie villain of all time I do not think he will ever be topped maybe a better way of saying this is that a one-dimensional character is defined by their one character trait they don't grow they don't change the always cheerful character might have moments when they're not cheerful but those moments are important because it's a deviation the always cheerful character might experience a moment of sadness but that's just something the writer is doing to give a moment meaning let the audience know look how important this is the always cheerful character just got serious for a second but then after that it's back to being always cheerful we see this in a lot of kids movies it's still just one dimension though one-dimensional characters often don't have once they have no motivation except escape survive maybe like revenge they shot John Wick's dog he's gonna kill everyone there's no subtext to that it's all surface he doesn't learn anything he doesn't grow a lot of classic action heroes Marty McFly Indiana Jones John wick they don't grow they don't change unless maybe they get to a third movie that's the defining element of a one-dimensional character they are nothing other than what we see on the surface and for a lot of fiction certainly a lot of RPG characters that's fine easy to play but limiting we'll talk about that in a minute a one-dimensional character can have an accent it can have a flamboyant entertaining personality but that doesn't mean they have depth a lot of the characters we see on D&D streams seem one-dimensional to me including streams I've been on including my own characters Morag my character and Phil's game is fun to play fun to watch if the comments we got are any indication Morag East nor Dagmar all fun to play fun to watch but none of them are complex characters they don't even really talk to each other they bark barks are those exclamations video game characters make when you walk past them typically one line long not back and forth those exclamations can be character form they can be informative but they lack substance and meaning I watched Tom playing Dagmar struggle because he'd committed to this idea that his character was basically dwarf Quint but there were times when he wanted to express an idea in character and couldn't figure out how Quint would do it doing the voice very entertaining often limiting you start to get into what I consider depth and meaning once you have a three-dimensional character a three-dimensional character experiences doubt has self-awareness a three-dimensional character thinks things they do not say when a three-dimensional character acts that action often comes out of an internal struggle a three-dimensional character holds conflicting values I must overcome that conflict make a decision and act just like a good campaign has a central conflict through which we create drama a three-dimensional character has an inner conflict which lets us create drama with just that one character I want to do this but I can't do that this self-reflection capacity for doubt internal unspoken monologue and inner conflict makes a three-dimensional character real real people hold conflicting opinions they doubt they struggle that realness is what gives a three-dimensional characters struggle meaning it's what lifts fiction into art because we watching these other people learn something about ourselves and this is the point of art Morag not a three-dimensional character she has a backstory there's a reason she behaves the way she does and wants the things she wants but she's just a cackle yeast noir is just an accent and a catchphrase but yeah contrast this with Marcellus Scipio an npc in the chain of a cron game Marcellus is a young man he's probably 20 or 21 he's the scion of a noble family studying at a prestigious university abroad any plans to have a good time doing it he's been grandfathered literally into a secret society the Sapphire sky they are a good organization and he's incredibly proud to belong and continue the family tradition but he's also a huge fan of the chain of Acheron he idolizes them the way you might follow a sports team it was Marcellus ah's idea for the Sapphire sky to use these mercenaries to help them stop Ajax the villain of my campaign at one point Marcellus watched Tom's character boots the chain of Akron's lieutenant debrief a commander of the Sapphire sky on everything that's been going on in ring well and up all these proper nouns overwhelming because you haven't been following my campaign I do not blame you just stick around it's about to make sense boots basically told the Sapphire sky everything watching this Marcellus thought this is a mistake if he keeps this up boots will eventually tell my commander something I don't know what that will pit us the Sapphire sky against the chain of Akron the reason we're using them is because they can do awful things we could never do they can't tell us everything this created an internal conflict within Marcellus he likes the chain that he belongs to the Sapphire sky he cannot serve two masters so on their way back in a moment alone Marcellus stops boots and says be careful how much you tell the vile silencer and I guess that goes for me too it was just a moment two sentences but I thought that was high-quality role-playing he was telling boots we are alike and we like each other but we are not the same we work for two very different organizations that are only temporarily aligned if you tell me everything you may say something that I have to tell my Master's about I was taking Marcellus as internal conflict and contextualizing it in dialogue that wasn't something I planned on or wrote down I just made it up I thought it was what Marcellus would say I knew who Marcellus Scipio was I knew what motivated him because he's a man of honor he tells boots maybe keep some stuff to yourself the stuff we might have to use against you if circumstances change I wasn't doing an accent or any particular manner or mode of speech it wasn't anything particularly flashing or entertaining but it had meaning it felt real I don't think role-playing gets much better than that it even had subtext so hopefully we've gotten this far without anybody feeling attacked I don't think there's anything wrong with a zero-dimensional character no character if that's your style of play a one-dimensional character with a single character trait and maybe a voice you can do is fun very flashy very entertaining for an audience nothing wrong with that my own character Morag is that but less flashy more meaningful is the three-dimensional character how do we get there how do we get from a voice and an attitude to meaning and subtext well we think about motivation when folks want to make fun of acting and how pretentious an actor can be they say what's my motivation and so that phrase passed into our cultural lexicon as an absurdity but this is a critical tool anyone can use when making a character as a writer it's something I think about all the time what does this character want what does the protagonist what it's a critical tool in understanding our characters enough to inhabit them and roleplay them in my first novel the main character starts the book by repeatedly turning down an assignment until something in his life changes he rescues a young girl he didn't expect to I was as surprised as he was and he finds himself saying yes to this job because he doesn't want to disappoint her that's his motivation he's not just living for himself anymore when he was he wasn't really living he's seeing himself through someone else's eyes and he's at a stage in his life where other men are fathers and now there's a young girl depending on him and he wants to be a role model for her he's not even really able to articulate it he doesn't understand why he's doing what he's doing at one point he gets close to it he says I don't want to disappoint but then he backs away from it he's afraid of the responsibility and literally can't finish the sentence he just says anyone even he doesn't know what he means I didn't spend hours on that line I just wrote it in the moment I felt it I felt like this is what Hayden would say I felt like he wouldn't really know why he was doing this he doesn't understand his own motivation was what I was doing as a writer any different than what we do as role players was it any different than what I did with Marcela Scipio this is what I mean when I say I can just be this character I can invent their reaction to almost anything what I'm really saying is I know what motivates them there's more to character than that something characters are meek some are aggressive some are clever some are dull some are funny some are serious but often not always often those characteristics come out of their motivation what motivates Frodo well he wants to destroy the ring that's pretty clear it's a good motivation for the Lord of the Rings since that entire series is about the ring and this can be a fine motivation for a player character in a game where the entire thing is about the MacGuffin there's a danger though that if you pick a motivation like that it might resolve before the end of the campaign I want to find my father okay what are you gonna do if that happens when you're third level now what you might have another six levels play left in the game but if your GM agrees that your game is going to be about finding your father you know Apocalypse Now into the jungle find Colonel Kurtz that's a tremendous hook for an adventurer maybe even a short campaign then that's a perfectly fine motivation I think Frodo's motivation is deeper than just destroy the ring this is what writers and critics mean by subtext there's what he's saying destroy the ring but then there's what he's talking about the why what's the real underlying unspoken motivation why does he want to destroy the ring well I think it's because he wants to go back to the way things were before he wants to go back to before the birthday party when Bilbo was still around that was an e Zdenek existence remember the Tom Bombadil video back then he lived an idyllic life no knowledge of good or evil or life or death the world of opposites was outside the Shire even time seemed suspended Bilbo thanks to the ring never seemed to age that's the subtext of course he wants to return to that time and while he never says I am doing this because I hope we could all go back to the Shire and the way things were he knows that's not possible but he routinely goes back to Bilbo in his mind because Bilbo represents that identic past then after what is almost literally a soul destroying experience he succeeds the ring is destroyed now what well he discovers he can't go home I mean he can literally return to the Shire but he can't live there he can't be there and if he can't be there he can't be anywhere he could no longer function as a person he can't relate to people no one can relate to him and there isn't one thing one moment that caused Frodo to feel that way he was ground down relentlessly over weeks and months just like the soldiers at the Somme or Verdun or any one of a hundred battles between 1914 and 1918 so in the end he well he leaves the world in a very genteel manner Tolkien a Catholic allows Frodo to check out to journey into the West and arrived in Valinor which isn't technically heaven but it's close enough that's that's remarkable Tolkien is saying to all his friends and college all the kids he went to war with and who came back unable to function it's ok I get it some things can't be endured that is a hell of a motivation great for us as authors the character who is driven to accomplish a task that will destroy him in the process and toward the end he realizes that he won't survive even if he succeeds all he's doing is giving everyone else a chance to go back to a normal life great motivation great character art so we have the motivation spoken clearly destroy the ring and the subtext the meaning never spoken because I want to go back to the way things were what's Luke Skywalker his motivation and is there an unspoken subtext well he wants to get off this rock and see the world at face value that's his motivation but given the chance he says no he rejects the quest you know we object to the player who rejects the quest and that's reasonable we got a game to play what are you doing but rejecting the quest is classic storytelling I think it's perfectly reasonable for your character to reject the quest for a reason I can't go rescue the blacksmith's children I've got a sick grandmother to care for all right well the goblins just burned down your grandmother's house on their way out of town now what that's that's extreme but you get the idea a character who can give the GM a reason why they can't go and it needs to be a certain kind of reason it needs to be solvable that's perfectly good storytelling Luke rejects the quest because he has responsibility and this is one of the things that makes him a hero he wants to do the right thing he can't just break his promise to his uncle and his aunt and abandon them he's honorable and responsible so we approve he's fulfilling his societal obligations and we approve of that but gosh we also wanted to go on the adventure don't we so George Lucas roasts his aunt and uncle and shows Luke they're smoking corpses and says now what we wanted Luke to go on the adventure but we didn't want him to do it for abstract or callous reasons I want to see the galaxy that's shallow I want to stop the Empire that's abstract but those stormtroopers killed my surrogate parents and I saw their smoking corpses now it's personal now Luke is well motivated and now we are allowed to approve of him going on the quest what motivates Luke well he wants to save the princess remember the video on verbs destroy the ring save the princess great motivations but why does Luke want to save the princess what is the subtext he feels but never says maybe never even really thinks to himself because she represents everything Tatooine is not he wants to get off this rock he wants to see the galaxy he wants to be a pilot like Biggs the cool kid he wants to join the rebellion fight the Empire he wants to matter that's what this all boils down to he wants to matter he wants to make a difference and more he wants to be seen making a difference he wants people to know he made a difference he wants glory he never says it he never says I want to save the galaxy and have the princess of the universe pin a medal on me and maybe wink at me in a sufficiently chaste but yet suggestive manner it would be extreme hubris to say that and then we wouldn't like him anymore but that's what he gets that's literally what he gets and when you sum up all the language Luke uses about how far away his farm is from everything interesting how he hates the Empire wants to join the rebellion wants to be a pilot that's what it all boils down to he wants what lots of kids who signed up for World War one and World War two wanted glory he wants to come back with medals pinned on him war is now seen as apocalyptic but for most of human history it was seen as a great adventure this is now no longer fashionable we no longer used this language but I bet there are still tons of kids everywhere who feel like wherever they grew up is nowhere and if they stay there'll be nothing and they want to go somewhere because if they do they'll be somebody they want to matter Luke wants to go and come back a man too Luke this is probably what manhood is about obi-wan is just a sweet old man until Luke finds out he used to be Toshiro Mifune a badass warrior samurai general you fought in the Clone Wars now what we want is someone a man an adult someone to look up to great motivation I want to get out of this dead-end backwater village and I want to save a beautiful dragon from a ravening princess the unspoken subtext I want to matter I want to be someone I don't want to spend 70 years precipitating water vapor out of the atmosphere I want people to know who I am great motivation for a hero that's one of the first things you learn in a screenwriting class you start off doing scene work and your teacher says this is good but have you done your subtext work by which they mean they're arguing about how he didn't get the groceries on the way home but the unspoken subtext is she hasn't been able to find a job and she feels useless we now have some language we can use to talk about different character and different degrees of role-playing we have role-playing with a lowercase R in which we're just making choices for our character we have role-playing with an uppercase R where those choices are different than what we would do which requires understanding that the character we're playing is a different person we have zero dimensional characters who are just a name and a look and a collection of stats and we have one dimensional characters with a personality trait and maybe a fun voice to do and we have three-dimensional characters with motivation and subtext and inner conflict who seem real and whose choices have meaning and well none of these are bad and each of them is appropriate for some groups and some players at different times there are definitely DMS out there who wish their players would do the voice or who wish their players would do their subtext work and what they say is I wish my players would roleplay more or at all well I think they probably are already role-playing you wish their role-playing had more character and meaning this is always dangerous to me because it smacks of I wish my players would stop having fun their way and have fun the way I want them to but if you want to roleplay better it starts with understanding your character's motivation which we just talked about what does the character want motivation and why do they want it subtext obviously backstory can help here but that's a subject so complex it deserves its own video apart from developing motivation and subtext what can we as Dungeon Master's do to encourage our players to roleplay more well there are some tricks that can work as long as we remember that the player may be perfectly happy playing the way they are and not want to do any more the most simple thing you can do is ask your players how their character reacts to something players especially new players are often passive it's a new situation and a new game and maybe with new friends it's up to us to coax them out of their shell so just ask them don't say how do you react to that say how does yeast Noire or Morag react to that players often have a more sophisticated idea of their character than they are able to play very common making a cool character with a backstory in a motivation but not being a good enough role player to pull it off what can be done well if you know the motivation of your players character you can ask what does your character do in a pointed way a player describes their character as being concerned with justice and doing the right thing and someone may be an NPC maybe another PC is doing something unjust if you the DM don't do something this player is just gonna sit there and do nothing they said their character is concerned with justice and doing the right thing but they're not a very good role player they don't speak up and they believe if they do nothing the scenario will resolve itself don't let them turn to the player and say is raggedy going to stand by and let this happen maybe the player uses that opportunity to speak in character maybe not but I bet they will say no I'm not gonna stand by and let this happen at that point who knows what happens next maybe conflict maybe the player will check it out but for a moment they were thinking in terms of what their character would do and that's how it starts we always tend to say you when we mean your character but calling out a PC by name can be a very effective way to remind your players they are not their characters that's why I write down every player and their character's name on a piece of paper even when I'm a player so I can call out their character's name when it's their turn simple thing makes a difference sometimes I challenge my players when they tell me how their character is going to react to something if I know or believe that this is the player speaking and their character would never do that I don't say no your character would not do that I say okay that's what you would do what would your character do and actually I use their proper names that's what Matt would do what would Morag do using those names makes it personal and specific and sometimes it works another very effective way to get your players out of their shell and maybe get them role playing more is to create an encounter that is literally just a conversation maybe encounter is the wrong word for it how about interlude early in the chain of a cron game I read Phil's characters backstory and came up with an encounter just for sweet sweet was a boxer the local crime boss ordered him to lose a match and he rebelled the crime boss was going to kill him so he had to leave town that's why he joined the chain it's now years later he's the commander he's on a boat crossing the bail sea one of the sailors recognizes him from his days as a boxer this NPC Jasper I think his name was just wanted to talk to sweet no trick no hook just hey I remember you we boxed on the same card that's why I say let's call it an interlude an encounter has conflict let's have some language for those scenes that are just opportunities for character development you might even say this is just an interlude it's not an encounter so the player relaxes and isn't waiting for the trick let it just be a moment between these two characters and see what happens I spent my prep time thinking of questions Jasper would ask the trick to an interlude like this is asking questions that don't have a yes-or-no answer why did you leave town back then why did you join the chain what do you miss about your life back then what are you gonna do next I mean after commanding the chain asking yes or no questions is okay but they don't usually lead to conversation introspection but they can be useful just to get the player talking and go ahead and have this NPC ask questions you already know the answer to remember the NPC doesn't know everything and just getting the player to describe the things you both know in character can be great role-playing it also helps your players roleplay more if you put them in situations that can't be solved by fighting a good aligned NPC has some critical piece of information the heroes need but this NPC doesn't trust the heroes or has a good reason to dislike them now what the heroes have to convince this NPC to share their information that's when you really see who these characters are what are you going to say to get this NPC to cooperate no you can't just make a role you have to tell me what your character says and if it's good you'll get advantage on the role don't punish them for not role-playing reward them for role-playing I know the trick I use and it works a lot is when a player asks me a question out of character I answer in character you can see sometimes the player doesn't like this they don't want the burden of responding in character but I don't let them off the hook if we're gonna have this conversation it's gonna be between two characters I even do this when the players are debating what to do they're speaking out of character but I have an NPC react in character the players often objective hang on we weren't speaking in character and then I remind them but your characters have to communicate to each other somehow they're not telepathic however you're saying this this NPC can hear it and has a reaction my players usually put up with all this I am persuading them to react in character but if I can tell they're not having fun I lay off this isn't a science it's an art and you have to pay attention to your players and gauge their reaction as I've said before role playing speaking in character is a style of play it's not for everyone there are ways to get a character to be a better role player but being a better role player doesn't make you a better player me personally my favorite players are the ones who treat the world like a real place they take it seriously they take notes and when there's a problem to solve they don't just look at their character sheet they think about who they've met and what they've learned maybe we can get that wizard we met before to help us that is my favorite player someone who does the voice that can make it fun for everybody but for me it's just a stylistic choice I don't think wow that accent makes him a better player however there are people who think that way there will always be people who want to play but can't maybe they don't have time maybe they don't know anyone who plays or maybe they're surrounded by people who think nerd stuff is dumb that happens before twitch those people would buy the books and read them and talk about them online there's no way to know but I personally think the number of people who want to play but can't so they buy the books read them and talk about the online is larger than the pool of people actually playing in fact I think historically going back to the 80s a lot of online RPG communities were populated by people who wanted to play but couldn't and forums and bulletin boards were how they scratch that itch now they watch people streaming this is much better than just reading the RPG books and imagining what the game might be like you can actually watch people playing and if the people are fun and charismatic you will like them and you will feel like you are at the table with them and this is a pretty good substitute for not being able to play the problem I've noticed with this is the audience has different goals and either the players or the DM and those goals are sometimes in opposition with the players the audience will always primarily want to be entertained that should not be a controversial statement the players want to have fun entertainment is passive it's something you consume like a movie or a book fun is active it's something you do so naturally the audience prefers situations that are more entertaining players prefer situations that are more fun sometimes watching people have fun is entertaining sometimes it's not because the player who does the voice is more entertaining the audience values them more than the player who does not do the voice but is merely having fun and because playing a three-dimensional character doesn't require you to do the voice just be the character and know how they would react no their motivation and subtext the audience starts to value simple one-dimensional characters over complex three-dimensional characters and is that even a little surprising most box-office smash hits including some of my favorite movies are all one-dimensional characters all surface the real gut punch movies that make you think about what it means to be a human being they might win awards but do they come out on top of the box office this perfectly natural reaction the audience prefers being entertained becomes a problem when the audience goes online to talk about what they like and then the community online begins to conclude that doing the voice is role playing and everything else is metagaming that I do not consider doing the voice particularly high quality role playing even when I'm doing it more AG fun to play fun for the audience nowhere near as complex as Marcellus Scipio I'm playing Marcellus I'm not doing an accent his demeanor doesn't change much from mine but he is very different from me he's done outrageous character like Morag but he's an actual person much less flashy less interesting to an audience but harder to play and more satisfying last week Lars who was very much not a flashy player spent like an hour by the clock wrestling with what King would do I had put him in an impossible situation the night of the falling star had to be killed but killing her would bring the whole city down on them conflict and then there was the subtext King is the commander of the chain it's his responsibility to do what's best for the chain but he's also the neutral good priest of a neutral good god and when push came to shove he could not issue the order and have the knight killed the chain are mercenaries they have no morality the reason the Sapphire sky teamed up with them is because the chain can do awful things that been explicitly goods secret order would never do and when it came down to it King punted he did the ethical thing but he thinks a better commander would have done the bloody awful evil convenient thing and the chain would be better for it if a random person had tuned into that moment they would not have been impressed they probably wouldn't have noticed anything was going on nothing flashy was happening Slim is a much more flamboyant interesting character but King is a real person we're very lucky with our community they do pick up on stuff like this but we still get people many fewer now that everything's calmed down who comment on YouTube saying and this is a quote I have no business being a DM if I'm not a trained actor we even get people commenting that the players should all go take improv classes why how did these people come to this absurd conclusion because they are audience members who want to be entertained we've entered a realm where and I think this is dangerous where if people aren't speaking in character all the time including when they're talking to the DM which is pretty weird if they try to solve problems out of character which should be normal some audience members rebel the audience want to see Morag solve the problem not Matt Koval so I've seen I've been on streams where the players are basically always doing the voice even when they're just talking to the DM asking for clarification the player is asking not the character but the player is doing the voice for the audience this is way more entertaining do the voice all the time but those audience members are also part of the online community and so now we have normal nerds trying to get into the game and they go online and they read these discussions and they conclude because they're new and they don't know any better that only doing the voice is role-playing that is a dangerous message even doing the voice is good role-playing is a bad message I think doing the voice is often a gimmick if you're making decisions about your character that's role-playing if your characters decisions are different from what you would do that's role-playing with a capital R if that character experiences doubt and has inner conflict with motivation and subtext that is high quality role playing no voice required doing the voice all the time I get it it's hard to get the accent right and it's harder if you were switching back and forth from the accent to your normal voice so it's easier to just never drop the accent but it's weird because I'm here to play D&D with you my friend because I like you you are fun to hang out with I want to play D&D with you I do not want to play D&D with your character that is weird I have played in games where I like everyone at the table but as soon as the game started everyone was doing the voice even when they were talking out of character and I could tell that me just being me just not being in character all the time was disruptive okay that's your table I don't want to change it you folks have fun you're gonna have to have fun without me because I want to hang out with you and play D&D with you not your character a little character is great just like some tactical combat is great but all tactical combat would be I couldn't even do it both have their place again if the folks at your table like to get into character and do the voice the whole time that's fantastic I have seen amazing stuff happen in that environment I'm not saying it's bad it's not bad although I think it is sometimes gimmicky but the audience deciding that doing the voice is best leads very quickly to the community deciding only doing the voice is real and that's wrong you're telling people if you enjoy playing any other way you're wrong that's not real role playing that's metagaming it's not metagaming metagaming is using knowledge your character wouldn't have to gain an unrealistic or unfair advantage it's not speaking out of character I have to say this because of the growing consensus that meta gaming is any gaming that isn't in character we can't let the audience decide that what they find entertaining to watch is the best way to play no it may make the best stream sure completely agree but at your table the audience doesn't matter the players matter there's another problem if we reject players planning out of character if we label that meta gaming and require them to always speak and plan in character then I think we lose some of the most dramatic moments which are both fun and entertaining players need to be able to plan and argue out of character because one of the things they're arguing about is what their character would do what is the truth in this moment taking time to figure that out leads to dramatic outcomes think about it even TV shows which are produced on pretty grueling schedules they spend at least a month on each script often several writers work on it movies they work on the script for years we played D&D for three or four hours we are expected to improvise our reactions because we believe in this game as a kind of storytelling exercise but stories are dramatic if we want dramatic outcomes we have to give the players time you are the author of your campaign you spend hours each week setting up the central tension of the neck session but likewise your players are the authors of their characters they must also be given time to invent author edit their responses otherwise you lose a lot of drama imagine how much less dramatic your favorite show would be if they had to improvise the whole thing it's the reason I don't really like improv I cringe and come away thinking it needs a rewrite so I deliberately gave Lars and the rest of the players a week to basically write that scene between them and the night of the falling star and it worked if we had kept playing without that week it would have immediately gone to combat but they spent the week arguing and talking and these are exactly the same things writers would do they talked about what was good for the chain what was good for the mission what their characters would do and this is very like writers talking about what's good for the episode versus what's good for the character what's dramatic versus keeping the pacing flowing and the result was something extraordinary game-changing probably we haven't yet seen the repercussions but stay tuned people are gonna watch this video and not get this far and go online and say Matt the writer wants us to stop being actors and be writers no that is that is very much not what I'm saying I'm saying we need both and none of it giving players time to figure out what their character would do leads to drama knowing your character's motivation and subtext so you can improvise their reaction leads to drama and just sitting around playing rolling dice and killing zombies is fun let's have all three you don't need to do the voice it's neat it's flashy but it's not the same as actually digging down and knowing your character and just being that person in fact I often think doing the voice substitutes for the hard work of knowing your character and improv doesn't only mean inventing dialogue on the fly it also means inventing a solution to a problem on the fly some of the best advice I've given it's changed people's games is that it's okay not to know how your players are going to get out of a situation it's not your job to get them out of the situation it's their job it's your job to listen and be open to good or interesting ideas don't be afraid to say no but also say yes when it's time to say yes I routinely put my players right in the middle of the no-win scenario no idea how they'll get out and they pull a rabbit out of their hat and everyone at the table is amazed including them including me and the only thing I did was sit back and give them to argue and plan it's one the most astonishing things that can happen at the table and it is the definition of improv the players made all that up all I did was say yeah that makes sense could fail though give me a roll that's improv that's role-playing that's it folks this was the role-playing video we covered a lot of ground I wanted to make a video that would encourage the folks who want to roleplay more and give them good and useful tools to help them out but I also want to make a video for everyone who feels pressured to play in a way they're not comfortable with we talked about role-playing with lowercase R just deciding what your character would do and role-playing with an uppercase R making decisions for a character are very different from you we talked about character and motivation and subtext about zero-dimensional characters who are just a name and a look at a page of stats and one-dimensional characters who have some personality and three-dimensional characters who are complex and an inner conflict we talked about ways to get your players to roleplay ask them what their character would do ask them if their character is going to stand by and do nothing we talked about answering in character when a player asks out of character we talked about creating interludes where PC and an NPC just have a conversation and creating scenarios where the players have to solve a problem without fighting hopefully in there somewhere was some advice you find useful when I was starting out in this hobby I was 15 and already very into the whole acting thing and my DMS would often reward me with magic items and titles and whatnot my friends objected saying it wasn't fair they were playing the way they liked I was playing the way I liked why was only I being rewarded they were right my friend Dave miles was right 100% it made me a better DM it also ended up getting his character and our party in the entire campaign into an apocalypse but that's the story for another video thanks for watching everyone the Kickstarter for kingdoms organizations and warfare goes live soon if you don't wanna miss it there's a link in the dooblydoo to get an alert if you like this video and you want to get an alert when new videos go up hit the bell icon down there I post my session notes each week on our patreon for folks at the $5 level and above we have a store with a dope shirt in it and quite a good book I think you're like we play D&D live every Wednesday night links for all this in the doobly-doo I hope to see you there 7:00 Pacific until next time peace out

Channel: Matthew Colville

Views: 778,872

Keywords: Matt Colville, Matthew Colville, Dungeons and Dragons, D&D, Dungeons & Dragons, Running the Game, Running D&D, Worldbuilding, Playing D&D, Playing Dungeons and Dragons, roleplaying

Id: 7YCVHnItKuY

Length: 46min 40sec (2800 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 31 2019