Players: Why Do You Play?

GM needs to be a good roleplayer. No, scratch that; GM needs to be a fucking amazing roleplayer, because GM has to juggle multiple charries at once. Characters bring a world to life; to show off an interesting world, you need interesting NP Cs. And no, I don't get to know other players better through their characters; through gaming, yes, but not their characters. A good roleplayer, like a good actor, has a sort of doubled mindset; on one hand, they know they aren't their character, but on the other, when they're in character, it's the character doing the thinking and talking, not the player. A good roleplayer should be able to play multiple kinds of characters, not the same character over and over and especially not as "myself but better."

Hey, no worries about the questions; glad I can be of assistance.

The main reason I found P&P stuff intriguing was because of the lore. Really, that's how I get drawn into a lot of stuff. For example, I found the concept of backstabbing rats that use Green Rocks in ways that most people use a hammer to be insanely cool. Which is why I picked up Skaven in Warhammer. As a result, I am very story-driven but I don't want to force that on anyone. Some people much prefer the numbers game in P&P and I respect that. There isn't really a right or wrong way to GM as long as everyone is enjoying themselves. Yeah, you can't please everyone all the time, but you might as well try. Remember: Everyone includes you.

As for carefully laid plans, in a way. One of my major fears of GMing is that I end up railroading everything. Which makes trying to carry out a plan immensely difficult. But it is what it is. Still, I give it my all to try and trick/lure the players into my plans while still giving them the option of saying no to it. Backfires a lot, as you may guess but when it works, it is great fun.

Would I run games without planning? Ehh... That's a question I can't seem to decrypt. I love writing my own stories but I often have difficulties coming up with a full cast, which is why I love roleplaying. Even if people don't really develop their own characters, it gives me a skeleton for me to think about and discover myself. If by planning you mean pre-written adventures, I'd probably wouldn't want to for the reason stated above and because I'd rather not have my players have all the info about the campaign beforehand. If by planning you mean having someone else design stuff like encounters and difficulty checks for non-battle encounters, hell yeah! I mean, I enjoy doing that stuff but I find that I have a hard time figuring out how to do that stuff in a balanced way.

Any more questions? Cuz I'm just getting started.

I'm most interested right now in the subject of roleplaying, because it's such a radically different way to play than my own. To Exelixi and anyone else who can answer this, could you talk more about the relationship between acting and roleplaying, and your own acting career? Why did you start acting? What do you get out out of it? What does it feel like to be in a stage performance? What does improv feel like, and how is it different than scripted acting? You don't have to give your own personal answers here only. If there are interviews with actors or anything else where the process of acting is explained well, feel free to quote from it or link to it.

@Evi: If you can keep this up, I want to know more about the "lore" you've mentioned. Do you use pre existing settings or come up with your own? If you do a lot of your own stuff, what influences do you have? Are you very influenced by books, and if so, from what genre and time period? Do you have any interest in history, and does that influence your worlds? I'm running out of questions to ask you. Is there anything you'd like to bring up that we've skipped over?

I think the "acting" that people have been talking about has been just a comparison with role-playing experience, and not necessary that they are actors themselves.

That said, I actually G Med a game (new Vampire, with a lot of extra homebrew lore added in as it should be) where one of the players is an inspired actor who did acting class and everything (he eventually got a job in a theatre, and then move overseas where there are more acting opportunities available). I can say that the comparison between actual role-play and acting are valid.

edited 17th Feb '13 3:04:03 PM by IraTheSquire

I've often described RPG's to non-gamers as "Skyrim meets improv theater." Acting is certainly a part of it, but the important bit for me isn't necessarily conveying the emotions and actions of your character - it's figuring out what those emotions and actions are. Acting skill definitely helps, but having the ability to put yourself in the mind of your character is far more important. I view it as more of a writing exercise than an acting one. Personally, I love playing on either side of the screen. Acting as a player, however, lets me focus my prep work onto one character, while when I GM I have to spread things out. It's also fun to be the one reacting to what someone else is throwing at you.

I'll throw in some stuff on lore because I like reading this thread!

Over the course of my P&P lifetime, I've played two 'official' settings (Forgotten Realms in 3rd and Sigil/Planescape in 4th) and something like six original settings. Oh, and one pre-built adventure (Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil in 3rd ed. It was filled to the brim with what I can only assume is unintentional hurt). The official ones lasted longer (marginally less work for the DM/DMs).

I've found that even official settings get bent to shape us pretty quickly: in the Realms, we turned Tilverton (a sleepy little village) into a floating city; and in Sigil, we started using Sending Stones as cellphones, which set off what we like to call the iStone craze in the city.

As for original settings, they tend to be things that the DM feels would be interesting, or that they'd want to write (which is important, since they'd be doing most of this anyway).

Just so you guys know, your answers about roleplaying and D Ms making good NP Cs aren't falling on deaf ears. This thread has been making me rethink my style a bit, and right now I'm planning for a Tale of Two Cities type game with much more focus on non player characters than any of my games have had for a while. I probably wouldn't have thought of it if it weren't for this thread. So keep the answers up please. And I'll let you know how my game goes.

Edit: Ran the game and had a blast. My players all got really sick of every NPC having an identical French accent though. Thanks to everyone who mentioned NP Cs. I think if I work on it some more, it will really improve my games.

edited 18th Feb '13 4:04:07 PM by Snout

French accents are the best. Especially if they're hilariously and stereotypically over the top.

I say this because one of our settings was a Fantasy!Europe with low-ish magic and all the core races transplanted in. The campaign itself was focused on Trystia, which was the France-analog. We also had Albion and Germania, and my character's family was from Fantasy!Switzerland, the name for which I can't recall right now.

For obvious reasons, accents were overblown and hilarious and awesome.

Oh gods, accents are the best.

...Oh right, questions.

Lore is a bit iffy for me. I really enjoy taking pre-existing settings and putting my spin on it. Seeing as my main campaign is the Star Wars one I keep going on about, I'll use it as the example. All the planets in the campaign are pre-existing ones and the game takes place after a canonical war. However, after that, all bets are off. I try to avoid having them meet actual characters from the canon so as to avoid inflating or deflating the importance of their task as well as to minimize any major distractions from the plot.

Where do I get my inspiration from? *shrug* I honestly don't know. That is, assuming we aren't talking about individual characters. They tend to be a bizarre combination of occasional historical inspiration, written fiction, video games, and, most importantly and bizarrely, music. Seriously, I have based entire characters off of songs and even throwaway lines from songs and then built up from there. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this, it is just how I get my creative juices going.

Because it's fun!

If you want more acting-y stuff, learn to control your voice. Tone, inflection, and even pitch can impart a lot about a character.

Did my first game of D & D in 1986 or so...I was little and my older brother was into it. Did not get seriously into tabletop until about ten years later. So, about 16-17 years as an actual hobby.

All my friends in high school were into it and if I didn't start I wouldn't have had any clue about the conversation. It was also fun as hell once I started doing it, though I prefer the acting aspect to the die-rolling/number crunching part.

I'll play anything once but I prefer White Wolf products. I used to be a big Shadowrun/Cyberpunk 2020 fan, but Shadowrun's system is all-but-incomprehensible and Cyberpunk 2020 is too dated these days to be anything more than a historical curiosity.

As to style, I'm a story-driven player and GM, all the way. If people aren't interested in staying in-character and putting investment into their characters, count me out. I don't look down on die-rolling number fiends (it's a valid part of the hobby), but count me out.

At first it was because I liked having a creative outlet. Now, I use it as a test bed for character and plot concepts; if the people around me like what I'm doing its probably worth spinning into a novel. If not, well, back to the drawing board.

Getting to act. When I'm G Ming, entertaining my friends. Having moments of high drama. Those great little jokes that only happen with gamers. It's the little stuff, and the big stuff.

It depends entirely on who I am gaming with and what their tolerance level is, but a well-run game with the right group of people can be just as moving as any other medium of storytelling. So, I guess the answer would be "a good deal, but only when appropriate."

Have you tried World systems and things like Fiasco?

edited 3rd Mar '13 2:16:20 AM by IraTheSquire

@Ira: I've never heard of either. I've become somewhat set in my ways. Call me curious, though.

@ drunk: World system is term to describe games derived from the system in Apocalypse World. It's main characteristic is that both players and the GM (called "Master of Ceremony" or MC in this) all have "moves", which are things that players and GM do in order to move the story forwards. This is a good site for ideas of how to hack the World-system (all rolls are 2D6, though my theory is that you can use any combination of dice rolls since the main point is that there's a between a success and a fail where players succeed with a price attached, which moves the story forwards). This gives you a good idea of how a World system works (it's a guide for Dungeon World, which is World system hacked for a Dn D style adventure). IMO it does what World of Darkness wants to do and does it better (as in, it's a narrative-based game that actually has a mechanical system that supports it, as opposed to the complicated ST system susceptible to gamist mini-maxing/munchkining).

Fiasco, on the other hand, is a GM-less, diceless, entirely narrative role-playing game where players play a one-shot story in which the mechanics are designed so that they screw up in the most hilarious fashion.

Fiasco is fucking awesome. It's Coen Brothers: The RPG.

Just in case I needed a reminder as to why I play - I just rolled up a character who can be summed up as "Don Quijote meets Da Orks." This guy flies around on a magic carpet with gatling guns attached to it, wears powered plate armor, and hits people with a steam powered pipe wrench. He projects fields in which the laws of physics throw up their hands in despair and reality itself bends to match his incredibly warped vision of the world.

He is also by far the least broken character in the campaign.

edited 5th Mar '13 4:11:32 AM by KyleJacobs

Let me guess: Genius The Transgression.

Nope.

Amazing. Because you just pretty much described an Unmada.

Hi there. Long time GM/Roleplayer here, about twelve years now. Mostly White Wolf systems, for reference, especially Wraith, Orpheus, Dark Ages: Vampire, and Scion. I started through friends who were hardcore into it.

Personally, I prefer a more relaxed, story-driven style versus the by-the-book, must-roll-dice-for-all-actions types. I've done both as well as a mix of the above, and while I find dice rolling useful, it can become annoyingly frustrating if over-relied on, since the game becomes more about luck than about story. I especially loathe most system combat rules and will simplify them in the systems I use when I GM.

Roleplaying is fun both for the creative and gaming aspects, for the chance to weave epic stories and pull of amazing feats, if at least in your own imagination. And yes, the social aspect is important, too.

I've seen benefits to being both a GM and a PC. As a player, you're free to create a character, participate in adventures, be the hero, and not worry about planning or running things. On the downside, as noted, if you've got a GM/DM/ST who's not very good at keeping everyone involved, you can be in for frustrating waits, especially if the other characters are just sort of farting around and not doing anything story related.

I do admit though, I think I enjoy GMing slightly more. I enjoy creating characters, settings, and plots, and seeing how others work with them. I like watching my players interact with each other and the game, and enjoy seeing how they work together (or not) to figure out plot twists, puzzles, and traps.

I don't really "act", and as Exelixi said, varying your voice helps. Your body posture can also go a long way between differentiating NPCs. A shy character speaks quietly and never looks at anyone. A more outgoing one has a warm voice and gestures often with their hands. A character who gets down to business speaks forcefully and clearly and looks PCs dead in the eye while talking. Not big acting, but enough to make a difference. And if you aren't good with accents, it's better to keep them slight and generalized to keep people from being distracted (vaguely French, vaguely Eastern Europe, vaguely Street, and so on). Not identifying character nationalities helps this, if it applies and you can get away with it, so you don't have PCs focused on why your Russian NPC sounds remarkably Swedish.

ETA: That's the third recommendation I've seen for Fiasco in as many weeks. Resistance broken...must buy.

edited 5th Mar '13 5:00:58 PM by Doryna