Roleplaying 101

I'm not certain if this is the right spot to put this in, or if it's highly irregular of me to make this...but I'm doing it anyway. The worst that can happen is I get MEGA-BANNED from the site. Which would be sad, but will save my life in the long run.

I've noticed that there are people on the site who have an academic interest in tabletop roleplaying but for whatever reason don't engage in doing so. I've also noticed that there are people who roleplay far better than I do. So I thought I'd make this thread for new people and people with questions to just ask the experienced people. And hopefully experienced people will answer. This would be just a general question and discussion thread, hopefully not devolving into any specific game system. We have threads for the others. If this sounds like a good idea, please feel free to ask questions! I've got 8 years of gaming experience in various roles and systems and will be happy to help! If you don't think it's a good idea, please just ignore this thread and I'll go hide in a corner until knowledge of it blows over.

Personally, I've always wondered about an attitudes towards playing a character with greater "mental" attributes than oneself, and of the correct way of doing that.

It is generally accepted that, for the character to be a master swordsman, a buff barbarian and so on the players themselves do not have to show skill in fencing or bodybuilder's physique. But some G Ms leave diplomacy, intelligence and similar things solely to the provision of roleplaying and explicitly say that if the player cannot talk their way out of wet tissue bag, figure out complicated plot etc then, well, tough luck.

I've seen some interesting ways of making "mental" attributes meaningful such as giving the players different levels of description depending on their stats (suppose that the information about Baddity Mc Bad and his fashion sense was found out earlier, "These orcs are wearing skull and crossbones amulet" vs. "These orcs are wearing skull and crossbones amulet, symbol of Baddity Mc Bad"). Still, I wonder how people usually handle it.

The same goes for low mental attributes. Whereas a weak and puny character might try to kick the door open, GM might roll some dice and say "no, you can't", a stupid character figuring out a way to prevent complicated trap from functioning is not uncommon, especially when it is intended to be decided not with die roll, but with the player smarts. And it is a bit more difficult to say "no, you can't", as a) G Ms tend to reward player smarts b) even a dim character might occasionally have brilliant ideas.

There are numerous problems inherent in roleplaying characters of a substantially different intelligence than oneself.

One method of dealing with this is if the player thinks of a clever idea, the character needs to make a roll for the appropriate skill (Engineering, Nature, etc.) to see if they could have come up with the idea; if the roll fails, then the idea can't be implemented in-character. This approach can be frustrating for innovative and spontaneous players, but it does prevent the barbarian with an IQ of 65 from inventing an internal combustion engine.

An alternative approach is to allow players to use any ideas they have in-character so long as they aren't totally implausible, but have the players roleplay a lack of intelligence at other times when it would be detrimental to compensate. This is arguably more fun and believable, but the GM has to be able to trust her players to not go overboard with that freedom.

Lastly, if a player gives a particularly rousing speech or comes up with a gem of a tactic, the GM can force the player to roll for their character, but with a good-sized modifier added in. For example, if a player gives a speech to rival the Gettysburg Address, but their character is a shifty rogue with no charisma to speak of, the player might have to roll Diplomacy to see how well the character pulls it off, but with a +4 bonus for a rousing performance. This blended approach is somewhat limiting, but it works well in most games.

I find it far easier to role play my characters who have a low intelligence. About the only times I can RP high intelligence characters is when I go Motor Mouth on different monsters.

From a theoretical stance, roleplaying a character whose intelligence or charisma is greater than your own has always been one part dice and one part roleplay for our group. A player with high charisma may still be required to do the talking, but his die roll and skill bonus would "fill in the gaps" as it were to make what he said come out in the game world as being smooth and coherent and convincing. Likewise, a player with high intelligence may be required to make the initial mental leap, or ask the right question, before the GM would allow him to roll to see how much he knows about the subject. For low scores on those attributes, I discovered a wonderful way to roleplay those out: When the talking starts, take a nap. I actually did this recently with the first straight Fighter I'd played in a while. I realized that I had no relevant knowledge skills and a mediocre intelligence and a terrible charisma, so I let the other characters do the figuring and the negotiating, where normally I'm the one playing the sort of character doing that. It worked for that character due to his pragmatism, but I admit it's not a perfect solution.

From a practical stance, I actually can't say that I've seen the "high intelligence" problem come up that often, both within my gaming group and viewing other games. We had a particular player for whom this was a problem, but he had character ADD so bad it was hard to get a good flow going for what worked and what didn't. The above paragraph was more of a "contingency plan," for when that would happen. Within our group, I noticed that our high intelligence players tended to stick with high intelligence characters. I myself tend to stick with Inquisitor-type characters, as that's where my natural talents really take off. I guess for us it was a particular form of escape to allow us to finally use our talents in a way that the real world wasn't allowing us to.