Title. Friend group and I play regularly but most of us are bad at the role playing part of it to the point where it’s hard to tell when the player or the character are speaking in some scenes. Conversations are stiff. We can’t use too heavily modified voices because we’re playing remotely. My character is about to die (probably!) so help me pick a character or trait of my new character that someone not comfortable roleplaying can stick to without feeling weird about it!
3rd person caveman/toddler speech
Grog lift big thing!
To go along with this, play as a low INT barbarian or fighter, who’s focus is mostly just wanting to smash things.
My suggestion is to avoid any cringey back story. Seems like all characters have some edgy drama they center on. Instead, have a really boring backstory like you’re a retiree who is just looking to pass the time. Something you can kinda chuckle at to break the tension with having to roleplay.
Or, if you have to have an elaborate backstory here is one I’ve used: your character’s mind broke after whatever happened (like old age) and they believe they have made a pact granting them warlock powers. They don’t have those powers and are just going batty, so just work it out with the dm where you “cast” hexblade but just do a normal attack. So you’re just a fighter really but you’ll be pretending you aren’t with the other players.
I have a guy in my group who is unashamedly a power gamer (which is fine by me, he still will participate in all pillars of play; he just always prioritizes mechanical power). His PCs consistently have some edgy loner backstory. I honestly think it’s because he doesn’t prioritize backstory when creating characters, instead trying to come up with a backstory which justifies all of the mechanical things he wants his character to have. The thing is, I’ve seen him RP fun or interesting character ideas for like one-shots, but for longer campaigns he always reverts to the safety blanket of an edgelord.
Recently he was rolling up a new character, and after he gave me the character sheet, it inevitably had some edgy loner backstory where the only details were things that explained his class, background, and proficiencies. So I politely suggested we workshop the backstory under the guise of working in some details relevant to the campaign. What I then did was talk him through his character’s whole backstory from childhood through to adulthood giving him an opportunity to think through the backstory one step at a time, occasionally prompting what might be choices his character would’ve had to make at different points in his life.
The result of this was that he actually had to think about his character’s backstory and it ended up being a way more interesting character concept.
That’s what I did - I had a firbolg rogue and his entire method of “stealth” was just being so unassuming that nobody really looked twice at him.
Lots of great tips here, but one that works pretty well for my group, is to think of myself less as an actor playing a character, and more like a narrator. Which is to say, I’ll often describe the actions and/or thought process of my character before saying what I think they’ll say (in my normal voice).
This is easiest for mages since cantrips like Prestidigitation become powerful roleplaying tools, but even something like holding a Fire Bolt in the air over the person you’re trying to intimidate can have an interesting affect on the mood of the scene.
Your comment made me realise that this was a key part of my development as a roleplayer - I played a Kenku for a small campaign and I had decided to lean into the mimicry aspect of Kenkus and build myself a phrasebook over the course of the campaign.
This meant that there were many times that I wanted to say something, but the words I had at my disposal either weren’t quite right or not there at all. If I wanted to express my character properly, I needed to describe body language and actions more.
I’ve only done a little time as a DM, but myself and all of my players were diversly nuerodivergent.
Some of them just did not have a performative bone in their body and I considered making or buying some kind of button that simply lights up while holding it down, as a visual indicator that they’re speaking as their character.
Probably not for everyone, but seemed helpful to a couple of people.
I can’t speak to the neurological state of my last group, but we had a lot of people new to TTRPGs, so we had similar issues.
We house ruled that making a gesture over your head meant it was OOC.
This was to help separate thinking outloud as a player, from something involving the character. It had become an issue for one of our players with a low int score, lol.
If you’re using cameras, you could just use a prop to visually separate you from your character. Glasses/monocle, cigarette/pipe, an eyepatch you can flip up or down, etc.
The act of deploying the prop would also help as a reminder to use whatever affectations you might want to when speaking too. When you want to go back to speaking OOC, you can just put the prop down.
There’s always a Vow of Silence, more facial expressions and gesticulating than funny voices.
Totally would if we were in person or on camera!
Not even on camera?!? Are you playing DnD or being catfished?
I know them outside of d&d
Can you truly know a person… but sure, I may not have been being wholly serious.
Generosity. Unyielding unflinching generosity. Giving the other NPCs and PCs the attention they need.
You can also look for ideas in books like Hillfolk (has ideas on how a “dramatic pole” can help, i.e. being torn between two conflicting values like home life vs work) or Play Unsafe (such as playing with status, being a noble or a servant). Play Unsafe also has the wonderful tip to not be afraid to be boring or obvious when improvising, to say the first thing that comes to mind as opposed to trying to force a creative or unique idea, because what you think is gonna be boring may well be super interesting to the other players (and when it’s not, it’s at least something basic and fundamental they can easily build on).
You can also collaborate with another player for a type of relationship with their character like being their body guard, religious follower, sibling, servant, spouse, teacher, or student. (Only if they’re into it, of course!) Some storytellers over the years have used extremely shallow and two-dimensional characters to great effect over the years simply by having a cast of characters collide with each other—people meeting other people is great story fuel.
I would just add not to be worried about dumb choices only earning ire.
Some, most, of my memories from past campaigns are borne from ideas all the players know were dumb as hell, but the gnome fighter with 3 int (2e) decided to just leroy jenkins a horde of goblins. We were captured which lead to other mishaps.
If the group doesn’t have at least one break so everyone can get the laughs out and settle so they speak without giggling, I consider it a bit of a failure, personally. Even in a “serious” session.
Overconfident can be a lot of fun to play, especially when paired with a flaw, like mispronouncing, using words wrong or making words up. Like Dr. Teeth from the Muppets, for example.
What kind of character are you playing currently?
That’s part of the problem in that I can tell you stats and that he believes that generally people deserve to live, to the point where he has died and caused a party member to die to save someone else, but I can’t tell you anything about his personality other than it’s me, and every character I ever play is like that. Trying to do something different ends up being annoying (my preachy dwarf cleric) or bland (young naïve wizard).
You say that but I bet he’s not as much of a self-insert as you say. One of the defining features of a TTRPG character is that they are willing to go on dangerous, even life threatening adventures. These adventures almost never make sense to go on, they are extremely high risk for not a lot of reward. You say your character is a self insert, but also that he has literally died to save someone else. Have you personally literally given your life to save someone else?
I would suggest to you that any rational person, after being nearly killed doing a thing, would stop doing that thing. Your character has literally been killed while adventuring, yet is still an adventurer. That’s more than selfless, that’s suicidal. I’m guessing you personally don’t have as much of a death wish as your character, so maybe think about why he chooses to keep adventuring, knowing it will probably be the thing that kills him. What does he stand to gain? If he wanted to just do good deeds, why doesn’t he go get some other job where he can provide his abilities as a service in a city? Why adventuring?
Yeah very good questions! Never quite figured it out in the backstory. Do you think a characters reason for adventuring is tied to how you would play them as a character? Also I’m conscious of going too serious with it. One of our party is a warlock who thinks clerics are just stick up warlocks and has a distinct, and funny (to the players at least!) personality, they’re fun to play with, I don’t want to make a too serious character who’s just not fun to play with.
Yeah my number 1 question when creating a character is “why are they an adventurer?” This also means that you will have a motivation that you can use to ground your decisions. I’d recommend if you haven’t already seen it to check out this video. It’s long but is a fantastic explanation of what is important to think about in order to roleplay. It has nothing to do with a funny quirk or voice, and has everything to do with understanding your character’s motivation.
You still haven’t shared anything about your character with me, but if you want some ideas or brainstorming I can definitely help out. I’d need to know their race/class/background/subclass and any backstory details you’ve already established.
I completely feel you there, and I genuinely wonder if another game system might help to practice RP via storytelling focus vs. D&D’s notorious crunch, ya know? Maybe a one-shot or short-arc in DOGS, Blades In The Dark, etc.?
I heavily recommend Fiasco for that
I’ll second fiasco. We’ve had so much fun with it
Try doing a sing-song voice for your character (presuming your natural voice is not already sing-songy)
Have you tried in person? I honestly have never tried playing online, but I’ve heard that the energy / enjoyability of in person is far better.
Surely it’s safe to assume that this isn’t an option…
Ya… I’m honestly not sure why I thought that was a productive thing for me to say. 😕
😅
