"We all know that acting in character adds fun, but role playing enhances D&D for everyone at the table. Role playing heightens the drama and the humor. It raises the stakes by making goals, successes and setbacks personal. It fosters relationships between characters."~ David Hartlage, DM David
Like me, you've heard a ton of this rhetoric. It washes upon the shore of D&D like a pounding sea, relentlessly telling us that our games need this role-playing, forever assuming that we don't already have it or that we're not perfectly happy with our games the way they are. We're reminded of the benefits it will bring to our storytellings, of how much fun it will be, of how it will enable us to focus less on mechanics and how it will create spontaneous, memorable experiences. Whenever the subject beats its chorus, expression and eloquence reaches to the very heights of game oratory. It is surprising we don't automatically genuflect when we hear it.
I am a believer in role-playing. I feel it immensely contributes to a game, but not because it adds to story or circumvents mechanics, and not because it uniquely creates moments of surprise. Every part of the game can create a sponteneity, mechanics and role-playing are not polar opposites and drama is a given ... no matter how much actual role-play is taking place. But I like role-play because it contributes to the player's personal, emotional investment in the moment-to-moment events of the game.
Where it comes to the hot air espoused by the role-play chorus, I cannot help but notice that nine times out of ten, this "stake-raising" ends up manifesting as players acting in a deceitful, self-serving and grasping manner. We're told that we're advancing the story, but instead mainstream role-players are bent on tricking townspeople, misleading them, defrauding them of their goods or "getting around" them as they try to do their jobs ... and in general acting like a bunch of venal, materialistic assholes. The moment a player opens a conversation with a merchant, a guardsman or an official, the first words out of their mouths are bound to be a string of unrelenting lies, followed by a desperate and amateur confidence game concocted by the player for nefarious purposes. Players do not "make friends." They push and shove against every weak point with sociopathic persistence ... and when they do not get a thing, they carp, they cry foul, they mutter about the unfairness of DMs ~ and then they try again.
I was recently told of a group of players who nearly ruined a campaign because they insisted on a personal audience with the local king ~ even though the players were nobodies, it wasn't their kingdom and they had nothing of any benefit to the king to say. None of that mattered. What mattered was that the players, greedy and avaricious to a fault, felt they had a right to talk to the "top man," no matter who the hell he was or what he might be doing. This was about the players, after all, and them getting their cut, their entitlement, their expected, exclusive privilege to ask and receive whatever the hell they wanted, period.
I wish I could say this was rare. However, whenever I read anything on Reddit, whenever I watch a let's play campaign, whenever some player is discussing what happened in last week's campaign, it invariably boils down to "We screwed these people, we stole from those people, we left this bunch of people holding the bag, we convinced this old fart to hide us or give us gold or kill his own daughter ..." or whatever the hell else the writer is expressing about their own utter lack of self-consciousness about criminal acts of inhumanity played for fun.
Now, all right, I get it. It's not like NPCs are real. Or can feel pain. Or deserve better. It's a game ... and we all have to accept that most DMs play NPCs like cardboard cut-outs pasted with labels that say, "Mess with me, that's why I'm here." But none of this stony-hearted, unsparing behaviour relates at all to the profound grandiloquence we hear when some pundit sings the praises of the role-playing gods. No one ever says, "Add more role-playing to your campaign so your players can be utter dicks." No one ever admits that this adding to the story includes a long sequence of falsifications, cock and bull stories, barefaced lies and alternative facts that the players will myopically view as "playing the game well."
Surprise a character with an NPC and stand back as a host of bullshit whoppers quickly bounce off the walls. Trust a character who already has 15,000 g.p. with 50 more and watch the player gleefully rub their hands together at screwing over the trusting chump. Put a player on the carpet in front of the king and get on your gas mask as the air is rapidly polluted with mendacity, until the brown is fairly thick enough to cut into small pieces. Allow a player to roleplay and expect the "stories" that follow to be fibs of spectacular proportions, bluffs, pretense, memberships to this years' Annual Wild Goose Hunt (with fun and prizes!) and yarns of terminological inexactitude.
So why don't we just tone down the magnificence a little and put it plain to players? During a role-playing game, try lying. Go ahead and use your weapons and roll dice and whatever else you do with your feats ... and remember that if you meet an NPC, lies also work.
Then we can stop this campaign of lying to ourselves.
I haven't read the original source you quoted at the beginning of the article, and from my experience in playing and running games, I haven't really encountered the core issue you describe, with players using role-playing as an excuse to act like complete twats. I also don't watch any online videos of other people role-playing, so I honestly wasn't aware that this was actually a thing people did and perhaps a motivation for them role-playing in the first place.
ReplyDeleteI've always encouraged role-playing for my players and used a lot of the (now I realize) incorrect reasoning that you point out: it makes the game more fun, it heightens the drama, etc.
What I was really encouraging its use for, and I was formulating this thought in my head when you said it first in your post, is this: "But I like role-play because it contributes to the player's personal, emotional investment in the moment-to-moment events of the game."
I have lately been involved in a group of players, all of whom I know outside of the game as dads of my daughter's friends, or former co-workers, or a guy I went to high school with... and I've little by little discovered that they are using our scheduled game night as an excuse to get away from the wife and kids and have some "adult time" with the guys. I see a lot of dozing off, over-imbibing, scrolling through social media on phones. I have called out this behavior as being disrespectful to the referee and very annoying to players who are more invested in the game.
What I have found is that when players actually choose to role-play their characters as though the stakes actually matter, they are more invested in the game to the point that the dozing ceases, the imbibing slows down, and the phones are put away.
This isn't my game (I'm a player in this one) so I don't make the rules. I've made my points clear, but the referee (who is also the host) is a little bit more lenient than I am and doesn't just kick these people out. The goal is to slowly turn them into active participants so that he ultimately doesn't have to kick them out.
I'd never really thought of the reason before as to why I wish my friends and acquaintances would role-play more, other than I personally enjoy it as a player. But thinking about how doing so helps people be more invested is the primary reason for me as to why it's important.
For those who want to role-play as an excuse to act anti-socially in the game, I think that might actually be worse than the guy who falls asleep at the table. It says something about that person's emotional well-being.
I role-play for the same reasons as you, Martin; as I said at the beginning, I believe in the importance of role-playing.
ReplyDeleteBut if you will look closely at the post, I did not specify "anti-social" behaviour. I specified lying. And not to other players, but to non-player characters.
The player decides that something is needed or must be done. Upon encountering the NPC in the way, and choosing not to draw an honest weapon, the player begins to lie. "We need to get past because [lie]. You should believe us because [lie]. We're actually [lie] [lie] [lie]."
They're introduced to an NPC and the player begins to speak: "I am the very important [lie]. I have accomplished [lie]. I am a famous [lie] in my homeland, where they [lie]." And so it goes.
Quite honestly, the players are very sociable when this is done. With each other. They urge each other to greater lies, they laugh at the ridiculousness of their lies ... and if they encounter a DM who runs NPCs as though they are real people, these players become irate that their pompous lies do not receive the immense appreciation these players expect.
But yes, very sociable.
Okay, I see where you're coming from. I think I read a little more into your post than what you most likely originally intended. I originally inferred that players were role-playing to act in ways that they otherwise couldn't get away with in real-life society as a way to perhaps act out some latent dark fantasies ("What if I could do whatever I wanted with no legal consequences?").
ReplyDeleteOf course they were will consequences in-game (or there should be), but the player doesn't actually suffer any ill effects. That's what I was getting at when I said "anti-social" - not toward you or the other players, but rather behavior that, in real-life, would not be tolerated.
All that said, in terms of the lying and bluffing, I have absolutely seen that. Certain players tend to do it much more often than others, although usually only when playing certain classes. One player of mine years ago created a character whom the player saw as more of an entertainer type, and he packed extra outfits of different social classes when the group went adventuring, along with wigs, make-up, etc., and he would email me between sessions mentioning how he wanted his character to find dialect coaches in each big city the group visited so his character could learn how to speak in a particular regional accent, and had his character study the history and geography of other cultures during non-adventuring time so he could be knowledgeable about such things. The player was constantly trying to pass his character off as different people by lying, and the player would make up elaborate names and backstories for these false identities and would role-play speaking in different accents, but it was core to his character and he was the only player in the group who did it. His success rate was partially based on how well the player tried to role-play the situation, how well he rolled on his Charisma check, and how intelligent the NPC was that he was lying to.
Where this becomes interesting in this particular group is that, depending on the situation, some of the players would role-play their characters not to go along with the lying character, based on their world-view and experience. They would correct him, shush him, apologize for him, or sometimes they'd let him go through his entire charade because the "lying" player had prepped ahead of time and had a very well prepared and delivered speech that was engaging to listen to, and made sense within the context of the adventure and his character. It all depended on the situation.
Fortunately I haven't really been part of a group as a player or a DM that constantly falls back on lying as their normal course of interacting with NPCs. I would think that would get boring after awhile.
Thank you Martin. The one player's enthusiasm would be a pleasure to run as a DM; he wanted a believable foundation for his confidence games and I can appreciate that.
ReplyDeleteWhat I don't appreciate are new players entering my campaign arguing that explain how they are huge role-playing fans, only to have them start off every conversation with a whopper that a six-year-old would see through. This puts me in a difficult situation as a DM. I don't roll to see if the NPC believes these lies. I take it as plain, having lived on a planet full of humans, what sort of lies are credible and which are not.
But players believe that because they are talking to NPCs, there should be no such standard. In fact, because they are NPCs, they should not be given any experience, awareness, self-respect or character of their own. The player wants to "role-play" is a sort of cheap television farce, where only the lead character has a brain and all the supporting roles are filled by complete dolts.
And this is what I see enacted when I watch let's play videos like Critical Role or view vlogs like Puffin Forrest. It is pervasive across the culture and it is widely encouraged, because the players are "heroes" and the ends always justify the means.
I call bullshit.
Let's talk about ill-effects. There are tens of thousands of children being raised on this motif of play. There are hundreds of thousands who are being encouraged to believe that bad behaviour is good play, so long as the dice roll your way. There is a whole generation who isn't really learning what "role-playing" is because it is obviously a personal need of a great many people to cheat their way rather than having to subject themselves to taking a risk and accepting a loss.
It is unpopular to say so, but ridiculous scenes like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVEpQ92Lkoo&t=247s
Are given a pass because they are SO funny ... but they depend on a DM blessing that says a shopkeeper is so incredibly stupid they can't figure out what's going on while people in the next room are shouting and encouraging each other to behave like total louts. But who gives a fuck, right?
They're just NPCs.
Which of course means that when we drop the standards of the game to a silliness that enables players to lie their way out of every situation, the only thing we preserve and teach is a greater capacity for lying. And more lying. And funnier lying. Etcetera, etcetera.
This isn't a game. This is a form of sick therapy.
Thank you so much for providing those examples like the YouTube link and the different "shows" (I don't know what to call them) with online videos. I have heard of Critical Role and I know it's popular, but I've never heard of Puffin Forest. From your comments, I don't think I need to seek it out.
ReplyDeleteI definitely have not had a "great" group of role-players (meaning that every single player was very into role-playing) that I play with. My current group has changed over the past 18 years since I got back into the hobby after moving and meeting some new friends. But, I have really never experienced what you're speaking of, and didn't realize it was so pervasive.
My experience with NPCs can be summed up quickly as a player in a campaign that I joined late after having met one of the players through my work and he realized I knew of the games. This was around February 2001. The group had been playing for about a year at this point.
Around 2007 or 2008 in the very same campaign, a certain background NPC, whom we had come to know and visit from time-to-time whenever we found ourselves back in our home town, died, specifically because another NPC, who was trying to "get to us" through what would hurt us most, killed the first NPC. It's similar to a comic book story when a villain who knows that Bruce Wayne is Batman attacks and harms Alfred, knowing that it will throw Bruce off his game.
Our group had the same reaction - we were so angry at the death of the NPC, and began telling stories about the first time we had met him, why he meant to much to us, and the game actually stopped as the players sat around sharing stories about what a "great guy" this NPC was and our different interactions with him over the years (of "real world" time). I hadn't known the NPC as long as the other players, but I was still moved and there was nary a dry eye in our friend's game room that afternoon.
We got our revenge and recompensed the NPC's family, but it never made us feel better that he died because he had been kind to us, and someone used that as a weakness to try to bring us down.
Thinking back on that, it's hard to think about "using" NPC's by lying to them or betraying them, etc. It could just be at that particular moment in time that I was fortunate enough to have been surrounded by the right group of players. When I was younger, with a much less experienced DM, I suspect very strongly that such an event would not have had as much of an impact. But I use that particular encounter/event as an example of the kind of emotion I want to try to get from my players. To your point, though, I would imagine the majority of players don't see the NPCs as "people" and therefore don't care about how they (the NPCs) are treated.
An excellent story, Martin. It reflects my first online campaign, where a similar experience occurred. I also had a bad NPC kill a friendly NPC and the reaction of the players was very like you describe.
ReplyDeleteI love NPCs the way that I love fictional characters in a book. Listening to Stranger in a Strange Land just lately, it doesn't matter to me that Jubal Harshaw or Mike Smith are "real." They are to me, because the author's imagination was real. Of course, to anyone who can put their immediate needs aside and appreciate the pleasure of discussing matters with the DM's fictional invention, it has an enormous possibility for satisfaction. We'd like to meet Sherlock Holmes, Dorian Gray or even Long John Silver ... assuming we could find a DM to play such characters. As a writer myself, I like to think I'm capable of creating rich, interesting and likeable characters ... and I'd rather introduce such people to players who were less hell bent on "getting theirs" than they were in the world as a whole concept.
When we talk about role-playing, and encourage role-playing, I think we're responsible for talking about what KIND of role-playing ... and not writing a blank cheque that says more of it, whatever "it" is, can only be a good thing. Too much of the wrong kind of role-playing can spoil a campaign as quickly as too much die rolling.