Do you...roleplay?

[Tweed]

When you gather around the tabletop do you just mechanically explain every action your character takes to your DM? Is your character just a galley slave on the voyage to loot and experience? Or do you really try to get into that neutral good halfling rogue on the character sheet and see things from his perspective?

[Vergil]

The idea of acting out and speaking as your character fills me with so much anxiety and cringe my balls suck up into the back of my throat.

[Stack of Turtles]

The idea of acting out and speaking as your character fills me with so much anxiety and cringe my balls suck up into the back of my throat.

aww it's fun

[Tweed]

The sessions I was in ages ago I'd describe as "roleplay light/med" the DM did most of the heavy lifting, but players were encouraged to speak as their characters. Nothing too crazy and not forced.

The CoC stuff I was in recently was mostly roleplay free, had a gud time though at least until asf killed us.

[Acrux]

I tend to be about 50/50 for being "in character" or just describing actions. Most often I'll speak in character if I think of something that fits the situation well.

When I DM, I try to do a few voices, but nothing over the top, and I guess it's possible they all sound really similar even though they are different in my head. There are just a lot of gruff people with fake-British accents in my world.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

When I attended RP campaigns in WoW, for the /roll 20 stuff I just emoted (in raid chat so everyone could see regardless of distance) the mechanical interaction I intended (attacked this target, healed that characters) and added a little fluff. I tried to keep my lines short and to the point. Other people dumped large paragraphs of text for every action they took and I couldn't be bothered to read the whole thing, especially when there are 20+ people participated every round. I am mainly thinking of what would be fun (people dying isn't fun so I try to heal them rather than just tunnel vision the NPC we are beating up). I only view things from my character's perspective (Tauren warrior, Horde soldier) when it becomes relevant like dealing with advanced civilized societies like Silvermoon that probably wouldn't want a sweaty stinking cow smelling up their pristine stone streets, or enemies of the Horde, etc.

[Boontaker]

Yes always. Playing a TTrpg without roleplay is like playing a less optimized board game and is less enjoyable. These days I tend toward the Lawful/X side of roleplay because everyone else just does chaotic neutral (the normie NPC choice) and gets strung along by the DM. Sparing a villain so that they can be brought back to the magistrate for true justice, is so much more satisfying than just bringing them to 0 HP then looting the corpse.

Lawful is much more than that though, using the lords laws to press gang weak willed bandits into service as penance, whipping a group of angry peasants into a frenzy, slaughtering the "goofy goblins" that have been harassing the locals for decades but are suddenly docile because PCs are around.

I love playing Lawful

[Boontaker]

The idea of acting out and speaking as your character fills me with so much anxiety and cringe my balls suck up into the back of my throat.

You don't have to do a voice, the decisions you make as the character are what matters. These are much easier to do the more of the character you understand, childhood, background, etc.

[OnTilt]

I don't do the drama club thing, but I'll make decisions based on my character and not meta-gaming.

On WoW I used to half-ironically RP. I played on an Rp-PvP server because they had better world pvp than any other server.

[Vergil]

I bite does that count?

[Boontaker]

I bite does that count?

As long as it's in character

[TKVNC]

I rp as a black man and steal and eat fried chicken

[WhiteShark]

When you gather around the tabletop do you just mechanically explain every action your character takes to your DM? Is your character just a galley slave on the voyage to loot and experience? Or do you really try to get into that neutral good halfling rogue on the character sheet and see things from his perspective?

I'm not sure you intended to imply this, but speaking in character is not the same as roleplaying. Doing voices and speaking in character is fun, but you can roleplay without it, and it's also possible to do voices while failing to roleplay at all.

As for how one describe his charcter's actions, I think it's generally fine to speak in terms of mechanics in combat and other situations highly defined by the rules, but, in cases requiring more subjective GM judgment, the player should describe what his character wants or is attempting to do in terms of the fiction, and the GM should adjudicate thence the mechanics that ought apply. In other words, I think it's fine to say, "I roll to attack the orc," but not, "I roll to bluff the guard."

[Cipher]

Doing funny voices or putting up a bad accent is not necessarily roleplay.

I like to do that because it helps me immerse into the shoes of the character. RP in tabletop must have characters speaking in first person. You can do that in your regular voice with no changes at all. Additionally, you can spice that up by using specific vocabulary, cadence or mannerisms and yes, even an accent and a voice different than your own but at the bare minimum the Player should speak in-character, meaning in 1st person. "I do. I am." Otherwise, its narration. And its not supposed to be a narration game, its supposed to be a roleplaying game.

My issue with using 3rd person, saying "my character does this and says that" is that it basically turns into a wargame or board game. Instead of saying "Lovely evening, my good man. I will have a mug of your finest ale." it becomes "my character asks for a beer" or sometimes not even that, "my character goes to a bar and gets drunk".

And to people claiming that saying: "Lovely evening, my good man. I will have a mug of your finest ale." is cringe then why are you even trying to play a roleplaying game? If the idea is just gather around with friends, throw dice and eat pretzels then play a wargame or a board game. Or poker.

Roleplaying games should be 1 part game, which is the dice and the mechanics, and 1 part roleplaying, which means immersing yourself and thinking as a living entity within the imaginary world the game is set in. Pure roleplaying without dice or mechanics is just LARPing. Pure game without roleplaying is a wargame or boardgame. This is the problem with WotC's D&D. Yes, even 3rd edition. It became about "builds" instead of characters. So what if my half dragon vampire kobold dhampyr that has lest than 3 levels in 17 classes just to abuse the frontloaded nature of class features doesn't make ******* sense and would never exist in any setting ever? it's about big numbers going up. That's unit in a wargame, not a character. And sure, I am exaggerating, but you know what I am talking about. You've seen these so called "characters". AD&D had a lot less emphasis on "builds" because it was about the characters and the Players overcoming a challenge, not seeing their numbers go up as they kill the next bag of XP and get some fat loot.

And this is not about "telling a story" is about having an adventure. "Story" in a roleplaying game is what happened after the session is over. The GM should create a world that exists on its own, with movers and shakers with their own goals and motivations. Players should create characters that fit into that setting and world and must have goals and motivations of their own and they should pursue those goals. The "story" is what happened due to the Players making decisions to facilitate achieving those goals and how this changes the setting around them for good or ill.

So, yes. I do roleplay when I am playing a roleplaying game. I don't roleplay when I am playing poker or something like Megaman X.

[fkirenicus]

"In days of old, when knights were bold and..." let's stop there.
Point is, when I started playing AD&D, MERP/Rolemaster, Call of Cthulhu... some 40 years back, me and my friends who did (and do) not have English as our primary language used the games (and read shitloads of Tolkien, Lewis, Lovecraft...) to actually train and improve our English. All dialog in-game was in English, so that when we spoke our own language, we knew it was "outside of the game". Hence, we put a great weight on the roleplaying aspect - as DM I would use different voices (well, sort of, anyway) to portray different NPCs, and the players would (often) speak in a very Tolkien-like fashion (read: dwarves - LOTR Gimli style; elves - LOTR Legolas style etc.). Or, when playing CoC, fake American accents.
Nowadays though, I use a more narrative-like style. Only a few like the "theatrics" (some are (retired) LARPs), and we tend to focus more on the story/world and improving the characters rather than be dead serious about the character personality development. As others have pointed out, it might be a bit because of the system - which focuses greatly on builds (we use D&D 3.5, as most probably already know). Actually, we rather like the somewhat more "wargame"-like aspect. Chill out on a Saturday afternoon with ridding the world of some evil goblins? Sure, why not!
If I decide to take up AD&D again instead, I still think it will be in a more narrative way - it doesn't feel "natural" forcing players to have to speak English. I am not sure my own English is good enough still, either...
Of course, some players talk in a very direct/"roleplaying" way in our own/native language, but as a DM I tend to go "Your opponent grins, draws his dagger and says...".
I was never meant to be an actor.

[Lord of Riva]

Yes, we always tried to roleplay while playing PnP and it always bothered me when I played with people who just described their character as if they were controlling them, when they should play as them.

I think we can expect a person to act at least in so far that they say "I pull out my sword and get ready for combat" instead of "Yeah, so my character has seen the enemies, right? so ambush rules should not apply"

That said, people trying to act their characters, especially with trying to modify their Voice is pretty cringe, it's **** in most cases and those dudes always think they are extremely good it acting, they are not.

Eg. Try to be immersed, don't be ********

[Tweed]

I'm not sure you intended to imply this, but speaking in character is not the same as roleplaying.

Mind telling me what that is then? Since it's part of the aspect of being in the role unless your character is an expy. When we played we had one trouble player who couldn't get past bad things happening to her character and when she'd get ****** she do things like try to attack party members which didn't go very well. You could say she was in character, but clearly it was her as a person getting mad at someone or the DM because something hadn't gone her way. Eventually she left the table and never returned, but not before some rather amusing drama. I remember one funny exchange:

Her: "Are you sure you want to **** off the neutral evil rogue?"

Me: "Don't know, are you sure you can survive attacking the chaotic neutral wild mage?"

She gave me a nasty glare and sulked at her dice for the rest of the session. Womyn players...I swear...

[Cipher]

I'm not sure you intended to imply this, but speaking in character is not the same as roleplaying.

Mind telling me what that is then? Since it's part of the aspect of being in the role unless your character is an expy. When we played we had one trouble player who couldn't get past bad things happening to her character and when she'd get ****** she do things like try to attack party members which didn't go very well. You could say she was in character, but clearly it was her as a person getting mad at someone or the DM because something hadn't gone her way. Eventually she left the table and never returned, but not before some rather amusing drama. I remember one funny exchange:

Her: "Are you sure you want to **** off the neutral evil rogue?"

Me: "Don't know, are you sure you can survive attacking the chaotic neutral wild mage?"

She gave me a nasty glare and sulked at her dice for the rest of the session. Womyn players...I swear...

Yup. Even back in the day, they were always terrible. And, contrary to what the woketards say now, everyone wanted women to play D&D with us even when it always detracted from the game. I have never met a woman that actually wants to take the game seriously and roleplay without turning into a source of temper tantrums and squabbles.

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm not sure you intended to imply this, but speaking in character is not the same as roleplaying.

Mind telling me what that is then? Since it's part of the aspect of being in the role unless your character is an expy. When we played we had one trouble player who couldn't get past bad things happening to her character and when she'd get ****** she do things like try to attack party members which didn't go very well. You could say she was in character, but clearly it was her as a person getting mad at someone or the DM because something hadn't gone her way. Eventually she left the table and never returned, but not before some rather amusing drama. I remember one funny exchange:

Her: "Are you sure you want to **** off the neutral evil rogue?"

Me: "Don't know, are you sure you can survive attacking the chaotic neutral wild mage?"

She gave me a nasty glare and sulked at her dice for the rest of the session. Womyn players...I swear...

Was she cute tho?

[Tweed]

I'm not sure you intended to imply this, but speaking in character is not the same as roleplaying.

Mind telling me what that is then? Since it's part of the aspect of being in the role unless your character is an expy. When we played we had one trouble player who couldn't get past bad things happening to her character and when she'd get ****** she do things like try to attack party members which didn't go very well. You could say she was in character, but clearly it was her as a person getting mad at someone or the DM because something hadn't gone her way. Eventually she left the table and never returned, but not before some rather amusing drama. I remember one funny exchange:

Her: "Are you sure you want to **** off the neutral evil rogue?"

Me: "Don't know, are you sure you can survive attacking the chaotic neutral wild mage?"

She gave me a nasty glare and sulked at her dice for the rest of the session. Womyn players...I swear...

Was she cute tho?

Ehh, kinda, but she was libtard to the core.

[asf]

solution is not play with wymyn

[Rand]

In 40 years of D&D and such, I have met exactly one woman that could play the game well and not be a female about it.
All the rest have been bad to a pain in the ***.

[SiMtRy]

When you gather around the tabletop do you just mechanically explain every action your character takes to your DM? Is your character just a galley slave on the voyage to loot and experience? Or do you really try to get into that neutral good halfling rogue on the character sheet and see things from his perspective?

I Mean Talking in character and the tone you want to say stuff isn't necessarily bad. But if it's gay theater kid stuff then that **** sucks. Either way i'm fine with both just explaining what you want to say or do, or actually saying the words you want to be said. Just be concise and don't bog down the game.

[enisey]

I'm bad at acting, but I try to roleplay through actions, especially when they result in mechanical disadvantages because everyone else metagames and just copes with it.

For example, I played a Paladin with low WIS and INT. I roleplayed that as being extremely naive and gullible. He just wanted to see the good in everyone. He'd assume absurd circumstances to rationalize why every act of malice he witnessed was actually done with good intentions, or were accidents at worst. He was physically ridiculously strong, but would use non-lethal attacks, and any attempt at deceiving him succeeded regardless of rolls. Basically a libtard except actually good and not only pretending to be ********.

I also like RPing barbarians. I never use rage as just a mechanical buff, I always find a cause. Once, I entered rage and snapped my bow in half because I missed twice in a row, and then charged into melee. Or I'd get frustrated about not understanding the bard's Inspire Courage (Comedy) jokes. I'd even stay in rage after combat ends to completely mutilate the corpses of particularly annoying opponents.

[SiMtRy]

If by roleplay you mean play act then no. Do i play out my characters as having goals independently as my own and having views i don't hold in real life, sure.