Community

Whether personally or as a group -- how do you roleplay, either as player or DM?

I'll start off to give people an idea of what I'm thinking of.

As a player, I talk to the NPCs as if I'm my PC.

• To NPC: "Can you describe the person who came in to your shop this morning and bought the black tunic?"

I also address the people around the table in their characters' names.

• "Hans, want to see if you can distract that manticore over there?"

I know others who describe what the PC is doing.

• To DM: "Chris asks the shopkeeper to describe the person."

Still others will sort of combine the two.

• To DM: "I ask the shopkeeper to describe the person."

I describe to the DM a particular thing I want to do.

• To DM: "I'm aiming at his wrist. I want to cut off the hand that's holding the evil dagger." or "I use the handholds I can find to scale the wall to the roof."

As a DM, I have two ways to interact with the PCs. If I have an NPC really well fleshed out and I know what his attitude is and how he fits into the storyline, I just answer questions "in character" or hand out information that I've planned out. If it's a random shopkeeper, I usually roll his reaction to the PCs before I answer the question in character.

For actions the PCs are taking, I'll often roll (or have the player roll) to see how well it works. But sometimes it's just so perfect for the scenario that I don't bother with a roll. If it makes the story better, it happens. However, if it's too farfetched, it won't succeed, but that is very, very rare.

How about you? In character, talking about the character, roll or no roll -- what's your style? There are NO wrong answers here, so please don't criticise others' posts. I'm just curious how others do things.

Drunk.

I've never felt completely comfortable being 100% in character. So frequently it's "I tell the bartender about the reward" instead of "you!  Wench!  There's a reward for Blackbeard".

As  DM I love doing voices...I'm terrible at them but its still fun and my players seem to like so w/e...as a player I ususally speak in the first person it helps me get into and stay in charcater...I'm really bad about switching out off characater without specifying but no one seems to mind.

For monsters or what not if they have intelligence I like to try to have battle cries and sounds of pain when their attacked.

I probably ussually get players to roll most stuff but with good enough roleplay they can overcome even a 1, combat wise is more strict towards rolls though.