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’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.
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.
In savage worlds you don’t really crit so much as just get raises.
You roll one of the polies, and if it lands on its highest number, you roll it again.
It is not uncommon to roll the same dice several times in a row, and the lower the dice the more often it happens.
You only need to hit 4 to succeed, generally. Every 4 over that is a raise. You also don’t really have health, you take wounds and if you take 3, you dead.
One raise might just be extra damage. But four raises… Well, my psion might have sprouted psychic tentacles for a moment and literally ripped the foe in two.
Yeah there are some interesting and cool systems out there. I like how Fragged Empire does it too where you roll d6s and you can use die that land on a six to trigger certain abilities and stuff.
I feel like Glory of Giants is just too light on content to justify a purchase.
One subclass, two backgrounds, a bunch of feats. Is that really it? I know they are most busy with 1DnD, but considering how that’s shaping out to be, I’m not really confident about the future of DnD.
WOTC has been phoning it in since Tasha’s. I’m so glad I switched to PF2e at the beginning of this year. Paizo treats their community well and releases tons of really good content, not these massive fluff books with only one or two new bits of crunch. They also don’t shy away from bigger content releases like entirely new classes.
I bought the big PF2 bundle during the OGL controversy and I really liked what I was looking at. Unfortunately my party isn’t really thrilled about changing system, so I’m stuck with dnd for the foreseeable future :/
You could start dropping hints about cool stuff in PF2 into your DnD game as house rules. Things like hero points, combat skill actions (demoralize, feint, etc.), and the 4 degrees of success (with differentials of 10 or more and nat 20/1) are fairly easy to incorporate into 5e. Then, once they are in love with all the cool house rules you’ve introduced you can be like “oh BTW those are just the tip of the iceberg of cool stuff in PF2”
I’m not sure how BG3 handles this but to my understanding they are pretty close to actual 5e rules.
In that case the scribing feature is from the wizard class and only lets you add wizard spells to your book. These spells would use INT as their spell casting ability.
I disagree with some of tips given in this article (for example, Session 0 is a waste of time), but in general it provides good information and useful links.
I disagree with your disagreement. Sure, if you already know your party and everyone is experienced, you can skip it, but if you start as a new player group, it is well invested time, that should be used to get to know each other and lineup expectatios.
Depends heavily on the group IME. For instance, some players will only have a good time if they know what others are expecting from them in advance, while others prefer to just get started and see what happens.
If the group consists of people who come there in good faith and are determined to have fun, no Session 0 is needed. Whatever problems will arise on the way, are going to be dealt with in mature way.
And if the group features bad faith actors, then no amount of discussion prior to the game will prevent a disaster from happening.
I don’t like thinking of individuals as simply “good/bad”. Some people grow frustrated with trying to engage creatively without specifics, others grow frustrated with overly narrow roles, still others get upset if everyone just builds what they want with no regard to team balance.
It really depends on the individuals involved whether people are going to get salty over unstated expectations. Setting vibes, expectations, and integrating characters with the setting are all worth doing, and for many players they need to be done in advance in order for them to feel included.
I never said that individuals are “good/bad”. I said they approach the game with either good faith or bad faith, which is radically different to what you’re talking about.
Yet your argument still ignores all nuance. I just chose to simplify the phrasing since it boils down to the same thing: “good group doesn’t need session zero and bad group isn’t helped by it”. You may as well use the same argument to repeal all criminal laws, since good people don’t commit crimes and bad people will do bad things anyhow.
Now you’re just doing some pedantic backpedaling, as though it changes the fact that your argument hinges on a false binary.
There are no nuances needed to be acknowledged in this specific distinction. People playing in good faith, WILL try to overcome any obstacles according to their experience, skills and maturity. People who don’t, will invent problems and actively search for them rather than focus on solutions. Neither needs Session #0.
good group doesn’t need session zero and bad group isn’t helped by it
It’s absolutely wrong take on the dillema. GOOD group doesn’t have to play in good faith - they are good players, experienced veterans, that know the art of role playing well. But they don’t have to put all their skills into good outcome. They may, for many reasons try to undermine the experience, break the game, test the ruleset for weaknesses, focus on one singe aspect of the game (for example, on combat) rather than on the whole adventure. And the other way around - bad gamers, clueless and inexperienced might still try to save their game, make the best of it.
As you can see, what you’re discussing is wildly different to what I’ve been talking about.
Now you’re just doing some pedantic backpedaling, as though it changes the fact that your argument hinges on a false binary.
From where I sit - it’s you who didn’t think through your position and when asked about details became passively-aggressive. Usually a strong hint that you feel you’re/were wrong.
And it’s ironic that you simultaneously accuse me of lacking nuances and simultaneously of being “too nuanced”. 😬
I didn’t acuse you of being too nuanced. I accused you of being pedantic, which you were in both your previous comment and on the one I’m replying to right now because you’ve been making this an argument over semantics.
It’s absolutely wrong take on the dillema. GOOD group doesn’t have to play in good faith - they are good players, experienced veterans, that know the art of role playing well. But they don’t have to put all their skills into good outcome. They may, for many reasons try to undermine the experience, break the game, test the ruleset for weaknesses, focus on one singe aspect of the game (for example, on combat) rather than on the whole adventure. And the other way around - bad gamers, clueless and inexperienced might still try to save their game, make the best of it.
I never said “a group of good players” or “a group of bad players”. I think it’s extremely obvious from context that by “good group” I meant the scenario you were talking about, so “a group of people playing in good faith”, and likewise meant “a group not playing in good faith” when I said “bad group”.
You’re still making this an argument over terminology (literally an argument over semantics) rather than addressing my point, which is that the thrust of your argument hinges on a false binary. Groups with players playing in good faith can still grow frustrated with each other, such as when two different existing friend groups are playing together for the first time and there are two competing ideas about how best to play or communicate. Different people are comfortable with different things and a session zero can help eliminate a lot of that friction, especially in groups with lots of new players.
Otherwise you might find your sessions devolving into pointless arguments over semantics due to a simple miscommunication, for instance. I’d much rather have this debate with you before a game ever started rather than mid-session.
As far as I can tell we’re both trying to engage in good faith, but talking past each other. If I knew you had no tolerance for the kind of conversational context I relied on with my initial comment in advance, I wouldn’t have said “good/bad” as shorthand for “people playing in good faith/people playing in bad faith” and we would’ve finished talking about this already. This type of miscommunication is extremely easy to avoid in-game by using a session zero to establish everyone’s communication styles and gameplay preferences in addition to integrating characters with the setting and balancing the party composition.
The easiest way to start with character creation is by using dndbeyond.com
Unfortunately, the more advanced features on this site are paid, so once you’re ready to try more advanced features, use 5e.tools and fill in your character sheets manually.
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