How to run a roleplaying campaign?

falconire

I've been DMing for the last 7 years, originally running a lot of dungeon crawls but lately more traveling/odyssey type adventurers. My players always tell me how awesome the combat sessions are in my game but one of my main players is always complaining about lack of roleplaying. Now usually when I write an adventure based on roleplaying it either turns into combat or it becomes a short adventure. My problem thus is simple, does any experianced DM know how to write a strong roleplaying element to a campaign? Or should I just have that one player castrated?

MadJack

Castraute him... not because he's being anoying but because damnit we need more castrations by DM's to bring the fear back to players.

Rankenphile

MadJack wrote:

Castraute him... not because he's being anoying but because damnit we need more castrations by DM's to bring the fear back to players.

You're kind of dumb, you know that?


Writing a role-playing adventure is really tough, especially if a few of the players would rather hackenslash. A couple unprovoked attacks and suddenly the entire party is drawn into a combat they may have rather avoided diplomatically, and all role-playing comes to a screeching halt.

I've been working on this myself, and am finding nice ways to reward players who play their characters rather than let the gear do the talking, but I find that even the most die-hard role-players quickly get bored if there isn't some combat and dungeon crawling thrown into the mix somwhere to scratch the itch. The trick is balance.

That said, I'll let the more experienced DMs here offer up better advice than I could.

Raziel

First of all, you have to get them in the mood to roleplay. All the preparation and acting in the world on your part won't do a thing unless the players are willing to get into it.

Put on accents, be rude to the players - when I'm roleplaying an NPC, I like to interrupt the players or tell them to "shut up," just to shock them into the realization that they're dealing with a person, rather than a set of preprogrammed responses.

Second, roleplaying campaigns are hard to do (but possible - just look at L5R's Winter Court boxed sets), so don't be afraid to throw in some combat.

That said, don't necessarily build NPCs to suit the party's CR - if it makes sense that the Ogre Chieftain is too powerful for the party to defeat, make it so - that way, if the party decides not to negotiate and just wades in, swords swinging, you can kill them all.

The next group of characters they make won't be so quick to kill everything they come across.

Finally, don't rely on persuasion or negotiation rolls - make them roleplay it out and either go from there, or hand out modifiers based on the quality of the roleplaying.

Rankenphile

Raziel wrote:

Put on accents, be rude to the players - when I'm roleplaying an NPC, I like to interrupt the players or tell them to "shut up," just to shock them into the realization that they're dealing with a person, rather than a set of preprogrammed responses.

This is excellent advice that I plan on utilizing soon. I'm getting tired of having the party spend five minutes discussing how they are going to react to someone in a conversation.

Also, I've found that in frantic situations, raising my hands and counting down "ten, nine, eight..." with my fingers works well. It forces them to make a decision, and is a visual rather than a verbal cue. Someone from here pointed it out, and I find it works great once the party gets used to it.

falconire

First of all, you have to get them in the mood to roleplay. All the preparation and acting in the world on your part won't do a thing unless the players are willing to get into it.

Put on accents, be rude to the players - when I'm roleplaying an NPC, I like to interrupt the players or tell them to "shut up," just to shock them into the realization that they're dealing with a person, rather than a set of preprogrammed responses.

Second, roleplaying campaigns are hard to do (but possible - just look at L5R's Winter Court boxed sets), so don't be afraid to throw in some combat.

That said, don't necessarily build NPCs to suit the party's CR - if it makes sense that the Ogre Chieftain is too powerful for the party to defeat, make it so - that way, if the party decides not to negotiate and just wades in, swords swinging, you can kill them all.

The next group of characters they make won't be so quick to kill everything they come across.

Finally, don't rely on persuasion or negotiation rolls - make them roleplay it out and either go from there, or hand out modifiers based on the quality of the roleplaying.

I do find that putting in a mega powerful NPC does tend to put them in their place from time to time. Occasionally I've had diehard kill 'em all players who think they can take anything at 2nd level and then cry when the storm giant flattens them.

I've also found, just the other day for example, that when I force players to go into another room to roleplay a scene that the others can't play that it seems to enjoy them pretty good. It works best in evil campaigns.

Nice words my friend...

falconire

This is excellent advice that I plan on utilizing soon. I'm getting tired of having the party spend five minutes discussing how they are going to react to someone in a conversation.

Also, I've found that in frantic situations, raising my hands and counting down "ten, nine, eight..." with my fingers works well. It forces them to make a decision, and is a visual rather than a verbal cue. Someone from here pointed it out, and I find it works great once the party gets used to it.

Aw, being evil like that is fun. I'll throw that in and see how it works. :twisted:

Pkmoutl

Okay, my first bit of advice is that if you want to move more into roleplay and draw away from Hack-N-Slash, stop playing whatever system they are used to. Change systems. If you keep using the same system, they are going to expect it to eventually go back to what you had before.

Secondly, make sure it is a system that is condusive to roleplaying. The World of Darkness games are a good example. You want a system that is relatively simple, but not one that you have to rely on for every little thing. Even if you just make the jump from D&D to Call of Cthulhu d20, that would work well too.

Also, you don't need a big bad indestructable NPC. I find that when you put these into campaigns, people sniff them out in a second and they tend to not like that character being in the game. Even if they are on "their side."

If you really want to break the Hack-N-Slash-itis, there is one game that will make it virtually impossible to do, and that's Amber. Roleplay is a must in that game, and I've found that even H&S'ers of Olde will bend to it's power.

The trick is to get them out of the same thing and into something else. If you want to do Fantasy still, move to something like MERP or even Torg. If you want to stick with D&D, change settings. You probably do Forgotten Realms, so change to Ravenloft or even do Dragonlance. Let them know that this is going to be more RP-intensive, and that hack and slash more than likely will get you killed. Especially someplace like Ravenloft.

The NPC's are a big part of it, though. Like he said before, give them accents and have them react to characters directly. Don't do the "the innkeeper gives you a beer" thing. Have the Innkeeper give the newcomers a bit of a dressing-down. Don't make every NPC a ragdoll on a rope.

Another thing is change up how you describe things. Instead of describing a room as "20 by 20 with a 15 foot ceiling," add more to it. Talk about the composition of the stones and/or wood, the state of decay of things in the room, smells, that kind of thing. If you're more theatrical, they'll tend to be more theatrical.

Also (and people can argue this with me, but I know I'm right), if you use miniatures, get rid of them. It is less conducive to Rules Lawyering and things like that. Too many people focus on the miniature and not on what is really going on in the scene.

The other big thing is make everything in-character. If they say it, they do it. Unless they say "Out of character, I do this:" Never let them say the phrase "My character does this" or "My character says" Tell them to do it in character.

All said, games with a lot of intrigue work better for RP-intensive gaming. Games that are combat-heavy tend to stay that way.

naporeon

In my experience both playing and running games, the best GMs are highly improvisational. I have had the luck (be it good or bad) to play almost entirely with groups that smell "railroading" a mile off, and love to thwart it whenever possible; I've seen the tricks GMs had to come up with to deal with a party that isn't necessarily following the story arc in a way they'd planned. As such, I've learned over time to have several "hooks," and to leave them out in as subtle a way as possible, but to just improvise and roll with the players' choices.

Also, what Rank and Pk said. Keep things fast, keep things in character. And OT, if you want to break a d20 group of their powergaming habits, switch to Cthulhu for a while.

Rankenphile

Also, if the guys want to joke around a bit, that's fine, but you have to let them know that sometimes they need to be a bit more serious.

Last week, the party finished saving a town from a bugbear that had drained the lakes using an Eversoaking Sponge - this is directly from Wizards' free-to-download Dry Spell adventure.

Well, they went back to town with this huge statue that was filled with water. The town was suffering drastically from the drought, so they sold the water to the town. No problem, the party is mostly Neutral/CN so it fit just fine.

Then one of them said, "I want to smash the statue after I collect the money so that the water spills everywhere."

I sort of stopped and stared at him for a second. "You're doing what? Why?"

"To teach these dumbshits to fucking move if their living conditions are so shitty."

"Dude, seriously. The week dried up two weeks ago. This isn't like it has been a huge historical problem, and you just saved the town so they can get water."

"Yeah, so? First sign of shit like this happening, I'd be out of there in a heartbeat."

"Ohhh-kay. So, you seriously want to do this?"

This whole situation led to a bunch of laughing and joking that went on for a good ten minutes before he said, "No, dude, I was kidding, I'll just let them take the water."

He couldn't understand how selling someone water to save their town, then smashing it and ruining it for them after you've collected the money could be considered an evil act.

I made up my mind after that that if they joke about shit like that too much, I'll jsut say "Okay, you smash the jog, water floods the dusty ground. The blacksmith that you sold the water to looks broken-hearted, then irate. The rest of the town is incredibly angry as well, and are coming to see what happened." Then I'll let them find a way out, and I'll start shifting the player's alignmnet to evil, because that's exactly how he is playing. If they start protesting that they were "just joking", I'll kind of shrug and say tough shit, take this a little more seriously.

I'm not saying I'm taking every word of theirs as straight-up seriousness, but there has to be a limit. Joking around about every single encounter with an NPC slows the game down and prevents good role-playing.

naporeon

Rankenphile wrote:

Then I'll let them find a way out, and I'll start shifting the player's alignmnet to evil, because that's exactly how he is playing.

His name isn't Pic, is it? Because I'm playing in a few games with a guy that meets that profile exactly...he's a nice enough fella. Jovial, fun, educated, works at Microsoft, doesn't seem like an RPGer at all. All of his goddamned characters are governed entirely by malicious whimsy, however.

Seriously, all of his characters. CE. It's so f'ing strange.

Rankenphile

naporeon wrote:

Rankenphile wrote:

Then I'll let them find a way out, and I'll start shifting the player's alignmnet to evil, because that's exactly how he is playing.

His name isn't Pic, is it? Because I'm playing in a few games with a guy that meets that profile exactly...he's a nice enough fella. Jovial, fun, educated, works at Microsoft, doesn't seem like an RPGer at all. All of his goddamned characters are governed entirely by malicious whimsy, however.

Seriously, all of his characters. CE. It's so f'ing strange.

Nah. This dude is unemployed.

The worst part was that he was playing a CN character and honestly couldn't see how it was an evil act.

piL

I've found that being a deadly GM is condusive to roleplaying. I have a friend who has what I call EverQuest disease, where every old merchant is a badass level 15 weaponmaster or crazy shit. I don't think that's the answer. When they kill innocent people instead of talking to them they generally can do it without difficulty, but then the law gets after them, they often get arrested, or more often they fight back and get killed. When they meet the one uber wizard from another plane and try to take him down, I flat out let them meet their end. Since then, in my campaigns, I've noticed people try to talk to people more often instead of just barring swords and cutting everyone they meet down.

Vincent Grayson

Raziel wrote:

First of all, you have to get them in the mood to roleplay. All the preparation and acting in the world on your part won't do a thing unless the players are willing to get into it.

Put on accents, be rude to the players - when I'm roleplaying an NPC, I like to interrupt the players or tell them to "shut up," just to shock them into the realization that they're dealing with a person, rather than a set of preprogrammed responses.

Second, roleplaying campaigns are hard to do (but possible - just look at L5R's Winter Court boxed sets), so don't be afraid to throw in some combat.

That said, don't necessarily build NPCs to suit the party's CR - if it makes sense that the Ogre Chieftain is too powerful for the party to defeat, make it so - that way, if the party decides not to negotiate and just wades in, swords swinging, you can kill them all.

The next group of characters they make won't be so quick to kill everything they come across.

Finally, don't rely on persuasion or negotiation rolls - make them roleplay it out and either go from there, or hand out modifiers based on the quality of the roleplaying.

That last bit is key, I think. Nearly every PnP game I've ever played, we've only used dice rolls for social skills when we're in a hurry to get something done...otherwise, all negoiation/diplomacy/intimidation/etc is up to the players. Sometimes, this might not work (if the player is significantly less/more intelligent/charismatic than their character), but usually, we just fudge it anyway, because it's more fun.

piL

Vincent Grayson wrote:

Raziel wrote:

First of all, you have to get them in the mood to roleplay. All the preparation and acting in the world on your part won't do a thing unless the players are willing to get into it.

Put on accents, be rude to the players - when I'm roleplaying an NPC, I like to interrupt the players or tell them to "shut up," just to shock them into the realization that they're dealing with a person, rather than a set of preprogrammed responses.

Second, roleplaying campaigns are hard to do (but possible - just look at L5R's Winter Court boxed sets), so don't be afraid to throw in some combat.

That said, don't necessarily build NPCs to suit the party's CR - if it makes sense that the Ogre Chieftain is too powerful for the party to defeat, make it so - that way, if the party decides not to negotiate and just wades in, swords swinging, you can kill them all.

The next group of characters they make won't be so quick to kill everything they come across.

Finally, don't rely on persuasion or negotiation rolls - make them roleplay it out and either go from there, or hand out modifiers based on the quality of the roleplaying.

That last bit is key, I think. Nearly every PnP game I've ever played, we've only used dice rolls for social skills when we're in a hurry to get something done...otherwise, all negoiation/diplomacy/intimidation/etc is up to the players. Sometimes, this might not work (if the player is significantly less/more intelligent/charismatic than their character), but usually, we just fudge it anyway, because it's more fun.

The alternative that I sometimes do when I'm playing is roll the die and then roleplay is, so if I crap out the roll, I make a crappy argument, but if I rock the roll (heh), I try to make a good argument and hope the DM responds appropriately.

naporeon

piL wrote:

I've found that being a deadly GM is condusive to roleplaying. I have a friend who has what I call EverQuest disease, where every old merchant is a badass level 15 weaponmaster or crazy shit. I don't think that's the answer. When they kill innocent people instead of talking to them they generally can do it without difficulty, but then the law gets after them, they often get arrested, or more often they fight back and get killed. When they meet the one uber wizard from another plane and try to take him down, I flat out let them meet their end. Since then, in my campaigns, I've noticed people try to talk to people more often instead of just barring swords and cutting everyone they meet down.

Haha...this happened to me, recently. I was playing in our D&D campaign last week, and I have to admit to starting to get really bored with the storylines and gameplay. The DM, probably the best I've ever played with, has started to get seriously lazy, and is clearly not putting much effort into it. I decided to spice it up a bit by becoming a little more aggro. During the game, the DM started making ominous comments to other players, saying, "Naporeon likes to play the game above the game, and I don't like it." I should've considered it a warning.

I did not.

Our party is tracking a werewolf with substantial levels of Monk and Fighter, who leads a large party of bandits. He is the target of a vendetta by my character, and in our first encounter with him, infected our LG psionic with lycanthropy. A bad egg, in other words. Anyhow, his followers, whom we did NOT fight in the first encounter, were described as non-coms; most likely L1 villagers, very few of whom are even armed. So...we find a small band (numbering 20 or so), and I try to convince our four-man party to ambush them. The thing is, we don't even know that they're bandits. They could be miners, for all we know. So we rest for the night, and I sneak down to the camp during my watch. Very few weapons. Other suspicious things. The next morning, I convince the party to go down to the other camp and "talk" to the guys. Our psionic and Monk come with me, and the wizard stays with the barely-functioning autistic kid who is guiding us (actually an AMAZING NPC). It becomes clear that these guys are in fact looking for the werewolf, in order to join him. That's enough for me...in the surprise round and on my initiative, my archer drops their leader. So it's the three of us and the ranged artillerist (wizard), 100' away, versus a camp full of 19 angry men. The only problem? These guys are looking to be converted, so they more or less share the werewolf's class breakdown. No weapons in camp?

Monks.

Fucked.

mrcheesypants

So I'm learning how to DM and getting a group set up but I'm not sure how to handle NPC conversations. My plan is to make them roll for social situations and those rolls just effect how easily offended or cooperative the NPC is.

Any comments on this idea?

DeVryGuy

I run an Sharn-based mystery campaign, so the roleplaying comes a little more naturally. But I will suggest that making the players work a little to get to the combats can help the roleplaying environment. Rather than "that tribe of goblins is causing trouble, go take care of it," try giving them an objective that they have to figure out.

For instance, my last adventure the PCs were hired to find someone who robbed one of the Adventuring Guilds in Sharn. They had to listen to testimonies, search for clues, run down leads and get just a little lucky, and then once they found the responsible party they were able to get their hack 'n slash on (against a formidable group of Knights)

Raziel

I should modify my point about uber-powerful NPCs.

See, you can't just make the Shopkeeper a 15th level fighter simply because you don't want the party to kill him - that's unrealistic. Make him a third-level commoner or expert. If the party wants to cut him down, let them.

But don't let them off the hook.

That merchant probably has friends and family. He probably has connections to the entire merchant culture.

Let's see how the party feels when they try to buy a new tanglefoot bag, and every merchant in town refuses to deal with the murderers.

What if the merchant's family hires bounty hunters to bring the murdering party to justice, dead or alive?

On the other hand, don't drop the CR of the Ogre King the party's supposed to kill - make him a CR 18 Ogre Barbarian. It's unrealistic for the third-level party to wipe out an entire tribe of Ogres anyway.

If they really want to kill him, let them think it out - draw him into an ambush, shoot a ballista at him, or drop him into a pit. Either that, or let them eat away at his civilization in pieces - kill the shaman, kill the farmers, burn the crops. Make the King's life miserable so he leaves voluntarily.

Either that, or make them remember to come back and finish the job after striking a decisive blow.

Finally, inject a little realism into the campaign. It doesn't make sense for every Goblin in the caves to be a warrior or shaman - what about the hunter/gatherers, midwives, and so forth?

The key is to use your logic. Don't just throw in a baby goblin for the hell of it - come up with a good reason the goblin will be there.

It'll help the party suspend disbelief, and really get into the world you've created.

Make no mistake - being a really good DM isn't just knowing the rules. You have to be an artist and storyteller too.

falconire

I used to have every innkeeper being clad in plate and a 15th level fighter but ironically the players started going after them, thinking they would be loaded with treasure. Now they're all 3rd level and the PC's get nothing but a bounty so they don't do it anymore.

I've decided to simply add more npc's to my game, like that goblin midwife idea. Good stuff there!

Pkmoutl

mrcheesypants wrote:

So I'm learning how to DM and getting a group set up but I'm not sure how to handle NPC conversations. My plan is to make them roll for social situations and those rolls just effect how easily offended or cooperative the NPC is.

Any comments on this idea?

If you want to do that, Flying Buffalo makes a die just for that purpose.

Personally, I think it's minimalistic and silly. Have them react to it like they would if they were real people. If you can't have a person react to something like a regular person without a die roll, you aren't really cut out for the GM's seat.

randombattle

I would say how people act in campaigns is a lot like anything else. If you keep doing one thing they will come to expect that and start acting that way. Like you said you made all the bartenders super awesome but that just made them want to go after them. If they come to expect super npc's that don't have anything to say they wont bother.

The more realistic npc's there are and the more conversations they have the more players are to going to start talking to them. If they keep getting into situations where they have to talk to people they will start doing that from the beginning and everything snowballs from there.

A couple people have mentioned making combat more difficult to get to. That might help you out if your players are focused on fighting. Just flesh out some npcs in the quests and make them more reluctant to tell the players unless they strike up more conversations.

A little depth for npcs they deal with can go along way to adding to atmosphere and encouraging roleplaying.

Pkmoutl wrote:

mrcheesypants wrote:

So I'm learning how to DM and getting a group set up but I'm not sure how to handle NPC conversations. My plan is to make them roll for social situations and those rolls just effect how easily offended or cooperative the NPC is.

Any comments on this idea?

If you want to do that, Flying Buffalo makes a die just for that purpose.

Personally, I think it's minimalistic and silly. Have them react to it like they would if they were real people. If you can't have a person react to something like a regular person without a die roll, you aren't really cut out for the GM's seat.

Yeah its a lot better for a person to be realistic then random. You don't want every person they run into be completely different.

It would make more sense to roll to see how a whole class of people think and then tweak it for each individual npc as they run into them.

Like maybe all the peasants think adventurers are disruptive to their simple way of life. But then you need to think "Ok does this way of thinking fit for what this npc has experienced?"

It's all very situational. If you use the same thing for every npc then the players will just get used to that way and start to get tired of it eventually making them not want to talk to npcs because they all act the same.

Pkmoutl

falconire wrote:

I used to have every innkeeper being clad in plate and a 15th level fighter but ironically the players started going after them, thinking they would be loaded with treasure. Now they're all 3rd level and the PC's get nothing but a bounty so they don't do it anymore.

I've decided to simply add more npc's to my game, like that goblin midwife idea. Good stuff there!

My merchants usually aren't anything special. However, I do make it perfectly clear that the City Watch are well-armed and well-trained. The first time your party has to face down a group where they are outnumbered 5 to 1 and they are armed with halberds, longswords and crossbows, they tend to not be assholes as much. The occasional Cleric or Wizard in the group doesn't hurt, either. I've also been known to have the watch use trained Barghests as attack dogs.

Aroused Bull

mrcheesypants wrote:

So I'm learning how to DM and getting a group set up but I'm not sure how to handle NPC conversations. My plan is to make them roll for social situations and those rolls just effect how easily offended or cooperative the NPC is.

Any comments on this idea?

I make a reaction roll based on charisma when they meet someone, have the NPC react accordingly, and from then on out everything is roleplay. While I'm playing the NPC I'll keep in mind the characters' charisma, intelligence etc and make the appropriate responses.

Pkmoutl

randombattle wrote:

A couple people have mentioned making combat more difficult to get to. That might help you out if your players are focused on fighting. Just flesh out some npcs in the quests and make them more reluctant to tell the players unless they strike up more conversations.

Another way to do it is to step up the lethality of combat. I did that with a Vampire campaign years ago. Back in 1st and 2nd edition, the Storyteller's Guide had an alternate combat system in it that was far more lethal (and a lot faster and simpler too). I started using that, and the first time someone went on a crime spree and was shot dead by a cop with a .38, they thought twice about just going willy-nilly into combat.

If they do this kind of thing, double up what you would usually use against them if you're playing D&D. Also, make sure to use all the special abilities that classes and monsters have. I can't tell you how many people I've met have held back on using a particular ability of a monster because it would more than likely kill someone.

If you make combat more dangerous to your PC's, the less likely they are going to be to just go running at everything with weapons drawn and treasure on their minds.

Once I made combat more lethal in my Vampire game, I saw less and less of it. I had an entire Sabbat campaign where there was no combat for the entire campaign. Well, that's not true. Someone knocked out one of the knobs by hitting them in the back of the head with the flat of their sword when they wouldn't shut the hell up.