I remember when d20 was all the rage, running games for strangers at cons, and a player wanted to make diplomacy rolls, against other players, in lieu of speaking in character, and then wanting me, as the GM, to interpret their character via their die roll to the other player.  Now, I had always run into players with different takes on how the game was played, but it was kind of a wtf moment.  I think I laughed at the guy, a big GM no-no, but I was dumbstruck, and I made the guy take his dice off the table and play it out.  I've always been pretty loose with table talk and such, and I try to accommodate different playing styles so that fun can be had by all, but there are moments when the game needs to be roleplayed - and that's pretty non-negotiable at my table.  I do however, lead by example, and most people fall naturally into the flow.

Quote from: Nexus;972794Could you unpack this a little?

Quote from: Willie the Duck;972795Not CRKrueger, but I'll take a crack at it. Nowhere in the books does it say that you are supposed to talk in-character (or for that matter treat your characters like characters). Therefor you have had people who treated the game like improv theater night, and people who treated it like a board game with infinitely changing boards and infinitely broad moves that your pieces could make. Both extremes are within the ruleset.

Yeah, basically this.  You could have 5 people playing D&D.  One could be playing the game with literally no roleplaying just playing it like 40k or something, another could be try to be IC as much as possible, another could be making decisions based on what they thought would be most interesting as a plot to play through, etc.

Once you start choosing a playstyle as a designer and start supporting that playstyle specifically through mechanics, frequently that ends up forcing that playstyle, because if you have a different playstyle, those mechanics now are in your way and fighting what you're trying to do.

BTW I meant "support" not "enforce" up above, I edited it.

About half and half in my games. Sometimes they are in character with each other, and sometimes not. I think it is worth encouraging. I would keep in mind player limitations: that painfully shy person playing a bard is more likely to speak as little as possible and hardly likely to come out of their personal shell, though I have seen it happen. I only play tabletop. I will say people have shown more willingness to be in character more often when I as a GM use different accents and voices.

Quote from: Madprofessor;973432I remember when d20 was all the rage, running games for strangers at cons, and a player wanted to make diplomacy rolls, against other players, in lieu of speaking in character, and then wanting me, as the GM, to interpret their character via their die roll to the other player.  Now, I had always run into players with different takes on how the game was played, but it was kind of a wtf moment.  I think I laughed at the guy, a big GM no-no, but I was dumbstruck, and I made the guy take his dice off the table and play it out.  I've always been pretty loose with table talk and such, and I try to accommodate different playing styles so that fun can be had by all, but there are moments when the game needs to be roleplayed - and that's pretty non-negotiable at my table.  I do however, lead by example, and most people fall naturally into the flow.

That can go both ways. I once had a DM ask me how I was disarming a trap. "Carefully, with thieve's tools," while rolling my die was apparently the wrong answer. He wanted to know exactly what I was doing to the lock. That went beyond my knowledge base, so I told him it was a stupid thing to ask.

Quote from: Harlock;973439That can go both ways. I once had a DM ask me how I was disarming a trap. "Carefully, with thieve's tools," while rolling my die was apparently the wrong answer. He wanted to know exactly what I was doing to the lock. That went beyond my knowledge base, so I told him it was a stupid thing to ask.

Point taken, and you're right, it can go too far the other way, but talking in character is something you do in a roleplaying game and I don't know any players who can plead ignorance: "but, I don't know how to talk. Can't I just roll?"

Quote from: Willie the Duck;972795Not CRKrueger, but I'll take a crack at it. Nowhere in the books does it say that you are supposed to talk in-character (or for that matter treat your characters like characters). Therefor you have had people who treated the game like improv theater night, and people who treated it like a board game with infinitely changing boards and infinitely broad moves that your pieces could make. Both extremes are within the ruleset.

Yes.

IME - players are generally fine at talking IC with NPCs, since I as GM address them IC and they respond in kind.

Players in non-D&D games tend to focus on the role they're playing and quite often talk IC with each other. I see this with one-shots especially. Players in online play by email, post, or text chat stick in-character very well, one reason I enjoy these formats.

Players in tabletop D&D IME tend to focus on the game as a problem-solving exercise, not a role-playing exercise, and talk OOC (or indistinguishable from OOC) about how they're going to solve the problem. In many cases the PCs don't have a clear personality distinct from the player. And I think (a) many players prefer this approach (OOC problem solving), though it is a bit frustrating to the more thespy types like me and (b) this largely reflects how the game was originally played; I don't think Gygax's Castle Greyhawk groups were engaging in much amateur dramatics. OTOH Braunstein type games would have been played IC.

Quote from: S'mon;973477Players in tabletop D&D IME tend to focus on the game as a problem-solving exercise, not a role-playing exercise, and talk OOC (or indistinguishable from OOC) about how they're going to solve the problem. In many cases the PCs don't have a clear personality distinct from the player. And I think (a) many players prefer this approach (OOC problem solving), though it is a bit frustrating to the more thespy types like me and (b) this largely reflects how the game was originally played; I don't think Gygax's Castle Greyhawk groups were engaging in much amateur dramatics. OTOH Braunstein type games would have been played IC.

Ugh. I wish I had my copy of Playing at the World with me.  There is a reference to a group (west coast I think) that were writing in-character stories for characters which represented themselves and creating whole narrative worlds for themselves with modified Braunsteins concurrent to when D&D was being formed. And I think they were absorbed into the D&D phenomenon. It also talked about how D&D characters were not played with a distinction between IC and OOC knowledge. So yeah, I think both extremes were well supported--culturally, as we just unpacked, all of them are supported (through silence) by the rules--right through the beginning of the game.

Quote from: CRKrueger;973434Yeah, basically this.  You could have 5 people playing D&D.  One could be playing the game with literally no roleplaying just playing it like 40k or something, another could be try to be IC as much as possible, another could be making decisions based on what they thought would be most interesting as a plot to play through, etc.

Once you start choosing a playstyle as a designer and start supporting that playstyle specifically through mechanics, frequently that ends up forcing that playstyle, because if you have a different playstyle, those mechanics now are in your way and fighting what you're trying to do.

BTW I meant "support" not "enforce" up above, I edited it.

Ah, okay. Thanks.

First let's set aside all the game irrelevant conversation that goes on during a game session (things like OOC jokes and comments like "pass the chips," "nice t-shirt," "what did you think of that movie?") and just focus on the game relevant table conversation. Some players approach a roleplaying game as mostly an OOC problem solving exercise. The vast majority of the talking at the table they do is OOC, especially when they relate to other players. Contrariwise, some players approach a roleplaying game as an amateur dramatics exercise. What I find strange are the people who don't appear to be familiar with both approaches.

(Removed because duplicated and amplified. Thought this one was gone...)

Quote from: CRKrueger;972793Probably.  That's like the 4th or 5th post expressing some level of surprise that someone wouldn't talk IC PC-to-PC, the hobby being roleplaying and all.

But that was always the advantage of poor old "incoherent" D&D.  It didn't mechanically support playstyle, therefore it didn't mechanically force playstyle.

Absolutely! Back when I was running D&D this three part division of how players talked was happening all the time. Now all my players play the same way, and chat, sometimes incessantly.

BTW, you can play a role - as in the stalwart fighter - without acting. Stalwart Fighter, Sneaky Thief, and Inscrutable Wizard are ROLES. As in they play a role in how the party functions. "Role-playing" does not require acting in character. Back when I started in the mid 70s, many groups played this way. Just as many played act-in-character or whatever. There was no single way to play, and every group was a world unto itself. There was no internet to proselytize one way over another, and groups depended on magazines, cons, and the slow drift of players from group to group to learn new things. Think island ecologies - our mammoths may have taken a looong time to die out!

Quote from: flyingmice;973694Stalwart Fighter, Sneaky Thief, and Inscrutable Wizard are ROLES. As in they play a role in how the party functions. "Role-playing" does not require acting in character.

Exactly.  This is how almost every gaming group I've ever been a part of does it.  If some organic moment of speaking in character happens at an opportune moment when the action and inspiration intersect, great.  But otherwise we're laughing, joking, busting each other and focusing on the experience around the table being fun as opposed to faithfully acting a certain way while we do it.

One of the worst (and weirdest) games I ever played in was one where the GM tried to ban us talking in character as it made him 'uncomfortable'.

There are a lot of different play styles out there.

Quote from: Bren;973649First let's set aside all the game irrelevant conversation that goes on during a game session (things like OOC jokes and comments like "pass the chips," "nice t-shirt," "what did you think of that movie?") and just focus on the game relevant table conversation. Some players approach a roleplaying game as mostly an OOC problem solving exercise. The vast majority of the talking at the table they do is OOC, especially when they relate to other players. Contrariwise, some players approach a roleplaying game as an amateur dramatics exercise. What I find strange are the people who don't appear to be familiar with both approaches.

I've not seen it happen in any group I've played in (that there's a mixture of approaches being employed at the same table). I can only imagine they'd each be annoying to those talking in the other way, I know I'd find it so if one of the player never spoke IC. Equally I'm sure the person "wasting" time talking IC would annoy those who want to get to the solutions.

Of course they do. Otherwise you are playing a small scale tactical skirmish game with cut scenes.

Occasional lapses where mechanics are referred to in the rough aside all conversation that doesn't relate to snacks, cups of tea or the like should be in character.

It's easy to encourage just have the NPCs talk to the PCs in character.

I mean some of you seem like you have never had the PCs sit down and have a meal and a conversation or discuss the merits of having or not having a rigid set of rules for their new Thieves Guild.
We once had a game of CoC where the PCs met up after a break of a few years (game and real life) and we started with high tea at the Missionary's house that latest 2 hours of real time.

Is the world gone mad?