How to Avoid Terrible Roleplaying in D&D 5e

There is no way to avoid terrible roleplaying in DnD! You have to come to terms with the fact that games are always going to be as bad as every b-rated movie ever made.

Just don't be the annoying guy who wants his character to get drunk all the time so he can be loud and "random."

Helpful video! I’d love to share it with my players, but I fear the title will hurt their feelings. 😂❤

My wife is new to ttrpgs and was having trouble choosing a character. I suggested she play as one of our animals and it was a great idea. Most people are tuned into their animals personalities and some of us have voices for them. Our scared little kitty has become a fun thief at our table.

I dont mind someone who plays a reluctant hero/adventurer I think that's a great idea but if a person tries to block me at every turn as a GM, I am afraid they will end up with a deceased Character pretty quickly. It's one of the few things that will make me act out in game, breaking session 0 rules like harassment of another player or that sort of thing will be addressed 1 time and then then person will be asked to leave. I have been SO lucky; I have only ever had to tell one person that I didn't think they were a match for the group after he spent most of a session after drinking several rum and Cokes hitting on our warlock and our mage who were not gay or Bi-sexual. I asked them if they were ok, and they said they were but at the end of the session I told the new player I thought he was not a good fit for our table.

My wife and I play with our adult kids one of whom is the DM. I really want to play an old adventurer who's going along cause he's gotten bored with retirement. "Back in my day..." "Did I ever tell you about the time I...."

I had a human fighter that would give piggy bag rides to the halfling rogue cause he was tired of her complaining about not being able to keep up..and to keep her hands of things that didn't belong to her. I even threw her up to a ledge while she was holding a rope so she could tie it off for us to climb up.

this is an amazing video you guys!! thank you so much for all these great ideas

I read a article that said most people play like DnD is a video game not a RPG

We had a character thar was grabbing every piece of loot. So my rogue took offense at this and did a little slight of had on choice items
But then as the only PC with a bag of holdin I held the grps loot and sold it or distributed it evenly.

Shallow characters cause bad roleplay, I'm in a campaign where there is a lot of hostility between my character and the other players and it's super fun since our characters are not shallow.

honestly the best video on roleplaying i've seen so far. two things i personally like for my characters is to 1 make sure to have a core memory to draw from and 2 imagine what activities my characters take part of in their spare time.

DM: After being given the details of your quest, the tavern owner continues.
Tavern Owner: I'm glad to have your help but I only have 10 gold to pay the 4 of you.
Player1: 10 gold for 4 of us?! That is WAY too low!
Tavern Owner: Sorry but that is all I have.
Player1: Fine then I'm going to find a better way to make money! [Leaves the tavern]
DM: As [Player1] closes the door, you hear unnatural sounds; growls, gnashing and the confused voice of your former companion. Suddenly the door violently rattles as you hear tearing, roaring and screaming. The door becomes quiet and a red fluid flows slowly from under the door.
Tavern Owner: Oh, my... it happened again.... So as I was saying. I'm really sorry but I only have 10 gold for the 3 of you.
Player2: We would be happy to accept anything you would be willing to give. 😅
Tavern Owner: Wonderful to hear!

thats what i like about the Matt Colville Chain of Acheron actual play, theyre a range of experience and comfortability with different levels of roleplay, and theyre clearly just a group of friends rather than a set of voice actors

i think the most fun i had was playing a pretty much combat twohander onetrick, who was a hero with extremely poor memory. playing him in social settings was just a tightrope act of throwing out intuitions when people recognized you and the group had no idea who they were, but neither did the guy that should have known the person. didnt even have to level lying much since the awkward scrambling for sense in the sentences wasnt called out much due to the standing as a hero, just basicially made me more famous for being so quirky and recognizable

Our current campaign has so much infighting that it borders on ridiculous. Almost all of the characters have tried to kill one another on more than one occasion for some reason or another. We make a lot of jokes about our party fighting as much as the characters in One Piece. They have fought one another over some of the most mundane things. It adds an interesting dynamic to the game and has gotten out of hand enough times that we actually have asked the DM if we should be getting XP for our interparty fights. We also split the party so much that the DM had to start thinking of ways to draw us back together. We have had a party of 5 characters split 3 different ways more than once. It isn't that our characters are loners in particular, it is just that we end up with very different goals in different places.

I think the most interesting one was last weekend though where I let them know I was going to be quite late to the session because I had my daughter's graduation first (it was televised from another state). When I showed up, we had to figure out what my character had been doing all of that time. Since the previous session ended on a long rest, we decided that he just overslept, and they didn't bother to wake him up. It was kind of perfect because I had no idea what I missed just like my character had no idea. He was just mad they didn't come get him which fits because he has anger management issues. It also fits that they might not have woken him up because our characters don't exactly like each other that much nor are they great at relaying information.

Some of the infighting and splitting up kind of makes the game a bit more drawn out than it should be, but at the same time, it has made for some very interesting gameplay with outcomes that have given us a lot to talk and joke about afterwards. I mean in the beginning we started off on a ship taking us to the city where everything was supposed to start. Things should go smoothly in that scenario, but we actually ended up having one of the characters accidently kill the ship's captain in his sleep and got into 3 interparty fights, the last of which almost destroyed the ship. The DM was not prepared for that much action that early into the game.

whell I rollplay a shy ninja so it feels easy bc I'm not talking much.

My character is a life cleric of Ilmater and has a wife. I imagine them as Ed and Lorraine Warren from the conjuring movies kicking bad guys ass together and slaying demons back to back

I love the recommendations about voice acting and mannerisms. Kelly and Monty are so good at it, it's amazing!

I'm currently playing on a 7-player campaign (yeah it's nuts sometimes), and we really have a hard time when it comes to role play. Only three of us seem to care about bringing our characters to life, altough I don't think we're too successful at it. We may be too focused on combat.

However, I think one of the players is doing a great job. He's a human fighter who used to be a noble and got accused of a crime he didn't commit. He's that one character in the party that ruins negotiations and carefully-planned dialogue by being pretentious and implying that he's above all of us. It may come off as annoying, but you know what? He's probably the best player on the table. By risking the party's plans he makes the rest of us constantly watch out for it, and try to anticipate to the way he's gonna fuck up next. And by doing that, we 1, think what our characters would do, and 2, work as a group, even if it's just to keep each other from fucking up.

I think that little things like that do a lot to ease-in the roleplay on the group. Other than that, we all need a bit of practice. I just hope we get better as time passes

a Heros Journey requires that the character changes from the experience of that journey

Great points. Thanks for another video

I'm only half way through the video but the section on seeking adventure helped me crack a huge block I'd been having in connecting with my character concept!!! I've finally figured out the change I needed to make to her recent backstory so that she really resonates with me

This video is super informative but is shying away from what the title is actually saying.
I've seen good roleplaying but where that player completely overshadows other players to the point where some characters are left on the backburner just because they are being played by more introverted players

I feel like if youre in a town/village setting, having characters go off and be motivated by their own ends works really well, but when you're on quest, you have to agree a bit more

On the note of seeking adventure, there's also a level of like realism that you want to be able to hit

Like, if you're being hired for a thing in character it makes complete sense that you you know, bargain for your price, if you're being severely undercut it makes sense that your character in game would be like, hey, I'm not going to work for severe undercut

That can even lead to things like the other members in your party arguing against it for the purpose of my like morality or something

My step son (21) has been playing for a few years now, and I had limited prior experience when i was a teen (49 now). He came to us (his Mom, myself, and his 9 year old brother) asking if we would be interested in playing as he learns to DM, and we have been having a blast! His Aunt even plays with us now and our table ranges in age from 9 to 60, each of us having very unique role playing styles. I say all of this to say that your videos have helped so much in the evolution of our game play. I appreciate you guys so much. Thank you.

Just created a actor bard named “Hal Pacino”. Easiest time I’ve ever had roleplaying.

I'm sorry but in this day and age it is absolutely necessary to speak in a bad Scottish accent if you're playing a dwarf fighter. Other than that though, no accent required.😅

So, this comment is a bit late. Im doing my first campaign, and the dm wanted us to start as undead (as chaotic evil characters) in a world that a artifact was used to flip the earth and make half of it always dark half of it always light. After we got brought back with the help of the closest thing to a god walking the earth, she asked what we wanted to do now since she hadn't planned after this. I suggested we try and fix the earth. No one else really said anything, so she assumed they were okay with it. My character, having seen this walking god in action, decided to worship him, fearing his wrath. Little did I know when we got brought back and all of our alignments got returned to normal half, the party was neutral and one was already evil....then 3 of them made a deal with a devil prince in a rp scenario... turning the only good one neutral and one of the neutral ones evil... then the neutral one took the hand of vecna and put it on himself.....turning fully evil...here I am a lawful good monk cleric like 😱. We go to town, and one of the first things one of them does in a bar fight was make a cloud of daggers "human blender." Now, as a LAWFUL GOOD CLERIC TERRIED HER GOD WILL MAKE EVERYONE FEEL HIS WRATH, she sees little choice but to knock the evil sorc out and help the guards. The other party member with the hand was talked into just knocking the people in the tavern out. The dm told me I should play it normally when they first turned evil since group conflict can be fun. But Im worried eventually this is gonna escalate, im not worried about any of us as friends not getting along. But its kinda hard to rp a lawful good character with only 1 neutral and 3 evil characters, im not sure what to do because I feel having a neutral character would make this infinitely easier to play since id avoid situations where id have to fight with 1+ people in the party, any suggestions for this? Side note, one of the characters is a kender who steals from everyone. My dm being a genius gave her a table of useless things shed randomly find on us every time she pickpocked us. That way, she didn't get anything we actually use (like 3 dead flies, a 10-foot pole, a random rock, etc. Kenders dont care what they steal they just love to take things.)

I had a case when my PC refused to go with certain stuff, and eventually decided that it would be easier to just create a new one. Long story short, he took an oath not to get involved to a certain civil war, and eventually we were asked to intervine, and not in a very... Right way? It was given in a different light, but we basically had to assassinate the rebel leader, and one who asked us to do it wasn't even from the country where the war took place. I initially intended to go with "I will only agree to go there and deside for myself after I see what's actually going on", but I would have to constantly come up with reasons why he wouldn't nope out of it, and it would require changes to the character that both wouldn't make sense and I wouldn't like.

"If your character would not be in the party, then okay, they leave the party. Now make a new character that will be a contributing member of the party".

Feel like the title of this could also be “understanding different types of roleplayers and learning to accept them”

This vid really helped me, thanks dudes

I watched this before I ever played, now that I have 10ish sessions under my belt, I'm back to check if I'm a problem

My current character is a fighter who is similar to Cell Saga Vegeta-overly confident and absolutely sure of his power, right up until the moment he gets his ass handed to him

the whole voice change and accent thing was never "the roleplaying" for me it was just a totem for my character. because i associate my character with that voice when i use the voice i behave more similar to how my character would. in the same way reading over my characters personality traits, ideal, bonds, and flaws reminds me of my character and makes roleplaying him easier, a voice change or accent i heavily associate with that character makes roleplaying as them easier.

the problem is when i'm the DM and the campaign has like 30 important characters.

Idk if the following is a DM fault or a player fault but we have a rather big group of 6 players and one of the characters isnt alligned with the rest at all. Causing him to separate from the group and do his own thing. The party got into a big battle one day so we spend a lot of time on that part while the loner player was just sitting in the library forging a document. I actually felt sorry because the player didnt get any interactions that day. But the player even now continues to make solo decisions and refusing to work well with the paladin. The paladin even had to act out of character in hope fix a little of this inter-party conflict.

I dont mind inter-party conflict at all, its fun and causes some new dynamics but it imo it needs to be done tactfully enough so that everyone can atleast contribute to the main goal. Players separating from the group and ending up doing nothing because they themselves havent even thought about what to do if the party that went together takes more time than they thought.

My moon druid occasionally wild shapes mid conversation if he gets flustered. He has 8CHR, so he's very easily flustered lol

I don’t have the best wording for this, but I might explain the “shared experience” to less empathetic players by emphasizing that Roleplaying is a dialogue between two people. You don’t Roleplay at the game. The backstory you write before the game or the characterization that’s only inside your head don’t count until someone else engages with it willingly. That’s why monopolizing the DM, being a loner, and ignoring/forgetting the plot are seen in a bad light.

I just started my first ever campaign. Super excited. Was told to watch the second campaign of Critical Role. Loving it. However, if anyone in my group tries to spend half a session giving a goblin and bath while the wizard looks for a smutt store I think I'd get super frustrated, I have to skip ahead a lot on that show cause they kinda do go too much at times.

Say "maneurism" one more time tho 😅

Hey hold on charisma is my dump stat

the bit about voice acting is good, people often forget that the people in dimension 20 or critical role are entertainers first, players second, but in a typical DnD campaign it's quite the opposite, you're players first, entertainer then comes some place after

objects are def good for getting into character, that's why I have a set of dice for each character! No other reason haha I don't have a problem.