Roleplay is, in essence, the heart of the game,
especially in Chromatia’s play-by-post environment where individuals have the time and space to really explore their character’s inner dialogue. At its basest, this form of interaction focuses on describing your character’s words and actions to the game master and other players within your immediate thread. In other words, drawing on the mental image you have of your character, you tell everyone what your character does and how they do it.
In play-by-post, we have the added benefit of sharing the character’s internal thoughts and feelings from moment to moment. This isn’t a requirement but learning how to express your character’s inner dialogue can greatly improve your own roleplay experience and helps contextualize your interactions to other players and readers.
Sometimes, what might seem as a completely out-of-left field action (like immediately casting a defensive spell on yourself as soon as combat ends) can be made more obvious as paranoias or excessive caution with the appropriate context given, reducing the likelihood of certain actions being misconstrued as meta gaming.
When using descriptive roleplay, consider the following:
- Describe your character’s emotions and attitude.
- Focus on your character’s intent and how it may be perceived by others.
- Provide as much embellishment as you feel comfortable with.
Interactions in D&D are much like interactions in real life. If you can offer a character something they want, threaten them with something they fear, or play on their sympathies and goals, you can use words to get almost anything you want. On the other hand, if you insult a proud warrior or speak ill of a noble’s allies, your efforts to convince or deceive will fall short.
Avoiding Metagaming
What you
shouldn’t do, however, is interject other characters' actions or reactions as part of your own, unless the other player is willing or has otherwise expressed permission to do so. Consider the following:
“Jason realized the fight was going from bad to worse. Making a snap decision, Jason picks up Diana and runs away.”
It might not seem obvious at first, but a roleplay statement like this could be considered meta gaming. Has Diana’s player given OOC permission for Jason to just pick her up? What if Diana didn’t want picked up? There are several factors to consider, but the short of it is that phrasing like this should be avoided in RP where able. A better way to phrase the statement would be something like this:
“Jason realized the fight was going from bad to worse. Making a snap decision, Jason attempts to pick up Diana and, if she lets him, runs away.”
This leaves Diana’s response open to interpretation and leaves them in control of what they do or do not do. This same premise applies to NPCs under the game master’s control. Structure your RP in a way that explains what your character is doing and your goals but do so in a way that leaves other characters their freedom of choice and the ability to respond in their own way.
Other players, the game master included, use your character’s actions and attitudes to determine how their own characters (including NPCs) react. A cowardly character buckles under threats of violence. A stubborn dwarf refuses to let anyone badger her. A vain dragon laps up flattery. Pay close attention to the portrayal of other characters moods, dialogue, and personality – it may help you determine the character’s personality traits and play off them to influence their attitude.
Like before, however, be careful not to play off information your character couldn’t possibly know. When an otherwise friendly character thinks to themselves, “I’m going to stab Jason,” if Jason suddenly gets defensive or combative to prevent the stabbing without evidence, this would be considered “player knowledge” and thus, meta gaming.
Meta gaming bad. Don’t do that.
