What is Roleplaying? And Are We All Doing It Wrong?

Critical Role has helped popularize roleplaying games, but you don’t need to be a professional actor (or even speak in character all the time) to roleplay. Image by Critical Role.

As a longtime Dungeon Master and player of D&D, I remember the first time I logged into a “roleplaying” server in EverQuest 2. I didn’t know quite what to expect. Would there be a lot of people speaking in Thee’s and Thou’s?

And there was. In the newbie areas. Once we leveled up into that mid-teens range, the fake roleplaying dropped away, and people tended to act in a way similar to any other server — which is to say, they were rarely (if ever)
“in character”.

It did get me thinking about what roleplaying actually is.

And it’s not speaking in Thee’s and Thou’s.

It’s also not Baldur’s Gate 3, despite it being one of the best “roleplaying” games in the history of mankind.

When you boil it all down, roleplaying is simply choosing actions for a character that are consistent with the personality and background given to the character.

There. Simple, right?

Perhaps not.

In writing, there is something called “fantastic realism.” This is not to be confused with magical realism, which is a genre of writing. Fantastic realism is the idea that strong worldbuilding requires a set of rules that are strictly followed even when dealing with worlds of fantasy.

It is a concept that all Dungeon Masters — and even all TTRPG players — should learn.

Basically, the idea is that just because you are roaming around in a “fantasy” world doesn’t mean your “very strong” character with a 17 strength can lift a two-ton boulder and throw it over the edge of a cliff because they rolled a natural 20.

Living in a fantasy doesn’t suspend the laws of physics. It just gives a new set of rules that allow you to bend or break those rules. Those new rules — “magic” — may allow fantastical actions, but those actions should follow the rules that allow them. If the world requires a magician to memorize a spell before casting it and then that spell vanishes from their brain, the characters within that world should stick to those rules.

In terms of writing, this allows authors to create stronger worlds that feel more real and coherent even when they have fantastical elements.

The same goes for roleplaying.

A character has a background. They have a personality. They have motives. They have genetics. And all of these combine into a set of actions that character takes in different situations.

And it is in staying true to that character that we find roleplaying.

That doesn’t mean your character can’t surprise you.

I remember in writing The Blood of the Templar, I had planned for one of the characters to remain within the story until the climactic end and beyond. Suddenly one night while writing a scene where assassins caught up with them — a scene that was plotted for why the characters would need to flee the area — I found that character heroically giving their life in defense of another.

It wasn’t planned. It just happened.

Your character may not always stick to their background, personality, motives or genetics.

We certainly don’t!

I tend to be a light-hearted comic always trying to crack my family up or tell an inside joke even if I’m the only person in the room that gets it. I’m the kind of guy that looks for any reason to quote Shanghai Noon: “I may not know Karate, but I do know crazy…”

But that doesn’t mean I won’t snap at someone because I woke up with a stomach ache that spread to my head, and I really don’t feel like putting up with their shit at that exact moment.

The character we take on is not locked into a rigid set of rules. Their behavior can surprise you, but this tends to come from being in character and having that voice inside your head whisper a surprising twist. It should be surprising, but in a way, not surprising.

The character’s death in my book surprised me when it happened. I had walked outside to pace around the house as I thought through the fight scene and… it just happened.

But it fit.

So, you need not feel locked into the background you have given your character. But your actions should still, in some way — even when they are surprising — fit your character.

And it is actions, not how you talk or the three pages of background you wrote up, that really define roleplaying.

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The author is the developer of Endless RPG, an app that allows sole play of D&D by creating random maps to explore. Endless RPG is available on Steam and mobile.