Spitballing an idea on here: 'Magic' Personality characteristics

[No brains]

Does anybody think it would push players to roleplay more if personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws had some kind of effect to back them up? How much power should be put into these? Should they work individually, or like a bingo where the player gets a benefit after invoking multiple characteristics?

[Sigreid]

I think the idea that you can push people to role-playing more is a non starter. Some people love the role-playing, some people are OK with a bit and some people are only there for the puzzles and fights. That's just the way it is. I think what your talking about would mostly annoy people.

[solidork]

In my home games we've written concrete triggers that give you inspiration, largely drawing from personality traits, ideals, bonds and flaws.

So my half satyr who has sincerity as an ideal and has a bond about finding his father gets inspiration when saying what he really thinks gets him into (or out of) trouble and when he learns something important about his father. Everyone has five or six of these beats (as in character beats) and we pick three at the start of every session. If you achieve one in play, you have to swap it out for a different one next session.

Having something written down that you as the player can plan around and go "aha, I did the thing - I get inspiration" means that we get to make use of it much more often. If you're good at picking beats that are likely to come up and diligent about pursuing them you can usually get inspiration once per session, otherwise its once every few sessions.

[Ionathus]

I've also seen Inspiration linked to Bonds, Ideals, and Flaws. It's a neat idea that I've tried to implement in my games, but it never seems to drive roleplaying the way I hope it will.

Honestly, I think incentivizing roleplay isn't the problem: quite the reverse. I think too many DMs subconsciously disincentivize roleplaying by having pre-conceived win conditions or a "correct" path in mind.

Example: a PC has a flaw that they're impulsive. If the player wants to explore that flaw, it's in the DM's best interest for the PC to act on their impulses even if they get the party into trouble. However, the player might be unwilling to do anything impulsive, out of a fear that it'll ruin the fun for them or their fellow players. The DM can help them feel comfortable roleplaying that impulsivity by introducing opportunities to make a "mistake" that might set the party back temporarily, but will ultimately drive the story forward.

This isn't the same thing, but Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark starts with Indy mis-timing the idol swap and having to run away from a giant boulder. Nobody thinks less of Indy for messing that up, because we get a cool boulder trap chase sequence out of it. Likewise, allowing your players to feel cool even when their path goes a sub-optimal (but more fun!) direction can help them feel more comfortable taking risks with roleplaying!

Obvious caveat: of course I'm talking within reason here. No, I'm not advocating for full-blown murderhobos doing whatever they please and trampling all over everyone else's fun. There's a difference between being a total jerk of a player vs. collaboratively having your PC make a "sub-optimal" decision because it will make for a better story for everyone.

[Anymage]

As noted, if the table prefers to come at the game as small unit tactics, trying to encourage roleplaying might work counter to what they enjoy. My teammate can enjoy restoring classic cars in his downtime and be the biggest baseball nerd on the planet. When it's time to get things done we just put our heads down and focus on getting things done.

If you want to try encouraging more RP and there is low pressure time to focus on that, one idea might be to treat inspirations more like fate points. Raise the cap. (Possibly uncapped, but if so have reset conditions so a character can't just stock a ton during low impact scenes.) Let everybody start out with one (and recover it when resetting), so that people can start playing with the benefits instead of having to spend time charging them up beforehand. And then say that you gain a point any time an ideal/bond/flaw causes complications that pure optimal behavior wouldn't, but spending the points is only possible if it somehow forwards or springs from an ideal/bond/flaw. You receive the benefits only when acting in character, and charge the pool up by acting in character. Plus players are incentivized to point out to you when they're acting in character instead of the DM having one more thing on their plate.

[Oramac]

I think the idea that you can push people to role-playing more is a non starter. Some people love the role-playing, some people are OK with a bit and some people are only there for the puzzles and fights. That's just the way it is. I think what your talking about would mostly annoy people.

Unfortunately, this has been my experience as well. Some people will role-play with no prompting at all, others won't role-play no matter how much they're incentivized. Most are somewhere in between.

[Psyren]

I think Sigried and Ionathus have it right. Given that we already have a mechanical way to reward roleplay (Inspiration) I would rather focus on improving that than creating yet another subsystem for the DM and players to track.

One approach we've tried that has been fun is to let you cash in your inspiration, not just for advantage, but for a "Cunning Action Lite" that only allows for Disengage or Dash.

[Oramac]

I think Sigried and Ionathus have it right. Given that we already have a mechanical way to reward roleplay (Inspiration) I would rather focus on improving that than creating yet another subsystem for the DM and players to track.

One approach we've tried that has been fun is to let you cash in your inspiration, not just for advantage, but for a "Cunning Action Lite" that only allows for Disengage or Dash.

That's a good one.

This is one place where I really like how Kobold Press redid Inspiration into Luck. It's a bit more complex, but it encourages use vs hoarding and it's regained for typical role-play heavy scenarios.