Worried about roleplaying

[Lord.Sorasen]

So, I'm about to DM for the first time, and I'm getting all sorts of things together. Currently, my plot revolves around the Vasharan (Book of Vile something, the race was originally human but worse (literally, there was not a single advantage to choosing it) so I buffed them a lot.), who have managed to invent psionic energies (which in my campaign world had yet to exist) in order to become God-Like without relying on Gods (psionics here are referred to as the original powers, which even the Gods used to create the universe.)

Anyway, my issue here is my group. They want to roleplay a somewhat more serious story, yes, but we all crumble so fast when roleplaying comes up. Usually, roleplaying attempts lead to metagaming, and character personalities often blend so far with the player's personalities that it gets very difficult to immerse oneself into the fantasy world presented. Please note that it's not that the players want to, but rather that they find it very difficult. So I'm wondering: What techniques have you dms come up with to help engage players in roleplaying?

Some basic info
Game played: DnD 3.5 (this cannot be changed. Our group has just finally finished learning these rules, we own the books, and we're not really ready to start over after only a year of playing tabletop RPGs.)
Age Group: 19-20 (We're all late to the game, I guess. Maybe this will be useful info to people.)
Time spent playing: Technically a year, but there's been a big gap between Summer and now where only I have actually gotten to play. One of our players has played only one short campaign so far, and one more has never played a campaign yet.

The people in our team. I'll give them names to refer to them by if you so choose to refer to the individual
Matt: This guy is really into video game RPGs. He likes roleplaying, but puts his character's power before his fluff without a doubt. He doesn't actually know much of anything about power gaming so it's not too big an issue. Last campaign he played a half-orc barbarian. This campaign he's going with a psychic Warrior Half-Ogre(template) Neanderthal we are referring to as Ancient Ogre. He's actually mentioned several non-combat uses for his expansion power, including fording the party across short rivers, so I'm a little less worried.
Daniel: This guy has always attempted to come up with interesting character quirks. His first character was a gnome bard with bagpipes named "Error" as a tribute to Legend of Zelda II. He mostly responded to NPCs with "I AM ERROR". His next character was a dwarf scout with two crossbows with a pet dove, attempting to imitate John Wu movies. These have been fun, but perhaps his problem is that characters never get passed the first quirk. Error said he was error, his John Wu clone released doves from his robes... Not really anything deep there. Though he wants to try. His current character is either a half-giant favored Soul, or a Hadozee (stormwrack) rogue.
Liz: Liz has a huge issue with roleplaying. She metagames constantly, gets distracted when it's not her turn by other things, etc etc. But, I must note, when she wants to roleplay she's the best of us by far. Her first character was a human monk, a drunken master (not the class). When asked to introduce herself to the party, she bursted into tears, crying (in between gasps for breath) that no one at her temple wanted to play Majong with her so she ran away forever. Currently she's playing a warforged Dragonfire Adept. She has big plans and I want to make sure she can utilize these.
Hannah: Hannah roleplays well enough, I suppose. She has a similar problem to Liz, and she's not quite as good at making things awesome. She's great at the backstory but gets a bit too quiet when the gaming begins. Currently she's going to play a naiive human paladin.
Maria: She's my sister. She's never played before, but when she does I imagine she'll be like me; with a lot of ideas but a bit too much nervousness to make them all show up. She's playing a Vanara (3.0 Oriental Adventures) beguiler w/ Dungeon Master Guide's "witch" alternate spell list. Hopes to make a living as a fortune teller who's managed to use illusions and lies to convince people she's a competent diviner. The party does not know of her beguiler powers, her character sheet says "sorceress".

One of the biggest issues I think, is that characters barely talk to each other in character at all. They'll talk in character to monsters or NPCs, but they never really seem to have a good enough excuse to communicate with each other. It seems they're either giving the dm there actions or listening to the dm tell them what's happening. I'd really like to encourage PC to PC interaction, though maybe that's not a thing DnD really has happening.

Any help? Sorry if this is too long/nonsensical. If it is I'll do my best to rewrite it asap.

[valadil]

The first step is a crucial one. Get them talking in the first person. None of this "my character asks the innkeeper for a room," business. Just have the player open his or her mouth and speak. It's the first step to getting into character. Harp on them to do this. If they slip up and narrate what their character does, have them restate it in the first person.

Getting them talking to each other is another matter. For that you really want to find things that they'll have different opinions about. But the opinions shouldn't be so different that they want to kill each other over them. A few games ago I gave my players an info sheet with basic facts about the city they were in. I wrote several pages for it, but omitted sections depending each character's background. What I didn't tell them was that some of the factoids in their sheets directly contradicted those in the other PCs' fact sheets. In particular, I highlighted a number of bars around town and each player had a different line about which bar served the best ale. The first mission was to steal a keg of ale (since the game was set in a thieves guild and the guild decreed that stolen ale tastes best). Even though the players were pretty much just reading opinions off their sheets, this set the tone that they could argue over the little things with each other.

[Urpriest]

Extending the above, a good way to encourage roleplaying it to enforce it at times. Specifically, if the players start discussing tactics in combat, suggest that they do so in-character.

[Sir Swindle89]

useing character names while ur playing goes pretty far. As does marking (raise your pencil, ect.) when you're speaking out of character (make sure NPC's react is they forget)

[Fallbot]

Try to deliberately manufacture situations where the characters will want to or need to socialize with each other.

An example from a recent session of ours; the party agreed to entertain the daughter of a local lord, which amounted to having to play truth or dare with her and her friends. Horribly anachronistic (but are we really worried about that in a game like this?) and very silly, but it meant the PCs had to interact with each other, and the players had to really think in character to come up with stories and silly bits of trivia to answer with.

Another good way of doing it that we use sometimes to keep the game from getting too bogged down with the characters chatting to each other is to have a forum or email thread for this sort of thing. Especially good for new players who might not be confident about speaking in character in front of people.

[Baveboi]

One that I found useful in any roleplaying case is: Roll something that has not that much to do with the person in question.
I more often than never roll woman PCs, dwarves, elves, clerics, barbarians, and they are my best characters. A very strange thing indeed, seeing how I'm so much Human Wizard kinda of guy.

[bloodtide]

As you are all new to the game, you might want to let the 'talking in character' slide a bit. New gamers can easily be confused between player things(such as game rules) and character things(the fictional world).

Newer gamers don't have the player/character split down. The same way character's don't talk to the DM, most character's don't talk to the other players. And mostly the players talk to each other, it's not the characters talking to each other, at least not at first.

A character would never say 'I'm down to 3 hit points', but a player would. A more experienced player might do a bit of role play-"By Thor's Hammer..I be quite wounded, mayhap you can spare a healing blessing for me''. It's the kind of thing that comes with more real life gaming experience.


You might want to give them more character to character role playing. Put them into some social area and let them talk. You might also want to do some pre-game character role play.

[Fortuna]

A character would never say 'I'm down to 3 hit points', but a player would. A more experienced player might do a bit of role play-"By Thor's Hammer..I be quite wounded, mayhap you can spare a healing blessing for me''. It's the kind of thing that comes with more real life gaming experience.

IT BURNS! IT BURNS!

Although there are some people who have the 'knack' of roleplaying straight away, they're rare, and I agree with your post in all ways except for that sentence, which I rather consign, yeah, unto the domain of the Nine, declaring it henceforth diabolic and outcast, and giving it no shelter nor succor.

[Grogmir]

So good advice already - like the OP my group is a little light on the PC to PC roleplaying.

All you can do is stick in character yourself, encourage RP that way. I'm not keen on raise hands for OOC talk on anything like that. Guess probably why we've not got a lot of RP.

But one thing I do do that seems to help is at the start - simple say... TIIIIIIME IN. A clear definition of the start of IC time, Does encourage things. and finally cut out any snide remarks or sniggering about RPing. Thats a huge fun part of the game - but also one of the most embarrasing. It takes people a while to get over it. and doesn't help if your friends are taking the pee even in a fun way.

Final tip - have your players create emotes for different situations. Charging, Defending, when they get bloodied etc. These make people think about how their characters talk and also gives them an easy fall back line if they don't know what to say.

Good luck and Happy rollin'

[obliged_salmon]

Tough. Plenty of my gamer friends LOVE to RP, and then there are some who absolutely won't ever. No, not even then. One important element is to sort of set the mood, and to discuss things together before and after the session. Talk about this very issue, and how you guys think you might become more comfortable with role playing.

Then, when the game starts up, turn the lights off, light a candle, play thematic music, use props. Try to be an enthusiastic RPer yourself, with cackling witches and angry ogres/barbarians having their say. Keep it going in combat too. Don't let yourself get too caught up in bookkeeping to ignore the fact that the goblin got shot with an arrow, and runs screaming for his life. There are tons of little theatrical things you can do in a game session to help create and enhance mood.

Good luck.

[Greenish]

By Thor's Hammer..I be quite wounded, mayhap you can spare a healing blessing for me

You almost ruined both my drink and my keyboard.

[Jornophelanthas]

useing character names while ur playing goes pretty far.

This bears repeating.

Note that it works better as a player to force others into their role than a the DM. As a player, you simply say something first-person in-character directed at one of the other player characters. If you succeed in starting up a conversation, you've just pulled another player into their role for the rest of the scene (or until someone else distracts your target).

As a DM, this does not work nearly as well, because (1) you need an NPC to directly address a player character, and (2) none of the NPCs will be as established or well-known to the players as their felllow players' characters. The best thing you can do as DM using this method is to declare that players should refer to each other by their characters' names when speaking in-character.

Furthermore, enforce speaking in-character by warning players beforehand that if they don't roleplay, you'll reduce XP (either for the group, or any players who disrupt the game by speaking out-of-character all the time). Conversely, reward good roleplaying with bonus XP (again, either the whole group, or the person(s) who play their role to the enjoyment of all).

As DM, you may to some extent also be responsible for teaching the basics of roleplaying to the least experienced players. Therefore, always provide a good example. Do not join in metagame discussions, try to cut off distracting conversations and roleplay your NPCs well. In short, try to keep everyone interested in the game. Teach by demonstration, and they will learn without realizing it.

[Grelna the Blue]

Then, when the game starts up, turn the lights off, light a candle, play thematic music, use props. Try to be an enthusiastic RPer yourself, with cackling witches and angry ogres/barbarians having their say. Keep it going in combat too. Don't let yourself get too caught up in bookkeeping to ignore the fact that the goblin got shot with an arrow, and runs screaming for his life. There are tons of little theatrical things you can do in a game session to help create and enhance mood.

Good luck.

This. Seriously, lower light level plus candle plus (appropriate) music is not just for romance. It strongly encourages the players to pay more attention to what's in their minds eye than on the unexciting living room or kitchen table they're all sitting around.

Oh, also, when you do RP an NPC or villain, use adjectives and adverbs when describing their actions. The world and the action seem a lot more flat without them, and it may encourage your players to respond in kind.