Avoid Freezing While Roleplaying
Ultimately, when you roleplay, you put on a small performance for your table. And if you freeze at the table, it’s the same stuff as stage fright. The spotlight is on you, someone says their line, and suddenly your mind goes blank. And the easiest way to get over stage fright is to learn your lines better. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse! Luckily for you, for RP purposes you don’t have to stand in front of a mirror saying things out loud. (though that would certainly help!) You can take the time to think up and write down some “lines” for your character. And feel free to keep your script with you at the table.
Level 1 - Prep a few things to say (bark outs)
If you play video games, think of “bark outs” - the lines of dialogue that characters say outside of cutscenes but in response to seeing something happen in the world. These are semi-generic phrases that you can use to add “spice” to your roleplay experiences. Try translating these phrases for your game/setting to give a good bit of flavor, I’ll give examples for Blastimus, the wizard.
Oh my gosh! — “By my beard!” or “By the gods!”
Screw you! — “May all your spells fizzle” or “Go pet a werewolf.”
I can’t believe my eyes. — “Is this some kind of illusion?” or “This must be some faerie prank.”
Its not my fault! — “The rogue did it!” or “The trickster god is fickle today.”
Once you get a whole list of these phrases, you can write them in an unused section of your character sheet, and have them ready at a moment’s notice. Whenever you start an RP moment, or even during exploration time (you may want to exclaim amazement when you open a door) make sure the phrases are face up, and read them when appropriate.
Level 2 - come up with the inciting incident
Once you are comfortable saying some of your bark outs, you may want to move beyond pre-generated phrases. Pre generated character barks can give your character some fun flavor, but if there isn’t a thread tying all the phrases together, something is lacking. You are effectively a cardboard cutout, until you add some depth.
The easiest way to add depth to your character is to describe one major life event that your character just can’t seem to stop talking about. Classic character defining elements can be an ex-soldier’s old military service time, an assassin’s first kill, the time a thief got caught, or a wizard’s first spellcast. This should be a fairly large event to them, and get ready to bring it up all the time. I’m from Minnesota, and this is your Halloween blizzard of the 90’s story. You are required by law to share yours whenever anyone brings it up.
My wizard Blastimus is obsessed with his first big fireball he ever cast. He’s never been able to cast anything as big as his first, and he’s out there trying to outdo himself. You can reflavor all of your barkouts around that one inciting incident now. Get ready to feel like you’re beating a dead horse, because you are. It gets “boring” to always be talking about the incident, but it makes it clear to everyone else at the table when you are roleplaying, and that si half the point of RP. Making it obvious is the best way to prompt other players or the GM to hook onto and reciprocate.
Oh my gosh! (if something is large) — “That’s bigger than my biggest fireball!”
Screw you! — “You better hope you’re fireproof.”
I can’t believe my eyes. — “That last blast must have messed with my eyes. What am I seeing?”
Its not my fault! — “My bat guano must have gone bad.” (a material component for his fireball spell)
Also - these might feel kind of lame to say. Its totally normal for these to feel stiff and shoehorned the first few times. Getting to level 2 is uncomfortable, and it requires work over time. I rewrote these bark outs 4 different times to try to make them flow better for this blog post. Each time I wrote them, I also took time off (at least an hour) and came back to make them better later. Expect to make these bark outs, try them in your session, and then return to the list and fix them up for the next session! Do this multiple times until you feel comfortable with them.
Level 3 - Find your character’s lens
Level 2 got you practicing the skill of translating things “through” your character. You know what you want to say as a baseline with the bark outs, but hopefully now you’ve gotten more comfortable with your specific character’s flavor. On its own, this can help build that translation muscle to help you RP in real time with others. To generalize it - to really build out the character framework to apply to any scenario, find the internal lesson they learned from the event. The general life lesson is something that you can much more easily apply to any scenario, just like you flavored the bark outs.
Blastimus’ story about the “biggest fireball ever” taught him that even inexperienced people can show wild talent. After all, it was his very first spell which was his biggest! Now, when he sees a group, he is most interested in speaking to the youngest person in a position of power. And anytime a young upstart claims they will change the world, Blastimus gives them the benefit of the doubt. After all, Blastimus did. The flipside of this belief is that old wizards are stuck in their ways. He is afraid of that in himself, and seeks to keep his actions youthful to better recreate the biggest blast.
Each inciting incident could teach multiple lessons, so I invite your to brainstorm and figure out what feels the best. Blastimus could have just as easily said that “young wizards are not to be trusted, because they can’t control their spells yet.” Or “Something about using a fireball on that particular day was special, I must study the stars to find out what else they guide in our lives.”
The reason that these more general life lessons are useful is that they can generally be expanded out to other scenarios much more easily than the inciting incident itself. It is hard to know how to act in a social situation when your only fact is that Blastimus once cast a big fireball. But once you figure out your lesson, it is easy to figure out how Blastimus would act in a social situation if he thinks old people are stuck in their ways and young people are the future.
It doesn’t have to be natural if you have a framework
Speaking in character on the fly is a skill, and it can be grown. If it doesn’t feel natural, that’s fine! The character is not you, and imagining how someone else would respond in a situation is a mental exercise that not everyone has experience with. So take it slow, start generic, and then build up your framework of knowing when you can speak “in character”, what your flavor of “in character” means, and then generalize it out to a rule you can apply anytime.
PS - none of this requires a funny voice.