Enchanted Realms Rulebook

Role Playing

As this is a role playing game, there should be a paragraph or two to discuss what role playing is and what it is not. The definition literally means the playing out of a role. For the game it is about identifying with one's character, determining how he or she acts. But even deeper, it is about the motivation behind the behavior and understanding why the character thinks as one does, even if the character itself does not have that self-awareness. Role playing is a major aspect of the game, but especially when social encounters occur, its need becomes even more apparent.

In the time with the group over the last ten years of Enchanted Realms, we tend to define role playing as collaborative storytelling. Other groups view it differently. In fact, there is a popular cliché that claims there is no wrong way to role play. However, this reminds me of the cliché that claims there is no such thing as bad publicity. I posit that Ted Bundy would disagree. However, the greater point is there are bad ways to role play and mostly it is about the group at the table.

Some groups love to act theatrically like a performance on Critical Role with Matt Mercer running the game. Other groups want almost nothing to do with thespian style and don't even like using accents for dwarves -- doesn't everyone do that? So, the wrong way to role play is to insist on something everyone else finds annoying and refuse to compromise. When this happens, the game becomes stifled, the players don't pay attention to the lore and the plot, and most of the session ends up being pointless arguments about something off-topic like sock-puppets or politics. The whole points is -- make the effort to find what is optimal for the other players around the gaming table.