Out of game. Kind of.
Among all of the tips, tricks, gimmicks, whatever you want to call the smoke & mirrors bullshit that the bulk of GM "advice" is vomited forth as, a hell-of-a-lot of it is painfully allergic to Roleplay. Forgive me for giving you a "just trust me bro," but if you've looked at the TTRPG space for any amount of time you'll come across GM-centered advice that tries to convince you-the-GM of some chore to impose upon or sneak into a game for a particular outcome, likely some kind of vibe or feel. This is not an attack on any one particular style of game, group, scene, none of that tribalism crap, Roleplaying as an element of a Roleplaying Game is disturbingly lacking and has never quite gotten the attention it deserves until recently.
And the main culprit, the thief of the beauty of Roleplaying, that demiurgic-shithead-clockwork-god at the head of the table; They Of Many Hats: The Rules Arbiter, The Bean-Counter, The Terrain-Architect, The Worldbuilder, The Handholder, The Ignorant Puppeteer, The Jabberer-Who-Must-Speak-Speak-Speak-Speak-Speak-Speak-Speak-Speak-Speak-Speak-Speak-Speak.
Fuck that guy. Kill-him-dead. At least for a while.
Internet DM Brennan Lee Mulligan's Polygon Quote from 2024 provoked this ramble from me. The quote:
"[Calling D&D a combat-oriented game] would sort of be like looking at a stove and being like, This has nothing to do with food. You can’t eat metal. Clearly this contraption is for moving gas around and having a clock on it. If it was about food, there would be some food here. [...] What you should get is a machine that is either made of food, or has food in it. [...]*
*I’m going to bring the food. The food is my favorite part. [People say that] because D&D has so many combat mechanics, you are destined to tell combat stories. I fundamentally disagree. Combat is the part I’m the least interested in simulating through improvisational storytelling. So I need a game to do that for me, while I take care of emotions, relationships, character progression, because that shit is intuitive and I understand it well. I don’t intuitively understand how an arrow moves through a fictional airspace."
"...I take care of emotions, relationships, character progression because that shit is intuitive and I understand it well."
And the players don't? They players couldn't possibly be expected to control or be mindful of such elements and are expected to be the interactive audience in your machinations? Is the role of the DM/GM/Host truly defined by their ability to wrangle cats and orchestrate a grand vision? Why? Why aren't the other players not given a greater responsibility than "be cool and show up - answer my choose-your-own-adventure prompts and roll dice when I tell you to." Gamers like Brennan will claim that's not what's going on at their table, but their streamed games speak volumes louder than their memories.
By Roleplaying, I do not mean play-acting or voice acting. Anyone who has ever genuinely Roleplayed and been immersed in a character knows those are not the same thing.
The fundamental element of Roleplaying that I believe has been squelched is Character Evocation. The Players should be expected to Evoke their Character. They must be capable of conjuring their discussed Idea-Form in their mind's eye and express it well enough that it infects the other people at the table and spawns an approximate version of that idea-form in another's mind's eye - enough for it to be interacted with with others. The GM's ultimate and solitary goal should be to Evoke the Idea-Form that is the Otherworld and its inhabitants. The participants must give themselves to the Idea-Forms and let themselves be "possessed" by them.
That's a lot of flowery pseudo-occult bullshit just to say, "fucking Roleplay consistently and play pretend and speak clearly, dummy." I don't believe in anything supernatural/stitious is involved here, don't get me wrong. An excellent part about wearing someone else's skin (in a group or solo) is that by giving yourself to these Idea-Forms, you can find out more about who you are as a person, however insignificant or fleeting a given revelation may be. Its the immersion in a character and their perception that I've found myself addicted to - not the systems and protocols of the game but their outcomes and not all systems and protocols leave room for this immersion or contribute to it.
(Crowley's Thoth Moon)
Many will opt to ignore Character Evocation all-together, choosing to instead adopt a role provided or imposed upon them by the game and seeking to "beat" or explore a given scenario instead of exploring the possible decisions, thoughts, or actions of one's character. Alternatively the ignorant flowery spotlight "roleplayer" who seemingly exists in their own world and ruins what immersion those around them may have, is also a detriment to the group-based activity if the purpose of the group is to adopt adventuring roles.
Most GMs that I have played with or seen in cesspool Actual-Plays on YouTube simply need to learn when to stop speaking, especially those of allegedly veteran groups, and trust their players. For the love of Christ, trust your players. This isn't a matter of being a "BRUTAL GM WHO DOESN'T HELP THE PLAYERS AND LETS THEM STARVE AND DIE." No shit, do that. Do they want you to burp and wipe them too?
If you all agreed to game rules, why wouldn't the players... who agreed to those rules... need a reminder of those rules? New rules that people need reminders on? Worry about them later. Why would one remind them in the middle of the game instead of them letting a given affliction afflict them and for the player to express that in-character? And if your player has some issues with remembering those rules, play your game. If the player accidently god-modes or otherwise ignores the rules, talk about it after the session. Keep Roleplaying. Trust Each Other. Vet Your Players. The GM should describe the world being interacted with and how its reacts. That's it. Evoke the World and its inhabitants. That is your job. If you want to have cool tools to help you in your job, great! But Keep Roleplaying.
I first discovered this focus or "revival" of interest in Roleplaying on YouTube and it has a couple different names. "Hard Roleplaying" and "4D Roleplaying." The former being popularized by the late Shawn Driscoll aka Shonner and the closely-related 4D Roleplaying still being discussed by a few different RPG-Tubers.
4D Roleplaying in-name started off as a joke and it's provoked pretty idiotic and irrelevant disputes based on perceived "pretentiousness" of "ROLEPLAYING IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION." I've personally redubbed the "D" as degree°, for me, the various 1-2-3-4Ds aren't distinguished layers of "imagined reality" but more levels of engagement with the game world. Defined (based on my understanding), they are:
1D: Audience. The player showed up, jokes around but does not engage with the activity in any meaningful way and is likely there just to spend time with others. This is fine.
2D: Gamer. They're engaging with the rules of the game being played akin to a board game, they are not interested in Character Evocation. They speak to the Host directly out-of-character and only engage with the game world as-necessary to play the game.
3D: Roleplayer. Engaging solely through the game world from the character's perspective, questions for the Host are channeled through in-character dialogue or narrated interaction with the world. Character is likely broken minimally in order to prompt rolls or declare a statistic if it is mandatory to be shared. The necessity and frequency of this character breaking is heavily dependent on the agreed-upon system.
4D: Roleplayer+. As 3D but the player does not leave their narration open-ended for the Host to clarify in the game world. The player adds to the world in their dialogue/narration and the rest of the participants adapt as-necessary. The extent of a single player's worldbuilding ability is agreed upon prior in the group's Social Contract.
Social Contracts are crucial for this style of Roleplaying and customized for every game and table and are often extensions of the "Session 0" wherein you would also discuss the desired game and Characters. The Social Contract outlines the agreed-upon expectations and limits of the Narration. It's likely that you've played a game where the different "Degrees" of roleplaying have shown their face casually or played in systems that sound like or very well may be 4D-adjascent. The key difference is that a 3/4D table strives to stay locked into character. Roleplay in your favorite game that you like the resolution system in, ideally one with few to no questions or discussions necessary to simply check success or failure for.
I dig d100 or other set-but-malleable target number systems for this, always knowing what you need to roll to succeed is cool and cuts down on out-of-character talk. That being said, Demon City (the Tarot-Card based system that recently came out in physical print and annihilates all of its contemporaries) isn't half bad for Hard Roleplaying either. Sure, you may need to break character to inquire or provide an intensity or contested stat but beyond that everything else is easily intuited and relies on players to pay attention to what's going on (a shared feature of DC & Hard Roleplay groups). Depending on the style of game, I would discuss who grants bonus throws. Base-line, keep it as is and have the Host declare Throws gained and lost. If you disagree, shut up and roleplay and discuss it after the game. If your group is high-trust, have players take their own throws. Make them in charge of their own deck. If a player seems cheaty and is swimming in senseless throws, talk to them after the game. You did vet them, right?
Roleplaying does not prevent you from playing the game you want to play with the tools you play with. It may prevent you from playing with certain people opposed to a continual stream of roleplay and that's cool. I'd personally much rather play with a consistent group instead of one that bounces between styles within a single session.
Roleplaying should not prevent you from engaging with the game world or solving a problem using player skill, admittedly, the shifted priority does reduce its importance/frequency and instead relies more on a player's Roleplaying. Either is fine. A group that that exalts 2D play and player skill is great. Their agreed-upon goal is just not to Roleplay. They're gaming and that distinction is important when setting group expectations. My issue, up until recently, was the lack of vocabulary or understanding of what was going on at the bulk of tables when the medley of players claim to be agreeable but end up visibly detaching from the game and giving the vapid "I had fun" when feedback is given because that's the same shit advice spewed out; we had fun so it's all good. Fuck that. Fun is not enough.
The OSR was a breath of fresh air because it celebrated the GM and the player-targeted challenges in a hobby (at the time) full of player-build centric nightmare games of lonely fun and number-crunching better served in a videogame. The GMs of OSR games are encouraged to engage in some of their own lonely fun with more thoughtful dungeon/adventure creation in addition to improv through the abundance of random tables that came/come out of that scene, (ideally) enhancing the GMs ability to evoke a convincing game world ("""verisimilitude""" as they say). A negative for me is the common dismissal of Character Evocation. Characters feel like a means to an end, a direct Avatar of the player or GM serving a function, not an emulated separate mind in the Otherworld to be explored alongside it.
A common Social Contract Rule is for the players to narrate certain test results while the GM/Host narrates the opposite type of result. Most commonly, the player narrates their successes whereas the GM narrates their failures. In High-Trust Horror games, this is sometimes swapped. This is in direct opposition to the the "mother may I" style of play where the players continually asking their GM a list of questions, hoping it leads to their success. Good. If the player is god-moding and narrating themselves as significantly more powerful than what was discussed during session 0, effectively playing a different game, then that will warrant discussion after the game.
Roleplaying in this context is NOT the same thing as the narrative-centered play of PBTA or story games, it's much more natural and still grounded in the agreed-upon game world. It's assumed that the Narration is the natural result of relevant success/fail test or simply the intuition/imagination of the participants; the tests exist, as usual, to provide clarity or suggest answers to an unclear outcome as they always have. Primary difference is that now the player/character can narrate/speak and dictate the outcomes of their own efforts after confirming they have succeeded.
All that extra stuff expected to be done by the GM is secondary fluff; worldbuilding, game design, voice acting, etc, do not have a direct bearing on the game if the goal is Roleplay. These additions MAY enhance Roleplay but they are not required and may be detrimental if too distracting. If your GOAL is more "2D" and you expect strategic combat encounters or interesting procedures and are uninterested in Roleplay; make that known. Do not suffer the fool who wants to roleplay at the wrong table - few things are more pitiful than the lone Roleplayer in a table of Gamers.
If you're still here, read Shonner's book. It'll give you more of an idea of what I'm about rambling here. With examples. The actual text explanations of the style are strange but it serves as a good litmus test of if the Hard/4D Roleplay is for you if I haven't already scared you away. It's free and short. He's gone now but he left quite the impression on the folks that stumbled upon his rants.
Rest in Peace, Mr. Driscoll.
