How do I learn to roleplay? Specifically...

Is he a nice guy? Is he brave? Is he wrathful?
Little things like that. Actually, an alignement could help if you really strugle.
Even if you play a cliche of your alignement, at least you're playing something.

OP makes this thread about once a week.

No, it's less than once a month. Last one was on September 22, before that was August 11.

What I use when I GM is three adjectives that describe their personality. Fill in the rest as you play. With alignment systems you also determining what their conscience is like and if they have a code of some sort.

>Liar, Bold, Intelligent
>Loving, Humorous, Respectful
>Thoughtful, Pragmatic, Focused
>Boastful, Angry, Lusty
>Just, Chatterbox, Clever
>Hateful, Bold, Honest

Try improvising with these.

That's what I already do. My characters have three personality traits that I keep visible on a card.
I think "What would a [trait 1], [trait 2], [trait 3] person say about this?", and I have no idea for several minutes.

So don't do that. Just pick one and keep it in mind as you say whatever comes into your head. Fumble around, fuck up, laugh it off and then try again.

>"What would a [trait 1], [trait 2], [trait 3] person say about this?"
Rational thinking is your enemy when roleplaying.

I swear he made one in October. He usually uses the bomb squad guy as his OP.

That's not true, and even then, it's far from "about once a week" unless you can find 5 more threads like this in between.

Different user here, I can confirm that this outburst of retardation is usually accompanied by the bomb squad guy image, to draw an inane comparison between role-playing and trying to defuse a live bomb.

Start with writing down how your character is different from YOU, the player.

Then when you need to make an in-character decision, or when there's an RP opportunity, first think of what you, the player, would do if you were confronted with the same situation.
Then according to the differences you wrote down, change you reaction accordingly.

Of course this will be clunky and a bit slow at first, but it's a trick to get into your character's mindset. It has worked wonders with some of the more introverted players or those new to RPGs at my table.

If you're a real turbo autist I don't know how to help. A professional might?

Saying the exact words isn't necessary. Being descriptive is just fine
>Charactername tells the dide to fuck off and insults him in dwarfish
This is fine. Adlib when it comes naturally, my group os roleplayheavy as fuck and we still have 30% direct character dubbing. It also helps the immersion, at least for me, because unless you are both a brilliant voice actor and improv actor, you won't sound like your character. What the fuck does a Eastern Fantasyorcland Accent sound like anyway when speaking Makeuppian?
Just do what comes naturally and talk in character whwn you feel it

I fill out the Jung test in character.

Roleplay as a deranged compulsive gambler who flips a coin to decide what he does in any given scenario.

Then, when a scenario arises in which you get a coin flip result that you don't want to follow through on, disobey the coin flip and turn that into your character's central conflict. He throws caution to the wind except where X is concerned.

It's not fucking hard, christ.

Oh hey I remember you.

The answer is still to fucking talk to your group and be open with them about the problem you're having.
Oh, and also practice and not overthinking it so fucking hard.

You don't need to say the exact perfect words every single time you autist, you're not being scored afterwards

ThisAnd just be not yourself

Drink. Heavily.

NEVER perform as your character are you FUCKING KIDDING ME why would you do that to yourself holy shit

>My guy agrees but wants to ask about the dolphin penis in the wall

There you go. No need to "act"

You are cancer.

Aw shit, guys, everyone hide, it's one of the cool kids.

>muh snowflake drama class performance
You've ruined the hobby since Day 2

The fuck are you talking about? Autistic people should not be trying to pull off performances. I'm giving him practical advice

>roleplaying games should not involve roleplaying
You really are cancer

Different user here.
There is a difference between method acting and roleplaying.

Yes, the difference is that people who are incapable of acting as their character during roleplaying are either cripplingly insecure, new to the hobby, or trapped in such shitty groups that they're terrified of acting remotely eccentric in case the other players look up from their phones long enough to shoot them a weird glare.
Solutions: become less of a beta cuck, play more RPGs before you try to share your shitty opinion, or find a better group.

>first think of what you, the player, would do
>would do
>DO
The issue less about what to DO and more about what to SAY.
In many cases I, the player, would SAY nothing at all. So I can't just take an existing thought and rephrase it a bit, because there is none. I can imagine a person who is different from me would say *something*, and get a general idea of what the subject of the sentence might be, but not EXACT WORDS.
Real people in real life do not speak in a narrow set of extremely vague prerecorded sentences. If my character just said shit like "yeah, what he said" and "I feel bad" over and over and over without any variation, and this character isn't supposed to be mentally ill, that is a failure to roleplay the character.

>you're not being scored afterwards
They kicked me out of the game for failing to meet their standards of roleplaying.
If I fail, I don't get to continue, so it's never just "practice", it's always a test.

OP, I would second what the other anons said about talking to your group about it and try to loosen up the pressure you´ve put on yourself.

Maybe try and play an non-human character. A friend of mine suffers from borderline Personality disorder and when she tried to play a "normal human being" (a druid) it was just way too awkward. She didn´t act like a normal person would, especially in social situations.
But then, in our new campaing she played an android and the same lack of empathy and weirdness made her play the role perfectly.
Try and pic a character that suits your own personality.

You could also try and describe your characters actions more. I am pretty introverted myself and when I play with people I don´t know, I tend to play non-talkative characters, or else I get exhausted and uncomfortable.
But, playing someone who doesn´t talk can get pretty boring, so I instead concentrate on describing their actions during conversations. Sth simple like, describing your characters non-verbal reaction to sth another player said (nodding etc.), or how they are reaching for their dagger as soons as a particular NPC is mentioned...
This way you don´t have to talk but the rest of the players can still guess your intentions, opinions etc.

And lastly, what always helps me with new characters is basing them on characters from a TV series. That way, you already have a bunch of suggestions how a person with these particular character traits would react to different situations.
Picturing them in you mind while playing also helps, I think. Mirroring other peoples mannerisms is always easier than coming up with them on your own.

>talking to your group about it
What makes you think I didn't do that, repeatedly? They just said I was being lazy and not thinking hard at all and should put EVEN MORE EFFORT into thinking about what my character would say.

Because you didn´t say so in your original post?

How should I know what you have and haven´t done?

But they sound like assholes.

If you actually act out your character you're a cringeworthy tryhard

You do realize you're the equivalent of a Farmville player browsing /v/?

One thing is to think: "I am this character now, so I'll say/do this" and then express yourself with composure

another is to change your voice and improvise shitty theatrics

If your friends know that you have autism and their response to your difficulty with social interaction and such is just "try harder" then your friends are dicks.

That's literally no better than telling depressed people "don't be sad" or, hell, paralyzed people, "well maybe your legs would work if you actually used them sometimes, you lazy piece of shit."

I'd say to tell them what I said above, more or less. Maybe not that they're dicks, but the analogies to depression and especially paralysis. Explain that your brain is wired differently than theirs, and you have difficulty roleplaying as talkative characters for that reason. Perhaps try playing as an elf or something, and passing your general quietness off as being aloof.

The other user's suggestion of playing something way different from human isn't a bad idea either. Then you can just say whatever you feel like at the time and, hey, it might be what the character would say. It's impossible for anybody to know because they've never been an awakened dog/an illithid/a duck-man/a cheez-it possessed by the ghost of Martin Luther King Jr.

But ultimately you probably should tell them, "Hey, it isn't a matter of thinking harder, and when you tell me it is, you're being jerks. I've really stressed over this. I'm trying as hard as I can, and maybe I'll get the hang of it, but in the meantime, bear with me. My mind literally works differently than yours."

To be clear, I don't have autism myself but I have some friends who do, and I know what it's like to not have someone take seriously the fact that you can't "just" do something they find easy.

>playing game with friends, my brother is gming
>total of 4 players not counting my brother
>a fighter, cleric, rogue, and wizard so its classic
>start in tavern
>cleric is a bit of a that guy so he starts jumping on the table and shouting about sinning and stuff
>rogue tackles him
>we kill the last of the goblins after the rogue cuts his thoat
>ask the GM for a hint to the puzzle
>he doesn't budge, but the wizard gets an idea
>he casts a spell
>can't remember what it was called but it finally closed the door to the closet
>a skeleton archer shoots me in the back of the head
>brought down low enough to have to make a roll
>nat 20
>I jump on the table and tackle the cleric
>we leave the tavern
>mfw

imagine being this much of a fucking spastic loser, so desperate to overcompensate for your crippling self esteem issues that you ACTUALLY try to convince an autistic person who's pretty much having a nervous breakdown because he can't get comfortable acting like an asshat during horse shit D&D make believe time that it's BADASS and xXxHARDCORExXx to use a cringey fake british accent and say retarded shit that nobody in real life or good fantasy fiction would ever say

imagine it right now

You're playing with the wrong groups, OP.

Truth be told, most people vastly overestimate the importance or even value of narrative roleplaying. Sometimes a game can just be a game, and playing up your racial stereotype is all it needs to be spicy.

I think your problem is more a slow typing speed problem, or being unable to think on your feet, more then an actual lack of 'quality' of roleplaying.

I know I'm not the only one, but any time I see a thread about people saying they've gotten bad responses or experiences roleplaying, I want to take you all together and start a misfit group.

What, again?

Gimme a situation in which a character is.

I'm sure this thread will go better this time than it has the last two times you've posted it. Have you ever considered just not roleplaying, or playing a role that doesn't involve speaking? Playing a barbarian who only speaks in sentence fragments is okay you know.

He did, and mentioned being kicked out for that.

Well, since this is thread number three that isn't going to make progress I'm pretty sure his only options are quitting or finding a group who doesn't mind him not speaking. Play by post, while slow as fuck, might be perfect.

They're right, though.
He's received lots of great advice over the threads, all of which he either ignored or answered with excuses for why he doesn't want to make any effort.

>thread number three
We're at the very least up to five now.

Practice
Alternatively come up with a new copypasta
Alternatively unironically kill yourself
Whatever option you choose will ensure we don't have to see this exact same shitpost every month. OP is a fag, etc, etc

ALRIGHT OP:

I AM GOING TO TELL YOU SOMETHING MORE SPECIFIC THAN "PRACTICE", AND MORE IN - DEPTH THAN "MAKE SOME DESCRIPTORS".

Consider someone you know fairly well, IRL. Presuming you are not literally beyond help there is someone applicable for my subsequent statements. You accept that you are not them. You also, whether you have exercised it or not, have some ability to model their behaviour.

- You could potentially pull off some infantile joke about how you are doing "Your impression of them" at a party or whatever.

- If some freaky friday shit happened and you swapped bodies, odds are you could make it through one significant interaction with other people in this person's life without being detected as an impostor.

- If you are privvy to a situation they do not know about, you have the discretion necessary to either tell them or not tell them, or indeed HOW you tell them, based on how they are likely to react. You have an approximate knowledge, for instance, whether they are likely to pick up the nearest brick and kill you with it upon hearing what you have to say, based on your understanding of how they respond to things and what they profess to think.

Having established this, you actually, right now, have a persona that you are modelling, and could even assume somewhat.

Now comes the harder part. Think specifically about the times you would have to act differently to how you normally act, to pretend to be them. Then, sit down and think carefully about what specific aspects of this person's life you know, and which things MIGHT have happened to this person (Because you weren't with them from birth to death) to cause them to behave contrarily to how YOU act. At this point, you have just extrapolated a backstory from a persona.

Now all you need to do is the opposite, extrapolate a persona from a backstory. Try and imagine a fully realised person with their own quirks, needs and desires that stem from the backstory you know.

To further clarify, lets say you are going in for a job interview, or a blind date, or fucking whatever, with this person. You have managed to facebook stalk them to figure out this backstory of them you have.

What sort of person are you expecting to meet? What do you expect them to say? If an orc busted in through the window with a cleaver, what do you think they would do?

Alright I hadn't actually seen this response.

So, your issue is easily coming up with some words to say, when you yourself don't usually push yourself to respond to most situations.

That's a lot less simple to deal with, it will be difficult to be someone else more talkative if you yourself have never been hugely talkative. I guess all I can really suggest is to try and pay close attention to some other people talking with each other until you can picture a model situation of that within your mind and play around with it, a bit like how (I at least, but hopefully you) can visualise the layout of a building or what the other side of a shape that can't be seen might look like. Then you can put together a bit of a basis for the call and response pattern of conversations.

Learning how to be witty in response to circumstances though... just kind of happens, or doesn't. Its a matter of just happening to come up with something that is a very good thing to say within a short time of the relevant thing happening, and then immediately saying it. Sometimes you get lucky. You get lucky more often if you are good at it. I play around with every quote I've ever heard involving keywords from the present situation, and try swapping pieces of them in and out, creating many different malaphors, effectively. Sometimes one of the malaphors I create is a good fit to the situation and sounds fun.

>Autistic people should not be trying to pull off performances.
In my experience (I'm another autist) roleplaying and performance actually help one learn how to react to social cues, given enough practice, and are a great opportunity just to leaen how to "be a person." I think that I would probably still be (more of) a socially inept manbaby if I had never taken up tabletop gaming and roleplaying in general.

Play as yourself
Best place to start

>The issue less about what to DO and more about what to SAY.
Play a mute monk from a monastery for a while. Have him communicate with sign language or written words or something. Try to see if you can get his personality to emerge naturally that way, and then maybe ask the DM if there's a way in-world for him to try and restore his voice. Or just keep playing a mute dude, if you're ok with that.

>make a mute character
>write everything he would have said anyway
What the fuck is the point?

Name three examples of this. And yeah, if by "doesn't want to make any effort" you mean "doesn't want to take a student loan and sink thousands of hours to get a degree in psychology", because one user literally told me to "study psychology" when I just want to PLAY A GAME AS A HOBBY.

>Consider someone you know fairly well, IRL.
I don't know anyone IRL well enough to assign personality traits to them like on a character sheet. Even with my own mother, when I try to predict how she will react to something, I consistently get it wrong. What now?
I appreciate you trying to help but I have zero frame of reference for what seems like essentially "just pretend to be another person" in more words.
And again, how a person ACTS and what they DO is a lot easier than what they SAY.
>If an orc busted in through the window with a cleaver, what do you think they would do?
Most people would be terrified and try to escape I suppose, but that's a long way from improvising a witty quip on the spot that is at once entertaining and consistent with all their stated personality traits in less than 30 seconds like the other players do.

You posted while I was writing my post because it took some time to gather my thoughts into exact words, and now it looks like I'm ignoring you. Let that be a demonstration of my problem.

Instead of struggling to completely express every trait of your character in every sentence or quip or throwaway line, just say what comes to mind, as long as it is not obviously contradicting their personality traits.

Trying to catch the rare unfitting thing is way easier than to tailor every word exactly to the character. Not everything a person says is a natural reflection of a their full character. You do not need a "thing that Ogborn the orphaned half orc mercenary would say", you only need something that a "grizzled old veteran with a dry, but crude sense of humour would say". Little discrepancies wont even be noticed by the table.

>or, hell, paralyzed people, "well maybe your legs would work if you actually used them sometimes, you lazy piece of shit."

Could you compare two separate people who are not you, and say whether one more closely fit a personality trait than another?

I find parents are a bit harder because ironically you're actually not privvy to an enormous volume of how they act around other people, since you don't hang out with them.

The closest friend or acquaintance you have might be a better bet. But if you genuinely just have no ability at all to hold expectations about the behaviour of other people, this may be beyond my method.

How much fiction do you read? Near as I can tell all the autistic people I know who are passable at roleplaying read ungodly quantities of science fiction and fantasy, which presumably gives them a better corpus of human interactions than their interactions with people in real life.

Looks like my only real option is to read more books then.
I'm not happy about it, because my goal is to play a tabletop RPG once a week and I don't want to sink a disporoportionate number of hours into preparation, but at least it's not studying psychology.
I'll get back to you when I've read 20 more books (any recommendations?) and attempted to join a tabletop RPG campaign to see if it changes anything.

Look I can't really speak to the effectiveness, or even if it is the reason that the autists I know do okay, but give it a try I guess? Don't sink more time than you can spare into it etc. etc.

As for recommendations, while I have my own favourites, speaking mainly of the autistic people I know, Brandon Sanderson's books (Which you would start by reading the "Mistborn" series, I thought it was pretty good) seem to be favourites. They're moderately easy reads, so its as good a starting point as any.

In my experience (I play with an autist) it's totally true.
Acting with us and allowing him to be weird as fuck with his characters in game made him understand why X or Y behavior was totally weird and inappropriate.

>Peronality exists in play... leave it vague... give a few general impressions, but not a laundry list.

If roleplaying can be considered something not entirely unlike an art, then properties which apply to art probably also apply to roleplaying. A useful tool when learning and practicing art is limitation, or narrowing the scope of what one can or should do.

Limitation breeds creativity. "The piece must be x inches tall." "Don't use red in the piece." "Pick a music style you like and do something else to branch out." This helps avoid blank-page syndrome, which I think OP is suffering from, in part.

While user is correct, a laundry list of things to keep in mind is a bad idea, dismissing character notes is also foolish. OP, if you can write down a few character traits, like that they feel a duty to their friends or knightly order, or that they're callous, or generous, or impulsive, and apply percent weights to each one so you can roll against them, that'll make it much easier to roleplay.

In my experience, this has been correct. I've played and GM'd games with this mechanic, and it works very well to help guide a player to stay in character and speak as that character. That's 80% of the effort abstracted away from you, the remaining 20% of the effort comes down to be creative within your limitations, and to not be a dick at the table. If you need to sacrifice a little agency or character purity to avoid pissing off the party, do so. Don't be that guy who steals from others while they sleep because "Its what my character would do".

>kicking players because they don't roleplay right
Not gonna say they shouldn't, God knows I can't throw stones in that direction, but have you tried ditching them? If this is for real how fucked in the head you get just trying to TALK to them, it'd probably be better for both you and the group for you to find other people to play with.

That's another of your menagerie of problems, then. I know it doesn't seem like it on the internet, but in reality, both online and off, no one cares about you.

No one, at all, gives a single solitary shit how you act or what you do, so long as they can get through their day. No one is sitting awake at night wondering why you did a thing a certain way, no one remembers your fuck-ups, and no one cares what you say beyond a general impression of "like/dislike," because you are not the fulcrum of social interaction. You are one person that even your closest friends only really deal with during a minority of their time.

They do not give enough of a shit about the end result for you to waste time to care what to say or how they feel about how long it takes for you to type at them. Not a single person on this earth. Not your friends, not your parents, not your lovers, and fucking CERTAINLY not us.

You're not loved a lot user

No, but I'm loved enough for me. Some people have to go their whole lives without what I have. Even if it's fleeting and will end one day, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps not until one of us dies, I can enjoy the hint of it I have.

The point is to primarily convey personality thtough actions and behavior, rather than words. Written words are more of a last resort. Think of games like Metroid Fusion. Samus doesn't have more than a handful of lines of dialogue in that game, but you still get a pretty good idea of what sort of person she is, simply from what she says with her actions.

Remember that acting/role-playing is "living truthfully under imaginary circumstances." Think about personality traits of your character (wise, brave, forgetful) and use them as a filter on how you would act. Think about what you would do if you had to break into an orc camp. Then picture that if you could shoot fire and stop time. While it's not perfect, using your character's personality as a filter for your own is the best place to start when you are learning.