Getting Players to Roleplay (GM Tips w/ Matt Mercer) 

Matt: „I’m very lazy“ Also Matt *creates entire worlds and novel worthy stories in his free time“

What helps me, a shy player, the most is simple: The GM adresses me with the characters name and a "you". "Hilbert, what are you doing now?"

In my dnd group I have one player who wrote a 12pt font, single spaced, font and back printed, 12 page backstory. The rest just said, oh I’m Hilgore, I’m a dwarf, and I worship a god?

In my game, the bard has taught and gotten the rest of the party to play Truth or Dare to fill in the time during long stretches of travel. It's amazing for roleplay and the PCs getting to know one another (the Paladin thinks of it as "team-building exercises"), and as a DM I don't even have to do anything.

More like, Matt the Immerser, am I right?

Matt seems like such a fun and cool person

I think I've been in college way too long. The second he said a "One page backstory" my first thought was "Single space or double?"

Friend: That's not what I meant by role play Me: *walks into room dressed as a French maid

I need a gif and/or sound bite of that "Kill shit, take loot" experience :p

The group I DM is weird, the usually socially awkward people are great RPers, which is awesome! But the usually bold personalities point blank refuse to do more than 2 lines in character in a 4 hour session, its so disheartening and i swear it destabilizes the shy peoples confidence in their performance :/

I find it funny when he’s like “as a gm, it’s ok if your player doesn’t like being rp, be supportive.” *when you’re the gm and you’re the one with the problem with rp*

If someone has social anxiety, and are really tight in their shell, that’s fine. I used to be like that as a player. If they know their character, and want to play, but are scared, maybe make an NPC talk to them.

I reward my players with a Special Card, we call them "Aces". Whenever someone does something that fits his character perfectly, I'll award him the Ace. Every player can only have one Ace at a time and they can use it to bend the rules of the game and come up with movie-like sequences. e.g.: Once the party was trapped. They have been fighting on a City fortification wall and enemies were pouring in from left and right. When suddenly the Rogue picks up his Ace and says "In desperation I look about and there I see it. A cartwagon is approaching the wall. I take Ledania by the hand and pull her to me and together we jump down to land the cartwagons haystack." Another time my players tracked an informant, but he was getting away. While his body guards block the way and keep the party enganged he runs off. Our Ranger picks up his Ace and says "With my eagle eye precision I fire a shot between the body guards and pierce the informants left knee." For the use of such an Ace there is no skill roll required, and that's the beauty of it. After they have used their Ace, the players have to return it to the GM, but through good and memorable roleplay they can get it back and use a second time, or a third, or ... :D

Exactly Layla!

Man, I wish I could play at your table. I love the RP aspect the best. My characters always have their own voice and point of view. It's my favorite thing to come up with a fun accent and backstory and set of "triggers" for their traits that play off of the crunchy bits on the character sheet. How does my high Intelligence and average Wisdom actually play out? Overthinking every decision, obviously. How does the high Charisma but low Intelligence and Wisdom play out? Needlessly lying and people pleasing behavior, obviously. So fun to come up with this stuff.

Props to the editor on this one. Really makes it pop.

"Not everyone has to write a multi-page back story" *Looks down at the fourteen page back story for my character, the world he's from, the history of the world and the lives and works of all major characters related to him*

So this is coming from someone relatively new to D&D, but I found it really helpful to ease into the RPing aspect in a one-shot. During the main campaign with my group, I rolled really well with my character creation, so I was really trying to keep them alive, and ignoring the RP aspect for the pragmatic response. However, we then did a little one-shot just for fun. I wasn't so attached to the new character so I figured I would have fun with the RPing aspect this time, and even try out an accent. I ended up creating a half-orc barbarian with what I intended to be a Russian accent and since Intelligence was my worst skill, I decided to play him as a jock stereotype. It took a little while to find my footing, I was definitely doing an Italian accent at first instead of the intended Russian, but eventually I really got into the character and had a blast. Eventually I got the accent going, I got to be a little bombastic, and I had my character try to flirt with the resident Queen with terribly corny pick-up lines that I would never try in the main campaign for fear of reprisal. However, even after the one-shot was done, I brought some of those developments back to the main campaign. I started to develop my character's personality more, and I try harder to have him act in a reasonable and consistent manner, rather than trying to meta-game the best response. It has definitely added to my experience. So I guess the moral of the story is that it might be a good idea to let players try out new things in a relatively risk-free environment like a one-shot. Let them know that they can be a little carefree and encourage them to try new things in an environment where their actions won't affect the character they may have grown attached to and don't want to risk things on. Just maybe they will experiment with something they really like and bring it back over to their main character.

One of my favorite moments as a DM, is when I get to see my players discuss what they are going to do in a certain situation. An example is when they are in a dungeon and they enter a open stone chamber, and they then start to discuss amongst themselves to plan for their next move.

“Be patient”. Literally best GM tip ever.

These tips are really good. Another one that I have found works for me is that in certain NPC conversations, anything the players say at the table, I act as if their characters said it. So if the party needs important info from a short tempered old man npc and one player comments to another, "I want to hurt this guy", or something like that, I will make the old man react as if the dwarven barabian said it, rather than the player. This means that everything the players do and say are neceasarily roleplaying, even if they don't do voices.

I had a player decide she wanted to play a sentient egg with legs. I said she could, on the condition that we could work together to come up with a sensible explanation that fit with the campaign setting. After a brief discussion, she sent me a very detailed google doc of her entire backstory. Long story short, out party’s tank is a two and a half foot tall sentient egg with legs.

1. Talk to your group in advance. Discuss the use of RP early on with your group. 2. Write background stories. This will help players engage more witch their characters. 3. Engage with your players. Speak to your players in a way that you would want them to RP in return. 4. Players: Try to engage. Leave your comfort zone in order to engage with your GM and fellow players. 5. Be patient. Allow your players to reach their comfort level in RP-ing naturally. 6. Be supportive. Engage with your fellow players and back up their statements.

I recently joined a game where the players were all freshly into level 2 so I wrote up a 5K word back story for my character. It got me bumped up to level two alongside them. Red, the Dragonborn Barbarian that forgoes material weaponry to rely on his claws and teeth. Also a female playing a male character is interesting for the other players to engage with. "And she's here ... He is here." "Do you want me to change the gender, would that help?" "No, no, I'll get it straight eventually." Also, just wanted to say, thanks Mercer and others for CritRole. It's gotten me back into DnD after a year without due to some bad experiences. But now I'm in a good game with a good crew and am assisting the DM by writing up some encounters that will later be put up on the DMG. Thank you so much for sharing your enjoyment with the world. :)

You are the GM we all strive to be dear mercer! One day i may have half your skill.

Had this with my students. I'm playing D&D with students as an after school activity. I'm pretty good with voices and characters and one of my students followed allong and gave his character a "Grog" kind of voice and he now is talking in character most of the time. This has encouraged the other members of the group to start to join in as well. It's been great so far!

When I'm the DM for new players, I ask them to think about three things: Their character's biggest fear, loneliest moment, and favorite thing they own. It helps encourage the newbies to engage in roleplay during a session, and allows me to spontaneously bring those fears or driven emotions to life with ease!

I once was a paladin who polymorphed into a cat. Interesting RP, needless to say. One encounter was completely ignored because I hopped into an NPC's lap and provided the necessary information to defuse the situation. At another time I calmed an important NPC by kneading them (the GM) with my paws.

I had a blast with my first character Carlos the Dwarf. It was kind of awesome watching my fellow playersget annoyed or inspired by the simultaneous fish-malk snowflake character I had unwittingly created. You see, Carlos was sort of your classic D&D fighter character, an impulsive, mildly inebriated bearded dwarf with a thick Scottish accent and a heart of gold whose answer to every problem was usually either some kind of explosive confrontation or an all out brawl, which would've been fine, but this was a Pokemon game. Set in a high school. I think you can see where the problems sprouted. I was a creative problem the GM somehow managed to make into what is still my favorite character I've played (a close second being Soldada, or the answer to the question " what if Harriet Tubman was a fifteen-foot tall, six-armed, hot pink bug monster that loved to punch things and dig tunnels?"). I still don't think she's forgiven me for somehow managing to shift the focus of the campaign away from the young man who shakes the earth when people touch him to an underwear heist to get my Oddish a pair of mechanical arms. It might go without saying, but my manners have aged like fine wine since then.

I really enjoy the rp part of the game, but I do unfortunately get nervous when it's my time to shine moment lol. it works sometimes, but other times I feel like I'm not engaging in the same way as everyone else.

One thing I found interesting was that I didn't tend to do the whole 'embodying' the character thing since I RP on Roll20. Apart from one character, Maximus the Impregnable, a high strength Wizard focused more on using his spells to enhance himself in fist fights than your traditional Wizardy robes type (yes he was a 'muscle wizard'). He had his own distinct voice (which apparently was basically Brian Blessed as Prince Vultan), he was loud, boistrous and I even found myself doing the grand gestures...despite the fact nobody could see them...and then having to describe what I was doing.

Shout out to the camera crew and director for making this video seem very casually informal, and as always Ser Mercer, thanks for the advice!

God damn I love you Matthew Mercer.

Wish I watched this sooner. Had my first session as a DM and afterwards one of my 7 (total mad lad of me, I know) messaged me that I did a great job, but role playing was a hard part of it and he didn't want to drag down the other players and wanted to step out of the game.

I just DM'd my first session ever and it was for all new players. Nobody has played before, and after tonight's session, they started buying things for me and the campaign to make it better. They are hooked. One at the beginning even said "I don't like roleplaying." And by the end she was doing more rp than the group. Group is still lvl 2, but I ended them with a sick cliffhanger. They investigated an abandoned manor, she (our elf druid) noticed the rug was of elven make unlike the rest and looked under it. As she lifted it, a banshee rose partly through and let out a Wail practically nose to nose. She dropped to zero HP (failed save) and the rest took a heavy chunk of dmg. Ended the session there. Turns out I love being a DM and watching the players interact.

Our DM is so fun - he’s so thoughtful on his npcs and how he rps them, and it’s so easy for me to just go along with it. Me and the bard of our group just go crazy in rping and idk how many times we’ve made the whole group almost die from laughing at our antics.

I've been GMing for years now, and it's so nice to see someone explain in such a simple way how much goes into what we do and how hard we work to make the PC's world come alive. Thanks Matt. I look forward to watching all your other and future vids :)

Please please please, could you give some tips on making voices for characters? maybe even some simple voice acting tips to enhance the experience? I'm having a really hard time to give my players believable voices for the NPCs i made.

Good tips! As a DM, I often have players who feel like writing a backstory is time-consuming: they want to dive in and start playing! This makes it crucial to thoughtfully create role-playing opportunities during the game. Recently I introduced the party to an NPC who can read thoughts; occasionally, I have the NPC read the mind of a PC, and ask the player to fill in the memories and thoughts that come up. It's a fun improv moment, and I feel like the players engage without stealing time from the adventure.

I will be a DM for the first time in a couple weeks, only played 3 times but my group thinks I will excel and watching Matt in the tips and in critical role has helped me build my campaign as well as understanding how to adjust to the slow decay of destroying my plan haha

This is a problem i’ve learned to overcome in multiple campaigns, I mostly DM for beginners, so i like to think its good to help them getting into RPing for if they get into more developed campaigns. With my current 2 year campaign, my players started off with only talking ooc and asking questions like that, then i started getting them int describing their replies, then that flowed into actually playing the characters. I’ve found that almost absolutely n o n e w p l a y e r s will start off as roleplayers. Ive found my way of beating this is to roleplay the npcs as much as possible, even with very small movements and comments. If the DM is acting as a character, people tend to catch on and join in, from there it should be your goal to make sure that they’re enjoying playing this character, from then on in develops. My absolute favourite parts about being a DM is when my players can have conversation and interaction as their characters without even needing me to direct or control anything.

Before I die I want Matt Mercer to DM a my game

These are all solid tips. They're all things I've either tried or tried to remember to try in my own sessions and I have had the most success with engaging players in a conversation that feels like only their character would get this particular reaction from the NPC. If it's just a standard bit of dialogue, then they know they're talking to that shopkeeper npc that's in every town, but if they say something specific like "And what does an Elf know of such things?" or "Oh, I should just trust a Tiefling because they say so?" reflects to them that the world is recognizing them as their character not as themselves and they need to keep that in mind. Also the trinkets table in the item section of the 5th edition base book is invaluable for character building.

When i ran my niece and nephew thru one of their first ever campaigns there was a moment when they had to confront a local crime lord of a towns poverty district. I did a high pitched whiney voice for the skinny slinky lookout who was keeping an eye on the door. Then when they met with the crime lord, he had a typical rough and tough new yorker accent. It was cliche, i know. But to my surprise thats what my nephew and niece remembered most about the game session. They didnt tell stories of "oh remember how I cut that guy in half in this fight or that fight". Weeks later they were actually talking to a friend telling them "Then we had to confront a crime boss" and they imitated the accent. Its really cool how roleplay is what they remembered, not the combat.

Since I learned that Matt voiced Chrom from Fire Emblem, now I can only hear him

This was my biggest hurdle getting into D&D and still is. The first time was the worst because I had no idea I had to. I didn't get into it until the 3rd session and even then I still struggled like hell. The only saving grace was that I was one of TWO people that session that was just as clueless when it came to the role-playing part. Thank god for that other player or else it would've been even worse that first session.

My all time favorite GM moment was when my cousin said the following to me: "You don't know that!" I was baffled at the time, but I laughed because I was the GM, I knew everything that goes on in the world and pertains to it.

I have been in a few D&D games and Call of cthulu. What I have noticed about roleplay is that when your players characters become friends. Slowly build up inside jokes, teasing, goals and cute stories. Getting in fights. It's like a real friendship

DM: Describes a necromancer holding a book Me: “Could I look at the book?” DM: “In character.” Me: “That was in character.” DM: “Oh.”

When helping my players write their backstories, I like having three paragraphs. One for early life, another for mid life, and a last one for right before adventuring.

I’m a theater major in college studying to be a drama therapist and teacher and I really want to bring D&D into my work - this is really helpful stuff!!

I used to run TMNT back in the 90s and early 2000s. I'm planning to run a campaign with my 3 kids, after not having played in two decades. Loved this video. Thank you for this excellent, clear advice.

I follow the crit juice way, if players rp well, I give them drinks. Drunk D&D is hillarious.

I just got a TAZ advertisement and I'm pumped! Also, I wish I could meet Matthew Mercer

It helps players create characters when you explain the setting first too! Give them a world first and then they can play with the aspects if it. Maybe give them spaces to fill in too. I knew I needed a war with two opposing sides but let them fill in the details. If players help create the world, they become 10x more invested.

I have found that props can help, crystals, old looking maps, wanted posters, something to wear..etc.

I’m gonna run some Call of Cthulhu home brew for Halloween, all with friends who’ve never played a pen and paper rpg. I really want them to WANT to role play, because there’s so little combat in CoC. If they aren’t willing, I’ve got other stuff for the night planned but I really hope they’re able to enjoy it.

"Kill Shit, Take Loot" Will now me my mantra all in things. This is now my life's quest!

Great video. My group uses a few rules as possible. Our group is very inconsistent so adding random friends who have never played was so much easier with such relaxed rules

One of the best ways i've found to draw out a player's roleplaying skills is to spend some time and effort during character creation to create links between all of the player's characters that the players will either discover during play or before it. It helps if these links are positive rather than negative, after all, it's easier for a Fighter to talk to the Thief that once bested him in a drinking game than to have the Thief as the guy who mugged him after a heavy drinking session and made off with his family heirloom (although this could work in the right setting!). :)

Damn, he speaks so perfect that even youtube substitles work almost perfect

I’ve been the dungeon master for the same group for a few years, there’s one player who only makes sarcastic and bored characters, and whenever they go to a place that’s obviously haunted and there’s revealed to be a ghost, they’re like “I KNEW IT.... UUGH” and the only role playing they do is that super salty behavior

Loved Matt in the latest Titanfall 2 single player campaign. The banter with BT was great.

I might have a decent tip for non native English speakers, I use my native language to explain things like the terrain or a person and his manner of speaking, but speaking in character in our group is done in English, this makes it a lot easier to roll play. For the sole reason that it isn't: "my character says this." and explaining what is in character and what is not.

Nice tips. The sound was a little off. Matt's voices was too quiet, or the music too loud

Loving the second season of GM tips!

I did a lot of initiation in conventions with an associations and that meant sometimes people who totally didn't hear about this, mostly families with young teens and parents. I usually had them try to first explicit their argument without the role play and then have them try (if they weren't too shy) and usually by the end of the game, they were hooked.

A few months back I was playing a bard for the first time. The group was full of relatively new players and I had only been a DM before. My character was a bit eccentric, talked like a radio show host, and one time took a bow after combat. The first time he did, everyone was confused at who I was bowing to and what for. I simply expressed that I was playing a bard, specifically my character. This guy across the table then has the audacity to say, "But, you're not actually a bard." Well excuse me sir I'm sorry for Role-playing in a Role-playing Game! That was my last session with the group.

Ugh critical role and critical role adjacent things make me want to play dnd so bad but I don't have a group and or time to find one on roll20 or things like that

I don't know who he is but I bet he is the best dungeon master ever

Thank you geek & sundry for introducing me to Matthew Mercer who I absolutely love after Critical Role. I truly want to see him, and the other players succeed. I need to keep up on what he does on a weekly basis so i don't end up missing anything.

Roleplaying is my personal favorite part of playing D&D! It was difficult to get everyone into it at first but now we have so many great moments in character! Love it!

0:29 should be a gif.

My druid write a back story, it was literally: my character have amnesia

I've been watching Dice, Camera, Action lately. And I wanna say, Nate is a great example of this and it is has been an actually interesting and enjoyable journey seeing him slowly open up and get more involved in the RP aspect of D&D. At the beginning Nate is very quiet, somewhat nervous and reserved (in his defense, I believe it's mentioned in episode 1 that this is his first ever tabletop RPG). And he actually stays that way for awhile. I'll admit, at first I started to grow a little unfond of him as member of the party. But he started slowly opening up a bit, and their DM, Chris Perkins, even give him small nudges by giving him a little silent companion that he grew extremely attached to almost immediately and giving him a small solo adventure where he was separated from the party and had to escape and deal with things on his own. I'm 80 episodes in and he's really into it at this point. Overtime, I grew to enjoy that slow evolution in his roleplay and I think it goes to show that anyone, givin time and patience, can grow to enjoy the roleplay aspect of D&D and really engage with the party and the story.

I'm loving this new improved GM Tips series! Thank you Matt and Geek and Sundry!

My players know I'm not heavily combat-driven. More storytelling and characters. I used to have a severely drug-addled joiner early on who would essentially fall into a coma until we called his name, at which point he would simply say "Eldritch blast" thinking fighting time had come again. We could've replaced him with one of those novelty drinking bird toys hitting a button that would roll 1d20+1d8 for his attack. And it would've been less stupid than he was. I'm not kidding. We spent five minutes once explaining why the action he was taking would end with him dead, he didn't care, and then was shocked and uncomprehending when he died. Until he went back to listening to loud videos on his phone. Anywho, in large part because of him, I've promised myself that if I ever come across a player who's all about, quote, diablo-style-kill-everything-get-loot-raar, that I would hand them my Monster Manual, a box of tissues, and tell them to go have fun. Pick a page and roll dice, buddy, we'll be over here having fun while you roll meaningless numbers against other meaningless numbers until one set of numbers counts down to zero to signal your victory or defeat. Woo, exciting.

While GMing I always have one or two Swords on me and when the Paladin says "Nice, natural 20" and rolls damage, I take my sword and narrate while fighting. It looks like this: "Geraldyn takes his great bastard sword that he owned from his uncle and avanges him with a mighty slash with the sword. You scream while you lift your weapon above your head and you decapitate the Archmage with the strongest hit you could have ever done." And now imagine this with me holding a LARP Longsword and screaming in the living room.

I like the idea of a solo mission with each player before they meet as a group so that each player has a chance to get to know their character better and how they handle both role play and combat. It is especially helpful with new players as they don't feel the pressure of a group at first and can kind of wade in to the waters. This of course has the obvious drawbacks of requiring extra time and effort from both the players and the DM. Another upshot is being able to suss out individual likes, dislikes, and backstory that you can take note of to later use to your advantage as an adventure hook for certain players or groups.

This is one of the best videos I have seen to help new players (and new GMs!) learn how to roleplay.

3:03 As you realise that the dragon on the left is probably going to be Thordak :O

Me a nerd: Me a theatre kid: Also me: Dungeons and Dragons it is.

Man, I just got into CR and while I enjoy their sessions what I love is that they all seem like such a kind lovable wholesome hugabunch. I just like hanging out with them

I enjoy doing voices, gestures and accents for my NPCs. I did quite a few in my last campaign from the soft spoken monk that drew out his words to the sales man that spoke very fast. One merchant didn't have full grasp of common so he spoke choppy. I even did a half orc female that was depressed because she was always picked on.

I want to see Ben from Puffin Forest play with Mercer and others like Travis Willingham. That would be great. Ben is only like 20 though so he's a lot younger than them.

I love the side comments

I have been blessed with players that actually engage in roleplay, sometimes more than I would like.

I think the key point I needed as a player who wants to RP was that I should be SPECIFIC. Not just describe what they do.

I have a hard time roleplaying like I want to and know what I want but it doesn’t come out. Lol

Something that works for me quite well to get the players more engaged in their backstorry is to give smal sets of homework like "write down a place your charakter feels at home with two NPC's". The basic can be done with a single paragraph, and when they doo it, i reward them with godly inspiration, wich they can interchange by inspiering each other.

I have a character in my game whose in-character voice is really easy to distinguish b/c he uses a heavy pirate accent. This is a sci-fi game set 400 years in the future, notably.

This is a really good video. I'm currently in a DnD campaign and I feel everyone getting frustrated with me because I don't really roleplay as much--my friend even pulled me aside to say that the GM and everyone wished that I roleplayed more. I'm too insecure and shy and it's my first time. I am trying though!

Oh I can hear Levi Ackerman in his voice, I'm dead

As someone who has roleplayed outside of D&D/Pathfinder before, it's not really hard for me, but I can see why it would be for some people.

Love the effects on this guys. Really adds to the series.

Who's just rewatching these for fun and or tips. I love these videos

Is that a Gilmore's Glorious Chalice?!

Congrats on the engagement Matt!!! Would D&D or Pathfinder be best for starting brand new players? My friends and I are total noobs at this so I would be DMing it.

0:31 "That's totally fine, it's totally great--a little worrying, but totally great" This my new favourite line.

1. *GM:* Discuss the use of RP with players early on 2. *GM/Players:* Have players write background stories for their characters, it'll help make RP easier 3. *GM:* Research NPC's and RP them at the level you hope players to RP, engage your PC as the NPC 4. *GM/Players:* Verbally and Physically change your demeanour for PC/NPCs to separate normal 'player-GM talk' and 'PC-NPC talk' 5. *GM/Players:* Be patient, finding the confidence to RP takes time 6. *Players:* Support other players when they RP, especially those who find it intimidating. Chat in character with each other 7. *Everyone:* Have fun!