Juspera's Good Ole GS4 Page / Roleplaying

The Heart of Roleplay

September 2, 2019 | Juspera's Player

For me, the special trick that brings life to roleplay comes down to making use of one thing. It's a thing that's occasionally hard to define, and usually even harder to explain. And yet, every one of us has the same opportunity to make use of it, regardless of our skill set or experience level. That thing is the gap between player knowledge and character knowledge.

The gap is the heart of roleplay. The more you lean into the gap -- the more you call attention to it, even, and emphasize it through your character's actions -- the richer and more real your roleplay will become.

What is the gap between player and character knowledge? It's everything you know that your character doesn't. This is not a concept that necessarily occurs spontaneously to new players. Sooner or later, however, we grasp the most fundamental aspects of it, such as that our characters should not automatically know everything we read on the boards. But the ability to see deeply into the gap, and use it, brings us to higher levels of nuance that we can enjoy playing with for the whole of our roleplaying careers.

Instead of saying "lean into the gap," I could give many other pieces of roleplaying advice that would sound more familiar: "Don't go OOC," or "Let your character be wrong," for instance, because these are in fact aspects of leaning into the gap. But I really want to emphasize this fundamental concept. No matter how many verbs you know in GS, no matter how much or how little character development you've done or backstory you've written, everyone can use the gap -- in the present moment -- to enhance their roleplay.

What types of knowledge fall into this gap? Potentially, all of these things:

1. What you read on the boards
2. What another player told you about their character
3. How to get to Solhaven
4. What time it is, in Elanthia
5. When your character's birthday is
6. Whether or not your character just blushed

For an example: a character asks yours what time it is. You, the player, know it's 2:30. Which is a more "real" response?

You say, "It's 2:30 Elven."

or

You say, "Um..."
You tilt your head up.
You ask, "Three o'clock, do you think?"

I saw a great example of this in a log recently, so I'll share it here. Wehnimer's Landing was being attacked by undead militia members, and this advice was offered to the adventurers and (live) militia members who were swinging away:

Shinann says, "Be careful and make sure they are the zombies... since they are wearing uniforms."

We as players all know that if we simply type "attack," the game will find a creature for us, and it's impossible to hit another PC. Mentions of friendly fire in the game are typically limited to cases of area-effect spells. However, Shinann's player demonstrated the divide between that knowledge and what her character knew, and in doing so made the game a little bit more real for everyone.

Nearly every interaction is a chance to notice the gap there, between our knowledge and our characters', and make use of it. Start looking for it.

In the coming essays, I'm going to return again and again to the idea of the gap. For now, I leave you with a little material to work with: 50 Ways to Be Wrong.

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Juspera's Good Ole GS4 Page / Roleplaying