Need explanations about roleplaying ingame

Sergeant Politeness

Sergeant Politeness

Where'd That 6th Toe Come From?
To begin, I am not sure if I posted this thread in the right place. If not, feel free to remove it (not that I have much choice on this matter anyway:razz:).

Lately, I've been trying to start roleplaying in games. I use to try making perfect games (doing all quests, finding all items...that kind of thing) but I realised how stupid it was lately and want to roleplay my character, which seems nice.

Problem is, I'm not used to this playstyle and I'm not sure how people do it. I have no problem creating a background for my character, but I can't adapt it to quests. I feel like there is plenty of quests that my character should not be doing but I also feel like I'm missing a big part of the game and XP and I usually end up trying to make excuse for my character to do them.

When I've played a lot of hours, I realize my roleplay is kinda f***ed and I loose motivation. My question is: how do you do it? Do you sacrifice most of the quests/XP to adapt it to your characters? How do you do the main quest and secondary ones in a credible manner? At which level do you finish the game usually while roleplaying in a way that lets you do some quests (I know that some roleplaying involves doing your own thing and not caring about quests)?

I can somehow roleplay a nice guy but roleplaying an ''evil'' character is hard for me. I want to do a character that has some reasons for doing the things he does others than "I'm an asshole", so I'll try to find interesting reasons to do the evil option of the quest. I can create an interesting background but I feel like that character would not do any quests that do not benefit him, which is a LOT.

Not sure if my text is understandable (english isn't my native language) but thanks for any future answers!
 
Well... My opinion on this is simple: Don't even think about it. Pick the stats and skills you like and go with it. I never found much joy in doing play-pretend in videogames.
 
Yeah but I spend so much time on these games that always doing the same things is getting boring and I'd like to change my playstyle, especially considering how fun roleplaying sounds. I really need to find new games but...I can't get enough of Fallout. Those games are too addictive:razz:
 
There are a good number of quest mods thar add new things for you to see and do, which may help.

As for roleplaying, there is, in my opinion, a serious degree of self-denial involved. It's easier in tabletop games, where your options aren't pre-programmed, and sometimes in video games it comes down to getting creative in rationalizing why your character would do or say something, or just conveniently pretending circumstances are ever-so-slightly different.

It helps to keep in mind that survival is rule number one in the wasteland and just about everyone you meet is a stranger, so sometimes helping out the people you like to the detriment of the people you don't have a real reason to care about, or taking a *slightly* distasteful job for needed money, info, or rep, wouldn't necessarily be seen as a bad thing to someone raised in that world. Even Vault Dwellers would have a noticeably different standards about right, wrong, and the acceptable middle ground than the ones their ancestors brought into the vault with them.
 
One thing I would consider is working on a backstory for the character. That will help with the character-building in terms of stats and perks. Also helps with choices if playing NV.
 
Thanks for the answers. I guess I'll just try roleplaying in New Vegas. The last roleplay I tried was in Fallout 2 but it is a lot less forgiving than Fallout NV. I mean, I was pretty much obligated to do quests in order to have the level required to fight the later ennemies. I had tried one in F3 too but...the writing of the game made it really hard to roleplay.

I'll try and see what happens.
 
I recently started a roleplay game in New Vegas and another question came to my nind: do you roleplayers plan everything step of their playthrough before playing or you improvise while playing?
 
Depends on the reason I start a run.

New Vegas is my default go to game when I have no new games to play.

When I play New Vegas out of boredom at not having any new games that interest me I tend to improvise on quest options

When I actively choose to go back to New Vegas I decide from the beginning what path to choose on most quests, I even decide on which ones to skip.
 
I usually just decide on a character before starting, and then try to improvise what the character would do. Is my character a goody two shoes? Then for the life of him, he won't be helping Vault City destroy Gecko! Is he greedy? Then he might do The Brain's quests, in the hopes of a very generous retribution!
Maybe he is a coward, so he won't be doing anything too risky, would be picking diplomatic solutions. Whatever. I just decide what kind of person my character is and see what is presented, and try for him or her to act accordingly.
My first play through a game is almost with no exception a diplomatic goody two shoes, mostly because I feel identified with that kind of character :P
Later on I prefer to play someone different to me. When there is any peculiar kind of character for the game, with special dialogs and stuff, that's usually one of them. For example, both mentally challenged and jinxed characters are really, REALLY fun to play in Fallout.
 
Thanks for the answers! Playing a character with low intelligence is definitely something I need to try one day... It would be nice if Bethesda implemented that option in future Fallout, but I don't see that happening, especially with the voice acting of Fallout 4.
 
when i play characters with low intelligence i try to act as dumb as possible irl, when i play characters with high str i hit the gym alot, i do that for every skill in every game i play , i like to fully immerse myself in the experience
 
Sergeant Politeness said:
I recently started a roleplay game in New Vegas and another question came to my nind: do you roleplayers plan everything step of their playthrough before playing or you improvise while playing?
Click to expand...

One thing I find that helps is to first come up with conducts you think it would be interesting to play, and then ask yourself "why would this person do these things" and fill in what kind of person they are based on those.

Like I recently had a New Vegas character who refused to use any pre-war drugs (stimpacks, etc.), refused to wait or sleep indoors (took the claustrophibia trait to go along with this), and wouldn't eat anything she didn't personally harvest. So I determined that she was a tribal who was separated from her tribe when she was trapped for a while in some pre-war ruins that partially collapsed, and was unable to locate them so spent a lot of time on her own fending for herself before becoming a courier. So because of this I decided that she was kind of shy, cautious, skeptical about people, distrustful of pre-war anything, but a dedicated and capable stalker and hunter. Just keeping in mind what sort of a person she was helped to mold my decisions throughout the game.

FWIW, getting to level 28 without using Radaway or going to the doctor was a little rough. Not as rough as my Vegan playthrough of NV (always on Very Hardcore) though.
 
Last edited:
I generally play characters with personalities affected by their origin and circumstance. I rarely have them affected by arbitrary inhibitions; any steadfast rule is going to be a matter of ethics and pragmatism.
 
Sergeant Politeness said:
Interesting. I usually do the opposite. I first come up with a background for my character and then establish rules.
Click to expand...

Sometimes you have a character in mind that you want to play, absolutely. But in my life I've RPed hundreds of characters in all sorts of games, so sometimes just "coming up with something" is a challenge. So having some sort of structure or boundaries or ideas about what the character is not helps get the creative juices flowing. After all "you can do literally anything" is the context where it's hardest to be creative, I find.
 
Last edited:
Dummy character in FO2 can be very entertaining. I have yet to finish it though, since I will usually arrive at San Francisco, but still severely under-levelled. The journey to there is fun though, and as a total moron it's easyer to do dumb things, for example when the Den trader is rude to me (by default), I immediately beat him to death. I will typically swap intelligence for strength, and always call my character Bobo, when dumb.

In FO3 it made no noticeable difference.

In FONV, I sometimes play a minimum intelligence character because it's easy enough. It's not particularily entertaining, I can think of... one? Funny dialogue option from low intelligence, but I kindov just "gift" the points to other stats, while role-playing a "fairly simple" grunt - because you aren't 'retarded' (like you are in FO2) but merely a bit simple.
 
Authentic role-playing is much easier if you're already familiar with a particular game. Generally, you're looking to develop a character-driven narrative rather than have a character who is subject to forces beyond his own control, and being familiar with the game's essential or required plot points helps tremendously with this so you don't role-play yourself into a corner with no solution. You're going to miss out on some content, quests, etc, but the reward of a purer narrative you (rather than some designer) construct on your own is worth it.

One important aspect of role-playing in crpgs is the limited opportunities for responsive interaction compared to table-top games. One often needs to exercise imagination to come up with novel narratives that have meaning to you, but aren't stipulated or explicitly present in the content offered by the game. Take Fallout 2, for example-- you want Myron to pay for being a douchebag, but your character isn't a cold-blooded killer either. So, take him up to Redding and lock him in the jail there after you become sheriff, or drop him off beside the NCR Rangers to let them deal with him. Neither of these things are "in" the standard game, but you can easily "put them in" the game with no effort beyond a bit of imagination.
 
Sergeant Politeness said:
I don't even want to know what happens when your character is a cannibal...
Click to expand...

Haha.

To answer your question, OP, from my perspective: I usually tend to be a really good guy when playing games. I like to think I am in real life, as well. But really a lot good-er in games. I mean, even though I COULD collect flowers for the elderly in my community or feed squirrels or pick up medicine for the fragile, I don't. In games I do. Partially for the XP, of course. These meaningless tasks serve mostly as a char-booster, but I tend to do everything I can as it is also a good way of seeing the game's world.

Lately I've also started to try playing games I like in different ways. I wrote another post about my feelings about Fallout a few days ago and even though I'm that kind of buhu-I-miss-the-real-Fallout-games-guy, I can enjoy New Vegas enough to have played it a few times. The playthrough I'm on right now I've tried to play the game in the most obvious way of sorts: as a loner and a guy that only really cares about himself.

If waking up with a bullethole in one's head, without really knowing why one got it, in the middle of the wastes at a peasant doctor's house - what would one do? It's not unrealistic to think that guy would just care more or less about himself. So this playthrough, no picking up flowers or doing silly stuff for random people. And the character has turned out to be a complete badass. Proficient in everything needed for Wasteland success, really: lockpicking, sneaking, gunning, science. Extremely low barter and speech to begin with (as speech is mostly used to complete random quests easier, and this guy wouldn't be interested in that). Also, no taking sides in the war between the NCR and the Legion. I did some quests for both sides, but only when there was obvious gain for myself.

I hate the fact that the Karma is affected by everything, no matter if someone catches the character doing something or not. Example: if one runs into a, by the look of it, abandoned shack but it's called "Crazy Petes shack", you lose Karma by taking a frickning wrench. Silly. Okay, if Crazy Pete catches me, but when nobody is around at all... Hm. But as it is like that, my Karma tend to be a lot worse playing like this. I steal everything I want or need. And I don't hesitate to shoot somebody down in cold blood if they have something I want. I've been going back and forth between Evil and Neutral the whole PT. I actually have a goal of sorts, and that is the character being Neutral when I'm done (but I won't act different to achieve it). My guy isn't Evil, he's just realistic enough to understand the best way to get by in a world with centaurs, Fat Man-equipped super mutants and deathclaws is to focus on himself. That's Neutral to me, not Evil.

Anyway, playing the way I've done now has given me a totally different experience, as I don't need to live up to the annoying "Messiah of the Wastes"-label I usually get. It's totally good fun! I've played both F1 and F2 the same way as far as possible, and it's a lot easier if the goal of the PT is not to complete the game, but to just enjoy the world.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top