I'm a new player to D&D 4e. I've been participating in D&D Encounters since Season 1 and have even run a couple of sessions in Season 3 when the regular DM couldn't attend. I don't play in any home groups as my schedule can only accomodate the one weekly Encounters night. My group doesn't do much role playing. Most of the time, the players push the minis around the map and declare which power they are using against what target.
I've been having a good time but I feel like I'm missing out on role playing opportunities. I tried to get the players more engaged in role playing with some character conversations or by adding descriptive elements to my actions when it's my turn. However, I can't seem to get other folks to get into the role playing part with me.
I asked the organizer if this was how the game was played and he basically told me that the format for Encounters is geared for new players and not set up to support much role play.
I'm trying to figure out if this is the prevailing opinion in the community. How can I encourage my group to do more role playing within the structure of a 90 minute D&D Encounters session?
Best Answer
To encourage more role-playing, ask questions. This is easiest when you're the DM - "OK, you kill the orc! Please describe how you do it" - but you can also do it as a player - "Hey, what did my character see yours do when you rolled that critical hit?"
In my experience it's best to ask for these moments of player narration after specific, infrequent game events whose outcome is already established in the rules. To address each part of this:
Specific is because you want the whole group to get in the habit of expecting to describe certain cool events. If you can make it a "rule" - like 'the player who lands the killing blow gets to describe the kill shot' - then it's easier for everyone to learn the rule and follow it automatically.
Infrequent is because, as others have said, people come to play for many reasons; you want to use player descriptions of what they do as a spice and a teaching tool, not something that has to happen every time a player wants their character to do something (which some will experience as an onerous burden). It's best if the events you're describing are significant moments, which are also infrequent.
Tied to game events is because people who aren't familiar with role-playing games are still familiar with other kinds of games. In a scene where character conversations are taking place without obvious stakes riding on them, some players won't get into it because they don't see where the game is here. By putting the game part first - "cool I rolled the dice and succeeded or failed" - you can then introduce the role-playing part - "oh yeah, I see how it's even cooler when I can imagine and share exactly how my awesome guy was awesome, and watch that get picked up by other players and become part of the collective imagination of the scene."
Outcome already established is because people feel ripped off (and turned off of narrating their character's actions) when they come up with a cool description of what their character is going to do, and then the dice say 'no, actually you fall on your ass.' Good moments when the dice have already spoken but leave room for narration are death scenes and becoming bloodied (your character or your foe), critical hits, and critical failures. I think this last one is especially important because failure can make a player fall out of love with their character. As DM I like to say "OK, so your character is a legendary hero, normally able to do mighty feats, but something went wrong here; what was it?"
Although what I'm talking about here might not seem like the thing you're thinking of when you want more role-playing, I think they're related if not the same. You want players to say what their characters are doing, thinking, and experiencing, not just what mechanics they're using; getting them to describe their actions is an important first step in that direction.