The question is a bit unclear and I’m not quite ready to delete my other answer since I’m not sure it’s inappropriate, but I think this would get lost in it and may be closer to what Zach wants, based on comments.
Therefore, I am answering two questions here:
How should I tell a player that he’s not playing a character the way he should be played?
How should I deal with a player who describes his character as one thing, but plays him as something else?
I separate these two because they are different question, and need different answers.
1. How should I tell a player that he’s not playing a character the way he should be played?
Simple: you don’t. That’s none of your business. If a Paladin needs to Fall because of his actions, then that’s what happens (but see my other answer for thoughts on how best to handle that mechanically – I despise the official rules on the matter, and never recommend them), but it’s because he’s not being a Paladin, not because he’s not playing how you imagine the character. It’s his character, not yours.
In effect, when you ask how to do this without seeming to accuse him of bad roleplaying and/or trying to play his character, the answer is you can’t, because that is exactly what you would be doing. Maybe he is roleplaying badly; maybe that accusation isn’t unfounded, and maybe that’s a discussion you actually should have. But if he’s not roleplaying “badly,” there shouldn’t be any need to comment at all.
2. How should I deal with a player who describes his character as one thing, but plays him as something else?
This is a different matter. Particularly when the character’s backstory touches on the rest of the world, as your player’s does with his father as the head of an order of paladins, there is a greater cause for concern and a greater need to set things straight. Remember, while his character is his, the setting is yours. If your setting does not include any order of paladins that would condone or accept his behavior, then he can’t be a member of one – or he is about to get into trouble with them.
And if he was raised to be this way his entire life, and up until now upheld those standards, maybe they’re going to worry if he’s been cursed or possessed or something. But maybe he hasn’t been – maybe he felt stifled in the order, and now that he’s out in the real world he’s feeling a bit restless and rebellious. Maybe he’s looking for a bit of independence from a father in whose shadow he’d spent his entire life, whatever.
But the key thing is for the player to recognize that his actions do not jive with his backstory. I suggest that you give him these choices:
Change how you behave, to be more in line with how the character was described in the backstory.
Change your backstory, to make your character a bit more rebellious or a bit more light-hearted; maybe his father hoped that going out into the real world would make him a bit more serious.
Keep both the behavior and the backstory, and accept that this is very much an abrupt change in his behavior. Tell him that the order will not be amused, and will be greatly concerned about it, possibly even angry.
All of these things, however, have more to do with the order’s rules, and not the Paladin’s Code of Conduct. In both the second and third case, however, warn him that Falling is a very real concern for the order. They do not appreciate his behavior precisely because they believe it will cause him to Fall – and point out that putting others in danger needlessly is something that could cause him to Fall quickly.
But like I said in my other answer: a Paladin’s allowed to have a little, or even a lot, of harmless fun, so long as it is harmless, and he remains that unwavering bastion of Good and honor. Throwing a chair at someone or throwing an ally into a group of enemies may not be harmless, but there certainly are plenty of “un-Paladin-y” things he could do (e.g. harmless pranks) that will never cause a Fall.
Before you even get to the point where you need to start talking technical, it's worth taking some time to head off that sort of necessity in the first place. Often this won't be possible, it's worth trying to focus the scene around character interactions rather than the technology being used. That should head off many of the dangers of sounding off when making up technological phrases and words.
But if you do find yourself in a situation where it's necessary, here's the core of what you should do.
Avoid having to actually describe abstract processes in-character. If you're in such a situation, gloss over as much of what your character is doing as possible. You can do that fairly easily by limiting things to actions that are easy to understand, or honestly even just saying "yay! we did it!" Consider the following two examples:
Michelle: "Give me a moment, I'm going to set up the field generator."
Lars: "Sweet, you need any help?"
possible lines:
Michelle: "Nah, I'm just gonna rejigger a couple things and we're good."
Michelle: "Yeah, can you flip that switch over there?"
Compare with:
Michelle: "Give me a moment, I'm going to set up the field generator."
Lars: "Sweet, you need any help?"
Michelle: "Yeah, can you realign the beryllium sphere to point west?"
Lars: "Alright, I did that, but the quantum phase detractors are desynchronizing."
Michelle: "Oh, shoot, I'm going to reset the power field wave generator, one moment!"
etc. etc. There's a hidden trap here: the latter scene might seem or feel more interactive, but in reality, neither player really has any understanding of what's going on - they're both going through the motions of "do some stuff, then some stuff happens." If there's a critical point in character, skip to it. Don't dawdle.
Go as far as you can with real (or already-established) terminology. This is going to depend on your level of knowledge, and the level everyone else is playing at, but the further you go using real words that describe real processes, the more realistic (go figure) your end result is going to sound. This requires a bit of thought and work, and can be hard to do on the spot, but it's a good place to start overall. Don't make up something new to describe something that can already plausibly be done.
Also, if you've already introduced new terminology for a process or method, you're welcome to include it here. If everyone's already agreed on which words mean what, that's fine, and counts as established terminology.
Plan and introduce in advance. If the details of some technology, method, or process are going to become relevant (instead of just accepting that the process exists), it's worth fleshing out in a bit more detail in advance. Why? If you can establish new terms and words, then you can follow the above advice and keep people more engaged in the scene. They'll understand what's going on if they have a better sense of what needs to happen.
Be sparse. Even if you're doing both of the above, don't use too many technical words at once. When too many technical terms and phrases make their way into roleplaying, it starts to sound like a joke.
"We need to realign the quantum nuclear crystals in the phase detractors of the wave generator to establish warp uplink! Hurry!"
Instead, consider:
Michelle: "Hey, can you reset the whatzit over there? Wave generator's giving me problems."
Notice that "quantum nuclear crystals" and "phase detractor" can be compressed into "whatzit" at no cost, and "establish warp uplink" can be left sort of... implied, probably by context.
Be internally consistent. If you're going to use real words to describe fictional processes, only combine words if they have a good a priori reason to be together. As an example, "the power grid is undergoing hydrostatic overload!" While it makes intuitive sense that a power grid can be overloaded... hydrostatic isn't exactly a great choice of words. Even if we're talking about a hydroelectric plant, hydrostatic is still not the correct choice of words.
It's true that this requires some baseline familiarity with what words mean, but if you're going to be making up technological stuff, that's not exactly a bad thing. Getting some familiarity with the terms you want to use in advance will allow you to select better ones on the spot.
- Be generally minimalist. Real Science (TM) doesn't use very many new words to describe ideas. A new word or phrase is usually added only when there's something very new to describe - otherwise, old words tend to be efficient. Any given problem or process is only liable to use a handful of words, and going beyond just a few technical terms is going to make it seem a little fake.
The tl;dr of the above boils down to this: it doesn't really matter what you pick, given that a) you don't pick too many words, and b) the words you pick are reasonably relevant. What I wrote above is long, but it's long because tech talk in a role-playing game is hard to do well. That's why I really recommend that you avoid it if you can, and if you must, establish in advance as much as possible.
Best Answer
"Causality and Choice in RPGs, Part 1: Getting rid of the
{TECH}
" on The 20' By 20' Room blog by Neel KrishnaswamiIt was a bit challenging to find this article. It took a search result pointing to a forum post linking to another forum post linking to a dead site (which I then looked up in the Wayback Machine), but I found it.
Here's the article. The article also seems to be mirrored on a non-dead site here. A summary from the opening paragraph:
(I was unable to find any other articles in the "series".)
Going line by line on how it meets your criteria:
Well, this one's obvious; it's right in the title! It's also repeated throughout the article.
It's a fairly self-contained article (it claims to be the first in a planned series, but I'm not sure whether any followups were written) and does talk about RPGs in general.
Quoted from the article:
And as for the main solution the author proposes:
Here's the basic explanation and the diagram in the article:
I'll refrain from quoting the entire article here, but basically it goes on to enumerate the possible states of being for each of those nodes; some are dependent on the inputs they receive. Once these technical relationships are able to be understood (even if totally made up just for the purposes of the story), players can make meaningful choices around them:
And as for your last point:
Seems pretty clearly demonstrated by the entire article focusing on technology and technobabble in particular. Similar logic could potentially be applied to "magic-babble" or its equivalent, but often fantasy RPGs will already set out the rules for how magic works rather than handwaving it, in which case this breakdown isn't necessary.