BoredGM wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2020 12:21 pm
Let's say that I am a player in a tabletop game or even Arelith. This is how I play my character. I get a table of possible actions that I could do, and assign numbers to each of them. I then use a random number generator to pick the number and therefore the action I take. If the action I take exists in game, is what I am doing roleplaying?
You've basically just described the confusion table, which there are rules for in DnD. If you were doing so on a normal character it made sense on, it's still role-playing, especially if you were choosing to play a chaotic/out of his mind character, but to do so on a lawful, ordered character wouldn't make much sense. Just like it doesn't make sense for Druids to be super friendly with Undead. Lore dictates that they are diametrically opposed to them, so you need to take that into consideration. You're choosing to play in a setting with predefined lore/history and you can't just ignore it because you don't like it.
It also doesn't mean if you have "attack someone right away!" written down on the list though, that you could justify it, because we still all play within the confines of the rules that we sign up to.
The fact is, you can play your characters however you want if you think it is a way to accurately reflect the persona you have built within the rules of the server and the lore of the world, because there will always be elements of characters we as people simply cannot 'fake' sometimes, so systems are built to help out.
Take a character with multiple personalities, for example. You might have a table on which those personalities are listed and regularly 'roll' to see which one occurs at a given moment. Dice rolls are a fundamental part of the DnD system. They create a fair structure so that people can't just go "But my character would have seen/understood/known that because I as a player do", when ultimately, your character doesn't and that can also be extended to other areas to help you as a player deal with something outside of your normal understanding.
And just to add to this, if you as a player don't particularly like certain types of RP (I.e conflict etc), then you are free to play a character that minimizes your exposure to it. If you want to prioritize playing music and writing poems & avoiding any kind of conflict RP at all, then make a character that gives you the freedom to do that. Ultimately though, everyone makes a choice when they create a character, so if your choice is "I'm going to make a loud mouth joker that pokes fun/insults everyone" go ahead and do so, but don't complain on an OOC level when your actions lead to hostile consequences & say it's not RP for you to be treated in a hostile way, because no-one forced you to make that character and develop their role play in that way, except you. To try and convince everyone to change for you and dictate what their character should be doing and how they should be reacting to you is not how RP works & it's incredibly self centered and selfish.
In every situation you make a choice as a player and that includes deciding on the kind of RP you want to build.