*plays one shot attack of the clones game* "i hate sand" ok now, less emotion, dont look anyone in the eye, and mumble. "ihatesand..." PERFECT

I remember something said on Critical Role. I'm paraphrasing but one of the members said something to the effect of "We're all really self-conscious. We need everyone to be acting silly or we feel really awkward." So, I agree, sometimes you need to break the ice to get everyone on board. On number 6: Playing a race that cannot speak the settings "common tongue" also works. Like a Wookie in Star Wars, or any game where languages aren't just a given. I remember back in college where I wanted to step out of my comfort zone, so I made up a character who was my total opposite and was the kind of person I loathed. The typical popular jock who drank and partied and womanized. I had a load of fun playing that character who was just so different from me it made for a very interesting game campaign. It even lead me to making choices that, on a meta level, were bad for my character but were fun as a player to experience and I think it was a treat for the GM because its so rare for a player to go down that sort of road.

8:25 _"Is to go to the Gym and"_ ... Don't scare me like that.

Beautiful intro

I got out of my comfort zone so hard, but teaching young kids. I had never been a kids' person, but after getting this job, I had a to radically realign my attitude to life in order to succeed at it. I haven't yet had a chance to test if it has made me a better roleplayer, but I'd hazard that it absolutely has.

Accents do really help with getting into and staying into your character's mindset.

This is something I struggle with. As a player while my characters will differ, I always end up playing heroically stupid type characters. Oh we're outnumbered 4 to 2 vs ghouls, well I can't just leave those two stunned guys to die so I run up to help. It's an issue I have when I play. It's like a friend of mine that always played a barbarian. He decided at the start of a new campaign he wanted to do something different and play a sword and shield paladin. I (the DM) looked at one of the other players and said "I bet you a level he gets a great sword in 2 weeks". 2 weeks later he comes to me and says "hey is there a merchant that I can buy a great sword from?" He became a running joke, that he was in on, as our teams palabarian.

You've inspired me to try some different mindsets and characters while alone in my room. Simply because you made me realize ; oh my god, I DO play the same type every time! Ive got my Macaw KenKu all worked out, cant wait to ask my GM to give it a try. ;) Thanks!

I had a lot of fun playing a mute with telepathy, super hero game, but his messages were in picture form. Another time I played a deaf character and spent every moment watching my fellow player's lips as they talked. If I didn't see their lips I ignored what they said. Both situations helped me find different ways of interacting and caused a number of interesting events.

I hope you meant that you were barking mad.

Beautiful voice acting. I especially loved the orc voice, since it sounded like it came straight from a movie or videogame.

your intro made my dog flip out XP

Thanks for the advice, also your pronunciation of "roaring" sounded just fine to my American ears.

One of my favorite games was when my cousin's thief got turned into a scumcreeper. Picture a giant paramecium. He couldn't talk, but had to wave his fingers about like tentacles while he was carried around on the Psionic's shield. Endgame he climbed a giant pine, and with 2 natural 20's (for real!) jumped and landed on one of the big baddies face, smothering it to death under his acidic slime. Epic!

Hahaha, I always considered doing a 'freaky friday' style session to mess with my PCs.

If you want to get out of the comfort zone, GM and have a large cast of NPCs that forces you to put on different hats.

At #6 there, I played a mute bard once. He communicated through music, specifically a violin, or whistling (which I actually did, substituting humming for the violin; I set the rule for myself that I literally wasn't allowed to speak until the session was on break or over). For real complex stuff he'd have to break out pen and paper though. That was an awful lot of fun, and a spell that let the other party members use his bonuses to social skills (diplomacy etc) kept him very functional.

Watched several of your videos today. Loved them and subbed. Nice to see someone from somewhere not america doing these things. As a brit I feel outnumbered when it comes to DnD

Easiest way to make a different character to what you usually do, randomly generate everything. Count number of races, classes, etc., and find a Random Number Generator. The randomly assign everything. Roll you stats, the order is your stat numbers. I've done this a couple times, and it strangely seems to make characters that do actually work (you might need to adjust which stat number goes in where depending on what class you got though)

Whenever I create a character I always take a trait of some kind, usually one of my own personality traits, and amplifying it.

Imagine if this is the first video people saw of your channel. *Imagine if this was the first video someone saw on youtube*

I used to do the standard 'Elven Ranger' type. This was long before I had ever watched LotR, but I always liked the combination synergy. He was always reserved, serious, and above all...kind of boring. When I went to start with the group I play with now, I decided I wanted to play something totally off base. So I made a Dwarven Cleric. He's old, he's crass, and he loves making jokes at other people's expense. In fact, we have a young elvish ranger in our party that he lovingly refers to as "Treef**ker". I find that more often than not, I end up making the table laugh, either at someone else's expense, or just through my reactions to my own misfortune. He's a lot more fun to play, and a lot more fun to talk about.

You make good content. When I start one of your videos and I don't see an ad, I reload until i get an add then i watch the whole thing. Gotta support good content.

I dig Tobin, can he get me Fiber internet to my home?

Woke up this morning to some loon barking at me.

This is golden! Just the topic I needed since I struggle to make new characters :)

The way I do characters is, I have 15 people, who I have been working on for about 6 years (they started as Chapter Masters for my 40k Legion, but I use them for just about everything now). And I can just hop into just about any one that I want on a whim. But, this takes years of just making characters, and I actually find it difficult to make characters that aren't them. I'll start playing a game where you make your character (e/g. Skyrim), and start making a character, then realize when it comes to naming them, I made one of m characters, but with different coloured hair.

I enjoy the video, it has its own good tips and tricks, I'll keep my eyes up for the next one ^^

It's a simple thing but I find having a material focus helps keep me in character. As an example: I used to take an old hooded sweater to one campaign where I was playing a Rogue and I would "become Tanis" when I put it on. I also adopted the habit of pulling up the hood any time I wanted to use stealth. Very simple, but that constant reminder was a big help for me.

I think the highest compliment I've ever gotten in my life was my DM telling me after our first session that it was bizarre seeing me dip in and out of character because I play such a different personality from my own. (which as compliments go it's pretty funny, considering I play a very smooth, level-headed and charismatic character. I guess that's ONE way of calling your friend an awkward goof)

The beginning. GOOD HEAVENS! He’s gone absolutely bonkers!!

One of things i wanted to doto try to push this was to hand out NPCs to players when in large populated areas, i would give them a cheat sheet with voice type, beliefs, oddites, and a description. The experiment was to give players something to do if the party splits up. Whether it would work? No idea, but i think it would force them to wear the skin of something new and possibly create new characters for them if someone dies.

I am not shy or afraid of breaking out, but I still find it very difficult to do so. I think the reason I have difficulty creating a PC other than myself is because I emotionally invest in my PC. I have tried my hand at being a GM for some short adventures. I don’t find it difficult to play a variety of NPCs. I find it quite fun. As an exercise, I took one of my NPC roguish goblin characters and made them into a PC for another game and I am having a blast! I have learned and am learning a lot from your videos. Thank you Guy.

As a new gm these videos are super helpful, because even as the gm you have to think about facial expressions and gestures. I like to think of my role as the narrator of a children's book and to be very animated 😁

Loved the intro! Is that an elaborate ruse to sound check when editing and you just tell us your crazy?!?! Lol, love the info please keep making more!

Thank you. This is really helpful.

You my friend would make an great author.. You are really helping me building and writing my book, thank you!

Cool, another one I requested. XD Thanks!

There's a lot of great advice here. I know when someone comes to me, either as another player or in my capacity as a GM, and says their worried about being seen as silly while roleplaying, I usually tell them to take a look around because if they're silly then so is everyone else in the room who's also roleplaying. Its generally enough of an icebreaker, gets them to laugh a little and ease the tension somewhat. If that fails, I'll then try to do something a little outrageous or over the top as my character or an NPC (depending on whether I'm playing or running the game) to show them that the other people might smile and maybe even laugh a little, but that's because its fun to see someone in character and doing something, not because they all think I've finally gone round the bend.

This video actually helped me a lot, was stuck for a long time being almost completely neutral, never went to an extreme before. Also looking for people to actually play stuff with as my normal group has fallen out of DnD. Mostly do homebrew stuff to have fun, maybe will have some luck here hahahaha........

Your videos are great to world build and plot build to. Thanks

another way is to practice writing in an accent. for example "He's gone barking mad" vs " 'es gone barking mad e as."

Ha. Yes that's a problem that I have... my character is just a rogue version of me :(

Oh my god that intro, also, one of my first characters i ever played was WAY out of my comfort zone. I picked a Mind Melter in Rifts, the GM told me later that i had to act arrogant, confident, selfish (sorta), that sort of thing and normally i play something more like a reluctant good guy or loner that comes to appreciate having a group. Turned out to be one of my favorite characters to play, i seduced every woman i came across (Would've seduced the men too but the GM said Seduce only works on the opposite sex), i made myself the leader of the group, constantly showed off how smart and sexy i was, and used my charisma to fast talk my way past several guards. I took over an entire train by convincing the soldiers that were stationed on the train to protect it that there was a new super virus that was going around and we needed to check every person on the train, and we needed all the soldiers to gather at the back of the train to make sure none of them were infected. Then i detached the back car and took off with the train. I also seduced the pilot of a giant robot that had just been trying to kill me moments ago, and i just killed all her crewmates. Got a robot out of it at least. I also may have knocked up one of the other players.. Then killed her after she gave birth to my kids (Ok a few weeks later, she turned evil on us)

I've been around the block so I'm comfortable with almost everything. I did get a younger player in my game to step out of her comfort zone though and get into a romantic relationship with my character, forcing the party to roleplay with one another more. Our group is great with npcs but, until recently, we never rped with each other. I'm happy that's changing because the party itself having a narrative makes the game infinitely more interesting.

if a video starts like this one, you know it will be good :D guy, you are awesome.

thank you for this video

I personally before i do something with my character i rethink EVERYTHING what have he experienced and what feelings he had there and after some time I switch characters and be more that character than my real life self. I only play for that experience to be someone else. That character have some similiar traits then i have but the character changes with every adventure and so i try to relife his story his past and so i become that character. I read very often the sheet what he got through it also helps so you dont forget the past what shaped you to be the character today ... like in real life.

I hope my character doesn't die but if he does i'm making jack sparrow.

Running a one shot of a crazy game worked great for me in the past. We used to play TOON for that... That or paranoia...

I feel like playing a Kenku that can only make meows would be really cool.

I did something similar to running a game within a movie. I ran a Firefly RPG and used the adventures in the front of the book exclusively, which are all based heavily on the events of the Firefly TV show. However, only one member of the party has actually seen Firefly and is familiar with it. The others are oblivious. So far, The Don Quixote and her crew have successfully wormed their way out of an Alliance cruiser checking in on them by the use of careful charm and well-baked digestive biscuits.They were able to calmly chat with Badger, travel to the outer rim and talk with Patience to sell of the protein bars. They did not take on passengers so Simon Tam became someone elses problem. Even though she turned on them, the sheer force of charisma that one character exuded allowed them to get away with the money without issue. They were also able to steal the crates from the train going to Paradisio and gain favour with Niska. At every point, these guys have lucked their way into faring better than the crew of the Serenity. It's been a lot of fun. Does mean I might have to rearrange a few episodes simply because some no longer make sense. Unless they actively start spitting in peoples faces.

i´m used to play a fighter/worrior type of Char, i choose to do something else in my new round and i´m a very childissh, playful and naiv character and its so refreshing to play him. and it was a good idea to put him into that group

04:20 - "The best thing about Hero Quest...."

I think a good way to break the comfort zone is to play an extreme character. The nuanced ones are the hard to keep in character while the extreme ones are like in a box, and in that box you'll keep him/her. It's like if you're larping it's a lot easier to play an orc than a human, because the human will so easily be just yourself. Basically, extreme traits are easier to keep in check than nuanced traits. And extreme character is also a lot of fun, because they do a lot of extreme stuff. :)

3:00 We had to do something like this in Video Production class in high school back in 1988. It was called "the Asshole Test"

Well, that was a way to start an episode. :-D

This video is making me think i should take a break from GMing for a month or two and let one of my players run a short arc for this exact purpose. also, you might want to consider setting up a softer light source behind the camera when you record, a white sheet to bounce more light from the window back onto your face, or even with a lamp behind it (with a very white, *not yellow* bulb). anyway. just a thought. Keep up the vids :)

I can't step out of my comfort zone in group. Last time I tried we got No where and my quite shy girl had to take control so we could actually play but hopefully with our new 3rd player I can change it up cause I want to

I think a good character always has aspects of the creator in them, that's my opinion as a GM at least... usually when no aspect of yourself is present in the character or you remove agency from the character and put it all in the dice as to what they decide to do... you get a boring or dumb experience after a short while. One of my players is a kind hearted Goblin (raised by a druid) and honestly I think they are the character that I enjoy seeing the reaction from the most because the player wholehearted plays this little goblin and makes sure the actions while fun aren't his they're the goblins.

This topic is very interesting. I am a GM for a while now (maybe 10-12 years), and for me, playing NPC characters are easy, and my players enjoy the different characters I come up with. BUT when I play, I noticed I tend to be just myself, so then I tried to think outside of the box: what to play that forces me to act differently. Then I started a child character, then a female character, then a wookie in a Star Wars setting, and it was way more fun and engaging for me. Sometimes I say to my players to try someone really young, or really old, with a lot of life experience (be it an elf, or just an old human), or the other gender, or a race that has a compeltly different morality than the avarage human race. It is so hard for them, but they learn...

I can say I do it some much that even my own brother, who played with me for at least 10 years now, never knows what character I'm doing. If he DMs, he always makes a lot of questions of how my character is because he simply can't predict me until I tell him... Maybe my comfort zone is not repeating myself? Sometimes it doesn't work, to be fair, but generally it's not a big deal, I do a little of character development to make it a little different again until I like it.

Is there a playlist on this channel specifically for players like there was in the last channel? I can't seem to find one.

Barking mad it seems!

would you ever be willing to make a video about your experiences larping?

having the other players try to interpret what you mean is always fun. in a campaign i play in my character accidentally lost his tounge and due to him being a big dumb brute he has no knowledge of how to write. So basically when he wants something he will make a gurling sound and try to point at things around to make himself understood. Hilarious to see what the other players can come up with. Though sometimes it can take a while or end up with the wrong result :P

Ag you speak such good English hey.

I think you may have swopped a letter around at some point

But what if I just have very limited taste? Like, in fantasy I can only play as elves, because I love them so much, but to be fair, I can play at least 3 archetype, badly ofc, cuz I don't have a lot of experience, but still

This is my biggest personal hurdle. I really like these types of games and I watch/listen to quite a few series born from tabletop rpg's. It really does seem like a lot of fun if you have a good group. But I've never actually gotten the opportunity to play a tabletop rpg (both in the sense that I simply don't have time and I've never gotten the courage to search for a group). My major problem being that I'm incredibly self conscious. I love to create, write, and design characters, but the fact is I love creating atypical characters and I always get really self conscious that it's going to annoy either the GM or the other players. No, not atypical as in the 'Let's do random stuff for the sake of being random'. That's incredibly typical and usually rather annoying. Just in the sense that I become incredibly aware as to even minor quirks. ----- For Example : I remember talking to a friend who did play these types of games and they were lamenting about how much he would get annoyed by people playing dark elves. Always brooding and being a loner type. So, literally, the first character I got inspired to mock up for a campaign was a dark elf. She was incredibly cordial, chipper, and inquisitive and while I'm not going to bore anyone with the details, her entire goal in life was to write a comprehensive book about the surface world because she came from the Underdark and hopes to unite her home and the surface. Problem being that she's incredibly naive, knows almost nothing about surface society, which would come in handy for me because frankly I wouldn't much either, the people back home thinks she's a loon and a dreamer, and since she was a druid and got fascinated by the surface world because of its wildlife (plus she was a druid), she was protective of most creatures, especially rare ones. If she saw a dire wolf blocking the path, she would still do her best to convince people that it is vital to the ecosystem somehow and there has to be another way. I also had this small rule that because she did grow up in the Underdark, she wasn't allowed to learn any light production spells because that just made it harder for her to see. From that description alone, not even getting into her full story, it's one of those things where I always end up being very self conscious because I don't know if I even got the lore entirely right, if she would come across as incredibly annoying due to her quirk of being protective of wildlife, or even just annoy people due to just being incredibly friendly.

My dog just stared at the screen like... what?

Hey im currently 17, and about to finish high school. ive never played DND or something similar before but i want to give it a try. im very sporty so im not much of a typical nerd, but ive spent alot of time playing league, wow and other similar games. so how and where can i get into DND ?

Now, a completely honest question - why would I step outside of my comfort zone? Especially if I enjoy playing characters similar to myself? In practice, I will often make my main characters slightly different from my personality, for example having a different hobby, having a few flaws that I don't have, and on one occasion I had my character fall in love with another that I myself would not find attractive, but in terms of core personality features such as morality/ethics, I don't think I'd enjoy playing someone much different than myself. I do have a few character concepts that I wouldn't mind playing a bit, and who are quite a bit more diverse, though still on the good side of the moral axis (although I've played them occasionally as tricked/mind controlled to serve the villains), but I don't think I'd want to play any of them in a long running campaign. They're not my main characters. As for stepping out of comfort zones, I do have to say though that one way is to find new people to play with. When I play with strangers, I tend to be much more open and eager to take risks, since if things go badly, I can simply decide to never again play with those people. When playing with close friends, I'd rather not do anything that could negatively impact our relationships, so I'm a lot more reserved in my actions. Also, playing with new people means more opportunities to learn new gaming styles, new experiences and stuff that can also help improve your gaming. I'm about to start a new campaign as a GM, where 2 of the players have been GMing for years, and I'm a bit intimidated by the fact my players may be more experienced than me... which is a big step outside of my comfort zone :P

So I just realized half the reason I don't step out of my comfort zone is because i have a home audience, namely my family. I'm not afraid of making a fool of myself in front of my friends, I'm afraid of making a fool of myself in front of my family. Also doesn't help when you have to be quiet for fear of waking someone up.

That intro scared my dog

Is it a problem that all of my characters to date are almost nothing like me? I try to get into the mindset of other people by playing unique characters, and thus create ones that I can hardly relate to. My first character was the closest to being like me, mostly just because he made a lot of ice cold puns (he was basically an ice knight, that's the joke) and I named him Asheburne because I wanted a hot name for a cool character. It was a heartwarming welcoming when I was added to the party until they gave my puns the cold shoulder. After that I made a psychopathic assassin rogue, a nature loving pacifistic wizard, a thieving rogue, a flare knight who, in lore, slaughtered over 7 billion demons just to roll low consistently, and then a punny rogue and a punnier fighter, all linked together by one simple thing: a dark past they never talk about

Hi! Some time ago in the campaign (Dragon Age)I'm running I had a character who was a PC but the player had left the game quite early so I had taken over the character. The PC was meant to be a pious, elderly clergyman (from the Chantry) but the character had a dark secret, he was actually an evil dragon worshiper. The player had planned a big reveal and I decided that a betrayal seemed a fitting way to rid myself of the character. So I planned it for a few weeks, even spliced together some epic betraying music. However, what I didn't count on was that by the time I had gotten to the point of the betrayal, the entire party had gotten so close to this PC that no one wanted to fight him no matter how much goading he did (I made him take a powerful magical crystal from the other mage, and a dragon egg from the inventory of the party leader. I thought for sure this would result in a fight, since I had previously shown the party leader a glorious gilded dragon egg, but I didn't allow him to take it.) Not only that, but I also found that I was having a very hard time, emotionally, making this character be mean to the other PCs after everything that they had been through with him. Long story, sorry, but I'm curious if you have any advice regarding this, or comments. I wanted to make him be evil so bad, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

I was the one thousandth person to like. What do I win?

It's spelled swap. Not swop.

One shot where we're goblin kids? So we are "the Stranger Things".

I try to act, and be animated, but unfortunately I play with four other players who I've never even heard a slight accent from. Not that you need to have an accent, but two are self conscious, one scoffs at the idea of roleplaying (I know... why are you here?) and another who always makes a craaaazy character who does craaaaazy things because he's craaaaaazy. Mostly this involves random acts of violence. I think i'll just keep at it, trying to get some response out of them.

You're speaking fey corgi aka canine language. And yes, I do enjoy squeaky toys immensely. :3

Your play list play in reverse order it seems

0.0 bawr bowbow bowr wow wow row ruff grrrr to you too sir!

Meanwhile I can’t seem to play a normal person who isn’t insane.

I've heard this a few times from experienced GMs. My problem with it is that I find playing non-pragmatic characters very boring. I had the chance to play D&D maybe 6 hours over the last 5 years. Who do I want to play, a) a leading character who is savvy and prudent, who speaks a lot, and interacts intelligently with NPCs. b) not that. I universally play mages or rogues; but once I tried to play a priest and it was such a bore. Constant limitation all the time. How could I play for even one hour a character that would bore me senseless with his 8 minutes of face time in a movie? And what to say of their one dimensional skill set? It's not that I'm not able to play anything else. It's just that when I do get the chance to finally play the game, I would like my experience to be fun.

I don't usually like a video within the first 15 seconds... but that was somethin' else I tell ya

Alcohol!

Hmm, idk. I get that one doesn't want to have the same person playing the same thing over and over again. At the same time however, i got accused of playing the same character, because none of them wanted to rape, pointlessly murder, pillage or do other dark & edgy crap that nobody short of a walking cartoon for emos would do. And like, my characters aren't even the same archtype - sometimes its a grizzly druid (puntastic, i know), sometimes a hardy gladiator, sometimes a suave knight, sometimes a jaded mercenary. The only thing they got in common is a fit state of their body and mind and not being cunts.

My confort zone, is being the conchence of the party. I also enjoy being a solver. That's why my first two characters, were an Inilectual Wizard, and an Enthusiastic Palidin.

It's all fun and games until someone gets too drunk and says, "you know, my character would probably go down on your character".

How many pinecones in a bush

I wanna see guy play

wow playing other players charracters, wow thats great idea.

like if your a loud and flamboyant man who plays a strong reserved paladin

Your barking sounds like a Cthulhu chicken.

*Hears fake barking.* WHAT THE F... ... that was jarring. Please don't do that again. >:( Also, volume spikes when barking.

Sorry lad but that Irish accent is absolutely dreadful xD

all i'm asking for is just one video where feminists and derogatory comments toward them are absent. it seems like this whole society vs feminists thing is really getting out of fucking control, and keeps popping up in videos where the subject completely doesn't belong. i'm seriously just so goddamn tired of hearing about it. just please. stop already.