An Actor's Guide to Dungeons and Dragons, Part 2: How to Get What You Want

TL;DR: Coming up with a shortlist of tactics (how you get what you want) can speed up and improve your RPing immensely!

And we're back, with even more roleplaying advice from your favorite (maybe?) actor/reddit poster! Last week, I posted about the importance of coming up with a clear driving objective for your character, and how much that can help with giving your character forward motion and keeping them interesting over time. Today's topic is going to build off of that concept somewhat, so it might be helpful to give that a read before you delve in here.

Finding your character's objective is the most important first step in stepping up your roleplaying, but let me know if this sounds familiar: you're sitting around the table, an RP incident starts up, and you sit there, wondering how to involve yourself, not sure of what your character would do in that moment. Often, that doesn't come from any lack of knowledge of what the character wants, but rather how it makes sense to get that thing out of the roleplaying.

This is where it is helpful to know what your character's tactics are. Tactics are, in the simplest terms, the specific ways in which a character goes about trying to achieve their objective. For an actor, this is their bread and butter. Knowing your tactics moment to moment allows everything you're doing to have a reason; every line, every action, has a forward movement, and even if the audience doesn't know exactly what it is your doing, they can tell that there's an importance and a reason behind it all.

A tactic is, in essence, a verb (the more active and specific the verb, the better) that describes what your character is doing to the character they're interacting with to try to get to their objective. To draw from classical theatre for an example, let's look at Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. Oedipus' objective throughout the play might be argued to be, "I want to discover the cause of the plague afflicting Thebes." Therefore, all of his tactics throughout the play are in service of this objective. He bullies Tiresias, he terrorizes Creon, he barters with Jocasta. Those tactics change as they either prove effective or not, and in reaction to the tactics of the other characters, and those tactics are what give life to the performance.

As an actor, once I've figured out my character's objective in each scene, my next job is to read through the scene over and over again, figuring out what my tactic is in each moment. Sometimes the same tactic will extend over several lines, sometimes it'll change mid-line, but finding those changes and figuring out why they change is the crux of an actor's preparation.

Obviously, for D&D, this doesn't work quite the same way. You don't have a script, often you have no idea what sort of interactions you're going to be involved in until you're in the middle of it, so this kind of preparation is off the table. However, what I find is helpful is to spend some time thinking about your character and coming up with a short-list of your preferred tactics. Maybe it's based on your backstory or the things that have come before in your adventures (the given circumstances of your character, to use another piece of theatre jargon). Maybe it's based on the kind of character you like to play. Whatever it is, if you can figure out a basic framework of how your character handles social interactions, it can cut down immensely on the sort of "What would my character do now?" questions that can slow down or hinder good RPing.

A few pointers for solidifying this short-list:

• Make the tactics as specific as possible, and as evocative as you can. Don't stick with "scare," delve deeper in to how you scare people. "Sabotage" is much more explicit than "put down." And, of course, this is all for you, so go with tactics that speak to you.
• Choose tactics that build on one another. Have several different intensities in mind, so that you can escalate your tactics as a scene progresses. If you're the type who's fine with groveling a bit to get what you want, make sure you have room to be more or less urgent with your given verbs. This allows you more flexibility to play with, depending on how important a moment is for you.
• Use the given Charisma based abilities as a starting point. Intimidation, Persuasion, Deception, and Performance give you a great division of different approaches to start with, so take those and delve deeper. Is your bard with Expertise in Persuasion a quick-talking salesman or just really earnest and forthcoming? Does your Rogue bluff with a perfect poker-face, or is he a silver-tongued liar who spins tall tales? Does your fighter intimidate with a roar or a simple look? These sort of questions can help you further figure out your character's personality.

Finally, the most important thing is to remember that this is all preparation. Whenever possible, try to have your objective and your tactics in mind before you ever sit down at a table; it'll make it that much smoother and easier for you to jump right in and get what you want in your roleplaying. An actor who walked into the first rehearsal without any preparation like this done on his own time is just slowing down the process for everyone, and you'll be amazed how much this kind of prep can get rid of the nervousness of not knowing what to do.

I hope this has been helpful, and given you some fodder for how to flesh out your character's social repertoire. Now that we've gotten through the pre-game prep for your characters, I'll be back next week with some thoughts on thinking on your feet and improvising your way through your games.