How are you at role-playing?

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Oh my goodness--I apparently suck at it!

Today was the last lecture (of my fourth and final summer class--thank goodness!) and we were just doing our presentations today. The last presentation group ended their's with a game. They passed around roles for people to play. The presentation was about the use of kids in drug trafficking and stuff, so some people were NGOs trying to protect the kids, and everyone else got a role to play in the drug trafficking country. Anyway, I was the leader of the drug cartel. I had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how to do this. I was supposed to think like a drug cartel, explain my reasoning for wanting to use the children, and try to manipulate a deal with the NGOs. I was completely stumped on how to put myself in the shoes of these people. How am I supposed to sympathize with a leader of a drug cartel when I hate them with a fiery passion?? Anyway, I ended up being at least 85% non-verbal during this game, and finally suggested they assassinate me (so I didn't have to talk anymore).

Does anyone else have such difficulty with role-playing?

My psychologist tried to get me to do it, and I was hopeless. If I had to act in a movie or something, I'm sure I could do it (I probably wouldn't be very good at it, but I could do it), since it's scripted, but I can't improvise.

As long as I don't have to play a Mage...

When my school psychologist thought I had social anxiety (this was before my diagnosis, and before I mentioned ASD at all), she was trying to get me to go out and do things, and I told her that I did not know HOW to have social interactions with other people. She tried to do a role-playing game where I basically became non-verbal (she seems a slightly talkative me, but that is not what I am like 90% of the time), and it last about 2 minutes, before we gave up and moved on to something else. I simply cannot figure out role-playing, so I am very uncomfortable when put into that situation.

Im on the speech team and a copmmon game we play when waiting for judges is improv, how it works is you pick half the room to start out, and the other half in the audience, one member from the audience must say a word and you have to act out an entire scene doing absolutely anything from kidnapping,bank robberies, to doing yoga , so long as its based on the word, and you cant get out unless the audience yells freeze and a member of the audience taps you on the shoulder to take your place. when i first did it i just stood there not even knowing what to do, then as i got used to it i got a bit better, it just took me a lot of practice, maybe you should try and play improv with a trusted friend or maybe if your having some party and ur bored to help you get used to role playing ,it helped me a lot .

I couldn't roleplay in a situation like you described.

I've played roleplaying games, and I generally play characters in the same way I used to put up facades around neurotypicals. It's interesting to me I could learn skills as part of a facade and can't use them when I'm not trying to fake NT. A facade is more a set of rules of social engagement - X is okay, Y is not, Z is expected, and not an actual personality, however.

My roleplaying does not range far afield from my own personality, either, and my facades are not that good.

I can role play really well in some situations - I had great fun doing a "murder mystery" character at a party, and was told I did it really well.

But the sort of situation you are describing, I definitely could not do - I just don't have the knowledge required. I mean, pretending to be a slightly different type of person is not much difference to how I get through everyday life, but leader of a drug cartel? No idea.

I would have to say though, that not being able to imaging yourself running a drug cartel is probably a really good thing. I would have concerns about anyone who could justify that too easily!!

My daughter is very good in role playing. She is so good her drama teacher told me we should consider acting lessons. But they get the role they are gonna be playing in advance, so she prepares searching info over the Internet (pics and youtube videos). Probably your reaction was because you had no idea how a cartel boss would behave, as you did not have time to prepare your role.

I love playing tabletop role-playing games. I'm an average role-player--not horrible, not excellent. I tend to gravitate toward Good-aligned protector/healer types, though. I'm trying to get away from that, because I feel like I need to try some more diverse characters. However, I've learned to accept that I'll never really like playing Evil characters--I would much rather play a hero (even a flawed or cowardly hero) than a villain. Some people find it a lot of fun to play a villain, but... Ehh, I guess I'm too much of a traditionalist as far as storytelling goes.

I have almost no roleplaying ability whatsoever. I put my skill points towards things that are actually important.

I'm very good at roleplaying. Even when I have no clue how the role I'm playing acts like, if I'm not concerned about accuracy I can usually just make stuff up to fill in the blanks. I've done some acting for the theatre group in my new town and absolutely loved it - instead of getting stage fright I got extremely excited and as soon as I was done each performance I'd get really stimmy and happy and hyperactive because I enjoyed it so much.

Well, the piece of paper told me who I was, why I wanted to continue to exploit kids, etc. It was figuring out the social interactions, and how I was supposed to respond in the situations the other people put me in that made me so confused.

Are these the type of games where you personally do not have to get into character with speech, looks, etc, but rather guide the character in the cards, board game, etc? If so, I do like this kind too...but obviously don't play it very often.

On the rare occasion I do play games like this, the characters are not really characters at all--they are pretty much just what I would do in a similar situation.

I can't do the type of RP that you're discussion.

Tabletop role-playing games, those I do well at. What I tend to do for those is take some small aspect of myself, make it extreme, and then expand that into a character. I hadn't thought about it before just now but my current Mage character is a naive, foreigner (she's a Sami who grew up in a traditional village), with ToM issues and the goal in life to turn into a seal... I hadn't realized that I'd given her major ToM issues. I also built her with my whole special interest in the history and culture of Finland...


Tabletop RPGs are the ones where you get into the character via speech and such (though we sometimes play online), but with a character sheet of what you're good at, what you're not as good at, and such, and you sometimes use dice, and sometimes explain what your character is doing.


Personally I think tabletop RPGs are more likely to help at least some of the spectrum than the roleplaying that you're describing. The characters tend to be something you care about, more structured, and characters you can learn over time and get into more. Plus you get the RP anyways, just in a way that isn't so forced and boring.

Most of the characters I played basically started out as me, and then I started changing things to make them distinct.

One time a GM had me playing myself (her idea) and she complained I was playing myself wrong. I wasn't reacting with enough emotion to events, you see.