First of all, don't stress too much about it. Everybody's early characters are gonna be not exactly the most amazing.
(All this in my opinion about how to do it. I don't actually consider myself a master role-player, and other people with have things that work better for them.)
There are two parts you need to think about:
How you choose your characters actions
How you present your character to the other players
#2 is probably what a lot of people think they should be doing, but it's less important than #1, and easy to do badly. (I'll get back to this.)
For #1, you need to think about your character's motivations. Why are they adventuring, as opposed to doing something safe and sensible? This is a vitally important thing for you to know -- if your character has no reason to be doing this, it's easy to run into situations where you're charging into danger only because it's the expectation of the game, and that tends to make the rest of your RPing harder. For this, it really helps to develop your character in concert with the other players, as personal ties are good motivation to do things you otherwise wouldn't.
Besides that, you just need to answer the big questions, such as: What does your character want out of life? What are their moral principles? Which of those things will turn out not to be true of push comes to shove? You don't even have to have firm answers, but some vague idea will help you firm them up in play.
For #2, how does their personality come out? Are they cheerful? Taciturn? Impulsive? Weird and creepy? Do they have an unusual manner of speaking? You'll slip up on this often, especially at the beginning, but even a little goes a long way.
Because a little goes a long way, it's very easy to overdo it, and annoy the other players, or just be a caricature when you don't mean to. When in doubt, underplay it. Unusual word choice is better than a fake accent. In the end, it's acting, which is a skill that people spend a lot of time to become good at it. It's fine if you can't pull it off comfortably, or consistently.
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I am a beginner in D&D and want to know how to roleplay a character well. What are things I can do to make my roleplaying very convincing?
First of all, don't stress too much about it. Everybody's early characters are gonna be not exactly the most amazing.
(All this in my opinion about how to do it. I don't actually consider myself a master role-player, and other people with have things that work better for them.)
There are two parts you need to think about:
#2 is probably what a lot of people think they should be doing, but it's less important than #1, and easy to do badly. (I'll get back to this.)
For #1, you need to think about your character's motivations. Why are they adventuring, as opposed to doing something safe and sensible? This is a vitally important thing for you to know -- if your character has no reason to be doing this, it's easy to run into situations where you're charging into danger only because it's the expectation of the game, and that tends to make the rest of your RPing harder. For this, it really helps to develop your character in concert with the other players, as personal ties are good motivation to do things you otherwise wouldn't.
Besides that, you just need to answer the big questions, such as: What does your character want out of life? What are their moral principles? Which of those things will turn out not to be true of push comes to shove? You don't even have to have firm answers, but some vague idea will help you firm them up in play.
For #2, how does their personality come out? Are they cheerful? Taciturn? Impulsive? Weird and creepy? Do they have an unusual manner of speaking? You'll slip up on this often, especially at the beginning, but even a little goes a long way.
Because a little goes a long way, it's very easy to overdo it, and annoy the other players, or just be a caricature when you don't mean to. When in doubt, underplay it. Unusual word choice is better than a fake accent. In the end, it's acting, which is a skill that people spend a lot of time to become good at it. It's fine if you can't pull it off comfortably, or consistently.