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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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The reason you ask for the player to roleplay his speech but not to describe his sword swing technique is because D&D is a game that exists in our heads. It is a real as the group believes it to be. That is to say, it can be very real, but this requires collective suspension of disbelief, engagement, buy-in, and yes — roleplaying. You aren't taken out of the collective fantasy by your fighter's player not knowing how to swing a sword, but you are by the player who is supposedly the high Charisma party face clamming up whenever an NPC speaks to him.

I don't have an issue with such players being at my table, and in my experience they tend to avoid those kinds of characters anyway. You don't need a silver tongue to be able to play a charismatic character, but you need to have some degree of wit and charm. If a player wants to give a speech, I'm not exactly expecting St. Crispin's Day, but he should have something to say.

Would you accept it if the player spoke in abstract about the themes his character is talking about, the buttons he tries to press, etc. without actually reciting it in first person?

Sure, especially if the player is less comfortable speaking in first person, or is performing something like a song that would take a long time to devise. I have a preference to first person roleplaying, but in the kind of example you gave the player is clearly demonstrating engagement and knowledge of what's going on, so it's all good to me. I take umbrage more with doing away with all of that and just rolling the dice in social situations.

Think "my character sings a song" vs "my character sings this folk song with specific themes that he uses to subtly mock the hostile lord."

That's my preferred method. "I try to persuade the king to spare the captive by appealing to his sense of justice/diplomacy/humour/whatever." It's like how you don't just "attack", you attack with a weapon.