Title. Friend group and I play regularly but most of us are bad at the role playing part of it to the point where it’s hard to tell when the player or the character are speaking in some scenes. Conversations are stiff. We can’t use too heavily modified voices because we’re playing remotely. My character is about to die (probably!) so help me pick a character or trait of my new character that someone not comfortable roleplaying can stick to without feeling weird about it!
My suggestion is to avoid any cringey back story. Seems like all characters have some edgy drama they center on. Instead, have a really boring backstory like you’re a retiree who is just looking to pass the time. Something you can kinda chuckle at to break the tension with having to roleplay.
Or, if you have to have an elaborate backstory here is one I’ve used: your character’s mind broke after whatever happened (like old age) and they believe they have made a pact granting them warlock powers. They don’t have those powers and are just going batty, so just work it out with the dm where you “cast” hexblade but just do a normal attack. So you’re just a fighter really but you’ll be pretending you aren’t with the other players.
I have a guy in my group who is unashamedly a power gamer (which is fine by me, he still will participate in all pillars of play; he just always prioritizes mechanical power). His PCs consistently have some edgy loner backstory. I honestly think it’s because he doesn’t prioritize backstory when creating characters, instead trying to come up with a backstory which justifies all of the mechanical things he wants his character to have. The thing is, I’ve seen him RP fun or interesting character ideas for like one-shots, but for longer campaigns he always reverts to the safety blanket of an edgelord.
Recently he was rolling up a new character, and after he gave me the character sheet, it inevitably had some edgy loner backstory where the only details were things that explained his class, background, and proficiencies. So I politely suggested we workshop the backstory under the guise of working in some details relevant to the campaign. What I then did was talk him through his character’s whole backstory from childhood through to adulthood giving him an opportunity to think through the backstory one step at a time, occasionally prompting what might be choices his character would’ve had to make at different points in his life.
The result of this was that he actually had to think about his character’s backstory and it ended up being a way more interesting character concept.
