📌 You can create Roleplay Sessions on every Synthesia plan.
Publishing to the Learner Portal needs a paid Roleplay Sessions plan. To learn more, check out How do I choose the right Roleplay Sessions plan?
A Roleplay Session lets learners practice a real conversation with an AI avatar and get automated feedback on how they did. You build it from three scene types — scripted, roleplay, and feedback — and then publish it to the learner portal. This article covers the full process from start to finish.
Before you start
To create a Roleplay Session, you need:
A Synthesia plan
A clear understanding of the skill you want to teach
Rubrics or skill criteria you want to assess learners on
If you are new to roleplay videos, start by reviewing the scene types first. This helps you understand how scripted, roleplay, and feedback scenes work together.
✍️ If you cannot see the Roleplay option, the Roleplay tab may be hidden for your workspace. Admins can toggle it in Workspace settings.
📚 Want to build one alongside a guide? Take the Build your first Roleplay Session course in Synthesia Academy.
How to create a Roleplay Session
There are three ways to create a Roleplay Session. Choose the one that fits how much you want to build from scratch:
Duplicate a ready-made template — the fastest way. You see a complete roleplay in action and edit it to fit your scenario.
Create with Assistant — describe your scenario in a prompt, and Assistant builds the whole roleplay for you.
Add a Roleplay scene — add a Roleplay scene to a new or existing video and configure it in the editor.
Duplicate a ready-made template
The fastest way to create a Roleplay Session is to duplicate a ready-made template. A template gives you a complete roleplay in action — scripted, roleplay, and feedback scenes already built — so you can see how the pieces fit together before you change anything.
Choose a template that matches your scenario, such as a sales template for a sales roleplay.
Duplicate the template.
Edit the persona, scenario, objections, skills, and scripts to fit your needs.
Create a roleplay with Assistant
Assistant builds a complete Roleplay Session from a prompt. You describe the scenario, and Assistant creates a ready-to-try roleplay for you.
From the home page, select Create a roleplay. You can also start from the Create a roleplay entry point in the video assistant view.
Choose one of the five activities: Cold call, Discovery call, Field sales, Manager feedback, or Customer conversation.
Enter a prompt that describes the scenario, audience, and topic.
You can also attach supporting context alongside your prompt. Assistant accepts files in .pdf, .pptx, .docx, and .txt format, and URLs. Assistant uses this material to ground the persona, the scenario, and the objections in your own content.
Under Design, choose a Delivery style:
Presentation
Dynamic
Under Style, set your Template:
Leave Template on Auto to let Assistant choose one for you, or
Choose a template By Synthesia or from Your library.
Under Style, choose a Brand kit to apply your brand colors, fonts, and logos.
Assistant builds a full storyboard — scripted, roleplay, and feedback scenes — from the stock template mapped to that activity. It also creates a custom persona (avatar, voice, personality, and background), scenario instructions, and objections, and assigns skills from Synthesia's stock skill library.
Try the roleplay by previewing. You can manually edit any generated element, such as the persona, scenario, or skills.
Add a Roleplay scene to a new or existing video
For full control over each scene, add a Roleplay scene to a new or existing video and build it in the editor.
1. Design the roleplay scenario
Before you configure the scene, define what learners will practice and how they will be assessed. This helps your teaching content map directly to the roleplay.
Decide:
AI agent persona — the person your agent roleplays as — their name, role, personality, and background.
Instructions — the persona’s context and how they should respond to different questions, approaches, and signals from the learner.
Objections — the realistic pushback the avatar should raise during the conversation.
Skills — the 2–5 skills or criteria the learner should be scored on.
Time limit — the maximum duration the roleplay can run. Most roleplays are 5–10 minutes.
For detail on each field, see How do I configure my roleplay and feedback scenes?
2. Add and configure the roleplay scene
In a new or existing video, add a Roleplay scene, then fill in the configuration fields for the scenario you designed.
Scene-type menu
The roleplay scene is the core of the experience. This is where learners have a real-time conversation with the AI avatar. The avatar follows your scenario, responds to what the learner says, and raises the objections or challenges you define.
Roleplay scene configuration panel in the Synthesia editor.
3. Add the feedback scene
Add a feedback scene after the roleplay scene. Synthesia generates most of the feedback scene for you, and you set how it works.
Set the passing score, then choose whether to turn Retries on or off. If retries are on, learners can retake the roleplay and try to improve their score. If retries are off, the learner has one chance within the attempt. They can still take the Session again later, and that is recorded as a separate attempt. The feedback scene appears after the roleplay and shows learners what they did well, where they can improve, and how they performed against the skill criteria.
Feedback scene settings
4. Add scripted scenes
Scripted scenes teach the skill and show what good looks like before learners practice. They often include examples, best practices, or a model answer.
Place scripted scenes before the roleplay scene. Write them after you configure the roleplay so the script maps to what learners will practice and what the feedback scene will assess.
Keep scripted content short so learners get to the practice quickly. Aim for 2–5 minutes of scripted content in total.
Scripted scene
📚 Want to go further? Learn how to configure your roleplay and feedback scenes.
Preview, generate, and share
These steps apply to all three creation methods.
1. Preview the experience
Use draft preview to run through the roleplay as a learner. Previewing helps you catch configuration issues before you publish.
Draft preview
During preview, check that:
The scripted scenes are clear and relevant.
The persona behaves as intended.
The objections feel realistic.
The roleplay flow makes sense.
The feedback scene scores the right skills.
The script maps to what the roleplay tests.
The persona holds up against awkward and off-script answers, not only the responses you expect.
Fix any issues you find before you generate or publish.
💡 If the persona breaks character, misreads the scenario, or behaves in an unexpected way, select the bug icon in the player controls to report it. The bug icon is available during preview and to learners during a Session.
2. Generate the video
When your configuration is complete, select Generate.
Synthesia checks for configuration errors, such as missing skill rubrics or unlinked scenes, before generation starts. If errors appear, fix them and try again.
Generation takes a few minutes.
3. Share your Session with learners
Once your Session has generated, you have four ways to share it.
1. Publish to the Learner Portal (recommended)
📌 Publishing to the Learner Portal is available on Self-Serve and Custom Roleplay Sessions plans. On the Free version, use one of the three options below.
Send the Session to the Synthesia Learner Portal, a dedicated space for assigning and tracking Roleplay Sessions at scale. Publishing requires organization admin access.
Publish to the learner portal.
📚 To learn more, check out How do I publish a Roleplay Session to the Learner Portal?
2. Share page link
A direct link that opens the full Session. On the Free version the recipient starts the roleplay without signing in, and nothing is tracked.
3. HTML embed
Embedd the Session to a webpage.
4. SCORM package
Upload the Session to your LMS for completion tracking. The Learner Portal and your LMS are separate tracking systems and do not sync.
Whichever route you choose, learners move through the full experience, scripted, then roleplay, then feedback, in one flow. If you publish to the Learner Portal, use learner progress and analytics to track completion, pass rates, and improvement over time.
📚 To compare what each route records more in depth, check out How do I share a Roleplay Session with learners?