Please explain the appeal of roleplaying games such as D&D to me.

[Elendil's Heir]

Originally Posted by Jihi

...Nothing is annoying so much as a player shouting his characters actions over his shoulder while playing Call of Duty or M:TG....

My favorite DM from my teen years would smile evilly when a player became disengaged like that. Invariably something would soon happen to that player's character because the player wasn't paying quite enough attention....

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Originally Posted by Peremensoe

For example, I wanted to introduce some seaborne stuff. When they first got to the coastal city, there were clues to several potential adventures around--rumors of a mysterious island, a sea monster; they didn't take up any of these right away and some of them never panned out.

Which is fine. Rumors are little plot hooks, and it's a great GMing style to sprinkle them liberally throughout the world.

But an enormous, unexplained fireball over part of the city? That's not in the same league as a rumor.

A fantastic GM once advised me that, if a game offers the flaws "reckless" or "curious," take them. Those "flaws" could be renamed, "grabs the plot hook," and almost always lead to more interesting characters. The worst players are those who play cautiously, who decide that instead of investigating the disappearances down at the mine, they'll keep working their day job at the saloon. And if a player ignored the ginormous explosion for any reason, I'd think them a pretty incompetent player (or else they were trying to play a very different game from the one I was trying to run).

Look at it this way. A cop who fails to follow up on a rumor of a new smuggling operation isn't necessarily falling down on the job. A cop who watches the Twin Towers falling and continues booking the shoplifting suspect? That's no good. The latter is more the kind of thing Miller is talking about.

[Peremensoe]

Originally Posted by Left Hand of Dorkness

Rumors are little plot hooks, and it's a great GMing style to sprinkle them liberally throughout the world.

But an enormous, unexplained fireball over part of the city? That's not in the same league as a rumor.

A fantastic GM once advised me that, if a game offers the flaws "reckless" or "curious," take them. Those "flaws" could be renamed, "grabs the plot hook," and almost always lead to more interesting characters. The worst players are those who play cautiously, who decide that instead of investigating the disappearances down at the mine, they'll keep working their day job at the saloon. And if a player ignored the ginormous explosion for any reason, I'd think them a pretty incompetent player (or else they were trying to play a very different game from the one I was trying to run).

Look at it this way. A cop who fails to follow up on a rumor of a new smuggling operation isn't necessarily falling down on the job. A cop who watches the Twin Towers falling and continues booking the shoplifting suspect? That's no good.

I agree.

I just wouldn't like a game in which players knew that that enormous fireball must be their cue, leading neatly into a plotted adventure just for them. It sure ought to inspire them to do something, no doubt! Of course my crew wouldn't have ignored such a thing.

But they'd have had a certain measure of caution going in because, as in the real world, they wouldn't know what they were getting themselves into. It might be something totally out of their league. There was no built-in guarantee that they would be the central figures in that particular story.

[Chronos]

One point to keep in mind is that he said it was a pre-made module. Some DMs absolutely thrive on improvisation, but those are generally the ones who don't buy modules. With a pre-made module, you have to railroad the players to at least some degree, lest they wander off the edges of the map. Because the maps for pre-made modules do have edges.

[Oakminster]

Originally Posted by Chronos

One point to keep in mind is that he said it was a pre-made module. Some DMs absolutely thrive on improvisation, but those are generally the ones who don't buy modules. With a pre-made module, you have to railroad the players to at least some degree, lest they wander off the edges of the map. Because the maps for pre-made modules do have edges.

Heh. As a beginning DM, I solved the wandering party problem pretty easily. One of my players asked about he lands beyond the edge of the map (outdoor dungeon, and I hadn't fleshed out the world beyond the area I was using at that point). I replied "Tiamat lives there." They decided to stay on the map.

[Bosstone]

Originally Posted by Left Hand of Dorkness

A fantastic GM once advised me that, if a game offers the flaws "reckless" or "curious," take them. Those "flaws" could be renamed, "grabs the plot hook," and almost always lead to more interesting characters. The worst players are those who play cautiously, who decide that instead of investigating the disappearances down at the mine, they'll keep working their day job at the saloon.

Oh man, yes. I used to, and sometimes still do, play extremely sensible characters. The stoic Paladin or Monk who always keeps a level head, is always observant, and just generally does the wise, sensible thing.

Reckless is so much more fun.

[Jragon]

This thread is starting to give me Unforgotten Realms flashbacks, where the plot goes so hilariously off the rails it actually settles into one of the best, yet still absolutely silliest, RPG plots ever.

[Kamino Neko]

It can be fun to have one complainer in a party, so long as the complaints are always in-character. (As a GM, when I have a character like that, he ends up having REASON to complain, as the universe gains a new chew toy. It either inures them to things so they stop bitching, or it provides entertainment for everyone with the 'how will he take it to the teeth this week?' Generally try to keep it on the good side of the line between 'cruel to the character' and 'cruel to the player', of course.)

Of course, the characters that I play tend to be easy to hook...

A sampling...

A bard who's got a thing about destiny, and is usually the one pushing the rest of the party to grab the damned hook.
A teenaged Halfling who doesn't much care what the party does, as long as there's excitement involved, and she gets money and/or sweets out of it.
A half-orcish mob enforcer who's used to taking orders, and enjoys nothing more than throwing himself into battle, with little heed on who's on the other side.
A scientist/engineer/medic who grabs every plot hook thrown his way because they offer opportunities for research/tinkering/collecting material and samples.
A comic book fangirl who's been thrown into a world of superheroes and goes with every adventure, because it's 'cool'.

They've all got things they won't do, and objections they might raise to a given hook, but they're all easy to motivate.

[Kobal2]

Originally Posted by Left Hand of Dorkness

The worst players are those who play cautiously, who decide that instead of investigating the disappearances down at the mine, they'll keep working their day job at the saloon. And if a player ignored the ginormous explosion for any reason, I'd think them a pretty incompetent player (or else they were trying to play a very different game from the one I was trying to run).

Actually, the worst players are those who create antisocial characters, with flaws like "loner" or who deliberately choose backgrounds that allow them to say "well, why would I do *adventure with the rest of the group* ? I don't care about that".

I ran a Vamp campaign once (my first Vamp campaign, actually) with a group of 4 complete strangers I'd met via the interwebs, so I didn't know exactly what they wanted or expected of me, but since I'd met them via a Vamp-related site I figured they were after typical Vampire fares - intrigues, backstabbing, power mongering, exploiting ridiculous Disciplines for fun and profit. One of them decided to play a Gangrel somewhat based on a rebellious, loner character from a manga (Sanosuke from Rurouni Kenshin, if you have to know).
The scenario featured a whole lot of intrigue, in fact it was a typical Vamp player's wet dream: the Prince of Paris just "died" in front of their eyes (in reality he faked his own death with the help of a friend), and in order to avoid deleterious power struggles in dangerous times the powers that be decide that until the matter of the assassination is resolved, this little bunch of new vampires who don't know anything about anything are going to be temporary Princes of the city. I repeat: 12th generation mongrels, with no allies or experience whatsoever, given absolute power in Paris to do whatever they want, rule however they wish, with the backing of characters immensely more powerful than themselves. A certain kind of player would kill to play this.

But not this guy. This guy spent the whole scenario basically saying "yeah, well, I'm a Gangrel, I hate cities, I don't give a shit. I'm going hunting in the nearest forest".

Now, I don't know what he expected of me or of the game, but despite trying multiple times to give him something to rope him into the plot or have him join the rest of the players who were having a ball dispensing high and low JUSTICE!, he never quite clicked with the rest of the group (and this despite the fact that another player at the table was his best friend IRL). I gave him exclusive clues into the murder that the other players didn't know about, figuring he'd at least try and tell them what he knew - he never did. I let him know that there was a plot against his mates (of course there was a plot against the neonate Princes, come on !) and that they were all in danger of getting ganked - zero action. Not interested, don't give a shit, not my problem. Forest. Hunt.

I never quite grokked that guy, and we stopped playing together soon after that.

[RickJay]

Originally Posted by Kobal2

Actually, the worst players are those who create antisocial characters, with flaws like "loner" or who deliberately choose backgrounds that allow them to say "well, why would I do *adventure with the rest of the group* ? I don't care about that".

The first rule of successful roleplaying: "I am a supporting character."

[Little Nemo]

Originally Posted by Kobal2

Now, I don't know what he expected of me or of the game, but despite trying multiple times to give him something to rope him into the plot or have him join the rest of the players who were having a ball dispensing high and low JUSTICE!, he never quite clicked with the rest of the group (and this despite the fact that another player at the table was his best friend IRL). I gave him exclusive clues into the murder that the other players didn't know about, figuring he'd at least try and tell them what he knew - he never did. I let him know that there was a plot against his mates (of course there was a plot against the neonate Princes, come on !) and that they were all in danger of getting ganked - zero action. Not interested, don't give a shit, not my problem. Forest. Hunt.

You were probably trying too hard to work with him. Maybe you should have taken the tactic, "Fine, you don't want to get involved in the interesting stuff? Then your character can do boring stuff."

Let him sit there and watch the other players participating in intrigue and adventure. And every once in a while, say, "Oh, and your character? He spent the day watching TV." At some point, he'll give up his loner ways and seek out the company of the people having all the fun.

[Evil Captor]

And then there's Second Life Gor. Adventure and fighting in a fantasy world, and hot slavegirls violating every norm of civilized human conduct for shits and giggles! So much fun!

[Skald the Rhymer]

Originally Posted by Evil Captor

And then there's Second Life Gor. Adventure and fighting in a fantasy world, and hot slavegirls violating every norm of civilized human conduct for shits and giggles! So much fun!

I prefer women who kick ass, think you.

[Evil Captor]

Originally Posted by Skald the Rhymer

I prefer women who kick ass, think you.

The iteration of Second Life Gor that I play, Gor Evolved, is full of them. We adjusted the rules to allow women warriors and of course there are the panther girls. Slavegirls and slaveboys too. It's kind of "pick your brand of fun and play."

[Skald the Rhymer]

Originally Posted by Evil Captor

The iteration of Second Life Gor that I play, Gor Evolved, is full of them. We adjusted the rules to allow women warriors and of course there are the panther girls. Slavegirls and slaveboys too. It's kind of "pick your brand of fun and play."

If you say so. If you don't mind I'd rather discuss something else.

[olivesmarch4th]

Originally Posted by Left Hand of Dorkness

Role-playing games do something I don't really see in any other form of entertainment: you have a story created by multiple people whose outcome can't be predicted by any of them.

So you get things like camels flying off cliffs while ghouls rain down on them. You get things like players moved to tears by a story of a (nonplayer character) wife chopping carrots and offering her (player-character) husband an amicable divorce so he can pursue his undisclosed superhero goals. You get cowardice and redemption, self-sacrifice. You get awesome monsters. You get crazy over-the-top solutions to problems that unfold in a manner nobody could have predicted.

At its worst, it can be totally stultifying; but at its best it's tremendous exhilirating fun.

This. Unlike a controlled video game, there aren't limits to what you can at least try. You can pretty much do anything you want to do (and so can everyone else, which makes it very interesting...) You can also take on character roles that are nothing at all like your real life personality.

We started playing online with some close friends last year, and am still in the middle of my first quest. I am a dragonborn Paladin on a mission to unite disparate cultures - another cool thing is that your complex history is known only to your character and half the fun is seeing the other characters take shape as you learn more about them.

And the complete and utter randomness of it all. We found a nest of drakes, and instead of killing them, as would be the standard RPG option, one of the players decided to charm them, what the hell? They followed my husband's character around (to his dismay) for days and days. Finally we arrived at the castle and reported on our failed quest, and as a consolation prize we gave the lord the pet drakes. During our last event, we found a satyr from another realm who despised our land so much he was begging for death. Everyone was going to keep talking to him but my character was so overwhelmed by the man's agony she just drew her sword and ran him through. Collective gasps from all players. We burned the body and threw it out to sea with some decent rites. As long as it makes sense within the context of the world, you can freakin' do anything.

[Kamino Neko]

Originally Posted by Kobal2

But not this guy. This guy spent the whole scenario basically saying "yeah, well, I'm a Gangrel, I hate cities, I don't give a shit. I'm going hunting in the nearest forest".

When I had a character like that (an assassin who would wander off to kill someone whenever the other characters were following a plot hook)...ended up holding him to a higher standard than the rest of the party - players who generally followed plot hooks, even if they went off on a side adventure of their own, I'd fudge dice in their favour, if they did something that wasn't entirely stupid I'd ignore consequences of not covering all the angles (like the other assassin not cleaning up after herself), or just have things break in their favour, because it's more fun for everybody if they don't spend the next session in jail. (Their one jailbreak...required a lot of fudging because the assassin who didn't suck was the only one who had any clue how to handle the situation.) But, using a very recognizable signature weapon to kill a civilian while the rest of the party (including the evil Drow assassin who (with the consent of all players involved) once murdered a party member in his sleep*) followed one of the plot hooks...that'll get the city watch after your ass, since I'm not going to pretend you're not going to be an obvious suspect, like I might for the others.

He eventually wandered off just before I kicked him out.

* The major enemy of the campaign was a group of undead who competed with each other in any number of things, and they were planning to replace the low man on the totem pole, letting the party kill him, and having this character take his place, after he was undeadified. So I went to the player, and asked 'hey, how would you like your character to be undead?' He liked the idea, so I had them hire the assassin character to do it.

That plot actually didn't work out, though...by the time the party killed one of the bosses (and not the one they were supposed to, either (a low-level vampire) - they allied with him), he'd left the group due to real life commitments.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Originally Posted by Peremensoe

But they'd have had a certain measure of caution going in because, as in the real world, they wouldn't know what they were getting themselves into. It might be something totally out of their league. There was no built-in guarantee that they would be the central figures in that particular story.

Fair enough--but unlike the real world, there are wizards casting fireballs.

My goal when I run games isn't to simulate the real world. Rather, it's to tell really fun stories. And the PCs are the characters about whom we'll be telling the stories, so yeah, we'll focus on events that they affect and that affect them.

I certainly understand that a lot of folks like sandbox games. They don't do it for me. I much prefer games with a heavy narrative focus, just like I prefer books with a heavy narrative focus.

***

An example of what I mean about a story that's totally unpredictable: tonight we played our normal campaign, except we used mostly different characters (representatives of five different noble houses vying for favor from a single PC), and we used the most excellent Fiasco rules ("A game of powerful ambition and poor impulse control").

I played a cross between Dr. Strangelove's Jack D. Ripper and Viserys, a scheming wizard convinced that necromancers were everywhere. Someone else played a horrible pedophile noble. Someone else played a spoiled teenage prince who relentlessly ass-kissed anyone he thought could do him a favor.

All of us were just trying to win the favor of the PC, but by the end of the game, we'd managed to get the teenager's arm bitten off by a skeleton dragon he'd inadvertantly summoned, get the pedophile murdered and turned into a nasty undead spirit inhabiting the body of a little girl (it's a Japanese themed game, creepy little girls are de rigueur), and get me completely discredited to the point of exile when I correctly but impoliticly accused the princeling of causing this major screwup.

It was tremendous fun (okay, full disclosure, if no other player ever brings up pedophilia in a game I'll be fine with that--Christ, dude), and completely not what any of us were expecting to happen.

[Peremensoe]

Originally Posted by Left Hand of Dorkness

Fair enough--but unlike the real world, there are wizards casting fireballs.

My goal when I run games isn't to simulate the real world. Rather, it's to tell really fun stories. And the PCs are the characters about whom we'll be telling the stories, so yeah, we'll focus on events that they affect and that affect them.

Sounds good to me. My goal isn't to simulate the real world, but a "real" world, meaning coherent and plausible on its own terms. To tell stories of and within that world. And of course the PCs are the "focus"--we spend the entire game talking about what the PCs experience!

Originally Posted by Left Hand of Dorkness

I certainly understand that a lot of folks like sandbox games. They don't do it for me. I much prefer games with a heavy narrative focus, just like I prefer books with a heavy narrative focus.
...
It was tremendous fun (okay, full disclosure, if no other player ever brings up pedophilia in a game I'll be fine with that--Christ, dude), and completely not what any of us were expecting to happen.

Did you just completely contradict yourself?

[Dangerosa]

I like easy battles and being led around by the nose. The group I play with is more interested in the social experience (beer, scotch, bourbon, sometimes wine - and cheesy poofs) than the gaming, and the style suits what we are there for. We don't want to be clever and figure things out (and when we are expected to, it takes FOREVER). We want to roll dice and kill something - and since at any given moment at least two people aren't paying attention - we don't want it to be so challenging that "the cleric had too much to drink" is the reason the whole party is dead. Lots of narrative structure? I'll read a book or watch a movie. I want a little narrative structure and to make comments about how sucky my dice rolls are all night.

[Kobal2]

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

You were probably trying too hard to work with him. Maybe you should have taken the tactic, "Fine, you don't want to get involved in the interesting stuff? Then your character can do boring stuff."

Let him sit there and watch the other players participating in intrigue and adventure. And every once in a while, say, "Oh, and your character? He spent the day watching TV." At some point, he'll give up his loner ways and seek out the company of the people having all the fun.

Yeah, maybe. I dunno - as the DM, I find it pretty hard to live with players obviously not being satisfied or enjoying what you're doing. We aim to please, don't we ? And when that happens, I tend to blame myself rather than them (in fact, I do that pretty consistently, in all walks of life ).
Besides, he was a good guy otherwise, I enjoyed shooting the shit with him outside the game. I dunno, man. Like I said, I don't think I really grokked the guy, then RL got in the way of the campaign and I never saw him again. Life goes on.

[Evil Captor]

Originally Posted by Skald the Rhymer

If you say so. If you don't mind I'd rather discuss something else.

As you please.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Originally Posted by Peremensoe

Did you just completely contradict yourself?

It's really stretching to call that a contradiction; I'm not even sure I'm seeing what you think might be one. If you're suggesting that my preference for a heavy narrative focus contradicts my enjoyment of a game where nobody knows what's going to happen, that's a non sequitur. The game I described had a very clear narrative structure (peaceful meeting; flashbacks establishing danger; foreshadowing; minor conflicts; eruption of major conflict; denouement). It's just that nobody knew what it would be in advance.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Skald the Rhymer

Well, do D&D and the like afford one the opportunity to win through treachery, deceit, and misrepresentation, and once the game is over to viciously mock my opponents until they are either infuriated to the point of violence and/or weeping? Because I want to play to my strengths.

So you're saying you'd like to DM, then?

[Chronos]

Skald probably would make a better DM than a player. I mean, that's basically what he's doing when he posts one of his bizarre hypothetical questions-- Just add dice. Though I imagine he'd make a pretty good player, too. I'll bet nobody would ever dare make fun of one of his bards.

[Skald the Rhymer]

Originally Posted by Chronos

Skald probably would make a better DM than a player. I mean, that's basically what he's doing when he posts one of his bizarre hypothetical questions-- Just add dice. Though I imagine he'd make a pretty good player, too. I'll bet nobody would ever dare make fun of one of his bards.

What is the difference between a DM and a player? I'm gathering that the DM doesn't participate in the adventure.

[The Other Waldo Pepper]

Originally Posted by Tengu

When I had a character like that (an assassin who would wander off to kill someone whenever the other characters were following a plot hook)...ended up holding him to a higher standard than the rest of the party

Just wanted to add quick mention of the WATCHMEN role-playing module, where the guy playing Eddie Blake is supposed to go into another room for brief side plots with the DM during the adventure; they note that this is often bad for group role-play, as it can make other players irritated and suspicious, but here is meant to do that -- because, hey, if you've read the comic, the whole point is that they have private agendas and don't see eye-to-eye on a lot of things and wouldn't work well as a team.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Originally Posted by Skald the Rhymer

What is the difference between a DM and a player? I'm gathering that the DM doesn't participate in the adventure.

The way I explain it to total newbies is this: every player but one chooses a single protagonist (in a troupe-style story) to play. They'll see the world from that character's point of view, and they'll describe what that character attempts to do. Their actions will change the story.

The last player is the Game Master, Storyteller, Dungeon Master, Computer, etc. (the specific term depends on the game). That player doesn't play a protagonist. Instead, they play the entire rest of the world: antagonists, supporting characters, animals, weather, chemistry, physics (such as they are in the world), etc. They have, within a set of constraints, final say-so over whether the protagonists are successful in their attempted actions. They generally devise the problems that the protagonists set out to overcome.

The interaction among all the players, but especially between each regular player and the DM, determine the story.

It's not generally an antogonistic relationship; rather, everyone should be working together to create maximum fun, which usually means trying to create maximum awesomeness in the story.

[Chronos]

It's not generally an antogonistic relationship...

This is an important point to stress. The DM is simultaneously trying to make the players fail, and hoping that they succeed. He's supposed to challenge them, but he also has to make sure the challenges can be overcome. The skill of the DM is generally the biggest determiner of how fun the game is (though, of course, all the players have some impact on that).

[mlees]

The DM knows all the spoilers.

Edit:

I DM'd an AD&D campaign while on WestPAC, so you could say I had a captive audience.

Reading all the other posts here, though, and I realise I sucked. We had fun amongst friends, though, which I guess is the main goal after all.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Originally Posted by mlees

Reading all the other posts here, though, and I realise I sucked. We had fun amongst friends, though, which I guess is the main goal after all.

Now THIS is a self-contradiction . If you ran a game that people enjoyed, by definition you rocked as a DM. Sure, there are styles that work better for differnt people, but running a game is a very little bit like directing a play: the goal above all is to create something that people enjoy. (The difference, of course, is that you and the actors are also the audience).

[Miller]

Originally Posted by Peremensoe

I agree.

I just wouldn't like a game in which players knew that that enormous fireball must be their cue, leading neatly into a plotted adventure just for them. It sure ought to inspire them to do something, no doubt! Of course my crew wouldn't have ignored such a thing.

But they'd have had a certain measure of caution going in because, as in the real world, they wouldn't know what they were getting themselves into. It might be something totally out of their league. There was no built-in guarantee that they would be the central figures in that particular story.

Okay, I see where you're coming from. I admit, my best gaming experiences have come from sandbox situations. One memorable example, I was helping playtest the rules for some indie game with rules for running a post-apocalyptic setting. First game session, the GM unrolls a sheet of butcher paper, pulls out a sharpie, and says, "Okay. Tell me about where you guys live." We spent the next four hours just world building, guided by a few questions from the GM ("Whose your tribe's biggest rival?" "Where do you get water from?" and so forth) but with no actual direction from him. Second game session, we start to actually play in it. Absolutely fantastic campaign, but there's no way it would work with my game group.

For one thing, there are currently twelve people with standing invitations to the weekly game. Three or four of them live outside of the immediate area (one out of state entirely) and so only rarely make games anymore, but on a given Sunday, I'll usually have six or eight players, and only half of them the same guys from the week before. I can't really be subtle about the plot cues with that set up. I need to make them loud, so people can hear them over the din of the enormous mob of people in my living room, and I need to make them often, because not everyone is there every week.

My group also tends to be very tactical. Most of them got into table top gaming through Warhammer 40k. They like big set piece tactical battles. An eight hour session spent planning out a massive combat with ebbs and flows and surprise re-enforcements and sudden changes to the battlefield is considered a session well spent. Half of my players would be completely at sea in a sandbox game. And the other half, left to their own devices, would get caught up in an astonishingly tedious level of micromanagement. (One game, that I was a player in, involved a party of 14th level characters giving up adventuring to take up the cloth merchant trade. This did not end the campaign.) I do my best to strike a balance, letting players have in-game "downtime" where they can work on personal schemes and pure roleplaying, punctuated by events that demand their attention unequivocally.

[Nava]

I usually explain it as "improptu theater, with an element of randomness provided by the dice".

Creativity (the "long door" spell was used vertically most of the time - eventually Middlebro and I got that manoeuver where he 'ported me to the middle of the enemy and I used the 3/wk fireballs from my hammer down pat - there was that bat who had a pet human and don't let the human say otherwise as the bat was clearly the smarter one...), socialization with people who like the same things I do (completely different from socialization with "normal people", see * below), being allowed to yell "¡FIREBOLO!" (purposeful mispronunciation of "fireball", the actual Spanish would be "bola de fuego" but that's less yellable), and lots and lots of Nesquik. What's wrong with that?



* I'm good at nodding and a-humming as kindergarten teachers talk about "their" kids' poop, doctors about bureaucratic hurdles or accountants about their battle with Santander to obtain a discount on a commision. Now try talking to those same people about the project to use urban trash for compost (agricultural engineer), to migrate a multinational from a bunch of separate management databases to a single one (hi), or about your difficulties with a new piece (trumpet player in the local band / jazz trumpet player / carpenter).

[Nava]

Originally Posted by Skald the Rhymer

Well, do D&D and the like afford one the opportunity to win through treachery, deceit, and misrepresentation, and once the game is over to viciously mock my opponents until they are either infuriated to the point of violence and/or weeping? Because I want to play to my strengths.

Too lazy to read: Skald, has anybody told you to look at Paranoia yet? The most common COD is "being backstabbed / thrown into a trap / made a scapegoat by one or more of the other players".

I once survived a game with all my clones intact, something which may be a world record (since dudes tend to underestimate me... I let them). Yes, the death rate is so high that each character gets four ready-made replacements.

[Angel of the Lord]

I play because, at some point around age seven, it became socially unacceptable to play pretend. I wasn't ready to stop. So I write, and I play tabletop, and I RP in Second Life (though not in a Gorean sim). And I RP in IMs. And I occasionally do my daily workout in character, because it's marginally more palatable that way.

The appeal for me is being able to play pretend with other people. Same as when I wanted to play Thundercats or Power Rangers on the playground.

[mlees]

Originally Posted by Left Hand of Dorkness

Now THIS is a self-contradiction . If you ran a game that people enjoyed, by definition you rocked as a DM. Sure, there are styles that work better for differnt people, but running a game is a very little bit like directing a play: the goal above all is to create something that people enjoy. (The difference, of course, is that you and the actors are also the audience).

I realise now that I did not prepare for gaming sessions as thoroughly as I should have. I basically used the published "modules" based on whichever adventure setting seemed cool to me at the time. They deserved better from me.

[Chronos]

Nava, you probably shouldn't recommend Paranoia to anyone as their introduction to RPGs. You need to give them a chance to learn how things work, before you start punishing them for knowing how things work.

[Nava]

I didn't recommend it as an introductory game, sorry if that was unclear - but I do think he'd like it.

Mind you, that level of backstabbedness means it isn't a game to be played every week, not if you want to avoid rl assault charges among the players.

[Kobal2]

Originally Posted by Miller

My group also tends to be very tactical. Most of them got into table top gaming through Warhammer 40k. They like big set piece tactical battles. An eight hour session spent planning out a massive combat with ebbs and flows and surprise re-enforcements and sudden changes to the battlefield is considered a session well spent.

I remember one session like that - we were playing COPS, and our first mission in the scenario was to bust a drug deal. Pretty simple stuff on paper: there's this restaurant used as a base by one gang of Triads, they have lots of dope in the back room ; another gang comes in with duffel bags full of money and they exchange money for dope. The idea was to bust in as both gang leaders were in that backroom with both money and dope on the table. And hopefully not get our asses shot off along the way.

We focused very much on that second part, because before the game had begun the DM had gone over the rules with us and emphasized that combat could be pretty deadly in this game.
So we Rainbow Sixed this thing all to hell. I think we spent a good 5 hours planning the bust - we set up snipers here, block this door there first thing, then we move here, if it's clear we give go-code Alpha so team 2 moves over here, hey but what if the bartender is with them and pulls a shotgun ? OK so we need to have one guy to control him and... etc ad nauseam.
The actual fight took about 10 seconds, as the gangsters just surrendered when we breached the first room - they, being smart and all, didn't want to add "shooting at the powleece" to their current dope-related charges.

We were a bit confused as to why the DM had let us waste so much goddamn time on what amounted to like 2 introductory lines in his scenario. He had a sheepish grin and said "You guys seemed like you were having a ball, I didn't find it in me to break it up"

[Kamino Neko]

And he didn't go 'hell with it, I'll give them a fight so this pays off'?

[Kobal2]

Well, like I said, these were not stupid criminals. Shooting it out would have broken their characterization, and the whole idea of that part of the story - the point was to make us *work* to get them off the streets, to make us frustrated that even though we knew damn well they were "bad guys", in practice there wasn't much we could do to keep them behind bars for good once they lawyered up, pleaded guilty for some reduced time, fingered another dealer or two to make that reduced time go away altogether... Smugging it up to 11 the whole time of course.

So, in a sense, the anticlimax was sort of welcome for the DM, it's the kind of feeling he was shooting for in the first place.

[E-Sabbath]

And how things work in the 'real world' sometimes anyhow.

You know, I think we could play a decent game of Paranoia on the board. And I bet Skald would love it. Anyone want to do it?

In my current Planescape (Pathfinder) game, my group has recently stopped a threat to Sigil that was a sentient hat. The hat wasn't so much the problem as that it was kidnapping people.

This led into a quest that was about a stairway being built by a lady who did not realize all that glitters is not gold, to the 7th heaven. We realized that connecting this stairway together would end all sentient thought. Turned out the whole thing was a suicide plot by Mephistopheles. We put paid to the current scheme, and, with the aid of angels, convinced Mammon of Mephistopheles' current direction. As Mammon wants to own everything, the planes turning into nonsentient oatmeal would be against his primary directive... so he's personally inclined to stop it. He 'thanked' us by pulling the spine out of one of his servitor pit fiends (Think Balrog, from LOTOR), and forming it into a sword. A sentient sword. A pit fiend sword. You can't really say _no_ to the guy. So now we have this evil thing in the party that may occasionally seek to dominate us and is spying on us for Mammon. Luckily, we have a plan to solve that. We need to get to Asgard and have the dwarves reforge it.

Problem is that the party mage (who is sort of a member of the Addams' Family) kind of broke reality and tossed us into a realm of nonbeing on the way there. Luckily, we figured out that the way to get out of it was to tell a myth of creation... and so it turns out we just created the home plane one of the party members came from originally.

After that, it got weird.