Do Your Tastes Change?

Hussar · Sep 7, 2010

Mine do.

I ran 3e D&D for about eight years. Every week. Managed to play in a separate campaign for a good chunk of that as well. Over that time, we played a pretty broad range of campaigns and styles. From almost free-form heavy RP, to high hack. We did some pretty open ended campaigns, where the players had lots and lots of freedom, and some very plotsy games where it was all about the story.

I liked some more than others, but, I can't say I disliked any of them.

A lot of people talk about this game or that idea just "not fitting with their play style". Me, I'm pretty open. So long as the game is fun, I'm, well, game.

So, how open are you to different styles of games? Do you like a broad range of stuff, or are you more focused, preferring a smaller number of styles?

Doug McCrae · Sep 7, 2010

Hussar said:
Do you like a broad range of stuff

I won't play in a game if it's a published scenario. Partly because 95% of them are crap and partly because I'm just not interested, I want to see what the GM can create him- or herself.

I care more about the quality of the content - the names, the characters, the ideas, the GM's ability to portray character + do voices - than I do about whether the campaign is a sandbox. I like freedom* of choice regarding which adventure we undertake but it's not a deal-breaker and I'm happy for the choosing to occur in a previous session, giving the GM time to prep.

*Which, if the other players chose something different than I did, would be no freedom at all, anyway.

Morrus · Sep 7, 2010

Mine have changed massively since I started playing. I've been playing for about 20 years, and 15 years ago I went through a "gritty" phase where I tried to make things all realistic, with super-detailed combat rules, actually used encumbrance - all sorts of things I avoid like the plague now! My preference now is for looser, high-fantasy stuff.

IronWolf · Sep 7, 2010

My tastes certainly change over time. There are the more gradual swings in preferring gritty to high fantasy to other styles to just wanting different feels within those genres.

Dannyalcatraz · Sep 7, 2010

Hussar said:
So, how open are you to different styles of games? Do you like a broad range of stuff, or are you more focused, preferring a smaller number of styles?

1977-1990: I played D&D, TFT/In the Labyrinth, Champions/HERO and Traveller, and was relatively focused. Beyond those 4 games, I had perhaps another 10 RPGs in my collection, like RIFTS, Paranoia, Primal Order and SSI's Universe; wargames were more numerous, including SFB, Starfire and some minigames from Task Force, a lot of Microgames (which would become SJG), and TSR's minigames.

1990-present: I played another 50+ RPG systems and tried out a wide variety of campaigns, in large part to the game group I joined in law school, hosted by Alan Hench. Due to the makeup of the group & the issues of scheduling, everyone was responsible for a campaign...so we wound up trying out dozens of different games, including a couple of playtests.

Jeff Wilder · Sep 7, 2010

My tastes have changed considerably.

As a kid, I wanted "realism." As a late-teenager into my early 20s, I added "complexity." I slowly dialed back on my desire for complexity and similarly my preference for realism morphed into satisfaction with verisimilitude.

These changes resulted in obverse changes ... I was replacing my preference for realism and complexity with speed and ease of play.

I'd say that the transformation was complete by 2004 or so. (That's the year that I noticed my eight pages of 3E house rules was down to basically three house rules, taking up a page or less.)

I've held pretty steady every since. (One line I will not cross in the name of speed over realism is 1-1-1 diagonal movement. I'll go fully abstract in combat (and often do, in my M&M game) before I'll accept that sort of bastardization of tactical play on a grid.)

There are many specific things that have never changed, and I don't anticipate them changing in the future: dislike of plentiful magic items, dislike of routine reversal of character death, dislike of altering die rolls, dislike of farcical or comedic RPGs (distinct from farcical or comedic sessions), as four examples.

amerigoV · Sep 7, 2010

What I enjoy out of a game does change over time. My recent conversion to Savage Worlds has really fueled change - I rarely had any interest in westerns, WWII (although I love to read about the period), supers, futuristic, etc. Now, I am very open to all of them since the system is generally the same across the genres.

As a player I had an interesting (to me) observation about myself. These days, I like my gaming with lots of action and a short story arc. I have gotten to dislike the EPIC fantasy storyline that takes forever to play out at the table (it tends to die in a less than epic manner I have noticed). I like my tabletop gaming to be more serial/episodic than anything else. I like my epic stories in books, movies or video games (Dragon Age/Mass Effect) where they get "resolved" faster.

Umbran · Sep 7, 2010

Hussar said:
So, how open are you to different styles of games? Do you like a broad range of stuff, or are you more focused, preferring a smaller number of styles?

This does not seem the same as the title question.

Do my tastes change? Well, they certainly have over time, and I won't be supposed if they change again as time goes on.

How open am I to different styles of game? Very. With the right group of people, I can enjoy most of the styles I've come across. For some I need the rest of the group to be more ideal than in others, I admit, but I'm open to a lot of things these days.

Odhanan · Sep 7, 2010

My tastes change too.

I started with AD&D, progressively broadening my horizons via the Dark Eye, Mentzer D&D, then Stormbringer, RuneQuest, Cthulhu, Warhammer FRP, Star Wars, then games like In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas, Cyberpunk 2020 etc. The White Wolf games for about a decade. Then going back to D&D via 3rd ed.

I ran 3rd ed and d20 games for eight years as well, and never had a problem with it. I did grow tired of the emphasis on game mechanics all over message boards, people obsessing overpowered this and underpowered that, and so on, so forth. I gradually went back to traditional forms of the game, C&C, then AD&D, OD&D, and all sorts of Old School twists on these games.

Now, I'm still running OD&D, but explore new venues more willingly. Aces & Eights, Mongoose's RuneQuest II, the New World of Darkness, the Savage World of Solomon Kane, Firefly's RPG are on my list of games I'd run in a heartbeat. I'm intrigued by 4E Essentials, as well as the new Gamma World.

Now that I'm much more clear on what I like and don't like about RPGs, I'm ready to broaden my palette of games again, while squarely staying with my old school games also. Different games for different takes on role playing. It's a good time to be a gamer, for me.