Approaches to prep in RPGing - GMs, players, and what play is *about*

[pointofyou]

Going to use this post to demonstrate what “prep” looks like for a Blades game.

Thanks for the examples. I haven't run Blades in the Dark and didn't enjoy play enough to really feel drawn to doing so.

 

[ART!]

I'm getting the impression that the sampling of gamers I've played with regularly are not the norm. I can't remember any iteration of groups I've gamed with regularly having players who as a habit did no prep and just sat there waiting for the GM to make things happen.

 

[pointofyou]

I'm getting the impression that the sampling of gamers I've played with regularly are not the norm. I can't remember any iteration of groups I've gamed with regularly having players who as a habit did no prep and just sat there waiting for the GM to make things happen.

I agree. They might not prep between sessions anything like as much as the GM but that's not close to the same thing as "passive."

 

[Umbran]

Hexcrawls require no prep? Interesting.

I've participated in hexcrawls that were randomly generated on the spot, from tables the GM had gotten from a published product. So, they can be run without preparation, even if that's not the common approach.

 

[Umbran]

I'm getting the impression that the sampling of gamers I've played with regularly are not the norm.

Yeah, no individual GM should expect their personal experience to be representative.

I can't remember any iteration of groups I've gamed with regularly having players who as a habit did no prep and just sat there waiting for the GM to make things happen.

I think you're kind of overstating or mischaracterizing the actuality a bit.

F'rex, if the GM says we are playing in a published adventure, and I agree, I'm expecting them to give me something that precipitates action, and I'm going to grab at one of the first things they dangle in front of me. From there, I'm going to choose from the various (usually bleedingly obvious) items relevant to the present content at hand. This takes no preparation on my part.

 

[ART!]

I think you're kind of overstating or mischaracterizing the actuality a bit.

F'rex, if the GM says we are playing in a published adventure, and I agree, I'm expecting them to give me something that precipitates action, and I'm going to grab at one of the first things they dangle in front of me. From there, I'm going to choose from the various (usually bleedingly obvious) items relevant to the present content at hand. This takes no preparation on my part.

I wasn't mis-characterizing my experience, but I might have been overstating the no-/low-prep, passive players end of things that some other posters were complain about.

 

[niklinna]

The Fate Core game Spirit of the Century has an interesting character creation phase that asks the PCs to come up with a title for a novel starring their character “Character in ….” eg Bilbo Baggins in An Unexpected Party They then add a 2 sentence blurb and generate 2 Aspects from it eg “a gentleman of the shire” and “a dash of the Took*”.

Oh did they redo Spirit of the Century in Fate Core??

 

[hawkeyefan]

To be fair, explaining a game can be kind of like explaining food. It can be useful if the person receiving the explanation has some relevant experience with related cuisine/dishes, but otherwise is apt to fail to generate clarity.

I don't expect that the examples I've offered in this and other recent threads will do all the work to explain a game to someone reading. But I'd expect they'd do at least some.

As I said, I'd expect some questions or attempts at clarification, not "I don't understand, so I'll just act like you've said nothing."

And he later makes a point about unrelenting positivity - sometimes discussions of non-trad games is conducted in a way that tends to dismiss areas that the games aren't actually great at, or that they sacrifice in the name of their focus.

Well, the conversation is about preparation, and how that can be shared by giving the players the opportunity to prepare the elements of play via their characters. The games I've mentioned are particularly strong at that. If someone asked about any of the drawbacks of any of these games, I'd have something to say, but very little of it would be about prep.

I've participated in hexcrawls that were randomly generated on the spot, from tables the GM had gotten from a published product. So, they can be run without preparation, even if that's not the common approach.

That's a fair point. Certainly it is possible, though it's not what I was thinking of. Most folks who I know that have run hexcrawls typically put a lot of prep into it... the map, the key, tables of random encounters, stat blocks and site maps... all that stuff. I've played in a randomly generated dungeon, too, but I don't think we'd categorize that as typical.

 

[pointofyou]

The problem is the overwhelming positive view point that makes the games hard to understand.

If your problem is that the people who like "Story Now" games like Apocalypse World and Burning Wheel and Blades in the Dark like them so uncritically that you can't understand what they're telling you then ask me. I didn't much like them in play but that's not about failing to understand them so much as it was tastes and preferences.

 

[Campbell]

There are plenty of tradeoffs involved in any game design. Games like Apocalypse World don't do power fantasy like at all. They don't do structured storytelling or build a shared experience that transcends a given table in the same way Against the Giants or Castle Ravenloft provides in D&D. There's no real sense of independent NPC agency. You don't always get to choose how your character thinks and feels. It doesn't do mysteries players have to solve by figuring out a puzzle of connections. It's not suited to casual players who are along for the ride.

I know @pemerton @Manbearcat @hawkeyefan myself and others have never been to shy about admitting any of those things. They're just not like something I personally value all that highly. They're also not part of the advertised experience. I'm not going to take a game to task for not being exactly what it's actively trying not to be. Apocalypse World isn't for everyone. Neither is any game.

I guess I am not seeing any sort of unrelenting positivity, besides maybe from like not actively caring about the things I generally don't care about. I can't speak on behalf of anyone else. I don't like when other people try to speak on my behalf and assume they know what I'm into. I'm certainly not interested in having to justify my place in the hobby.