Group Dynamics for Choosing the Game You Play - How does your group do it?

[Jeff Wilder]

Generally the GM chooses the game, and the players choose whether they want to play. That's how it happened in our recently begun SWSE game.

After my Eberron campaign ended a few months back, I made a list of five games I was willing to run (Pathfinder, M&M, Space D6 (Serenity or Star Wars), and Shadowrun) and asked everyone to vote for their top three, with their first choice counting as three votes, second choice as two, and third choice as one.

I voted Serenity D6, M&M, and Pathfinder.

M&M ended up with the most votes, even though it was nobody's first choice.

My M&M campaign is going gratifyingly well, though it's been personally traumatic going from a rules expert to a rules know-nothing. It seems like I learn a (genuinely important) new rule or ruling every other day.

 

[Steel_Wind]

In our group, it's gone a little oddly and defies neat categorization. Some vote, some veto, some consensus, all trending towards something we all wanted to play or run.

There are two, sometimes three games underway. We recently ended another 3.5 D&D campain. That left a slot open for a new game.

I wanted to run a game and I offered a large number of options to the players that were NOT 3.5

So I offered up these choices:

1 – D&D 3.5: Savage Tide Adventure Path.

2- Pathfinder RPG:

3- D&D 3.5/DragonLance:

4- Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic SW:SE

5- D&D 3.5:

6 – DarkSun D&D 4.0:

7 – World of Warcraft 3.5/4.0:

8 – X-Com/”V” (D20 Modern):

When I offered this list, it became Campaign Survivor. The five other players in the group either expressed collective dismay (4E was a non-starter) and then issued "vetoes" over games they did not individually have any interest in playing.

After 4E Dark Sun was rejected in a landslide, Savage Tide fell to a veto (objection arose out of previous Age of Worms AP that became more like a tabletop wargame and a lot less like a RPG). Another player hated DragonLance - that fell of the list. There seemed to be a swelling trend towards the X-Com /"V" Campaign - but then one player vetoed that and expressed great dislike for a realisitc present day setting in any form.

When that list was pared down, the trend moved to a consensus on Star Wars: SE pretty quickly. Which was fine by me and fine by my players too. We're having a lot of fun with it.

End result: part vote, part veto and part consensus. We ended up with a game I wanted to run and everybody wanted to play. Considering the group tends to cleave to standard fantasy fare most of the time, that in itself was a victory of sorts.

 

[Umbran]

I just recently went through the process of choosing a game.

My players are not particularly concerned with what system they play. A few had a mild preference for something not-D&D. They generally liked D&D, but finding someone to play D&D with is easy, and a GM willing to run something else was a little more rare. If I asked what game they wanted to play, they'd answer. "Anything, just run a game, please!"

I, meanwhile, like running all sorts of games, and had ideas for a stack of different ones - enough to suffer a bit of option paralysis.

So, I asked them a bunch of secondary questions about the style of play they liked, and what they wanted to see in this particular go-round. I used that information to help me narrow the field of options, and chose something. They accepted my choice without any issues.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Some of it is consensus. Some of it is time constraints- busy adults with small kids don't like to spend time learning a host of new RPG systems.

Sometimes, its simple closed-mindedness. One guy in our group is notoriously anti-all-RPGs-except D&D.

And yet, somehow I managed to convince him to play in my Supers 1912 game using Mutants & Masterminds for a little while.

Right now, consensus is king, though- only one guy in the group is interested in running 4Ed, and he'll only get the chance after the current 3.X campaign's story arc wraps up. Not a lot of love for 4Ed in the group.

Still, as long as I'm not the GM, I'll play just about anything, so I'm not going to let my distaste for 4Ed stop me from playing in a 4Ed campaign if its well done. I'm even already brainstorming some ideas for PCs.

 

[SKyOdin]

Most of my gaming experience has been in the context of a university gaming club. In that environment, a DM would advertise that he (or she) was planning on starting a new campaign and was looking for players from among the large pool of regular attendees of the club. Eventually, the DM would find enough players to start a game. Thus, DMs picked what system they were using and what kind of campaign they were going to run, but still had to hunt for interested players.

 

[karlindel]

Generally GM suggestion followed by consensus.

In one campaign, the GM is running a series of mini-campaigns using different systems and genres. He proposed shifting to this format awhile back and all the players were for it.

One campaign started with the GM running the WOTC modules, but we recently switched to War of the Burning Sky. The GM proposed switching, and the players were all ready to try something new.

My campaign started with me finding some D&D 4e players, and I proposed a couple of different campaign options, and the players all preferred one of the options, so that is the one I am running (although we've lost some players and added new ones).

During breaks for our weekly game, I have run one shots (D&D 4e, Dread, and Warhammer 3rd so far). Another player recently proposed running a 4e mini-arc (2-3 sessions) the next time we decide to take a break in the campaign, and everyone was all for it.

 

[Longtooth Studios]

I pulled together a group at my local FLGS because I wanted to run a pathfinder game. Accept for my son, I had not met any of these players before. We are already planning to continue playing the adventures paths after this series is done, and one of my players will be stepping up and running. SWEET! I love to play!

So it started with my decision, and then was passed to the other DM who is running what he wants to. We have enough players around so that if anyone wants to walk away, we can easily fill the seat, but I think everyone is just happy to have a couple of DMs around.

 

[Shadowslayer]

You know, my old long-time group pretty much never said no to anything. We primarily played D&D, but everyone had their pet non-D&D game.
(One guy liked Palladium, one guy liked offbeat stuff like Toon, one guy like Shadowrun....My own pet game was Star Wars d6.)

Basically, we had our main night that was for the main D&D campaign, and one other night that was basically whatever the flavor of the month was.

 

[Mr. Wilson]

After one game ends, someone says, "Hey, I have a game I want to run, anyone mind if we play X?"

Generally, no one minds, so we then play X.

Over the last year, I've played 4E, 3.5, Deadlands: HoE, Star Wars d6, Vampire, Werewolf: TA, and GURPS (set in 1930s).

In the future once I'm done with d6 Star Wars, we have 3.5, Shadowrun, and maybe 4E or Dr. Who on deck.