Tony Vargas
Legend
As a DM, my style tends towards the improvisational, especially when running a campaign and when the players are providing their own characters. I'll run with and fill in the details the players are interested in, and the rest is establishing shots and broad strokes.
OTOH, if I run at a convention, I might have a definite story in mind, and provide pregens that work with it. In those cases, each character will have a succinct description of personality, goals, and relations with the other characters.
As a player, I like to do a build-to-concept that works in the system, and develop the character by interacting with the world and the other characters, I like the problem-solving inherent in overcoming challenges, and doing so using the abilities of a PC that might be very, very different from myself, gets back around to developing the character. But, I'm also happy to just approach the game as a game, and the character as a piece in it, or as a collaborative storytelling exercise, or as an imagined reality with internal consistency. Play style isn't a sticking point, for the most part. What does matter is the quality of the system and the ability of the GM.
But, really, most of the things I hear called out as being 'styles' as if they were mutually exclusive or self-contained, feel to me more like aspects of playing an RPG, they are games, they do tell a cooperative story, they do model a setting or genre, but no game or gamer is 100% simulationist or gamist or narrativist, every campaign touches on all three or it doesn't make much sense.
I guess you could say I have a 'syncretic' style, then.
Saelorn: I think it's a little weird how people are arguing with you over your professed style, it's your style, I know you're not going to be talked out of it, and it shouldn't be hurting anyone else.
Maybe it's that you're trying to claim the mantle of 'Traditional' for a style that emphasizes what, back in the day (the early 80s - and, I'm guessing, back to the origin of D&D and the wargames that preceded it) we'd've called "realism." Thing is, there was a big debate about the relevance of realism to D&D back in the 80s, too, and, (IMHO, IIRC, at least judging from the pages of The Dragon and the range of people I gamed with), realism didn't exactly come out on top (indeed, people will rarely cop to 'wanting realism,' today, preferring verisimilitude or simulationism or some other neologism not tainted by all the points scored against realism back then). Rather, traditional or old-school D&D was very much a game, a treasure-hunting game or a war-game, depending, but a game - the RP aspect was tantalizing, but it took a little time to really come to the fore. By the time 2e was the current edition (which, IIRC, is when you joined the hobby), that'd happened, and the whole Role vs Roll and storytelling stuff was the big controversy.
Anyway, point is: you might get less push-back if you didn't try to wrap yourself in the mantle of 'Tradition.'
OTOH, if I run at a convention, I might have a definite story in mind, and provide pregens that work with it. In those cases, each character will have a succinct description of personality, goals, and relations with the other characters.
As a player, I like to do a build-to-concept that works in the system, and develop the character by interacting with the world and the other characters, I like the problem-solving inherent in overcoming challenges, and doing so using the abilities of a PC that might be very, very different from myself, gets back around to developing the character. But, I'm also happy to just approach the game as a game, and the character as a piece in it, or as a collaborative storytelling exercise, or as an imagined reality with internal consistency. Play style isn't a sticking point, for the most part. What does matter is the quality of the system and the ability of the GM.
But, really, most of the things I hear called out as being 'styles' as if they were mutually exclusive or self-contained, feel to me more like aspects of playing an RPG, they are games, they do tell a cooperative story, they do model a setting or genre, but no game or gamer is 100% simulationist or gamist or narrativist, every campaign touches on all three or it doesn't make much sense.
I guess you could say I have a 'syncretic' style, then.
Saelorn: I think it's a little weird how people are arguing with you over your professed style, it's your style, I know you're not going to be talked out of it, and it shouldn't be hurting anyone else.
Maybe it's that you're trying to claim the mantle of 'Traditional' for a style that emphasizes what, back in the day (the early 80s - and, I'm guessing, back to the origin of D&D and the wargames that preceded it) we'd've called "realism." Thing is, there was a big debate about the relevance of realism to D&D back in the 80s, too, and, (IMHO, IIRC, at least judging from the pages of The Dragon and the range of people I gamed with), realism didn't exactly come out on top (indeed, people will rarely cop to 'wanting realism,' today, preferring verisimilitude or simulationism or some other neologism not tainted by all the points scored against realism back then). Rather, traditional or old-school D&D was very much a game, a treasure-hunting game or a war-game, depending, but a game - the RP aspect was tantalizing, but it took a little time to really come to the fore. By the time 2e was the current edition (which, IIRC, is when you joined the hobby), that'd happened, and the whole Role vs Roll and storytelling stuff was the big controversy.
Anyway, point is: you might get less push-back if you didn't try to wrap yourself in the mantle of 'Tradition.'
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I do like setting up backgrounds and situations and reacting to the players more than blocking out scenes, for instance. But the idea is still have a good story play out. Mabye working towards a specific climax, or a theme. The last two years, though, I've been running old modules converted to 5e... so more exploration than story, and personality traits/bonds/flaws rather than background/goals/relations.
