Making different playstyles fit

[Lwaxy]

Due to some people dropping out of some games, two of my online groups decided they would merge, making it 5 players again. Generally a good idea, as they are both compatible with time zone and already know each other somewhat.

But I have a feeling their different playstyles could be an issue. I sent them a mail about it and they want to give it a try, so I'm wondering how to best make this fit.

3 of them are the actor type, basically acting everything out, including bar and gateway encounters (unless really insignificant), bard songs, camp fire stories etc. Some of this is done over email and in forum posts outside the actual game (camp fire talk especially) but most is in game. This also means they don't dice that much for information gathering, it's decided by their interactions most of the time. Unless they get stuck.

This group is also less concerned with mechanics, especially in fights, so without having to go through all the details it was easy to help them narrate a fight and keep in quick and still 'realistic.'

The other 2 abbreviate encounters, as in "I talk to the barkeep" "I ask around for information." The dice roll, not the role play, decides. They don't do this always but a great deal. This of course sped the game along quite a bit.

Those 2 are concerned with the mechanics, in a fight especially, too. They do describe their actions, just not as colorfully, and sometimes it's just "I attack and hit" without flavor added, especially in short skirmishes. Also, they are more likely to point out that some fancy ideas the 3 actors come up with don't really work - I usually let it slide if it was cool enough.

Both parts of the new group are fine with any sort of adventure but pure hack and slash. None of them power games, though the 2 non-actors tend to optimize their builds while the others don't.

So, I need to find some rules for a middle way. I was thinking of making it a rule that standard encounters (shopping, information gathering, camping etc) are not acted out unless it is vital to the story. I don't know if I can add a rule that certain things need to be acted out, as the 2 who don't usually do that aren't that good in it. However, if I just let one of them dice and the others act it out, I think they would have to wait a lot of the time for the 3 to finish what they are doing and would probably get bored.

Players are willing to compromise, I just would like to do it in a way so no one has to c0ompromise too much.

Ideas very much appreciated. It is some time before the next adventure starts so I'm not in a hurry.

 

[S'mon]

If it were me I would go with whatever approach made me happiest as GM.

Normally I appreciate the 'actor' types, especially in online play where the medium supports it much better than mechanistic number-crunching. It could be taken too far, but the GM can always cut a scene if he's getting bored with the chitchat. Personally I would go with the approach of the majority, the 3 actors, but keep an eye out for cutting short any trivial interactions that seem to be dragging. I would expect the other two to step up their game a bit - I don't need 'Hamlet', but I certainly need more than "I roll Diplomacy" ("I talk to the barkee" might be enough for a routine gather info check though, esp if we've played out talk-to-barkeep scenes already).

I think the main thing though is to take the approach that maximises your own happiness & satisfaction. Then you'll enjoy the game more, and likely the players will too.

Edit: I see a lot of IMO poor 4e DMing advice recently on sites like Critical Hits that advocates the GM being a sort of servant to the players, constantly thinking only of Player Fun. To some extent this can be taken from the advice in the DMG and DMG2. As a reaction to tyrannical pseudo-Gygaxian or '90s-railroad GMing, it probably has merit. But those GMs who give that advice (including James Wyatt in the DMG) also seem to burn out a lot and struggle to run successful long-term campaigns.

 

[Desdichado]

Quick question; you mention that it's online, but what medium? Chat? Goggle+ hangouts? Or just Play by post forum style? There's a lot of things that can affect the pacing of the game that are heavily influenced by the medium.

You could always offer to try and recruit a few more players if it looks like it might be sticky to get a good balance that makes both groups happy.

I also like S'mon's advice. In general, doing things that players like tends to make the GM's happy too, but sometimes you have to recognize that the best way for everyone to have fun is to have a group that is more or less on the same page around certain playstyle elements. I'm lucky in that my home group is more or less like this, so playstyle conflicts or frustrations or disappointments are almost completely a non-issue. And in my online games; again, I've been lucky to have recruited folks who would likely run exactly the perfect game for me as well; we were very much on the same page.

For online gaming in particular, I think having a group of folks who are on the same page about the game is super important to pulling it off successfully. For face to face, you can overlook at lot more of that assuming that you are friends with your fellow gamers and enjoy hanging out for its own sake anyway.

 

[Lwaxy]

Mostly IRC chat, a bit on forums and per email when we can't fit it in another way, mostly for the slower parts. We are considering switching to a map tool version.

I'm fine with either style, slightly preferring the actor version. I think I can get at least one of the non-actors to be more descriptive, she's just never tried it yet.

I will definitely see if I can get 2 or 3 more players eventually, but before Xmas everyone seems to be busy doing other things. Given that the majority of people hanging out in those chats is more into Star Wars anything, recruiting for anything else usually goes slow (even this this is more of a fantasy in space type homebrew).

And it's definitely true that it needs to be fun for me or I wouldn't be able to pull anything off.

 

[S'mon]

Re number of players - my text-chat 1e AD&D Yggsburgh game on Dragonsfoot game started with 6, I found that was at the extreme end of what I could handle, Currently I typically have 3 players in a session, and that seems perfect for the medium. 2 is also very good, as is 4. 1 is doable, but too intense & unrelenting on 1 PC, without the leavening of different styles and PC-PC or player-player interaction. 5 starts to get chaotic, easy to forget people.

 

[Lwaxy]

Average PC number for me is 8. Partly because only two other people in the club run RPGs regularly. It does get chaotic but as long as people use different colors and take the ooc chat to an extra channel it works. No idea if a map tool set up would be any better or make it worse.

 

[Lwaxy]

Surprisingly, it worked well. We did a short scenario involving a quick battle and a night in town to see if they were compatible enough. We'll need to iron out some of the flow issues yet, to not tire the abbreviators (one is picking up on playing things out though) but if the sessions don't get too long it's definitely doable.

 

[Karak]

Glad it worked out. Differing styles can really add to the game...or make it a nightmare

 

[Li Shenron]

Surprisingly, it worked well. We did a short scenario involving a quick battle and a night in town to see if they were compatible enough. We'll need to iron out some of the flow issues yet, to not tire the abbreviators (one is picking up on playing things out though) but if the sessions don't get too long it's definitely doable.

To be honest, I expected this

I was going to say that before trying to suggest anything, I would even go back to a more general question: does the DM really need to take a stance when there is a gamestyle conflict?

I guess that sometimes she does, but in your case I would not have been worried too much.

You have 3 players who like detailed conversations vs 2 players who skip over them. Now in my experience I would say that most players who skip over IC roleplay do so because they don't feel good at that, rather than because they don't like it to happen; if they see other players at the table doing good roleplay, they may actually just sit back, relax, and enjoy it themselves even if they aren't very active.

I'm not saying every player is like that, but again IMXP more often than not, it goes fine. Of course if the heavy roleplayer actually sucks and his roleplaying is annoying, or if the non-roleplayer is an attention-seeker who cannot stay at the margin of the game for ten minutes without freaking out, problems become more likely.

But my general idea was to just let the players handle their differences, on the ground that if the heavy-tactical players allow the heavy-roleplayers to have their fun during IC social interactions, then also the second will allow the first to have their fun during combat.

If the players are petty and want all their cake without the others having their own, it's not actually the DM's fault.

I believe that you should step in only if you notice that either group is stretching the scene too far and some player starts yawning at the table, at which point it's actually good for the DM to say it clearly that it's best for all to move on.

Also, if the adventure allows or if you are the type of DM who has no problem winging it freely, as an alternative you can instead step in with an event that suddenly breaks the scene. For instance, a social interaction scene taking too long can easily be interrupted with a sudden emergency, an attention-grabbing event, or even a fight, and a combat scene taking too long can be interrupted with the decision of the enemies to parley or to flee, or with an environmental (probably dangerous or at least fastidious) event that forces the two sides to quit fighting and get away safe.

 

[Rel]

It sounds as though it is working reasonably well. But I think I'd dig for slightly more specificity on what drives the players than to simply call them "actors" and "not actors". I think that Li Shenron may be onto something in terms of saying that just because the "not actors" aren't into the acting that it doesn't mean they want to skip it. But you never know unless you ask.

I'm a pretty huge fan of the "Player Types" notion popularized by Robin Laws and found in some of the recent DMG's (3.5 DMG2 and 4e DMG IIRC). They have allowed me to make my games fun for the players on purpose rather than fun for the players accidentally. I think that they would serve you well here.

For example you've already determined that the non-actors are not really Power Gamers. But they might be Tacticians or Butt Kickers or Specialists, any one of which probably won't be all that into the "talk to the barkeep" stuff. However each of those Player Types would be best handled differently.

As I said, it seems to be going well thus far. But digging a little deeper could get you to Great without much additional effort.