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I can't comprehend spending several hours a week in a social situation led by someone who doesn't understand social situations or how other people think. Seriously. That sounds absolutely miserable. What's good about it? Serious question. The other people there? The stuff he comes up with...

Honestly, I'd like to see more player-on-player violence in my games. Backstory: our current game is based on Zelazny's Amber series, so the PCs (and the few NPCs that actually matter) are all related. There's a strong in-game reason for them not to actually kill each other, but plotting and...

If you want them to go ahead and get there, why not just do it? Seriously. Did they tell you they wanted to play out the whole overland journey? I'm not being snarky; maybe your group's not comfortable with aggressive scene framing, and that's fine. But man, I would not know how to deal with...

Maybe I'm just missing something, but if you want lower-power characters in Iron Heroes, can't you just make them lower level? Or raise the CR of their opposition? Either way, it's one variable. It sounds like a level X character with a +1 sword is about as good as a level X+1 character. (You...

You have to think of your own fun first. That doesn't mean being selfish, but you're not being selfish. I totally understand where you're coming from. Right now when it comes to this character you're in an "explore her moral landscape" mode, and trying to squeeze that into a dungeon crawl is...

So, what are the characters like? Do they have goals of their own they want to pursue? You could fill a couple of sessions easily by playing out that kind of stuff.

Whoa. That's a lot of detail, thanks. I still think those are particular points along the scale, rather than absolute categories (for instance, I've had players who were a lot like your Author/Roleplaying focus category, but came up with their backstory during play rather than write a bio). But...

I think you're right -- there's a couple of axes involved. I don't think "stance" captures it all. I think the structure you're laying out there does a much better job of explaining the variables than I did. Thanks, Majoru! I may print that out and show it to some of my players, since my own...

I just wanted to mention that the author's released a version of the TSOY experience system as OGL material. http://www.anvilwerks.com/src/sweet20/ If you like the idea of Keys from TSOY and would like to use them in your D&D game, it's definately worth reading.

Hi SBMC, I'm sorry, I'm really not parsing your post. I think you're using the "IC/OOC information split" part of the stance definitions to look at elements of character creation, right? Could you maybe phrase it in a different manner? I think I see where you're coming from (there's an...

Sorry. Sorcerer & Sword is by Adept Press; you can also get it directly from www.sorcerer-rpg.com. I don't want to push any product too hard, it's just a resource I've found useful in "bottom-up" campaign design, where how things go in the first few sessions shape the direction of later games...

This is so true it makes my teeth hurt. :) I'm glad to see it pointed out. People typically pick up "how to play" by osmosis, through joining experienced groups; it's not at all easy or obvious. I mean, prewritten modules handle the scenario design part, but what people actually do during a...

On the "Players take too long discussing ideas/tactics" front: As GM, I've started telling the players that if they forgot something critical to their plan (like, they're planning to climb over a wall to sneak into a building, and it turns out nobody remembered to bring rope) then I'll retcon...

I totally agree with you about giving NPCs over to sidelined players. I've got to the point where I do this all the time -- if a player expresses any interest in how a NPC should act, I'll try to hand them over.

Ouch. I feel for you. I've been in games where the "We'll be back in an hour" turned into a full day IC and a full session OOC where one player sat guarding the boat. We have characters split up all the time, to the point where there's rarely a "party" at all. But since that's a known factor...

Interesting stuff. (And all "on topic" enough for me -- I figure as thread starter I'm just the guy who brought up something to have a conversation about, and anything sparked by that conversation is relevant.) Just for clarification, the stances I listed come from the book Sorcerer & Sword by...

So can I put you down for "Actor stance"? :) I just don't like acting. I'll do some dialogue sometimes, but not much if I can help it. I'm actually trying to do some more of it, but that's only because my players enjoy that kind of stuff. I played in a campaign where I had to do all...

Talk for a while, roll it out once the situation's established. I'd be happy with rolling and describing the results, but my players in general like dialogue scenes more than I do.

This is one of the reasons I like to have adventures take place outside of a "home base" that the PCs go back to fairly often. It makes it easier to have NPCs around when you want to have interaction, and out of the way when there's traveling and fighting going on. The last time this came up...

Thanks for the thoughts, folks. You've pointed out to me that there's three parts of what sometimes gets called immersion. I'm going to stick names on them because I like doing that sort of thing. I'm sure someone can come up with better ones. There's Mindset, which is how you treat the...