All rp all the time

[Gothmog]

Well, that depends on the grading method. If the grade is determined by examinations and essays with no mark for participation, then, so long as the product is equal, then both deserve the same grade. Heh, I teach English, so I do understand exactly what you mean.

But, really and truly, hats off to you. A THIRTEEN year campaign. Wow. With the same people? Same characters? The longest I've ever had a camp run was 2 years and I thought that was doing pretty good.

Fair enough, in a campaign that has been running that long, the rules are obviously different.

Usually I structure my classes so most of the points come from exams and quizzes, but I have a certain number of discretionary points (around 10% of the total point value) built into the class as participation points. So no, I won't arbitrarily penalize someone, since the bulk of their grade comes from their individual efforts in class, and only a few times in the time I've been teaching have I had to knock down the participation points a lot due to lack of effort, or poor behavior in class, and always with a warning to the student in question.

And yeah, the campaign has been going 13 years now, with mostly the same people the entire time. My sister plays the wizard, the paladin in a high school buddy, the witch (homebrew class) is the paladin player's wife, the ranger is another high school friend, the bard is a girl I met in undergrad, the druid is a friend of the paladin player, and I have a DM NPC (NOT pet NPC) that is a rogue that seems to get into trouble and humiliate himself on a regular basis. There have been 4 other people come and go at various points in the campaign, but all of them stayed for at least 2 or 3 years before real-life concerns forced them to quit (moving, school, etc). I started the campaign back at the end of my freshman year of undergrad, and for about 5 years, we played every week or two for 6-8 hours per session. After that, as people drifted off to grad schools, the gaming got less frequent, but we still make time to get everyone together 2-4 times a year for a whole weekend of gaming. I'm still ancy to get further along on that whole Schonnberg subplot (which initially encompassed just the bard, but the whole group is VERY interested in that one now).

 

[Hussar]

A thought about grading and how it relates to DnD.

It's a very valid point IMO. When you go into a class, the first thing you always get is the grading breakdown for the course. X for this Y for that. Everyone knows, as of the first day, what is expected of them.

This, of course, should be pretty much what a DM with a new campaign should be doing as well. Laying out the ground expectations for the campaign. I have no beefs with that. And, as I said, it's not unreasonable to come to an impasse and decide that Player X just isn't fitting in.

However, as I said before, and I think we're in agreement here, there is usually room for compromise. Some flexibility from both sides of the issue can sometimes wind up with a better group all the way around. Maybe the goal oriented player learns to ease up on the throttle a bit and finds that smelling the flowers sometimes can be fun. Maybe the DM learns to tighten the reins a bit and give the horse a kick to increase the pace of the game. Maybe neither happens and something else does. In any case, it's generally worth a try.