D&D gaming style preference changes

[Bullgrit]

Does your own personal D&D gaming career have style eras? That is, have you been playing D&D long enough that looking back over that time, you can identify style preference changes in your gaming? Or maybe you’ve been playing a long time, but your style preference has not changed at all.

If your style has changed, has it been “onward and upward”, or has it “gone full circle”? Do you look back and think, “I’m glad I don’t play like that anymore.” Or do you think, “I wish I could play like that again.”

Have you gone through the “I loves the dungeon crawl” style? The “I’m a deep immersion thespian” style? Power gamer style? Munchkin style? Simulationist, gamist, storyteller, etc. styles? “Let’s kill some orcs!” “What’s my motivation?”

Is a changing style preference inevitable? Is it possible to play D&D for 20+ years and never have your style preference change? Is it possible to go 20+ years and have your style preference not circle back – either because you tested everything else and found them not better than your original style, or because you’re nostalgic for the first style?

Bullgrit

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Oh, no question. When I first started playing AD&D (having been DMing basic and Expert for a couple of years) when I was 15, I was a power gamer and I cheated. Sometime around 18 years old, I stopped cheating. At around 20 years old, I gave up the power gaming. (I still like an effective character, but I'm not interested in optimization.)

At around 33 or 34 years old I consciously decided to emphasize description and immersion, as a player and (especially) as a GM. Numbers in building my own characters took a back seat, and that trend has continued ever since.

 

[crazy_monkey1956]

My style has changed mainly due to real life. I DM most of the time and back in high school I would spent hours (including time I should've been doing homework) creating dungeons and settings and such.

In the Air Force, I didn't have time to prep anymore so I just tried winging things with very mixed results.

In the Navy, I still didn't have prep time, but the games were good because I was using published adventures.

These days, I have more prep time (I'm a stay-at-home-dad) but most of my DMing happens via play-by-post, so lots of world building and gaming that looks more like cooperative novel-writing than "gaming."

 

[Fifth Element]

When I started playing around 12 years old, we were very cautious in the "send in the henchmen first, poke everything with a 10' pole, retreat when the wizard uses up his sleep spell, and maybe we'll get out of this alive" sense.

I can't say exactly when that changed, but I'm now much more "let's just do this and have some fun" type of player. I would never play now the way I used to; I have limited gaming time and just want to have some fun, TPKs be darned.

I wouldn't think preferences necessarily change over time. I expect they do, at least somewhat, for most people. But I'm sure there are at least some players who enjoy playing exactly the same way they did 'back in the day'.

 

[Jack7]

I would say that with me this is definitely true.

As a DM or GM (and that's what I've done through most of my gaming career) I've gone through roughly the following styles:

Tolkien like era
Heavily Mythological (Classical and Medieval Myth)
Historical and Semi-Historical
Purely Imaginative (from my own imagination)
Literary and Linguistic
Experimental and Symbolic and Symboligical
Pulp Fantasy
Mixed (being a combination of different styles) - this is the stage I'm at now and have been in for a good while.


As a player through (with a very few exceptions) I've always been a very pragmatic, no-nonsense player who attempted to play my characters like "real people in a real world" no matter how bizarre, fabulous, odd, or even ridiculous that world was. So as a player my style never really changed. I got better as a player, and increased my survival skills and play capabilities, but it never really changed much. Maybe that's cause I didn't play much relative to time spent as a DM/GM.

Or maybe that's really my own personality. I'm pretty much pragmatic by nature. I've never been or wanted to be the "light me up or decorate me guy." I'd much rather stay in the rear most of the time, be as observant as possible, and outthink and outwit my enemies by guile and by out-anticipating them.

I'd much rather beat somebody by my wits than by some wonder-weapon. Skill, technique, planning, tactics, forethought, and survival skills in game have always been more important to me than powers, special abilities, magic, or enchantments. (Though I got nothing against those things, especially if they improve my chances of success and survival.) But to me in a game it's much better to test myself than just my character. My character exists to provide me with a means to test myself, not the other way around. So maybe it's that I didn't play enough to change much, or that's just my personality and mind-set, or maybe it's a bit of both.

As a DM though I've come full circle on more than one occasion.
I suspect that is probably common.

When I started playing around 12 years old, we were very cautious in the "send in the henchmen first, poke everything with a 10' pole, retreat when the wizard uses up his sleep spell, and maybe we'll get out of this alive" sense.

Though I don't do that anymore either, that was a good era for me too. Very exciting.

 

[weem]

Let's see...

Ages 12-17 = Munchkin Style (for the most part)
Ages 18-21 = Evil Campaigns (for the most part)
Ages 22-24 = Railroad Story Styles (for the most part)

Ages 24-30 = varied styles of games, brief campaigns. I wasn't playing as much any more, and when i was it was a lot of one-offs, etc

Ages 31-33 [Now] = Character-driven, RP focused

I have gotten better as a DM over time (as most do), but I have also preferred the styles of games more as well as I've gone along. I would not go back to those early days (at least for a serious campaign) but I appreciate where they got me.

 

[Morrus]

Absolutely!

Once upon a time I was very "simulationist". I used to try to organise spells into themed paths, write intricate combat rules and critical hit charts. I'd work out ways to track encumbrance and rations and ammo.

Nowadays I do none of that. I'm clearly now "gamist". I just wanna have fun, and I don't want the PCs to be realistic I want them to be fantasy heroes doing ridiculous things! I play much more fast and loose with the rules, I try never to say "no", and focus on fun more than anything else.

 

[Stormonu]

Over time, I've become a ruleshound, obsessed with "doing things right". I miss my old gaming days when I was a lot more "wahoo!" about things - to the point we used the themes and names from the game, but not the rules and a lot of times not even the dice.

I wish I could go back to that sort of free-form play, but I imagine it would end poorly.

 

[Scotley]

There have been definite changes over the years, but other things have stayed the same. I guess I'm a gamist at heart and always have been. I've never been much of a thespian. I started playing and Dm'ing when I was 10, so the earliest years were marked by that immaturity. There was some munchkin stuff going on back then to say the least. In high school I was more simulationist. We often had calculators out to figure spell areas or fall speeds and otherwise try to apply real world physics to the games. I have always enjoyed playing effective characters, but have rarely risen to the level of full on optimizing. I think playing grossly sub-optimal characters makes the gamest in me feel like I'm losing, while over optimizing it takes some of the fun out of it too. That said, I do make choices that favor story or flavor over optimization quite often. That hasn't always been the case. I like to develop backstories and personality for characters then have them grow and change and as a DM I like to have a story arc to the game and I love world building so there is some storyteller in me too. That hasn't changed much over my gaming career. I don't get to game face to face much at all anymore. Maybe once or twice a year. So about 6 years ago my gaming moved almost exclusively to EN World. That was certainly a big change. There wasn't an 'online' when I started gaming in the late seventies. I still enjoy DMing and I've done so since my earliest days. I think I took the DM plunge the third time I gamed. In terms of full circle. I started out with D&D and I'm back there again having played lots of other systems along the way. I don't want to start and edition war, but I play 3.5, Pathfinder and 4e these days, so most folks will agree that I still play D&D at least part of the time.

 

[steenan]

I went through several styles in my RPG career:

Ages 15-16, my first contact with RPG: Rules-heavy simulationism. A lot of homebrewing and houseruling as a GM; focus on power (but through in-game actions, not mechanical optimization) as a player.

Ages 17-18: WoD, often powergamed or played for laughs; no trace of "personal horror". CoC, with similar bias, but with more successful sessions. As a GM, more focus on story, sometimes with good results and sometimes leading to heavy railroading.

Ages 19-22: Rules-light (often diceless) simulationism. A lot of homebrewed settings. A lot of focus on consistency and story. Strongly player-driven, but not player-narrated play. Sessions aiming for specific genre and specific atmosphere, often successful. More mature themes in games and mature approach to these.

Ages 23-26: Less homebrews, more published games. D&D 3e. More focus on rules. Mechanical optimization, but moderated by taking into account consistency and story. More player input in descriptions and world creation.

Ages 27-30 (now): Awareness of different playstyles, conscious choices. Wide spectrum of genres, styles and creative agendas. Indie games. Exalted (with changed mechanics). Homebrews with better mechanics. Explicit social contracts.