Do you play more for the story or the combat?

[xechnao]

Yep!

Where I might be a little weird is that I want the game to give me stories without me having to put things into the game to get them. Skill challenges have some balance issues that I'm not a fan of, but ditching a lot of "simulationist" aspects hurts my ability to pull a narrative out of a few dice rolls. 4e assumes I have a story all lined up and ready to tell and gets out of my way for it. I want more system than that, myself.

I'm a narrative DM who wants the game to tell me a story.

Like background staff hardcoded to PC abilities as in Runequest/Heroquest?

 

[Thanee]

Story (and character development (both kinds)), but combat is also fun and as such a close second.

A game with only combat and no story whatsoever would be pretty boring.
A game with only story would fare better, but would still be lacking something.

Bye
Thanee

 

[xechnao]

neither. i play for fun and escapism.

Yeah fan do you have more fan with the combat or with the story?

 

[Phaezen]

I voted story, with the caveat that at least part of the story includes killing things and taking thier stuff.

Phaezen

 

[evilgenius8000]

I chose story because that is what drives an adventure, and adventures are what D&D is all about. Combat and RP (which was suspiciously absent from the poll) are two things that come about because of the story.

 

[Piratecat]

I love whacking things and taking their stuff, and I have a deep and abiding love for treasure baths, but I'm about 60% story / 40% combat.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

For me, combat is usually part of the story (to wit, such epics as Beowulf, the Volsungasaga, The Illiad, etc all feature combat rather prominently but are no doubt stories all the same). If you're asking whether I prefer combat-intensive roleplay to non-combat-intensive roleplay, your question is worded poorly.

This. When I roleplay, I'm usually interested in heroic or epic fantasy, or (very) occasionally space opera or super heroes. It is rather hard to do the kind of stories I like without a large dose of combat being likely. If the players want and manage to cleverly avoid combat, I'm completely fine with that, even if it happens all of a 10 hour session. But the threat has to be there.

 

[pawsplay]

There are some situations in which I don't mind spending the session in talk, but I usually prefer a little action. There are some situations where I don't mind a little mindless violence, but I usually prefer a story behind it.

So I'm not wishy-washy. I'm emphatically about 80% for both.

 

[Darrin Drader]

I'm about 60% story / 40% combat.

That's what I was going to say, but you seem to have beat me to it.

Sometimes there is something to be said for depopulating the monsters who have taken up residence in the local dungeon, but after doing that for several hours, it does get boring, particularly if the game moves so slow that you can really only fit in 4 combats per evening - and that's really a fault of 3E and 4E in my opinion. If the name of the game is dungeon clearing and killing as many bad guys as possible, give me C&C.

On the other hand, if the combats are fewer and farther between, then I think 3.5 plays really well. The number and variety of skills available make for a game where you can really sink your teeth into specific NPC encounters or non-combat challenges.

Ideally though, if I had to choose between a dungeon stomp or something with more roleplay, I'll take the roleplay any day of the week. I've had games where the characters don't draw their swords throughout the entire adventure. Instead they were interacting with people or sneaking around. Of course one adventure in particular comes to mind where they didn't draw their swords because their were too busy evading their enemies for much of the night.

My group has actually found that for straight dungeon crawls, we're really enjoying the game Descent, by FFG.

 

[Victim]

I picked combat. I like playing games - on nights when not everyone can make it, our group can still play video games, Arkham Horror, or other board games and still have a good time. And combat is the primary game playing element of DnD.

Story and campaign elements are good value adds, but I'll find those a little unsatisfying without the foundation of a solid game underneath.