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Fighters vs. Spellcasters (a case for fighters.)
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<blockquote data-quote="Aenghus" data-source="post: 6205319" data-attributes="member: 2656"><p>With so many different RPGs out there there are players with a huge variety of playstyles and expectations. Even within D&D there's been decades of a myriad of different games with widely differing styles, in a variety of editions, that have produced players with wildly different expectations. </p><p></p><p> This can make finding players with compatible expectations more difficult, and perhaps explains at least some of the prickly defensiveness visible here on this forum, particularly this thread. Few people like becoming an endangered species, and the fracturing of the player base has put a lot of us on the endangered list.</p><p></p><p>A case in point being how proactive players are allowed to be in a game. A lot of players are very passive, sometimes because they have been trained to be in games where proactivity wasn't rewarded or encouraged, or actively punished. I attempt to retrain passive players by showing them they can take some initiative and be successful doing it. The first step is describing the gameworld as clearly as possible and establishing expectations for how it typically works, what actions are likely to be successful, unsuccessful or impossible.Secondly, when players try being proactive I don't punish them for it, regardless of the secret details of the gameworld so far unrevealed - if their action doesn't make sense I try to improve their understanding of the gameworld and allow retractions. If their actions entail unforeseeable risks, I will generally tell them so they don't inadvertently suicide their PCs out of ignorance. </p><p></p><p>I want my players to make informed choices, so I err on the side of perhaps giving them too much information. Players starved of information are at their most dangerous, bored from inactivity or forced to make random, meaningless choices. </p><p></p><p>But generally, the players in my game can attempt actions such as skill checks and I'm highly unlikely to veto them or summarily decide they are impossible. The better the players understand how my game works the less likely they are to attempt the impossible in the first place. Success or fail, the results do need to be something we can live with, and this might require some negotiation. </p><p></p><p>The people who post on this forum are probably unrepresentative of the average player or DM. We have a lot more system mastery and have spent a lot more time thinking about RPGs in general and D&D in particular. The extrapolated consequences of the various elements of the D&D rules aren't obvious to a lot of people, and are subjective in nature as different people can honestly come to different conclusions given the same evidence, especially given the ambiguousness of some of these rules. Though when people have lived with their gameworlds for years, it can be hard to remember whats actually printed rules, what's houserules and whats extrapolated from their logical consequences.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Aenghus, post: 6205319, member: 2656"] With so many different RPGs out there there are players with a huge variety of playstyles and expectations. Even within D&D there's been decades of a myriad of different games with widely differing styles, in a variety of editions, that have produced players with wildly different expectations. This can make finding players with compatible expectations more difficult, and perhaps explains at least some of the prickly defensiveness visible here on this forum, particularly this thread. Few people like becoming an endangered species, and the fracturing of the player base has put a lot of us on the endangered list. A case in point being how proactive players are allowed to be in a game. A lot of players are very passive, sometimes because they have been trained to be in games where proactivity wasn't rewarded or encouraged, or actively punished. I attempt to retrain passive players by showing them they can take some initiative and be successful doing it. The first step is describing the gameworld as clearly as possible and establishing expectations for how it typically works, what actions are likely to be successful, unsuccessful or impossible.Secondly, when players try being proactive I don't punish them for it, regardless of the secret details of the gameworld so far unrevealed - if their action doesn't make sense I try to improve their understanding of the gameworld and allow retractions. If their actions entail unforeseeable risks, I will generally tell them so they don't inadvertently suicide their PCs out of ignorance. I want my players to make informed choices, so I err on the side of perhaps giving them too much information. Players starved of information are at their most dangerous, bored from inactivity or forced to make random, meaningless choices. But generally, the players in my game can attempt actions such as skill checks and I'm highly unlikely to veto them or summarily decide they are impossible. The better the players understand how my game works the less likely they are to attempt the impossible in the first place. Success or fail, the results do need to be something we can live with, and this might require some negotiation. The people who post on this forum are probably unrepresentative of the average player or DM. We have a lot more system mastery and have spent a lot more time thinking about RPGs in general and D&D in particular. The extrapolated consequences of the various elements of the D&D rules aren't obvious to a lot of people, and are subjective in nature as different people can honestly come to different conclusions given the same evidence, especially given the ambiguousness of some of these rules. Though when people have lived with their gameworlds for years, it can be hard to remember whats actually printed rules, what's houserules and whats extrapolated from their logical consequences. [/QUOTE]
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