Games You Rarely See Played "Correctly"

[MGibster]

Okay, just to keep you from coming at me with pitchforks and torches; If you and your group are having fun then you're playing the game correctly. But....are you really playing the game correctly? i.e. As it was envisioned by the creators? There are games where there seems to be a dissonance between how it was set up to be played and how it is actually played.

The most popular game I can think where this was the case was Vampire the Masquerade back in the early 1990s. What was clearly supposed to be a game about personal horror ended up being superheroes with fangs. Instead of an angsty vampire trying to hold on to their humanity or live under the oppressive rules of their elders, we had vampires running around with twin Desert Eagles, katanas, and trench coats.

In Cyberpunk 2020, it's suppose to be more important to look good doing something than to be competent. I can't think of many players who adhered to this ethos when it came to their characters. Most of us tried to make the most effective characters, choosing equipment and cyberware that would make us more efficient killers and thieves, and making choices based on what was going to get us the most euros in the shortest period of time. I can only recall one player who tried look cool no matter what. In CP2020, a posergang is a specific gang where members all alter themselves surgically to look like a specific person or persons. For example, the Gilligans were a LGBTQ posergang and they all looked like characters from Gilligan's Island and there was another posergang who looked like members of the Kennedy family. Anyway, I had one player who was a former member of a posergang and they all looked like Star Wars character. His main weapon of choice was a replica that looked like Solo's blaster and he loaded it with tracer shots so it'd resemble a blaster when fired. He's the only player I can remember who spent that much time on how his character looked and chose his equipment on what made sense for his style.

Anyone else player their games "wrong?"

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

 

[bloodtide]

The vast majority of games. In a lot of ways it is the point of a IRL game.

So....

The Vampire, Werewolf and most other horror type games are played more 'soft horror', like disney horror or like Goosebumbs, where the player like the 'scary' horror(as they do).

Traveler played like Star Trek. Star Wars played like Star Trek.

And, of course, the vast majority of D&D games.............

 

[Blue]

Well, since you mention "as envisioned by the creators", nearly everyone plays D&D 5e wrong. The creators balanced the math around a dungeon crawl's worth of combat encounters per day -- 6-7 as per the advice in the 2014 DMG. Less than that and the balance between the classes goes off. (Why you don't see rogues and fighters pushing for a 15 minute adventuring day).

But if the majority, perhaps even the vast majority, are playing in a certain way, doesn't that mean that the creators were wrong in how they envisioned it? That they've messed up the math and balance points to make the game that the people are actually playing. Can we blame the players and call what they do "wrong" under those circumstances?

 

[MGibster]

View attachment 426290

I keep trying to win this game but I can't seem to get ahead.

 

[SableWyvern]

Perhaps I'm not really engaging with the premise, but as far as I'm concerned, every single ruleset I use to run a game is a toolkit. I use the bits I want the way I want to arrive at a system that meets my needs. As a general rule, I don't really care how the author intended it to be played, beyond what I need to understand in order to ensure I can get the system to do what I need it to.

Since I don't watch other people play and no game I run meets the OP's definition of correctly, every game I see played is always played incorrectly.


Edit: Actually, perhaps games intended by the authors to be used as tookits are ones I use correctly. In that case, the ones I used incorrectly are the ones not intended for such. And, now that I think about it, that's probably broadly true.

Is a game meant to be used as a toolkit? Is there an expectation that players will modify it to suit their needs? If yes, almost everyone is using it correctly. If no, a very large number of people, probably most, are almost certainly playing it "incorrectly".

 

[Jahydin]

Monopoly. I don't know a single person who plays it RAW.

 

[cbwjm]

Not an RPG, but apparently, everyone plays UNO wrong and you don't collect the "go to jail" money when you land on free parking in monopoly.

I think with RPGs, the original theme is going to quickly melt away once players understand the mechanics and realise what else can be done with the system.

Well, since you mention "as envisioned by the creators", nearly everyone plays D&D 5e wrong. The creators balanced the math around a dungeon crawl's worth of combat encounters per day -- 6-7 as per the advice in the 2014 DMG. Less than that and the balance between the classes goes off. (Why you don't see rogues and fighters pushing for a 15 minute adventuring day).

But if the majority, perhaps even the vast majority, are playing in a certain way, doesn't that mean that the creators were wrong in how they envisioned it? That they've messed up the math and balance points to make the game that the people are actually playing. Can we blame the players and call what they do "wrong" under those circumstances?

I believe the DMG says something along the lines of "this is roughly how much the PCs can handle" it never said that's how much they should be doing.

 

[MGibster]

Well, since you mention "as envisioned by the creators", nearly everyone plays D&D 5e wrong. The creators balanced the math around a dungeon crawl's worth of combat encounters per day -- 6-7 as per the advice in the 2014 DMG. Less than that and the balance between the classes goes off. (Why you don't see rogues and fighters pushing for a 15 minute adventuring day).

That's fair. I simply can't be bothered to have that many encounters per day because it's just so tedious. Given how long combat takes in D&D, knowing an encounter is there that is inconsequential other than knocking down a few resources drives me nuts.

 

[aramis erak]

Old School D&D. Not using: a Caller, group sizes over 8, downtime in realtime...

Traveller: The imperium as the good guys. (Marc originally envisaged fighting the imperium a lá Star Wars; even after, they're not the good guys.)

Starships & Spacemen: Running it as its own thing, not as Trek. (It was intended to be licensed, but they couldn't afford it. So Dr. Kanterman tweaked it away just enough to not get sued. Me, I prefer it as its own thing.)

Tunnels and Trolls: Not using stunts during combat.