How adversarial is your group?

[bloodtide]

None of them.

They all pose a way of doing things that I do not follow or agree with at all.

Like some games can be "broken" by a player using a rule on page 11 to "break" the game while the DM just sits there and cries. And plenty of people think that is normal. That would never happen in my game...or my life.

And some foolish players to try to "beat" the DM, but in my game that can't ever work.

The only one that comes close is that players can use whatever they know in-character, but still under the DMs iron fist.

I make a hard game....Hard Fun.....near Impossible to many players.....but it is not "adversarial"

 

[Ath'kethin]

I've never understood an adversarial mindset in TTRPGs. I've played under DMs who ran things that way, but it was never really my thing. I've always been upfront about this, and luckily I've never in over 30 years had an issue with a player (in that regard anyway).

I work with my groups to make the game fun for everyone. I'm always open to suggestions and I tend to prioritize whatever is entertaining over anything else.

 

[kigmatzomat]

We play pretty tactically, so some of these are just a play style. I mean, tactics are not adversarial. Occasionally in the heat of the moment we all make mistakes, sometimes against the players, others the GM but we generally figure out the "right" way of doing things and just say "whoopsie daisey".

We're all technical people (I'm a licensed civil engineer) and it's pretty hard to ignore our acquired knowledge. But we also can say "but that'd be too hard to bother with in game so lets use the RAW." We do like to figure out what the more contradictory RAW would look like.

E.g. "Ummm...Dirt weighs twice as much as water, so a 5ft cube of dirt is like 6 tons....that means Transmute Rock To Mud used on a cave roof drops 40 tons of mud on each 5ft square but the damage is only 2d8 or 4d8..so......I guess the mud...instead of obliterating the creatures underneath...flows slowly .... like caramel...except its slippery so creatures float to the top instead of being trapped...? "

We use our knowledge to figure out how to make the RAW feel like something that could happen.

 

[dbm]

Our group is not adversarial in the slightest. We’ve all been playing for decades, including playing together for at least 20 years as the current group stands.

We have multiple GMs in the group so people will point out slips of memory when they come up, but that isn’t adversarial or chiding in any way.

Enemies act as is appropriate for them. If they are very competent then they will set up ambushes and so on to oppose the characters, but the GM is not opposing the players.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Some recent threads I have been in have discussed player-GM interaction and the degree to which GMs need to handle player knowledge and the degree to which players and GMs like to challenge each other. This is not a poll to discover who is playing "the right way", but more to establish a baseline on styles of play -- all of which can be valid and fun!

Please choose options that you feel are generally true for you and the group(s) you play regularly with. If you have any other thoughts and suggestions -- especially if there are variations or have thoughts on factors that might influence these issues, please add in the comments, but remember that the goal is to discover trends, not to brand anything as badwrongfun!

What's funny here is a lot of this stuff can be true at the same time.

For example:

Players take advantage of DM errors that are in their character's favour

and

Players point out DM errors even when it disadvantages them

I've seen both of these from the same player, in the same game, at the same session! Literally depending on what the errors are. Definitely we lean more towards the latter as a group but I don't think there's a real contradiction here, and I doubt many players 100% pick up on DM errors one way or the other. Generally if the advantage would be too big the players are more likely to point it out, but they're less likely to pick up on a rounding error or few points of damage or the like.

Also in different games, different things are true. Like, in most RPGs we play, this is never the case:

Players prefer to leave the room rather than experience an event their character does not

But in other RPGs, specific ones, particularly ones where intra-character conflict is more likely, we do, in fact, do that. Also the importance of the event matters a lot. And further I'd say that isn't a trait of adversarial games or not - it's doesn't track with them, it's something that happens in both very friendly and very adversarial games albeit for slightly different reasons.

The only two which are almost always untrue for my main group are:

Players take advantage of in-game events their characters are not aware of

and

Players enjoy breaking encounters by using weak or "edge case" rules

But largely because those are boring and slightly annoying-to-everyone things to do.

Overall I'd say the tone of the group is very non-adversarial. Whether I'm DMing or the other guy, we're both basically in the "be a fan of the player characters" general zone (albeit also "kill your darlings" applies lol).

What's funny is I've seen groups where almost all the non-adversarial options would be checked, but where the tone was actually oppressively adversarial just because of how the DM operated - you can non-adversarial players but an extremely adversarial DM. Indeed a lot of the early 1990s games of AD&D I played (rather than DM'd) in could be described accurately that way.

I think the main issue with this survey is that in my experience, adversariality rarely flows from the players to the DM, but rather almost always the tone is set by the DM, and if the DM adversarial, then the group can become adversarial.

 

[dragoner]

I'm not going to play or run a game if it isn't fun, that makes no sense at all.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

What's funny here is a lot of this stuff can be true at the same time.

Yes, very much so. Role players are varied and fun creatures — sometimes I like to optimize a killer D&D4E bard/rogue/assassin Drow who creates shadows, teleports in and murders enemies with a carefully chosen set of feats and powers, and sometimes I like to play a kid on a bike who has a crush on the girl he sits next to in class. I set out this poll not to prove some kind of viewpoint, but because I was curious as to the range of GM experiences. In other threads it became clear that a more adversarial way of playing was more common than I thought, so I wanted to see how much more so it was, and what sort of ways of playing people liked.

 

[aramis erak]

Please choose options that you feel are generally true for you and the group(s) you play regularly with. If you have any other thoughts and suggestions -- especially if there are variations or have thoughts on factors that might influence these issues, please add in the comments, but remember that the goal is to discover trends, not to brand anything as badwrongfun!

I have one former (potentially returning) who fails to think ahead... this was survivable in some games, not in others. He's good about generating new.
I've another who enjoys finding story-based edge cases, rather than rules based.

They're not openly adversarial, but they are often the cause of TPK/NTPK situations.

 

[MNblockhead]

Interesting that all of these options are about players. My answers might make my players come across as overly adversarial...until you pan away and see the PC obituary sheet on the wall behind my DM chair.

 

[John Dallman]

There are a few things one has to distinguish from adversarial play:

• Breaking laws in civilized parts of the setting, and getting caught and put on trial. As a GM, I have executed one PC for attempted murder of the judge. The rest of the PCs stood by, because they couldn't claim it was unfair, and were a long way from any possible help. I've also imprisoned another for a decade (during while I lost contact with the player - he was no loss). Powerful and violent people who don't see why they should obey laws tend to get treated firmly by functional justice systems.
• Ingenious tactics within the game, not relying on rules exploits, but just taking advantage of holes in the opponents' plans.

Some GMs are not adversarial, but joke about it. They may be crestfallen when the players do something unexpected, or find something that others have missed. Dave Waring has been running his Avalon setting for about fifty real years. I'm part of a party that happened to discover a gold mine that several past groups have not noticed. This marked a major change in the campaign, as we became extremely wealthy, but has not ruined it.