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Message: <blockquote data-quote="STARP_Social_Officer" data-source="post: 3509172" data-attributes="member: 41202">Well, in my view you're missing a lot of the fun if you minimise out-of-character discussion. I'm our group's DM 75% of the time, and I'm the worst when it comes to out-of-game discussion. The point is socialisation; if you wanted just plain role-playing you'd play WoW or something. In any case, there's a reason STARP is called the Side Tracked Association of Role Players.Leaving that aside, I agree with you about role-playing and not roll-playing. To avoid roll-playing, I suggest you use my approach. When I DM, I let the players guide the story. A lot of DMs favour the "competitive" model, where their object seems to be to challenge the players or, in some cases, wipe them out. Others seem to feel that they are a storyteller and that they need to guide (read:railroad) the players into actions they want them to take. Now, there's merit in a certain amount of gentle nudging, and certainly a good DM challenges his players, but the players and their characters should always guide the story. The game needs to be about them, not just featuring them. When I'm playing, I try to follow this same philosophy by throwing myself into the part, so much so that it becomes impossible to pretend the character isn't there or isn't relavent. We tend to stay away from pre-published adventures, simply because they're pretty linear and tend to be (in my experience) mostly about throwing monster after monster at the PCs. Basically, my point is that a good gaming group has a DM that adapts his adventure to his players and their characters, and players that create interesting, dynamic, vibrant characters. And conflict - inter-party conflict is very important. Not that that means the PCs should hate one another - that's never gonna work (we tried it once). It means that they should have different goals, different world-views and, yes, different alignments. The conflict between two people who work together is a powerful role-playing device. Just be careful how you use it. Oh, and remember to develop characters. Just because a character hates dwarves doesn't mean they have to hate dwarves forever. All players and the DM must be open to change. Conservatism kills campaigns cold. Change is good. Static leads to staleness and boredom.Of course, the opposite of everything I've said is also true.Isn't this fun?</blockquote>

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