So...what type of game do you guys want to play?

[VictorTheVictorious]

I've enjoyed reading the various questionnaires GMs have provided to players before the start of a new game. I think, as a GM, managing expectations (both your own and the players) can help make a great experience.

I have cobbled together and adjusted some of the best questions I've seen and invented a few of my own to make my own custom ten questions to ask players before you start a campaign or game.

I hope someone finds them useful.

Oh - BTW - in the interest of transparency I answered:
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1. What sort of tone do you like?

1. Gritty and realistic with local details. Where are we going and how should we get there? What will we eat on the way? Where do we sleep on the way?
2. I like a balanced tone. Sometimes get into the details - sometimes let’s not worry about it.
3. Cinematic. Let’s play out the big things and gloss over the details. Teleport me to the dungeon where I can start killing things. I have no interest in the three days it takes for us to get there.
4. I don’t care. I’d have fun with any approach

2. How do you feel about the world or setting you play in?

1. I want to interact with a world that feels real. Give me any background stuff to read so I know how my character fits in and I will make it happen.
2. I appreciate a deep setting but do not want to be burdened with learning it outside of game time.
3. I don’t care who the king is. My character might but I don’t need to know. Settings are for GMs to navigate but boring for players.
4. I don’t care. I’d have fun with any approach

3. How historically accurate would you like the setting you play in to be?

1. As realistic and historically accurate as possible. I hate the idea of stagecoaches in something that looks like it took place in 1368 AD.
2. I’d like it to have some grounding so I know what, generally, to expect.
3. This is fantasy - why does it have to look like anything historical?
4. I don’t care. I’d have fun with any approach

4. How serious should the game experience be?

1. Completely serious. Our characters are fighting for their lives.
2. Somewhat - but even the Fellowship had time for some levity on their journey.
3. Inside jokes and silly names make the game more enjoyable.
4. I don’t care. I’d have fun with any approach

5. Should continuous boldness be rewarded or punished?

1. Rewarded. This is our game and we should be able to attack and kill anything in our way
2. Balanced. Sometimes we should face things so powerful the smart thing is to move on or hide and wait for another day.
3. Punished. The world should be dangerous and we should respect that.
4. I don’t care. I’d have fun with any approach

6. How much freedom should the characters have in choosing their adventures?

1. Total. We should be able to move wherever we please and a good GM should be ready and willing to improvise.
2. Some. The GM should have some things prepared but roll with the punches if we stray.
3. None. The best adventures are when the GM plans and adventure and sets us up to take it on.
4. I don’t care. I’d have fun with any approach

7. Should players be heroes of light in a dark world (or vice versa)?

1. Absolutely. The game world should be black and white and we are the good guys. Like Frodo vs Mordor (or maybe once in a while we are on the bad guys)
2. Somewhat. A good vs evil backdrop is helpful but everything should not be about that.
3. No. The real world has no real good vs evil and the game world should have the same shades of grey.
4. I don’t care. I’d have fun with any approach

8. How much actual role playing do you like in a session?

1. Lots. I’d prefer most interactions were done via in-character role playing?
2. Some. Now and again is fine but I don’t want an entire night of people talking in-character to each other.
3. Little. I like to solve puzzles and/or fight monsters. I am not really interested in speaking in-character.
4. I don’t care. I’d have fun with any approach

9. How important is it that players make in-game decisions as a group?

1. Very important. We should all make decisions that maximizes the team as a whole.
2. Somewhat important. People should play how they want as long as we don’t have a group of 8 elven wizards.
3. Not important. Everyone should play how they want without worrying about what is best for the group and we will muddle through together.
4. I don’t care. I’d have fun with any approach

10. Which of the above the above questions is the most important to you?

 

[steenan]

There are several playstyles that I like. I usually try to mix - like, playing a campaign in one mode, and sometimes one-shots in other.

One style is character-driven, exploratory and intense:
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6 - Game should be driven by players' ideas and their characters' backgrounds, not by a pre-planned story. But players should play their characters in coherent and interesting way, not act randomly.
7 - There is light and there is darkness, but it's players' job to decide which is which, not GM's or setting book's. But I want meaningful moral contrasts, not uniform grey.
8 - Role playing as "portraying my character", which is not equivalent to "in-character conversation"
9 - Everybody decides for themselves. But everybody also takes care of other players' fun. I dislike party-think, but backstabbing or playing solo while others wait is even worse. Keep the level of conflict between characters high enough to be interesting, but low enough to not be disrupting.

Another is heroic, cinematic and action-focused:
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6 - There is a central conflict that the players are expected to engage. How they do it is their choice.
7 - It's less about good vs evil. More about "it's clear who are the heroes - the PCs".

And the third is very tactical:
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8,9 - It's much less "what my character would do" than "what we, as a team, should do to succeed".

 

[Argyle King]

1. What sort of tone do you like?

1. Gritty and realistic with local details. Where are we going and how should we get there? What will we eat on the way? Where do we sleep on the way?
2. I like a balanced tone. Sometimes get into the details - sometimes let’s not worry about it.
3. Cinematic. Let’s play out the big things and gloss over the details. Teleport me to the dungeon where I can start killing things. I have no interest in the three days it takes for us to get there.
4. I don’t care. I’d have fun with any approach

I strongly prefer option 1, but am happy with option 2.

2. How do you feel about the world or setting you play in?

1. I want to interact with a world that feels real. Give me any background stuff to read so I know how my character fits in and I will make it happen.
2. I appreciate a deep setting but do not want to be burdened with learning it outside of game time.
3. I don’t care who the king is. My character might but I don’t need to know. Settings are for GMs to navigate but boring for players.
4. I don’t care. I’d have fun with any approach

Option 1

3. How historically accurate would you like the setting you play in to be?

1. As realistic and historically accurate as possible. I hate the idea of stagecoaches in something that looks like it took place in 1368 AD.
2. I’d like it to have some grounding so I know what, generally, to expect.
3. This is fantasy - why does it have to look like anything historical?
4. I don’t care. I’d have fun with any approach

Option 4

4. How serious should the game experience be?

1. Completely serious. Our characters are fighting for their lives.
2. Somewhat - but even the Fellowship had time for some levity on their journey.
3. Inside jokes and silly names make the game more enjoyable.
4. I don’t care. I’d have fun with any approach

Option 4

5. Should continuous boldness be rewarded or punished?

1. Rewarded. This is our game and we should be able to attack and kill anything in our way
2. Balanced. Sometimes we should face things so powerful the smart thing is to move on or hide and wait for another day.
3. Punished. The world should be dangerous and we should respect that.
4. I don’t care. I’d have fun with any approach

Option 2

6. How much freedom should the characters have in choosing their adventures?

1. Total. We should be able to move wherever we please and a good GM should be ready and willing to improvise.
2. Some. The GM should have some things prepared but roll with the punches if we stray.
3. None. The best adventures are when the GM plans and adventure and sets us up to take it on.
4. I don’t care. I’d have fun with any approach

Option 2

7. Should players be heroes of light in a dark world (or vice versa)?

1. Absolutely. The game world should be black and white and we are the good guys. Like Frodo vs Mordor (or maybe once in a while we are on the bad guys)
2. Somewhat. A good vs evil backdrop is helpful but everything should not be about that.
3. No. The real world has no real good vs evil and the game world should have the same shades of grey.
4. I don’t care. I’d have fun with any approach

Option 3

8. How much actual role playing do you like in a session?

1. Lots. I’d prefer most interactions were done via in-character role playing?
2. Some. Now and again is fine but I don’t want an entire night of people talking in-character to each other.
3. Little. I like to solve puzzles and/or fight monsters. I am not really interested in speaking in-character.
4. I don’t care. I’d have fun with any approach

I'm not sure how to answer this. I like a lot of roleplaying, but I also enjoy solving puzzles and fighting monsters. I don't want to answer that "I'd have fun with any approach" because that's not entirely true. I like a little bit of each option.

9. How important is it that players make in-game decisions as a group?

1. Very important. We should all make decisions that maximizes the team as a whole.
2. Somewhat important. People should play how they want as long as we don’t have a group of 8 elven wizards.
3. Not important. Everyone should play how they want without worrying about what is best for the group and we will muddle through together.
4. I don’t care. I’d have fun with any approach

Option 4, but I lean toward 3

10. Which of the above the above questions is the most important to you?

Hmm... probably either Question 1 or Question 5.

 

[VictorTheVictorious]

Bah - my copying and pasting from my google doc messed up my bullets and such.

Anyhoo - I appreciate reading where your heads are at for yourself as players and feel it makes me appreciate better why people play.

Thanks for the replies.

 

[Darkness]

3. How historically accurate would you like the setting you play in to be?
I basically stopped caring about such things after watching the early seasons of Xena: Warrior Princess, back in the 1990s.

6. How much freedom should the characters have in choosing their adventures?
In general, I think 'Some' freedom is good.

10. Which of the above the above questions is the most important to you?
Number 4. Humor is serious business, yo. (Well, not for me, but humor is important to me and IMX this question is quite important for some people, so I think it's good to make sure everyone is on the same page.)

1. What sort of tone do you like?
2. How do you feel about the world or setting you play in?
4. How serious should the game experience be?
5. Should continuous boldness be rewarded or punished?
7. Should players be heroes of light in a dark world (or vice versa)?
8. How much actual role playing do you like in a session?
9. How important is it that players make in-game decisions as a group?
To me, all of these depend on what's best for the campaign.

 

[Gilladian]

I answered option 2 just about across the board! I just thought that was funny. I think the most important two questions are about humor and about light/dark. I think it is very hard to mix groups where one person wants to be silly and the others are serious. I had to stop playing with one friend who wanted to turn everything into a joke. He'd have his dwarf fighter rip off his armor and run into battle in his purple panties just to make someone giggle. It got old, really fast...

And while I don't mind shades of grey, I prefer that the PCs have the clear option of choosing a "good, heroic" option without having mud smeared in their faces for it every time. One or two ambiguous moral choices are much more fun when MOST of the rest are clear and fairly obvious.

 

[VictorTheVictorious]

I think the most important two questions are about humor and about light/dark. I think it is very hard to mix groups where one person wants to be silly and the others are serious. I had to stop playing with one friend who wanted to turn everything into a joke. He'd have his dwarf fighter rip off his armor and run into battle in his purple panties just to make someone giggle. It got old, really fast..

I agree humor is a big deal because it is so divisive. People will put up with all kinds of playing style differences but humor is rarely one of them. I think it is one of the first things a group has to work out early in their working together. The first time I played in a group outside my own I was completely surprised (and frustrated) with how everyone wanted to make everything a joke.

 

[Derren]

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3. How historically accurate would you like the setting you play in to be?

I care more about that the technology/history in the setting is internally consistent than that they closely mimick the real world.

8. How much actual role playing do you like in a session?

That question is imo a bit off as it implies that using the game mechanics is automatically "not role playing" even though the the way the character addresses non social problems and behaves in combat etc. also counts as role playing to me (which sadly many people forget, especially in tactical game systems).

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Really you could just give me option #2 on all those. For question #10, none of them really stand out as being particularly more important than the others. Moderation in all things I guess, including in moderation.

 

[Zhaleskra]

I'm going to skip all your numbered lists and answer in a paragraph, or a few.

Over my years of gaming, I have come to dislike hit points as a jumble of "fatigue, life, and luck", and have come to dislike systems not having a way of specific injuries mattering. Therefore I am in favor of combat being quite deadly and have come to prefer death-spiral combat systems. Especially because I am a fan of Diomin, which is supposed to be a Dark Fantasy world, which D&D's combat system does not represent well to me. I feel the risk of being killed in nasty ways is an essential part of dark fantasy.

Even in In Nomine, I have come to hate morality mechanics. Sure, Diomin is supposed to be a you-know-what sack world where good and evil are supposed to be black and white, but even it has its blotches of gray. In Nomine even presents the idea that both angels and demons are evil (one style of campaign), in which angels only slightly less evil than demons.

I have come more to the idea of providing an outline than writing plots. So I dangle a few plot hooks in front of the PCs, and they pick the one(s) they want to pursue. Obvious exception for modules. When the PCs want to do something "out there", I roll with it a lot of the time, especially if it doesn't affect the hook they're following.

I own the AD&D Vikings campaign sourcebook, but even it isn't historically accurate presenting Trollborn as a player race. So far as historically accurate, aside from monarchies and the death penalty being common for crimes, not a whole lot.

Heroes: I agree with both what World Tree and actual Veterans say. World Tree: "you're not a hero until someone else says you are.", suggesting otherwise will at best get you laughed at. Veterans: "I'm not a hero, the real heroes don't come home/are still over there." Deeds, not intentions, define heroes.

Boldness should be rewarded or punished exactly according to how foolhardy it is.

Every person has their own comfort level of immersion. All I care about is that everyone at the table is using the same person to talk about their character. It's awkward if some are talking in first while others are speaking in third.

While this is my preferred style of game, that is not to say I will not play games that do not follow this format. Anime game? Sure, let the characters take ridiculous amounts of damage with minimal effect. Someone else running a module? By agreeing to play, I feel I agreed to the module's rails. You're running an actually historically accurate game? Might be fun.