Storytelling or Roleplaying?

[jaerdaph]

Yeah, this guy would be a bad DM in any edition.

 

[Rechan]

The first thing that really offended my sensibility is that this guy describles your character's reactions and emotions and such. That, to me, is Out of Bounds for a DM. Whether my character recoils from something disgusting or just grunts and wipes his hand, that's my choice. Saying my character does x when a trap misses is fine, or how my character avoids a blow, but when he starts dictating my own character's reactions in and of themselves, that's where I draw the line.

As to the issue of STorytelling vs. Roleplaying, I actually don't make much of a distinction. Many indie roleplaying games have group storytelling. Not "we pass the stick and I tell you how your character reacts", but instead players can influence the narrative (rather than characters merely react to what the DM has given them, the players can also react to changes the Players have made).

A very off-the-top-of-my-head example would be, "Ok, we need to get out of dodge? I spend a plot point. DM, I once got this guy out of a jam, and he owes me a favor. I call in my favor, hit up Fast Tony, and get him to hide us." The DM then gets to 1) veto it if he feels it's out of bounds for, say, a plot point, or then 2) gets to include any complications or narrate anything or whatnot - for instance Fast Tony might be monitored by the FBI, and the Pcs conversation at Fast Tony's was picked up on the planted bugs.

To me, Roleplaying is "This is my character being my character", storytelling is "This is something happening outside of my character".

What the DM in the OP is doing is reading a script with (Insert Die Roll Here) interspersed.

 

[Aus_Snow]

I get annoyed with the use of buzzwords like storytelling vs. roleplaying and whatnot.

Fire drill, anyone?

Anyway, yeah, this guy needs some pointers re: DMing. Maybe some other kind of help too. Dunno.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

that doesn't sound like roleplaying at all. and it sounds terribly boring. well, actually it sounds pretty amusing, but in an out of body experience type of way. most of all, it just seems they aren't playing d&d. whether you call it role playing, or whether you call it storytelling, whatever it is, the d&d mechanics do not suit it whatsoever.

Yeah. I mean, the guy was REALLY good at describing things. He wove an awesome story. I'm probably going to go back to see if things are at all different next week. We started late, he didn't know he was going to be running D&D when I showed up. He had to come up with a story on the fly, and I got the impression a couple of times that he was talking, mostly so that he could get the stuff he was making up on the fly out of his head as soon as they occurred to him.

He said he'd actually plan something for next week. I'll see if his style changes.

they usually play 3.5? that doesn't seem any better suited. min/maxing is even more possible.

They used to. Apparently, they've been playing 4e for a year now, despite wanting to play other systems because they've advertised their game publicly, and the players who show up keep requesting 4e games.

But I get the impression that it fits their style a bit better in a couple of ways. When the DM says "There are 40 guys out there" he can run a battle against 40 1st level fighters and have them pose a real threat to the group. And have the battle not be a TPK. On the other hand, in 4e those 40 guys who are 1st level would likely kill a 4e party of 5th level without really blinking. And if you make them all minions....they may not pose much of a threat at all unless you make them level 5 or 6 minions. And with Wizards and Swordmages around...they might be able to burst them all into death quickly.

In their complaint post about 4e, their main complaint was "It is impossible for monsters to win against PCs, because PCs are horribly overpowered and unbeatable." Swordmage was listed as an example because it allowed them to kill 8 minions at a time, which was horribly broken. The second issue was "No craft, profession, and perform" and without those skills, roleplaying was impossible.

i hope you have other options for games. it certainly doesn't seem like these players would be interested in playing your style of game even with you dming.

Yeah, I currently play in a weekly game. I was just looking to find new experiences. My weekly game is kind of the EXACT opposite. Too much opposite for me sometimes. The DM starts saying "The room is..." and by the time they get that much out, we have 4 players talking to each other about WoW, the newest feat they got for their character last level, or their favorite moment from the last combat.

We've actually had a player say "Are you done talking yet so we can kill things?" The PCs in this game nearly ALL average 30 damage a round with their at-will attacks at 12th level. I'm considered the weak one in the group because I only do 1d10+12 Brutal 2 against bloodied creatures. They mostly got that power by using Power Attack/Bloodclaw/Iron Armbands, by using Frost Weapons/Lasting Frost/Bloodmage, or Powerful Charge/Howling Strike/Power Attack/Reckless Weapon.

This is a group that when I brought up the "You're a half-elf? Really?" thread to them, one of them playing a Warforged said "I play up that I'm a warforged all the time" and I said "I think you mentioned it once...back when we were level 2, 6 months ago." He said, "Well, how am I supposed to mention it? Warforged aren't any different from humans."

 

[The Ghost]

This is a DM who hates the game he is running and wants to make it suck at all costs to prove his point. Whether he is capable of running a good game at all remains to be seen.

Maybe. I don't know what his true motives are and I hesitate to speculate on them.

4E isn't what I would call my "go to" system of choice, but I recently started a campaign using 4E and intend on having it not suck because running a crappy game for my friends is no way to prove anyhing except that I know how to ruin an evening of fun. This DM sounds more like a selfish tool than a clueless newb. Someone else should run a real game and kick him out before he poisons that one.

It is possible that his players actually do enjoy something like what was written in the OP. It is also possible that he was just having a bad session. It happens to us all from time-to-time. We are getting a fairly one-sided view of what happened. I don't think that I would enjoy a game session like that described in the OP, but I can certainly understand how some people might. What really gets me though, (and this applies to ExploderWizard and the group in the OP) is this attitude that "we will show you how to run a real game" - whatever that is. Why can't they just enjoy their game and you enjoy yours?

 

[ExploderWizard]

Why can't they just enjoy their game and you enjoy yours?

Based on the expressed comments the OP didn't enjoy the game. Other members of the group might have loved it but we don't know unless they speak up.

We all have bad days but constantly blaming the system for them out loud to the group still stinks.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Based on the expressed comments the OP didn't enjoy the game. Other members of the group might have loved it but we don't know unless they speak up.

I wouldn't say I actually didn't enjoy it...it was fun. But it was so different from what I was used to, I needed to make a post on it.

It's fairly apparent everyone else in the group loves the way it works. They also posted on their forums saying how great their DM was because he was able to adapt the game and give nearly every type of player(despite being many different styles) something to enjoy in game. They really enjoyed the fact that he ran a "thinking man's game". In that, you had to use your brain because often fighting was the absolute worst answer in his games.

But it was also apparent in their posts that they'd much rather be playing Exalted, Rogue Trader, or Dark Heresy. They just keep being "forced" to use a substandard system because 2-3 people show up every week that don't want to try any other games. Some of them are "Slayers" and that player type annoys them because there are a couple of "Actors" in their group and they feel the two player types are incompatible.

We all have bad days but constantly blaming the system for them out loud to the group still stinks.

Yeah. And to be fair, I think they considered the day I came one where the system DIDN'T pose a problem.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

What really gets me though, (and this applies to ExploderWizard and the group in the OP) is this attitude that "we will show you how to run a real game" - whatever that is. Why can't they just enjoy their game and you enjoy yours?

That was kind of my sticking point too. To be fair, I joined the meetup group and started posting in defense of 4e. It seems they were all in fairly big agreement that 4e was broken(except for the newest 3 or 4 people to their 12 member group. Different people show up every week.). I just suggested that it might be best to run 4e the way it was meant to be run and see if that was fun for them. They suggested that if they ran 4e the way it was meant to be run than they were no longer roleplaying. Since it took ALL of their choices(i.e. they were incapable of crafting anything since there was no craft skill, they were incapable of playing an instrument without any perform, they were incapable of doing anything against the party since it was a cooperative game), they weren't playing a roleplaying game anymore.

Which I felt pretty insulted by. But the DM posted saying "Look, I think we all got off on the wrong foot, and it sounds like everyone in my group hates 4e. But that's not true. We've been playing it every week for a year now. Just come to our game, I'm sure you'll like it and you'll get along with everyone here."

It wasn't horrible. I'm thinking I'll just interrupt the DM more often when I want to do something before he narrates past me next week. I'm just concerned that I already have on of their players posting a message about the session that said: "Majoru was also a nice little addition to our adventure, a great roleplayer indeed. Mind you his assassin is a tiny bit cheap , I could sympathize with the DM."

I multiclassed into Rogue and I purposefully didn't sneak attack that encounter because the DM was complaining that I was doing too much damage when I was only using at-wills. I think I might optimize a little too well to fit in.

 

[Henry]

I think I might optimize a little too well to fit in.

Optimize, or just know the rules? If the player of the wizard and the DM were any indication, it sounds like they need a slightly better refresher on the rules, because they took the "INT vs. Reflex" a little too literally, and the DM really didn't read the DMG, at least the DM advice parts.

 

[Celebrim]

Well, I must say that in 25 years I've never encountered a DM like that.

I don't mind a longwinded DM, and at times I've felt like the long winded DM and even asked my PC's if they thought my descriptions were getting to florid, but they seemed to like it - or at least they encouraged me to continue. And I don't mind not picking up the dice much. Picking up the dice is not really part of role-playing, its how you arbitrate propositions that have interesting consequences if they fail.

But, if the description is accurate the DM is doing something that no good DM should do - telling the player what his character does or how the character responds. That is not to be tolerated except in cases where something like a charm is influencing the character.

There is nothing 'primitive' or 'old school' about that sort of DMing.

So, reasonable and good:

"DM: "29? WOW. You see the Assassin almost turn invisible. One second he is there and one second he is gone. Even though the Artificer has gone after him, she has difficulty finding him and just has to head in the general direction of the camp and hope she finds him. Assassin, you hear the sound of water crashing into a pool and voices up ahead. You hear someone say 'Where do you put my shirt?' and some arguing. Up ahead, the trees are thick and hard to see through. Keep in mind that these are primeval forests, not the forests of today."

But bad:

"You proceed past the men bathing in the pool nearby, the sound of the waterfall masking your progress until you reach the camp."

The DM needs to put a decision point here. You've provided a new set of choices to the PC, and now you need to know essentially, "Do you want to continue on to the main camp or turn aside and investigate the pool where the voices are coming from?" As a DM you don't know that the PC 'proceeds past the men bathing in the pool nearby' until the player tells you that you do.

Aside from forgetting who can see what in a divided party, good:

"There is lots of noise in the camp so it easily covers you as you get closer. In the camp you see a couple of people. One, the Fighter recognizes (The fighter couldn't even see the camp from where he was standing, by the way) as Bob (can't remember the name).

But bad:

He is the evil slaver you met in your travels before. He is a vile, wicked man who traffics in flesh and mistreats his slaves. As you watch this man walk towards a wagon that is covered, obviously to prevent people from noticing that it contains slaves.

This isn't nearly as big of a flaw as telling the player what the character does (I'd be tempted to find an excuse to leave early if too much of that happened), but its not really polished DMing because its telling instead of showing. Don't tell someone how vile and evil an NPC is, showthem. Don't explain why things are as they are, let the character decide for themselves or ask. Your job is to show 'what, who, when, where', and to leave 'how' and 'why' for the PC to figure out.

Bad:

You are aware that she makes way more noise than you and you quickly tell her to be quiet.

This one is particularly irritating, because its not only depriving the player of a choice but its depriving a player of the oppurtunity to role play. What really should be said here is something like, "Jane finds you. She's making entirely too much noice.", and leave it to the players to create the scene.

Bad:

What we have here is a choice. You have Good people amongst you and they cannot allow these slavers to continue their work. But as you look, you can see that the woman you are looking for is not amongst the camp. The monk suddenly appears beside you, just as silent as you are. He says that if you stop to deal with the camp, all hope is lost in finding this woman he is looking for. But if you choose to do something about it, he will understand. He cannot stand slavers either. If he needs to trade the life of one person for the lives of many, he will make that trade. But it is up to you.

Uggg... uggg... I can't say how bad that is. I really hope that summation isn't doing it justice, because I can't imagine playing like that.

In all fairness, it also doesn't sound to me like the player's are what I'd call particularly skilled either as it seems to me from the description that there was alot of attempts to resolve in game situations out of character and using meta-language, and the DM found himself doing alot of translation to explain things in in-game language.