So this is mostly just a vent.
I've been DMing a 3e game for about three years. It wrapped up a few weeks ago, and the group seemed happy. We went from level one to level twenty, they went through a complex and connected storyline with a genuine plot and everything, and people told me in private that they really liked the game.
So, after the game, we considered our options. Nobody else really wanted to GM the next game. There were two people who said, "Death first," two people who said, "I don't want to, and I don't think I'd be good at it," and one person who said, "I'm already running one, but if Tacky doesn't want to, I can run this one, too," and then we all hastened to tell him that wasn't necessary, since he's the group's official fifth wheel, the one who doesn't actually roleplay at all unless he's doing it to pass up a plot hook, the one who thinks he has a much better sense of humor than he actually does. In private conversations with two of the other guys, we'd compared playing in a game this guy was DMing to whacking yourself repeatedly in the groin with a whiffle bat.
So hey, I'm the DM again. I suggest d20 Modern. They say cool. I tell them I'm thinking about campaigns. They say cool.
I decide to get a feel for what people want, and everyone kind of says, "You know, whatever is good." I decide that this is not terribly specific, so I send out a survey with various genres and themes (how equipment-bound should characters be? how easy should death be to overcome? etc.)
And here's what I've found out.
I don't really have a gaming group. I have a CRPG group that just happens to use dice. They don't want a big overarching plot this time, but they DO want character-driven sessions and the potential for a full night without combat -- despite the fact that none of them are comfortable enough roleplaying to do so much as an accent, and two-thirds of them can't separate player knowledge from character knowledge. The survey says that they are interested in either Urban Fantasy or Cyberpunk as genres. Great, I think -- one of the campaign ideas I had sort of mixes the two ideas.
I run it by one of the players, who promptly says that it's too complicated and that people wouldn't have fun. So goodbye, "Fey surreptitiously helping PCs fight the sneaky invasion of Earth by non-spaceship-flying aliens that use Cyberpunk technology."
Okay, so, next idea -- something like a cop show. CSI folks, District Attorneys, Detectives, working together to solve mysteries. After a few cases, I could slowly introduce fantasy creatures into the campaign as a sort of evolving underworld. I bring the idea (minus the fantasy element, which I'm playing close to my chest) to another player, who says, "didn't we just do that?" Yes, technically, the players started their campaign as a branch of guardsmen who left the town on special missions to protect people, until they got to be high enough level to effectively go out and do stuff on their own. That bears about as much resemblence to a team mystery-solver game as Dragnet does to Stargate: SG-1.
Here's what I'm gradually realizing: Asking my players what they wanted was an enormous mistake.
My players don't know what they want. They want the game to be totally plot-filled so they can roleplay, except that they don't actually want to roleplay, they want to show off their minmaxing skills and brag about what a given skill check result is. They don't actually want to decide on, much less work on, any campaign idea themselves, but they're really happy to veto ideas.
The proper approach to this would have been for me to just say, "Okay, it's me, then? I'm DMing again because nobody else wants to? Great. Here's what we're playing." I should have kept things nice and tyrannical, so that even if they were pissed at me for making them play the game I chose, we'd at least be playing something.
Yeah, I know, player choice makes for good campaign, gablah gablah, gablah, but the little addendum that so often gets overlooked is that it's player choice plus player WORK...
As I said before, I'm pretty much just venting. Nobody's got a gun to my head, forcing me to DM. It's just frustrating watching something I started to improve player satisfaction turn out to be this entry into an enormous, "And we all want tough morality choices, but none of this 'no right option' moral ambiguity stuff," complaint session.
I've been DMing a 3e game for about three years. It wrapped up a few weeks ago, and the group seemed happy. We went from level one to level twenty, they went through a complex and connected storyline with a genuine plot and everything, and people told me in private that they really liked the game.
So, after the game, we considered our options. Nobody else really wanted to GM the next game. There were two people who said, "Death first," two people who said, "I don't want to, and I don't think I'd be good at it," and one person who said, "I'm already running one, but if Tacky doesn't want to, I can run this one, too," and then we all hastened to tell him that wasn't necessary, since he's the group's official fifth wheel, the one who doesn't actually roleplay at all unless he's doing it to pass up a plot hook, the one who thinks he has a much better sense of humor than he actually does. In private conversations with two of the other guys, we'd compared playing in a game this guy was DMing to whacking yourself repeatedly in the groin with a whiffle bat.
So hey, I'm the DM again. I suggest d20 Modern. They say cool. I tell them I'm thinking about campaigns. They say cool.
I decide to get a feel for what people want, and everyone kind of says, "You know, whatever is good." I decide that this is not terribly specific, so I send out a survey with various genres and themes (how equipment-bound should characters be? how easy should death be to overcome? etc.)
And here's what I've found out.
I don't really have a gaming group. I have a CRPG group that just happens to use dice. They don't want a big overarching plot this time, but they DO want character-driven sessions and the potential for a full night without combat -- despite the fact that none of them are comfortable enough roleplaying to do so much as an accent, and two-thirds of them can't separate player knowledge from character knowledge. The survey says that they are interested in either Urban Fantasy or Cyberpunk as genres. Great, I think -- one of the campaign ideas I had sort of mixes the two ideas.
I run it by one of the players, who promptly says that it's too complicated and that people wouldn't have fun. So goodbye, "Fey surreptitiously helping PCs fight the sneaky invasion of Earth by non-spaceship-flying aliens that use Cyberpunk technology."
Okay, so, next idea -- something like a cop show. CSI folks, District Attorneys, Detectives, working together to solve mysteries. After a few cases, I could slowly introduce fantasy creatures into the campaign as a sort of evolving underworld. I bring the idea (minus the fantasy element, which I'm playing close to my chest) to another player, who says, "didn't we just do that?" Yes, technically, the players started their campaign as a branch of guardsmen who left the town on special missions to protect people, until they got to be high enough level to effectively go out and do stuff on their own. That bears about as much resemblence to a team mystery-solver game as Dragnet does to Stargate: SG-1.
Here's what I'm gradually realizing: Asking my players what they wanted was an enormous mistake.
My players don't know what they want. They want the game to be totally plot-filled so they can roleplay, except that they don't actually want to roleplay, they want to show off their minmaxing skills and brag about what a given skill check result is. They don't actually want to decide on, much less work on, any campaign idea themselves, but they're really happy to veto ideas.
The proper approach to this would have been for me to just say, "Okay, it's me, then? I'm DMing again because nobody else wants to? Great. Here's what we're playing." I should have kept things nice and tyrannical, so that even if they were pissed at me for making them play the game I chose, we'd at least be playing something.
Yeah, I know, player choice makes for good campaign, gablah gablah, gablah, but the little addendum that so often gets overlooked is that it's player choice plus player WORK...
As I said before, I'm pretty much just venting. Nobody's got a gun to my head, forcing me to DM. It's just frustrating watching something I started to improve player satisfaction turn out to be this entry into an enormous, "And we all want tough morality choices, but none of this 'no right option' moral ambiguity stuff," complaint session.
Oh, you said to insult you and not your team, my mistake. Nothing comes to mind...
