Stupid Surveys...

[Haradim]

My group is the same way. Asking what they (and, I must admit, what I) want from a game is a nearly futile exercise.

The most you can generally get is a 'whatever works'. Half the time, even that is hard to draw out of them.

I too think, in the end, that they really only want the action, the times when they are winning, and to have the thinking turned down. I don't really have anything against this, but it isn't the kind of game I want to run/play in, at least not on a regular basis.

 

[evildm]

Wow, I thought this was unique to my group, as they're some of the most indecisive people I've ever known. I've started (recently, actually) making a habit of just dictating what I'm going to be running. Much to my surprise, it's actually working.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

Heh. I so know exactly what you mean. Something recent happened with my current game. It started as a dungeon > you meatgrinder megadungeon. I made sure everyone understood this. "You'll have to work as a team. Expect deaths otherwise. It's combat heavy." And that was an abysmal failure.

So I ran a survey to find out what the players want. Here's what I found out.
1. Role-playing scored #1. This from the people who didn't know eachother's names for 3 days, and who never once spoke to an NPC without me prompting it.
2. Character development scored #2. This from the group who has one character history between them (orphan, no family or friends).
3. Puzzles scored third. Puzzles are my weakness.
4. Generally, the answers were geared towards things with concievably little to no consiquence.
5. In many cases, when asked for prompting, or when presented an opertunity to say something bad about the DMing style (ie: Not enough campaign info as a choice) they avoided it.

This brings me to what I have learned about surveys. They are most useful when you've got an issue you want clarified. Mostly they've been of use to me when I know something's wrong, or when I'm directly worried about something. An example was asking if I overused the battle map. Everyone liked it, and in fact asked for more, but no one was willing to go to the point of saying that it replaced a good room description. Hence, it helped me make my decision. But it was only a factor. I actually cut back on the battle mat, simply because my players used that instaed of talking to me, or spent time worrying about their exact positioning around the table when it didn't matter (that and the calls of "move me to the window, would you?" got annoying).

Tacky, your situation sounds a lot like mine. If I let you join my game, can I join yours?

For the most part, the "Write it and they will play" section is correct. The only area that I differ in (from painful personal expierence) is that you may want a screening process. They will play. With the situation as I can imagine it, you could get enough force for a game if it was about lawn gnomes amasing adventures in watching grass. However, you wont' have nearly as much fun if the players aren't the right type. At one point, I was going to run a campaign somewhere between a fighting game and a kung-fu movie. It had three basic requirements. 1. The playes had to supply a plot hook. 2. The characters had to be committed to finishing this action no matter what. 3. The character had to be willing to work on a team with the others. I wound up with one character, weak on 1, but strong on 2 and 3. The second was strong on all 3. The third was a pacifist who lived in a monistary somewhere who managed to piss off his entire team in the first trial run, and nearly got everyone killed.

Needless to say, I stopped that game before I hurt myself, but I left the promise that if I found a decent third, we'd take it up again. The key is to make a game you want to run, but also get people who are willing to play that game.

I'd say that goes both ways. I recently quit a game (about to get back into it, as it's finally started to get interesting) run by a good friend of mine (player #1 above). He really refused to be cornered on what the game was focused on. From what I gathered, there was going to be an emphasis on exploration, character interaction, character growth, plot, and only the occasional combat (in rare cases when it was unavoidable). I wound up with a sociable medic/radio operator, with far too much depth for the game. Unfortunately, I read into his evasions what I wanted to play. The game I'm currently playing in had a similar setup. Except I couldn't get even that much from the DM. In either game, we spend a lot of time walking from place to place, waiting for a cue of what we can do, and talking to NPC's who don't have or want anything to do with us. The locations are kind of neat in both though.

If the game doesn't have an identity, it falls down to the group to do a lot of communication to keep the game running smoothly. This has been a flaw in all the games I've played in or run to date, except the one that's waiting on another decent player.

Woah, got a little off track there.

Anyway, do not leave the question open ended. Especially for CRPG players. Give them 5 or six answers, each obviously weigted in a certian direction. You'll still get all the information you need from them, but you'll be able to pull out something useful from it.

Hope that helped.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

And, just as a random note, Centaur's observation holds. Admittedly, my expierence as of the last 5 years is with a particularly bad group. But what I've found is that with one exception, everyone who I'd miss in the groups I've played with has DMed before. Typically they seem to have a wider range of skills, and much more appreciation for what's going on.

Speaking of which, there's one guy who's been DMing who I need to hit with the learning stick.

However, I have done some damn annoying things as a player in DM mode. It really does cut both ways. But this really is past OT, and going anymore into it would deserve its own thread.

 

[Greyhawk_DM]

People who only Play do so becuase they don't have enough immagination to know what they want. Sometimes the Best PCs are made up by people who also GM.
edit spelling...

I would not agree that most don't have enough imagination. IMO the people that DM are the ones that think about the game, situations in the game, how one pc or race or character type etc...would react in the game....etc....
Again IMO, most players treat the game like a video game...show up, pick a character personality dictated by game circumstances etc...roll some dice....get the treasure....go home and never really think about the game or their pc again until the next game session. The DM on the other hand is most likely consumed with "their" world. If not consumed they will at least think about it several times during the day or in the coming weeks leading up to "game time."

 

[Rune]

The problem with surveys, is that people inevitably read teh questions differently. They really aren't a good barometer of the preferences of the gaming group, in my experience.

On the other hand, it's a great idea to get fewedback after a game (ask specifically what you could improve and what you did well) and, of course, pay attention to the players' reactions during the game. That is how you keep track of the groups preferences.

On the comment about non-DMs lacking creativity, I can think of one outstanding example off the top of my head that stands in opposition to the statement. My brother, an excellent role-player has DMed before, but does not DM. For whatever reasons (lack of time, lack of confidence, lack of a desire to take a leadership position, all vital to DMing), he simply prefers not to run games.

He has tons of great ideas and, in fact, regularly breaks rule #1 (never give the DM ideas) just to see what I'll do with it. He's an excellent DM, in fact. He just doesn't DM.

As a side note (since Tacky mentioned that he told one of his players about his campaign ideas), I always think it's a bad idea to give away campaign secrets to even those who are good at seperating character knowledge from out-of-game knowledge. It's really unfair to the player.

My advice?

Run the Fey Modern game anyway; just don't tell the players you're running it. All they need to know is that it's a modern game. If they have the opportunity to figure out what supernatural stuff is happening on their own, the idea will seem a lot fresher than a survey could make it sound.

Also, when the guy who said it was too complicated figures out you ran it anyway, you get to say, "I told you so."

 

[takyris]

Hey, everybody,

Thanks for the support. It really helped. I was really getting frustrated by these "enh" semi-vetoes from people who hadn't really thought about the campaign I'd been doing work to plan.

Here's what I think I'm gonna do. I'm going to tell them that I looked at all their surveys, and I've come up with three campaigns. I will actually describe the campaigns with slight spoilers, so that people will know that they're in for cyberpunk aliens or criminal fey. I'll give them a list of three choices, and then tell them to work it out among themselves and come to me only once they've decided which one they want to play.

I also plan to directly address the most frustrating problem I saw, which boils down to, "I don't want to be shoehorned through the plot. Also, I don't want to play a heroic adventurer character." Maybe I'm shortsighted, but I don't see how that leaves room for a game. PCs usually consist of either adventurous people out looking for stuff to happen, or ordinary people who get pulled into the action against their better judgment and often against their will. If you have an ordinary Joe who isn't looking for action, and nothing happens to pull him into the action, what exactly do we do all session? We end up playing _Seinfeld d20_, in effect. Yes, roll to see if you get Kramer's obscure reference. Diplomacy check on Elaine? Reflex save to react to that one-liner.

I'll have one campaign where people are sucked into the action, and one campaign where PCs must be adventurous and go off looking for action -- and both of these will be up-front and declared beforehand, so that people can pick the one they want.

Anyway, thanks again for the help.

By the way, in re players vs. DMs imagination -- I find that that tends to be true in a lot of cases, as many stereotypes tend to be true, but it's nowhere near 100%. A good DM must have imagination, but good imagination alone does not make a good DM. Some of my players have great imaginations, but they lack something else that would make them a great DM -- and sometimes the thing that they lack is the desire. I completely agree with whoever said that the DMs are different from the players primarily in that they're more driven, more interested, and more likely to think about and work on the game. That drive is more of a distinguishing factor for me than imagination or inherent intelligence or devilish good looks or anything like that.

 

[Henry]

I also plan to directly address the most frustrating problem I saw, which boils down to, "I don't want to be shoehorned through the plot. Also, I don't want to play a heroic adventurer character." Maybe I'm shortsighted, but I don't see how that leaves room for a game.

My perception from what you said is that they don't want "Seinfeld," they want "Soldier of Fortune." They want to make the big bucks, live the adventurous dream - but they don't want attacks of conscience when they refuse to save the small town and rescue the princess.