To RP Game Players/Gamemasters -- What is Fun? What is Unfun?

[ScottS]

Fun: Some sort of plane travel/planet hopping/extreme environment exploration/"alternative physics" that my character can control and interact with. I don't know how much this overlaps with genre-mashing, because I haven't played most of the games that specialized in this sort of thing (Rifts, Torg, etc.) The game system/setting that I've had the most success with outside of D&D is Shadowrun, and I think that the "astral space" and "virtual hacking" aspects of SR are partially what made it fun and interesting (also see below). (Fantasy-literature-wise, I'm coming at gaming from a Zelazny/Farmer direction rather than Tolkien/Jordan.)

Fun: Being able to play beings which differ substantially from the human(oid) norm in a game-mechanical way (i.e. that aren't just "humans in funny makeup" with different stat bonuses and minor powers). D&D Dark Sun did this to a reasonable degree, as did Shadowrun. Core D&D races aren't reallly "different" enough. (Needless to say, I was a huge fan of Savage Species and the cleaned-up LA/ECL rules. "I don't care how much you nerf me; just let me play a damn blink dog/lantern archon/whatever.")

 

[Umbran]

Yeah, I know, that sounds crazy. Everybody knows game system choices stem from fundamental moral failings and corporate brainwashing.

If you have a problem with moderation warnings, take it to e-mail.

If you overstate a moderator's position like that again, you will not be happy with the results

To be clear - I said absolutely nothing about moral failings or corporate brainwashing - those are your terms, and they came out of your own mind, not mine. Do not try to put them in my mouth again, sir.

I am talking about simple habits of thought, created over months of talking this stuff over, often vehemently - getting stuck in a mental rut. When so many of the fun/unfun lists so closely match the partisan talking points of the Edition Warz, you need to make a pretty strong case that there's no patterning involved.

So, here's the challenge to everyone - break out of the rut. Find the unfun things in your favored edition, and the fun things in the edition you otherwise don't like. There lies real honesty and valuable analysis.

 

[ExploderWizard]

So, here's the challenge to everyone - break out of the rut. Find the unfun things in your favored edition, and the fun things in the edition you otherwise don't like. There lies real honesty and valuable analysis.

I accept:

Basic D&D (my favorite)
UNFUN:
Being exactly the same as every other member of my class.

D&D 4E (my least favorite)
FUN:
Having several maneuver options available even at 1st level.

 

[Shades of Green]

So, here's the challenge to everyone - break out of the rut. Find the unfun things in your favored edition, and the fun things in the edition you otherwise don't like. There lies real honesty and valuable analysis.

Unfun in AD&D 1E/2E (more or less my favorite):
- Racial class limits (or level limits). The only cases I'd think about class limits for races is for specific campaign reasons (e.g. dwarves are naturally magical resistant and thus arcane magic doesn't work well for them), but saying without a justification that ALL dwarves in ALL campaigns couldn't be mages, paladins, rangers and so on is annoying.

- Messy "task resolution" - multiple and different systems for saving throws, attacks and non-weapon proficiencies. Also, a large number of saving throws, THAC0 and negative AC being better.

Fun in D&D 3E (a bit less of a favorite but I play it a lot more often):
- No racial limits on class selection; going against archetype might create a slightly less optimal character but is mechanically possible.

- A unified d20 "task system" for everything, making the system easier to use and smoother to run. Also, three saving throws, positive AC and simple BAB instead of THAC0.

 

[GlaziusF]

What I've always enjoyed about D&D is that it was a pretty good excuse for getting together with other people who were okay with pretending to hack around a dungeon. Sometimes we wouldn't even play D&D, we'd get caught up in a ridiculously huge mix of Munchkin or the more cerebral guy would make an attempt to teach us how to play Puerto Rico (I think we got the directions right the fifth time through, maybe?) and that'd be the night.

And most times I didn't really mind, because I was the DM and my head was all full of numbers that I really couldn't connect to each other.

But one time I was really humming. I had some complete dead space at my day job, so I spent a week working on a way to mix up a bunch of encounters for an open-ended ruin the PCs were heading into. I built separate creature decks for the different factions, created some rules that sounded right to create tactically balanced encounters, and spent a lot of time tuning a small selection of monsters with various level adjustments and NPC classes and PC classes and feat selections and a lot of time checking and double-checking the math for all that. The one thing I was really proud of was putting a few simple combat options on each monster card based on existing skills or magical items I gave them.

I also had a deck containing various bits of treasure, mostly random wealth with the occasional magic item and the more occasional item the PCs might want.

I think we spent a few months in that ruin, rotating new monsters through the deck as the PCs dropped the old ones. It was fairly easy to get going and I definitely threw in some ad-libs about the giant ruined city, survivors, and some of the less intelligent creatures, but for the most part the random drawing gave me enough to work with most weeks.

And then the decks were exhausted, the bosses down, and we moved on... and I didn't have nearly as much time to prep every week and the campaign fell apart. But I was really humming.

And then, some time later, I cracked the new DMG and MM, and the feeling that I'd just walked into the Twilight Zone gradually gave way to the realization that I could prep like that all the time.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Fun = Stuff I Like
Not Fun = Stuff I Don't Like.

It depends on my mood. RE: 4e, here's what I've found.

Fun = Killing things, taking their stuff, telling a story about it.
Not Fun = Monster creation (hooray for vague suggestions!), character creation (hooray for writing cramps!), combat (hooray watered-down video game chess!), plotting (hooray pre-determined plot points!).

RE: 3e, here was the case:
Fun = Killing things, taking their stuff, telling a story about it, reacting to players' actions to build a story, working spontaneously, building a world filled with adventure, working with the assumptions of the game, changing the assumptions of the game to see what happened
Not Fun = Creating a character, monster, or NPC above 5th level. Trying to fit 20+ level characters into a dungeon. Overly swingy combats. Accidental Suck.

Hopefully that calls out enough cool things and sucky things about each edition to keep the jackals at bay.

 

[Derren]

Fun
- Having a living world with realistic consequences.
- The PCs interacting with said world as if they really live in that
- The players making their own plans and solve problems in a RP way.
- The players building their PCs according to their role, not for combat effectivness

Not Fun
- Having a visibly non functional world which only serves as background for the PC to slaughter things
- The players not thinking for themselves and expect to be railroaded from place to place, only interested in the next combat/loot.
- Players building their characters only around combat effectiveness (no matter if they do it voluntary or are forced to do so by the rules)

 

[thedungeondelver]

So, here's the challenge to everyone - break out of the rut. Find the unfun things in your favored edition, and the fun things in the edition you otherwise don't like. There lies real honesty and valuable analysis.

I'll see you and raise you:

The least fun thing in AD&D is initiative. There is no "right way" to do it. Gary gave contradictory answers when asked about it. Figuring out initiative in AD&D is "every DM for themselves". Surprise? That works. It's hard to figure out, but once you've got it down, it works. Unarmed melee? Again, very hard to figure out, but it works. Initiative? Pf, forgetaboutit.

The most fun thing in DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 3RD EDITION are prestige classes, which while potential exploits for intolerable munchkins, obviously draw their roots directly from ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS (look up the rules on how the cavalier and bard work) and the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS RULES CYCLOPEDIA (paladins and some others I can't immediately recall).

 

[thedungeondelver]

This is something I enjoy a lot. Although I don't exactly 'wargame' the NPCs unless they're brilliant tacticians; smart critters like drow or duergar maybe. With orcs and goblins, I play them in-character; dangerous but intellectually limited. I ran an orc squad with panthers on Saturday vs the PCs. The PCs were holding a narrow doorway. The orcs sent in the panthers first to soften them up; then when a gap opened up the big orcs drove the small weak orcs in first, soaking up the AoOs of the defenders so the little orcs got cut down and the big orcs behind were able to move in over the corpses and pour into the room. At that point the orcs got massacred; they'd already lost too many men & panthers. The last orc ran away; a PC tracked him down and finished him off. But it was fun getting into the mindset of orcs and running them appropriately, and doing my best - as an orc - to kill the PCs.

<obiwan>
Then you've taken your first step into a larger world.
</obiwan>

I should tell the story about the smackdown that took place in the dungeon level of G1, one of these days.

 

[Fifth Element]

Unfun: Rules you need to look up every single time.

Fun: As a DM, a successful use of the DM's Force trick. (No, I don't mean Star Wars.)

Unfun: Save or suck effects.

Fun: Critting when you're down to you last 3 hit points.