Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Argyle King" data-source="post: 5388355" data-attributes="member: 58416">In contrast to the many people who have said the issue is due to GM failure, I am going to say otherwise.  I too am somewhat irked by players who seem to have mental inertia.  As someone has already mentioned, if I'm GMing the world and also telling your character what he should be doing, I might as well just stay home and write a book. I do not believe anyone else is playing the game wrongly by prefering to be lead by the hand.  I simply highly prefer that players have at least a modicum of initiative.  Even if it's hack & slash, that's at least something... it may not be a strategy that always works in the games I run, but you're at least doing something without me needed to tell you what you have to do. I see no reason why players can't create hooks.  Even if I am running an adventure path and am providing hooks, I still like it when a player's character has... well... has character.  When I sit and ponder your character's motivations for being an adventurer, I like it when I have more of a reason than 'well, the GM says so..."  Again, I'll take even ye olde cliche of fame and fortune; just give me some sort of feedback. One thing which I don't think gets said enough is that the GM is a player too.  If I'm not enjoying my seat at the game from the GM side of the table, I'm not going to want to play any more than a player who isn't enjoying being part of my game.  I'm willing to compromise my style and include things in games which fit the styles of the people I game with; however, a compromise goes both ways, and I expect at least a token effort at giving me a little bit of what I want.  If you hate my GMing style, hey, that's fine too; I'll let somebody else GM if the group is violently opposed to what I want to run rather than do all the work of GMing only to be miserable every weekend. I have had experiences similar to the player 2 example which Fire gave.  One of the players who comes to mind would literally not do anything unless I practically played his character for him.  Again, I understand that some people just want to sit down and roll some dice without much thought; I really do understand that.  However, asking whether or not you open a door shouldn't -I feel- lead to the deer in the headlights* look.    Pacing can be controlled by players in more than just combat situations.  In the face-to-face campaign I am running right now, the players are in a town on the edge of civilization.  Through various social interactions with NPCs, the players developed a desire to be involved in the growth of the town.  This meant that the players chose to take a break from the story arc they were involved in and instead create their own hooks involved with the town.  This also meant that several months of in-game time had passed.  Thirdly, it meant that they had control over what they felt was important to them and the game.  From the GM side of things, I highly enjoyed that they were looking through the world in the eyes of their characters and creating things which had some amount of sentimental value to those characters; the world became something shared with the players rather than something completely dictated to them.  *Yes, I understand there can be a variety of reasons for this.  If all you've known are linear campaigns and you're caught offguard** by the ability to choose your path, I can work with that.  If you're new to rpgs and the game seems confusing, I can work with that.  I can work with a lot of things. If you just don't want to play in an open ended game, fine, I can even work with that or find you someone else better suited to a linear game.  All I ask is to let me know, and I'll do what I can to help if that's what you need.  However, if you're just willfully choosing to not participate because "well, that's not why I'm here" that's -in my opinion- somewhat selfish.  I feel that rpgs are meant to be a shared experience.  As a GM, you need to know your players.  As a player, you need to be mindful that not everyone at the table is there for the exact same reasons you are.  Sometimes   Expecting the GM and other players to compromise and include things to fit your style without being willing to do anything at all which is outside of your prefered playstyle, I feel that is somewhat insulting to the other people at the table. **I know some people don't like the term 'train your players' as illustrated by the posts earlier in this thread, but I do feel that some amount of training can and should take place in this case.  An rpg experience need not be exactly the same every time you sit down at a table.  That's something I feel that enough people are not aware of; that there's more than one way to play the game.  Especially in the case of new players being exposed to the hobby, I think it's good to showcase the flexibility of rpgs and illustrate that it's just as possible to interactively play through a multiplayer choose your own adventure book as it is to play a tabletop version of WoW.</blockquote>

Verification