Why is "I don't like it" not good enough?

[nerfherder]

I've also found that it's easier to write a "game available" ad using the direct approach. Might you accidentally alienate players who do fit because they're offended by the ad? Sure, but then you wouldn't want that person at your game anyway.

This is an excellent idea that works both ways. There are clearly DMs & players that have different preferences, and it's probably best for the game if they don't mix. Write your ad "being the biggest douchebag I could possibly be", as Hussar put it, then you'll get the type of players you prefer, and the other players will respond to the ads that don't read like they were written by "the biggest douchebag". Win - win!

 

[Rel]

Also, contra Rel, I'm really not that into listening to a new players social games in order to teach him or her that such stuff doesn't fly. I love to teach new people how to game, or gamers a new style (if they are interested). Teaching them social skills? Not so much. I find that this preference transcends gaming, and applies to everything I do. (I've done a lot of teaching careers and hobbies.)

Did I say that?

 

[Hussar]

This is an excellent idea that works both ways. There are clearly DMs & players that have different preferences, and it's probably best for the game if they don't mix. Write your ad "being the biggest douchebag I could possibly be", as Hussar put it, then you'll get the type of players you prefer, and the other players will respond to the ads that don't read like they were written by "the biggest douchebag". Win - win!

Pretty much, yeah. I'm not sure if I'm actually writing a really nasty ad or not to be honest. It certainly feels like I am. But, I just got so tired of flakey players that it was the only way I could weed out the chaff. Anyone who was willing to put up with the crap I was spewing at the outset obviously had enough intestinal fortitude to actually commit to an ongoing game.

When screening potential players from strangers, I find that you really can't be very sentimental about it. All business at the outset and then try to be the nice guy later on down the line.

Shadzar-

I am putting myself out there as willing to run a game and make it work. Sadly only one person liked the idea to continue, and I am not really running solo games, nor are they in playing them, so looking for new players again once tax-season is over, and just winging it until then.

I don't know you and I only know the small snippet you are presenting here, but, if you put it to the group that you want to keep going and everyone gets up and leaves, save one player, it might be time for a bit of self-examination. Why didn't they want to continue? Is this the first time this has happened? Why did your groups end previously?

Look, I'm not trying to fling poo here. But, it sounds like you just had a player revolt. That generally doesn't happen for no reason.

 

[The Shaman]

You create a world/setting/campaign whole cloth, working on internal consistence, the feel of it, internal logic and a certain flavour. You go to great lengths to make everything fitting and everything has a place in this.

Pretty much, yeah.

At the actual table, you have every player hand in their characters and then aprove or disaprove based on whether that character fits into your preconceived scenario.

Yup. I even have a set of rubber stamps which read APPROVED, REJECTED, and RESUBMIT WITH EDITS, and a bright red Sharpie.

I also insist that my chair is at least three inches higher than everyone else's.



Actually, it begins with the system. I chose Flashing Blades from among other swashbuckling rpgs because it does a great job producing cape-and-sword genre archetype characters. I recruited players interested in the system or the genre. We conducted chargen together at the table, during which we discussed ways to sync their developing character concepts and the setting and to the other characters.

I choose settings which allow for a range of different character concepts, and I enjoy characters which bend but don't break genre conventions. The roommate of one of my players watched us playing and liked the game, but he didn't really have an interest in playing a swordsman, so we kicked around the concept of a pacifist friar-alchemist for his character, if he can arrange his schedule to join us. If he wanted to play a steampunk clockwork automaton fencing machine, I would've politely said no - that's genre-breaking, not genre-bending.

I, on the other hand, ask my players what they like to see in the next world/setting/campaign and work from there on out. If no one has any interest in dwarves, I leave them out. If no one like playing a human, I leave them out. If everyone agrees on grim and gritty, I make it so. Fantasy Samurai Japan? Why not. And so on.

I'm not part of a 'gaming group' which bounces around from rpg to rpg, campaign to campaign - "We're finishing up Clyde's Call of Cthulhu campaign, then we're going to alternate weeks between Maria's Dogs in the Vinyeard game and some gm-less Capes," holds no appeal for me.

My tastes in rpgs are quite narrow. I rarely play rpgs simply to play rpgs, but rather because a particular concept interests me. The closest I get to the former is my annual D&D game with some of the local guys from Dragonsfoot; I have no interest in joiing a group of D&D players just to play an rpg, however, and the only foreseeable circumstance in which I'd run D&D again is for my kids (and I'd rather introduce them to Traveller, but my daughter likes The Black Cauldron and my son wants Castle LEGO for his birthday . . . ).

So I run what I want to run, and I find players who are interested in playing that game rather than creating a game expressly to suit a group of players.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

So I run what I want to run, and I find players who are interested in playing that game rather than creating a game expressly to suit a group of players.

I'm sort of in the middle. When my Pathfinder game ended, I was willing to run PFRPG, M&M, Shadowrun, Serenity (using d6 rules), or Warriors & Warlocks (M&M). We all voted and M&M won.

Once the system is picked, though, as GM the specifics are up to me. The parameters I chose were "modern day, parallel universe, Bay Area, heroic non-loner non-psychopath PCs, tone closer to Silver Age than to Iron or Bronze Age."

If the players had cared enough to ask before the vote, I'd have been glad to share as much of that as I'd decided on, but after the vote, it's my call. If a player really, really wants to play a clone of Deadpool, I say go for it. In somebody else's game.

 

[shadzar]

Well, hang on, you're the one who said "when designing an adventure you do NOT know the final players you will be playing for an DO design in a vacuum of sorts". I denied that this is true of me. I didn't dispute that it might be true for some.

It seemed you were denying if memory serves a while ago..if not..then c'est la vie..

 

[shadzar]

Shadzar-

I don't know you and I only know the small snippet you are presenting here, but, if you put it to the group that you want to keep going and everyone gets up and leaves, save one player, it might be time for a bit of self-examination. Why didn't they want to continue? Is this the first time this has happened? Why did your groups end previously?

Look, I'm not trying to fling poo here. But, it sounds like you just had a player revolt. That generally doesn't happen for no reason.

AFTER games, only one person has shown interest in continuing as a group/joining the group of what I am willing to run/play in.

Others will return for one shots of varying types of games had or different ideas, but only one interested thus far for making a group to have a continuous game.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Did I say that?

I'm too lazy to go back and look up the exact statements, but there were a series of posts where you indicated what appeared to me to be far more willingness than I possess to tolerate agenda setting and other such behavior--under the guise of asking "Why?"--in order to teach the player that such things wouldn't fly.

I'm not interested in teaching them that it won't fly (barring them being very young or otherwise having a good excuse for not having already learned it). I'm not interested in them being in the room with me.

A couple of months ago in another venue, I learned more about where my line was. I help teach beginner fencing at a local fencing school, typically to kids. I've put up with all kinds of nonsense, and it really hasn't bothered me one bit. I like helping kids develop some social skills. Then I had a couple of kids that would ... not... shup ... up. I mean, talking constantly. About 45 minutes in, I threw them out of the class. Told them they could come back when they weren't disrupting everyone else's learning. I think they quit. Good thing the owner backed me up.

If had been just them in the class, I probably wouldn't have thrown them out. But the other people in the class were getting robbed by these kids--literally, as fencing instruction is expensive. When an otherwise "adult" person wants to act that way in a game, my tolerance is on a hair trigger. It's not just my time he is wasting.

I sensed from your posts that your tolerance was not infinite, but something more than hair trigger. More power to you, as someone's got to do it.

 

[Cyronax]

I've also found that it's easier to write a "game available" ad using the direct approach. Might you accidentally alienate players who do fit because they're offended by the ad? Sure, but then you wouldn't want that person at your game anyway.

Saying the same things while being careful not to offend people takes more time. Mostly because the ad becomes more wordy.

So I'm confused. What are furries? I looked on wikipedia and it sounds like LARPing. So do you dress up as Thunrdercats or something? I noticed that there's some controversy over some CSI episode, but I didn't read the article too closely.

C.I.D.

 

[shadzar]

So I'm confused. What are furries? I looked on wikipedia and it sounds like LARPing. So do you dress up as Thunrdercats or something? I noticed that there's some controversy over some CSI episode, but I didn't read the article too closely.

C.I.D.

Anthropomorphic animals are furries, including but not limited too:
Cowardly Lion form Wizard of Oz
Na'vi form Avatar
Wolfman in the corner of the Cantina in Star Wars

Animals that walk erect on two legs like a person, but have most of the features of the animal. However they can keep all features such as a female cat furry may have two nipples like a human, or six like a cat.

As demihumans are races similar to human in form and physique (elves longer ears and skinnier, dwarves shorted and stockier), furries are just animals that take the form more related to that of a human.

Image a werewolf, but not one that would transform into human or wolf form, but is always the wolf human hybrid.

In D&D they would be like Tabaxi and other animals that are more human like.

X-MEN Sabertooth, Beast, etc also qualify as furries in a sense if you ignore there mutant genes.