Your gaming experience: are expectations matching the reality?

[derelictjay]

Most of the time I come in the game expecting the same old thing, and thats what I normally get. Though I always love it when the completely unexpected happens. Especially when I DM.

 

[johnsemlak]

I think it's really hard to answer. The reality is often different from session to session. I don't know if I can give an answer that reflects an 'average'.

 

[dren]

I voted moderate expectations with high results. I have a good group of players who consistently act creatively...I never know what I am going to get in a session. Their combat strategy is lacking, but the player interaction, and pure roleplaying are superb.

 

[Piratecat]

High expectations, high results.

I'm really picky about regular ongoiing games. I'm probably spoiled by good players and good DMs. Despite this, the gameplay and roleplaying in our campaigns tends to exceed my expectations. It's not unusual for me to be just blown away by how well my fellow players game. I think that's unusual in itself.

 

[WanderingMonster]

Overall I rate my experience mod/ave. Lately it's low/low. I just want to get people to the table and roll dice. It's hard to do even that recently.

 

[Arnwyn]

Moderate expectations, moderate results.

If nothing else, I have a very firm grip on reality. I know my players all too well, and have long since come to accept their limitations.

 

[Joshua Randall]

I chose I have high expectations, and my experiences are usually worse than expected. But that sounds more pessimistic than I actually feel.

As a DM, I have high expectations for making a detailed, immersive campaign world full of compelling plot hooks and well-realized NPC. But there is never enough time for me to do all that I want to do, so I end up winging it a lot, and failing to transmit my excitement to the players.

As a player, I have high expectations for being a good role-player and a good roll-players, for making clever deductions, for using wacky combat maneuvers, for coming up with devious political machinations. But too often I just grab the dice and start rolling, without giving much thought to how to make the game more fun.

So, there's nothing wrong with D&D, in my experience. Instead, as Shakespeare put it, The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves. (Julius Caesar, Act I, scene 2)

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I guess I may be looking at this question a little differently than others, I understand that the players and the GM are the most important part of making the actual game expereince, and in that respect I guess I have moderate expectations and they usually meet those expectations - some are better, some are worse. But when I answered the poll, I was looking more from the idea of whether a game; a new game, a new system whatever, lived up to my high expectations once we got around to trying that out. In that situation things often were not as good as my expectations.

Once upon a time, when I was single, no kids, no mortgage and had disposable income, I would buy all kinds of new games and systems. I inevitably would read all the info, would get very excited for the game, finally convince some friends to try it out, and then find that after a few times, the game kind of fell flat. Maybe it was just we didn't have the right people, sometimes it was a lack of support from the publisher, many times it was a situation where it sounded cool, but in practicality, it just didn't work well. For me D&D is the one game that has held on through thick and thin, from OD&D all the way to 3.5. I'm not saying it is perfect, but somehow it has always managed to hold on to the mystique while playing well and being supported (expect for that one very dark period just before WoTC).

 

[the Jester]

I have high expectations- after all, there are a lot of ways I could have more than a little fun other than gaming. I spend all my free time on gaming- I better expect a lot!

The games usually meet my expectations, though for a while one player kept bringing the experience down for us. He's pretty much dropped out though.

 

[Ashrum the Black]

I have high expectations, and am usually disappointed because my players have differing expectations.

I'm hoping to change things tonight, but we'll just have to see if I can bring my expectations down, and theirs up a little to form a happy medium.