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I've been observing different styles of gaming recently, from different people, different groups, and occasionally the same people in different groups. This is all in the realm of tabletop gaming, which along with LARP, is the area where styles have the most effect. In computer, card, or board games, you've really got the rules and that's that.
So anyway. I want some things in particular from my games, and I get impatient when I don't get them - which is why I've not often been a player.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eng_monkey is the first gamemaster I've come across who actually runs a game that suits everything I like, and I can't praise his game highly enough. I'm trying to pin down those elements in some way that I can explain them to other people - and perhaps give players in my own games some insight into things. They're mostly things I don't like.
The first of these is joking. More specifically, I don't like out-of-character jokes. I blame Monty Python for a lot of these things, and it's not just because of the Coconut Incident. In-character jokes are great - An Armanan, a Taratto and an Elsaivi walk into a tavern... - but having your villains colour coded by black for irredeemable evil, red for "likes destruction" and purple for sexually frustrated... no, take it away, please. If someone in my worlds wears purple, they're wearing it because they like it, it has some significance to them, or the like. There is an in-world, in-character reason for every single thing that I describe in a game session. I tend to get frustrated when players assume that a character they've met is there for comic relief; I've never used such a character, and probably never will. In essence, you won't find me playing Paranoia.
Second, I don't like tying system to feel. I've stopped describing my games as D&D because people immediately assume that it's a casual, reality-lite, one-size-fits-all, dungeon-crawling, hack-and-slash game. It's bloody not. If I could run a practical game while not letting the players see the rules at all, I would, but that's more work than I have time for, and lacks the structure that allows me to adlib without breaking things. So I'm using "d20 Fantasy" as a description, or even just "fantasy campaign" when I can get away with it.
Something I do like: subtlety. I'm fairly sure that nobody I've run games for has ever picked up on even 25% of the motifs, themes, foreshadowing, and just plain detail work that goes into the game, and that's the way I like it. All that material is working there at the subconscious level, and if I do it right, I can plant suspiscions in the player's mind about a given situation by using triggers and motifs from previous experience. This does require the player to be paying attention, of course. I pay a lot of attention, and probably over-analyse as a player.
That's enough pacing and muttering for one day, I think. I might pick up on this again.
So anyway. I want some things in particular from my games, and I get impatient when I don't get them - which is why I've not often been a player.
eng_monkey is the first gamemaster I've come across who actually runs a game that suits everything I like, and I can't praise his game highly enough. I'm trying to pin down those elements in some way that I can explain them to other people - and perhaps give players in my own games some insight into things. They're mostly things I don't like.The first of these is joking. More specifically, I don't like out-of-character jokes. I blame Monty Python for a lot of these things, and it's not just because of the Coconut Incident. In-character jokes are great - An Armanan, a Taratto and an Elsaivi walk into a tavern... - but having your villains colour coded by black for irredeemable evil, red for "likes destruction" and purple for sexually frustrated... no, take it away, please. If someone in my worlds wears purple, they're wearing it because they like it, it has some significance to them, or the like. There is an in-world, in-character reason for every single thing that I describe in a game session. I tend to get frustrated when players assume that a character they've met is there for comic relief; I've never used such a character, and probably never will. In essence, you won't find me playing Paranoia.
Second, I don't like tying system to feel. I've stopped describing my games as D&D because people immediately assume that it's a casual, reality-lite, one-size-fits-all, dungeon-crawling, hack-and-slash game. It's bloody not. If I could run a practical game while not letting the players see the rules at all, I would, but that's more work than I have time for, and lacks the structure that allows me to adlib without breaking things. So I'm using "d20 Fantasy" as a description, or even just "fantasy campaign" when I can get away with it.
Something I do like: subtlety. I'm fairly sure that nobody I've run games for has ever picked up on even 25% of the motifs, themes, foreshadowing, and just plain detail work that goes into the game, and that's the way I like it. All that material is working there at the subconscious level, and if I do it right, I can plant suspiscions in the player's mind about a given situation by using triggers and motifs from previous experience. This does require the player to be paying attention, of course. I pay a lot of attention, and probably over-analyse as a player.
That's enough pacing and muttering for one day, I think. I might pick up on this again.