Your thoughts please?

[Gareque]

Hi all, I am new to the board and as a long time player/DM I would like to see/hear other peoples (on a much larger basis than my circle of friends) views on what makes a fun game.

Do you prefer to have a character based more on RP or Hack&Slash?
Do you specifically dumb down characters to make them balanced? Or raise the stakes and create sickeningly hard characters?

One reason I wonder this, is because my main group at the moment is kind of split down the middle. Some like to power play, the other more experienced members, such as myself, prefer to make the game more challenging.

I mean, I could make a rogue at level 12 that has approx AC42+, but I choose not to because this then becomes insanely awkward for the DM lol.

What are your views?

[Richard Littles]

I prefer to run a story based game using a fairly balanced rule set. When I GM I bring my players to the edge and hold them there until the right time to ratchet down the tension. Since I use Hero System all of the characters are flawed due to having to get complications.

[Sascha]

Neither. But I'm guessing the games I enjoy have a different reward structure than the games you do, in both mechanics and play style senses.

Still, I'm not certain - though I have an idea - what you mean by "balanced" or "sickeningly hard," in the context of 'fun', so I'm not sure my response can be much clearer without assuming definitions.

[Arch Lich Thoth-Amon]

Dark, gritty, unfair and unbalanced, with light rules, and death lurking behind every corner. BTW, and IMO, this is also the formula that allows for horror to be injected when desired.

[Gareque]

Essentially, what I mean is by making your character fair.

3.5 is a very easy system to make hard characters, which the monster manuals creatures simply cannot hold upto.

For instance the rogue I mentioned. I could easily make a lvl 12 rogue with 42AC, 46 against an attack of opportunity.

In game terms, there is only 1 thing that can hurt it, being mages. This in turn, means that to be effective, you have to have mages in a large portion of the encounters or the rogue wanders around stabbing people with no problem.

Druids also cause issues. I mean, at lvl 12 you can turn into a tiger. You can have a dire tiger pet and summon a number of dire tigers. Say you get 3 from the summon monster spell, that's 5 sets of possible: Claw, claw, bite, rend, rend from one character. Along with the druids spells and given Dragonhide armour of the wild, can have an AC of 42+ with ease.

So things like this can make DMing a nightmare. Hence, balanced vs imbalanced.

[Sascha]

What I thought, but wanted to make sure

I'll stick with 'neither' for 3E-family contexts, though I do lean towards "interesting" over "effective." Mechanical challenges aren't interesting, for the most part; I'm not invested enough in the game aspect to care about optimization or 'earning' a victory.

For my preferred game, though, 'both' is the more appropriate response. In FATE, they're pretty much the same thing, with the way Aspects and Fate points interact.

[outrider]

I personally like both. Some days I want to just attempt to cut through things, other days Im interested what type of soup that my character would try or to meet at a bar for a drink.

[MortonStromgal]

Dark, gritty, unfair and unbalanced, with light rules, and death lurking behind every corner. BTW, and IMO, this is also the formula that allows for horror to be injected when desired.

This + Heavy Roleplaying, the closer you get to LARPing at the table the better. BTW Thoth have you found Desolation yet? Its a thing of beauty!

[Arch Lich Thoth-Amon]

This + Heavy Roleplaying, the closer you get to LARPing at the table the better. BTW Thoth have you found Desolation yet? Its a thing of beauty!

Oh man, i want it so bad, as well as WFRP3E & Alpha & Omega, but alas, the fundage is not there at the moment.

[Gareque]

I am still yet to play any version of WHFRP. One of my groups keeps meaning too, but not got round to it yet.

I am a big fan of Dark Heresy though .

As for Alpha & Omega, I recognise the biblical reference (through no small thanks to Fallout 3 lol), but what is it in RPG terms?

[trechriron]

I like to focus on collaborative story telling. I want genre emulation and people really getting into it. I don't like long combats or really long places where the mechanics of the system are bogging down play. Long conflicts are fine if it's based on in-game in character going at it stuff.

I am a player-focused GM and I believe they should be the focus of the story/events taking place. I look at running a game like directing a fully improv movie where the actors were handed dossiers and the first scene is setup and then I say "action!".

I am really digging the FATE 3.0 system with some minor hacks. Awesome Adventures is a solid distro. I like Starblazer Adventures but I am leaning towards a streamlined stunts system like Diaspora. Also, in the past I have leaned towards generic crunchier systems and I am really starting to understand WHY I don't like that anymore.

Still love GURPS quality, research, information, and ideas but I can't do the system part anymore. Still love it though.

[Webhead]

...snippity...

This is some really awesome stuff and actually quite similar to a lot of my views as a GM. Thank you for sharing!

I like FATE 3.0 as well, with some adjustments as you mention. For one, 10 Aspects per PC is entirely too many. 5 would seem much more manageable. Also, Fred Hicks has mentioned that he (and the other designers) feel that the base of 5 Stress boxes is too many and that a base of 3 would lead to fewer drawn-out conflicts and more frequent application of Consequences which is where the fun is in a FATE conflict anyway.

[Dytrrnikl]

As a GM, I tend to run a mix of story and hack. Leaning towards the scenarios being heavily weighted against the group - CR value of encounters being 3 to 5 above the average level of the party. So, there is never such a thing as an unblanced player. As a player, I prefer games where a lot of problem solving is involved, leaning towards scenarios similar to what I run as a GM.

[Valarian]

I like to focus on collaborative story telling. I want genre emulation and people really getting into it. I don't like long combats or really long places where the mechanics of the system are bogging down play.

I'm like Trechriron. When I'm running a game, I'm providing the basis for the story, but I'm also looking for the players to join in. If they start to take the story down a different route to the one I've got in the back of my mind it's more work but also more enjoyable. The story becomes a group effort, rather than just me giving the players a series of scenes where they act out a part.

As a player, I want to build an interesting character and be able to form a narrative behind the character. In some systems, I start with the narrative and build the character appropriately. In others, I roll the character and then try to build the narrative around the stats. Either way, if I don't have a feel for the character by the time I'm playing, I struggle with the game.

As both, I look for a mix of roleplaying, story telling and action. Action is part of the story, but not the be all and end all. I also game online nowadays, as I've got less time available. Using a virtual tabletop, the interaction is via chat text. In some ways, this makes the roleplaying better as we're using the written media rather than spoken. Immersion is also better, the Elven Princess asking for the aid of your heroes doesn't speak with a gruff bass voice. However, chat slows the speed of the game (sessions achieving about half to two thirds of a face-to-face equivalent) and slows combat even further. Hence action is limited in stories to when absolutely required and an attempt is made to keep the action short.

[trechriron]

This is some really awesome stuff and actually quite similar to a lot of my views as a GM. Thank you for sharing!

... more frequent application of Consequences which is where the fun is in a FATE conflict anyway.

Thanks! My pleasure.

Awesome Adventures has a stress track free distro, and it plays fast. Probably going to try that out in my next game. The demo game I played was superb!