Stupid Ranger beat me to it this morning by providing a very good answer to one of the player questions I posted yesterday when I introduced my first player.
Now that I asked similar questions to your DMs (and hope they’ll continue answering as they drop by) I’d like to hear from you players, part time or full time, that read here (I think Stupid Ranger is not the only one).
So here are the questions:
- What Role-Playing game are your currently playing?
- What Quote would best summarize your Character (current or last one)?
- What other Role Playing games have you played?
- What do you look for in a game session to make it a great session?
- What do you look in a multi-session adventure to make it a great adventure?
- What tends to decrease your fun the most in a single session?
- Tell me about your best RPG memory as a player?
I await your answers as they provide a good window into what makes a game fun to a player as opposed to what makes it fun for a DM.
What Role-Playing game are you currently playing?
Scarred lands using Savage Worlds as the rules set.
What Quote would best summarize your Character (current or last one)?
“Tharag smash!!!”
What other Role Playing games have you played?
Dozens, maybe hundreds. I am using Savage Worlds to run Steampunk bi-weekly. Anything else is…irregular.
What do you look for in a game session to make it a great session?
A great team. We hang out as much as we play.
What do you look in a multi-session adventure to make it a great adventure?
A great recurring villain. A moderately challenging mystery.
What tends to decrease your fun the most in a single session?
Stopping the game dead. Be it from indecision on your turn to taking forever to look something up.
Tell me about your best RPG memory as a player?
While the rest of the group struggled against a (small) ary of ratmen, Tharag took on a wrack dragon alone…and killed it. He cut off its’ head and used it to scare away the rest of the army.
Good stuff Tom.
I see that you pul double duty as GM and player. Is it hard for you to take one hat off and put one the other one when you switch?
I make an horrible player as I get frustrated really fast when I can’t see the whole plot in advance. I’m a genetic DM I think.
Putting on my Player hat…
What Role-Playing game are your currently playing?
D&D 3.5 (Ravenloft) and Lacuna (alternating weekends).
What Quote would best summarize your Character (current or last one)?
Nerisse (D&D): “Hey, idiots! Could we please stop playing the super-evil vampire lord’s game, and start making him play ours?”
Agent Skinner (Lacuna): “Agent Gage, someday that lovely facade of yours is going to crack. And I want to be there to see what’s inside.”
What other Role Playing games have you played?
Whew.
D&D, almost all versions
Gamma World, several editions
World of Darkness
Star Frontiers
Fudge
Lacuna
GURPS
Star Wars D6
Dragonstar (D20)
Shadowrun 4th Ed
Mutants & Masterminds
Deadlands: Hell on Earth
Savage Worlds
Feng Shui
Traveller (Classic and TNE)
Twilight 2000
Robotech
Heavy Gear
Others I’m sure I’ve forgotten, for good or ill.
What do you look for in a game session to make it a great session?
Players staying in character. Characters involved in what’s going on – even if they have to improvise.
A sense of progress, well-earned.
Getting to do cool and awesome things, even if they’re on a small scale.
What do you look in a multi-session adventure to make it a great adventure?
Again, a sense of progress – but progress we earn, sometimes at great cost.
The time to develop the characters, sometimes just to RP the silly, boring things.
The chance to make our mark on the world, even if it’s a small one.
What tends to decrease your fun the most in a single session?
Rules that get in the way of doing cool stuff (D&D, I’m looking at you).
People who can’t pay attention in combat or exposition.
Having to halt combat to look up spells or rules.
Tell me about your best RPG memory as a player?
From Deadlands: Hell on Earth…
Erica Waylans, 42-year-old vet of The Last War. Psychic, devout Catholic, and slowly going mad in a world that, by all rights, has gone through the Apocalypse and left her behind. As the campaign went on, it became more and more obvious that she was touched by God, an instrument of St. Michael. She was a huge amount of fun (not to mention emotionally draining at times) to play.
What Role-Playing game are your currently playing?
D&D 3.5
What Quote would best summarize your Character (current or last one)?
Gunnar Brockson of the Torbjørn, a big, strong, and stupid Barabarian.
What other Role Playing games have you played?
Holy cow, a little bit of everything it seems like. D&D, AD&D, AD&D 2nd, Star Frontiers, Ninjas and Super Spies, Heros Unlimited, TMNT, Star Wars D6, Top Secret, and Serenity (As a GM I’ve run even more games Marvel Super Heros (FASERIP), BESM, Cyberpunk 2020, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, just to name a few. But I have not been a player in those games.)
What do you look for in a game session to make it a great session?
Action, Adventure of course. That it keeps my attention, and there is a goal.
What do you look in a multi-session adventure to make it a great adventure?
The same as above I guess. It helps if I’m really into it. That the gamne is absorbing.
What tends to decrease your fun the most in a single session?
Rules lawyers. Pissy people mad about the uncontrollable. The character I started this campaign with was an elven ranger. He got killed. But I wasnt a dick to the GM about it. Things happen. Was I happy about it, nope. But as stated things happen. I’ve seen other people freak out after things dont go their way or what not. Them being angry across the table from me like that I dont care for.
Tell me about your best RPG memory as a player?
The one that comes quickest to mind was a Heros Unlimited game. We were fighting a group evil ninjas, which cumilated in fighting a powerful cyborg.
Thank you all for sharing this. I am spending a lot of time absorbing the ‘what I like’ and ‘What I could do without’ from you all.
From Ve4grm, Posted here for easier access.
What Role-Playing game are your currently playing?
D&D 3.5e run by my fiance. Running the Monte Cook adventure “Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil”.
What Quote would best summarize your Character (current or last one)?
Hmm… we just started the game, so I’m not sure… oh wait.
“Forward… to adventure!”
I shouted this at least twice in the last game, mostly to keep things moving. My character (Alfred Hammerbeard III) doesn’t like waiting around. And neither do I. 😛
What other Role Playing games have you played?
Mostly d20. D&D, d20 Modern, d20 Star Wars (revised).
What do you look for in a game session to make it a great session?
An opportunity to showcase myself, and do something cool. If I don’t get that, it can still be a good session, but this makes it a great one.
Also, an opportunity to further the plot is always appreciated. And a DM who can improvise well enough that we don’t now we left the tracks, and yet can guide us back to the plot at the same time.
What do you look in a multi-session adventure to make it a great adventure?
Being made to care about what’s happening. I can fake it alright in-character, but if you as a GM can make me as a player, not a character, care about what’s happening, then you have won me over. It’s difficult, but when it happens it’s the best feeling ever.
What tends to decrease your fun the most in a single session?
Lack of freedom. Now, I’m not going to purposely mess with the GM, but I appreciate the freedom to leave the tracks for a while, and I try to give that freedom when I GM. If you don’t allow us to derail sometimes, whether it’s do to a lack of preparation of a lack of experience with improvising, it disappoints me.
Note: If we are in the abyss, and I want to go to the store, tell me no. But if I want to check out this one clue that you didn’t expect we’d see as a clue, let us do so. Or if I want to solve a problem in a different way than you predetermined, let me.
A lack of “rule of cool” can also be a drag. But that depend on the rest of the session.
Tell me about your best RPG memory as a player?
Heh. Well, this is a few years ago, near the beginning of my D&D career (I started in 3e), but hasn’t been surpassed.
Ever read Dragonlance? I was a Gully Dwarf.
More to the point, I was a Chaotic Neutral Gully Dwarf Paladin. (My sword did holy or unholy damage, depending on a random die roll.
At one point, my party decided I needed a bath (Gullys are dirty), and tried to throw me in the river. I won the grapple check, reversed it, and managed to toss the human fighter into the river first.
But the best moment was as follows. We came across some snake-men (yuan-ti) who attacked us. I hit one, and on his turn he picks me up by the throat. I’m hanging about 3 feet off the ground.
My turn comes up, and we figure that my flailing legs should just reach his elbow. So I kick him in the elbow. Good damage, he screams and drops me. I fall prone, and take some damage. The following ensues on my next turn:
DM: “Alright, so it’ll take a move action to get up, provoking an AoO…”
Me: “No.”
DM: “No?”
Me: “Can I reach him from where I’m laying?”
DM: “Yes, with some penalties.”
Me: “I bite his ankle!”
DM: “He’s a snake.”
Me: “Fine. I bite his tail, then.”
DM: “…alright, roll it.”
*rolls, natural 20
Me: “Sweet!” *confirms* “Crit!” *rolls good damage*
DM and other players shake their heads, laugh at me and move on.
My next round:
DM: “Getting up now?”
Me: “Nope.” *rolls, natural 20, confirms crit again*
DM and other players stare and laugh as I rolls near-max damage again.
DM: “Holy… Alright, with that one you tear out a chunk of flesh, hitting a vein. He falls over, dead.”
My next round:
DM: “Alright, there’s one left. You can get up, move beside him and attack him.”
Me: “I sit here, munching on the snakeman chunk I just got.”
DM: “But the fight is still going on. Why would you do that?”
Me: “I’m a Gully Dwarf.”
“Yeah…”
“I’m hungry.”
“Ok…”
“And the others can take care of the snakeman.”
“Sure, but…”
Me: “I chew on the chunk of meat.”
DM: “…alright then.”
The snakeman died with one more hit, from someone else. And that character hasn’t been forgotten since.
Ha ha, that is a great story from Ve4grm and I appreciate the time you took to type it. Gully Dwarf Paladin, he’ll kill you with his bare teeth and chew you over a couple times for the flavor.
Thanks!
I even ended up naming my website/campaign log after it.
http://criticalanklebites.com