In my discussions with several readers and friends, I noticed that many RPG group are divided into two broad categories of gamers. One one side you have your min/maxed, Butt kicking power gamers who are on the lookout for the next fight. On the other you have the psychodrama-loving story-starved players who only truly become alive when a NPC (preferably mysterious and in need) approaches them to engage in some roleplaying.
Many such group exhibit a classic pattern where the Butt kickers become impatient whenever there’s any roleplaying going and the storytellers are dejected and uninterested in the fight scenes.
In more uniform groups like mine, where everyone is at least partly a Butt Kicker or a in a group filled with passionate storytellers, there’s no issue. However, mixed groups can have a hard time to achieve a sustainable level of fun for the majority.
In fact, I’d bet that mixed groups who haven’t reached the Norming stage can lead DMs to feel that any game is doomed to fail and that power gamers/butt kickers are incompatible with psychodramatist/storytellers.
I can attest that this is false, at least in groups where players are willing to compromise.
I’ll deal with the Butt kickers in a future post. Today I’ll focus on what we call Storytellers.
Storytellers is a broad term used to group together a wide range of players. In my post on player types and motivation, I defined storytellers as players who
- Enjoy exploring a story unfold around a character’s actions and choices.
When you break down storytellers into what motivates them to play, you would find that they prefer
- Story: Seeking the range of emotions that comes from a game’s narrative and non-crunch achievements.
- Psychodrama: Seeking to explore and develop a character from an internal perspective.
- Setting Exploration:Seeking new horizons in a setting and learning the lore of in-game objects, locales and events.
If you, as GM, are motivated by the same things, chances are you know how to make Storytellers happy. If your whole gaming group loves to spend a entire evenings lounging in comfy chairs, discussing the finer points of kingdom politics without ever reaching for dice then everything’s fine.
However, if you have players complaining that the game is only about combat and Munchkinism, chances are you have storytellers whose needs aren’t being catered to.
Thing is, it’s actually rather simple to make storyteller/psychodrama/explorer players happy.
You need to have each scene, even combat encounter, have a meaning in the larger story.
If your game has no overarching story, like some sandbox of game (MegaDungeons or West Marches types of game) you need to pepper your various sites with bits and pieces of story that Storyteller can discover and play. At the very least, make sure that the story that the party is building gets disseminated through the NPCs of your game world so that storytellers get some validation of the ‘work’ they put in your game.
For other types of campaign, you must make sure to include story/setting elements throughout your adventures. You need to have original NPCs come to the party with meaningful quests. For example, have the PCs escort the hidden heir of the Imperial Jade throne through a ravaged Orc-ridden war zone to her father’s deathbed. Also, each combat encounter must be staged to move the story forward. If the party gets attacked by ninjas while escorting the young emperor, have the PCs find a letter ordering the PCs execution and bearing an enigmatic seal that the Storytellers will want to investigate.
Gaming with storytellers is all about linking scenes together through NPC interaction, overarching plots and tantalizing clues and hooks.
It doesn’t mean that you must spend 2 hours discussing the weather, but even the most impatient of Butt kickers will listen in on a 10-15 minute negotiation just to see if the Lich-Baron will order his minions to attack or offer to help fight the Beholder-King.
How about you? Do you suffer from the Butt Kicker/Storyteller syndrome? What have you done to make your storytellers (and assorted player types) happy? What’s your winning formula?
My usual group is extremely flexible, being able to deal with stories and combat in equal measure or in lopped sides. I, however, am a strange beast. There’s certain things in stories that engage me – but if a story doesn’t engage me, I tend to revert into a buttkicker with a tolerance for story.
I’ve been in games with really huge, overarching stories that just did not interest me one bit…either they were too generic (my backstory and character was ignored or used so sparsely it barely matters) or they felt too unapproachable (I’ve had DMs turn my character and backstory into such a ridiculous web of intrigue that I, who WROTE THE THING in the first place, can’t figure out what’s going on).
In such games, I become a very well-roleplayed buttkicker. I go into combat interacting with enemies, making character-appropriate remarks as I deliver attacks, weaving in skills into the combat. Outside of combat, I go with the flow or throw in a skill here or there when I’m needed.
Storytellers would be incredibly happy in most of my games, and I’d be incredibly happy to have them, if they can tolerate my style of storytelling. I know what I like, and I like what I know…it’s hard for me to tailor a game to players who are intent on playing something I don’t know or don’t like (such as an extremely gritty or realistic game). But I’m generally a very narrative DM – when I plan a campaign I refer to it in chapters, story arcs and “books”.
It’s not always comedy, contrary to popular belief either. I’ve recently been going into the serious stuff, in all fields.
.-= Wyatt´s last blog ..A Punishment Ill Fit =-.
I find a nice way to mix both (simply) is with exploration. Exploring new areas leads to new peoples, new factions, new mysteries.
And new people to kill.
“I wanted to meet interesting and stimulating people of an ancient culture – and kill them”
.-= Zzarchov´s last blog ..Adventuring Party! Updated =-.
Funny you mention this because i’m currently suffering from player burn out. I’ve played D&D for quite some time & near the end of 3.5 i was starting to get disillusioned by the amount of meta-game stuff coming out that had a tendency to break the flow of story. You know the stuff, i’m talking about; prestige classess that gave you wings, dragonborn (3.5 version) & magic of incarnum, that kind of thing.
4E has expidated my declining interest in the D&D Formula. I’m not a combat player; i’ve always looked at Roleplaying as a shared storytelling experience & this new version i just not up to scratch in that department.
I enjoy many other games & they all have strong story elements, but my current group (or more acurately groupS), all see combat scenarios as being the be all and end all of roleplaying.
The GM is a great guy & he creates interesting encounters, but they rarely end… at all. The Campaigns keep on going, have no real ending & i feel a little put out. I enjoy getting to the end of an adventure (or mission) and seeing that i’ve achieved some result, not just start looking for our next adventure. I want some closure to the adventure before we start our next mission, i want to see that it was all worth the trouble.
The rest of the group are system players… those players who love a system so completely as long as you put the logo on it, they would play it regardless of how crappy the actual product is. They also love combat & love endless round robin combat sessions.
I am considering dropping my D&D groups entirely. I’ve already stopped supporting WotC & 4E. Now i’m wondering if my hour long commute (each way) is worth gaming once a fortnight, or if its time to part ways and try and find another game in another system. A game that encourages creatvity, over rule balance. A game that encourage story over combat.
-M
@Wyatt: Adjusting our DMing style to the expectations of players and still finding ‘what we like’ is one of the big challenges of GMing. Once you identified what makes you tick, you gotta convey this to the players in such a way that everyone finds what they’re looking for.
@Zzarchov: I agree that exploration, as long as it’s rich and varied, is a good strategy to interest storytellers.
@Mike: You really should talk to the group or, as you say, switch systems. While I’m among those who think that 4e doesn’t have to be about combat all the time, I know that many groups (like mine) do have numerous fights.
I hope you find what you like, in my mind what you want (Creativity and story) are hallmarks of a gaming group, not the actual game. But maybe 4e just isin’t for you. I agree that if you don’t want fights, you would be better served with a less crunchy system like Risus or Primetime Adventure. Or perhaps Burning Wheel.
I remember that player types and motivation post, it was great! Which I expressed through rabid commenting at the time.
But still, the storyteller types are never the ones that are a problem for me to handle. The only thing that might occasionally be problematic is the choice of setting. We have a lot of internal discussions on that, but other than that, I’d call our group mostly storytelling players with a pinch of butt-kicking every once in a while (we have a few of those “nobody touches the dice”-sessions occasionally).
As a player, I always like stories to revolve around me. But I prefer storytelling, although I end up wanting to make the story, not participate in it.
(Off-topic: I don’t often act like that when not at the gaming table, and I think it’s not uncommon for people to become all “attention seeking”-y/self-centered when gaming, even though they’re not so during other activities.
Maybe some repressed fame-craving or some such. Interesting thing to look into!)
Hope to see the follow-up on the butt-kickers soon, those guys can be difficult for me to handle!
I have an odd sort of problem in that my group is comprised mostly of Butt-Kickers who like to make sense. That is, they want to kick butt, but they don’t want to be out of place in the world by doing so. They’ll negotiate when it seems appropriate, the characters will be based on what are set down in the campaign as societal or cultural norms, and they usual have some sort of motivation or character.
Cue the Roadblock. He also likes to kick butt, but unlike the rest of the group, versimillitude is a nonexistent concern to this individual. In a predominantly demi-human setting, consisting primarily of humans, elves, and dwarves, (but mostly humans, as was reflected in the adventuring party of three humans, and two that we’ll get to shortly…) decided that, purely in order to achieve the greatest mechanical benefit, he would be a catfolk weretiger. He retreated to catfolk when informed that there was no way in the world he could afford the level buyoff of being a weretiger at level 1. Not content to be the only freak, he then brought another player in and made for her a humanoid turtle character with 6 intelligence. Or was it 3? In any case, she was barely sentient, and chosen solely for her AC and Con bonus. He wanted someone to hide behind, so he made her a turtle.
The three human characters spent a lot of the game time making cat, collar, and bowl of milk jokes. This player seemed to think that he was just like everyone else, and shouldn’t be treated any differently, despite being the -only member of his species in existence-.
It wouldn’t be as much of a problem if this were an isolated incident, but…
Well, it wouldn’t be the first time he’s played as a catfolk weretiger. He wanted to go without the consequences every other time as well, thinking he could go about in hybrid form and not worry about everything living wanting to kill him. He’s done similar stunts back in his clerical days, when all he wanted to do was be an undead-controlling cleric, and thinking it unreasonable of the paladin to object. I don’t mean in-character unreasonable, I mean the player gets mad at people who object to what amount to evil plans.
[/rant]
What am I supposed to make of that?
.-= Nathan Abrahams´s last blog ..Vacation to the End of the World. =-.
@Nathan A.
I had a player just like that! Two, actually… The first one was the worst, we actually caught him – after suspecting it at first – cheating, modifying stats and having about five too many feats… That is the most awkward and sad moment I ever experienced with all these wonderful games. We just stopped playing at his place and I stopped inviting him. (passive aggressive, yeah!) He also did some other pretty stupid stuff; ousting a guy for just cheating once is pretty harsh I think.
The second guy wanted to be half-Troll, half-Dragon and member of some made-up class that was heavily overpowered. But he is a real, nice and creative guy, he just likes to be the best. We used restrictions on classes and races for a long time, limiting the options to just about what one could find in the 3.5 PHB and the prestige classes of the DMG; no catfolk, half-vampires, dragonborn mindflayers and the like. I think imposing these limits worked perfectly, the hint came across! Now, we play in a system where acquiring racial benefits is impossible (all humans) and there are no classes, works too, but its not for everyone.
Cheers!
We have a Roleplayer who referred to our campaign as a “Dungeon Crawl” — even though our typical session takes place mostly in town, and features a single combat encounter (or maybe two) in a ten hour session. He seems to enjoy the combats, so I’m truly confused as to what he wants — any ideas? I’m not the DM, but I’d love to understand him.
I’m caught is several things today (my daughter’s birthday party mostly) but I’ll come back and respond to all comments over the weekend. Sorry!
Being a storyteller DM, I have no problem creating a world for that type of players. It’s the butt kickers I have trouble with usually.
I have no problem with a moderate butt kicking player. But the hardcore ones usually get on my nerves big time.
What I’m gonna say has been described by one of my oldest, and very much BK player type, friend as condescending. And I agree that it is, it’s just my opinion on the subject.
To me if the focus of a RPG game is not storytelling, if a group of player is more interested by their next level of experience than they are by the story their characters evolve in, then they’re not RPG players. In a way, they are more boardgames enthusiast.
They don’t necessarily need the boardgame (battlemat), they usually are content to draw everything on a piece of paper. But there’s always the hardcore BKP who insist that everyone need to have his figure matching his class and race (Painted of course) and that any attempt to make approximation judgement on the use of a range weapon is a sin…. Like in Nathan Abrahams story, he wants to be the “impossible to fit in” character, just for the sake of using the rule that will give him an edger of the other players. If he must play a human/fighter he will bug you endlessly about that magical armor he read about in the fighter compendium he bought the day before. He wants to use this special rule that he found in the compendium… (souvenir, souvenir…)
Any person played their first “Roleplaying game” the day they took the role of the cop or the robber running around neighborhood. The only rule was that you were dead the moment someone pointed at you with his finger or plastic gun saying ”Bang your dead”. Or when a daughter played the mother to his baby doll.
Rules and systems are only the tool controling the game. The game is not the rules. In fact every RPG that exist (almost all of them at least) start with a note stating that all the rules can be modified or simply ignored. That to me is the biggest hint to all the BKP of this world that they are missing the point of the game. Roleplay!
I believe that the rules can enhance the feeling of evolution a character experience. But the rules itself usually need help to make sure the evolution correspond to the real events in a story. That’s why I usually completely ignore the “Kill a monster/earn xp” model. You can get experience for killing a monster in my games, but it better be a new monster or one you usually failed to slay in the past. And I know there’s sophisticate tables and rules referring to encounters difficulty … etc… this is all very boring stuff to me. The minute you think about those things is a minute lost for ever. Think of all the time you lost not having fun… all this time litterateur “working”!?!?!
D
All right, let’s tackle this.
@Flying: There’s a difference between being a little self-centered and being downright selfish. One I’m done covering all the main player type I’ll end this sub-series with the Selffish jerk.
@Nathan: Your player seems to be at the extreme end of the Power Gaming range. That birngs an interesting point that players who are motivated by just one thing often disrupt play by not fitting with the rest of the group at all. I think this bears being explored in a future post.
@Michelle: I’ve seen that in some of my friend’s games. Players who don’t really know what they want except complain about the game. And when you ask them what bothers them they’ll often bring up things that make no sense. In such cases, it’s good to ask them what would make the perfect D&D game for them and note down what they say for further discussion.
I usually make spelling errors here and there… but the last comment I made is a record.
That will teach me, writing on a break at work… not a good idea!
Sorry if some of my sentences doesnt make any sense!
D
@D_Luck: While I agree that an extreme butt kicker can be a pain to deal with in a storytelling-heavy group, I refuse to say that power gamers and Butt Kickers are not RPG players. You’re making a ‘you’re doing it wrong’ argument and I have little tolerance for those.
D&D can be played many different ways and playing out a role with deep character immersion is just one way of doing it. It’s not better than others.
Okay so this post and the comments generated by it make me realize that people don’t have trouble dealing with Storytellers. However, it seems that stotrytelling GMs have trouble with Butt Kickers. This is going to make an interesting chat later on.
I know I sound condescending when I say that and I’m sorry. I just feel that way about this subject.
My friend, if he was here, would want me to point out (he made the exact argument to me on the subject a long time ago) that extreme storytellers like me are control freaks who can’t accept that sometime just following the rules simplefy things and take away the need to dramatize and over complicate everything (like I often do)!
D
It’s all good man. It really does bring forward the need to discuss extreme gamers. Those guys and girls that mark our gaming groups by being just too damn much.
I’ll be thinking of that for a future post.
I’m lucky enuff to play exclusively with a tight knit group of storytellers, although we also like to kick butt. Another great resource, in fact I’d have to say one of the best RPG products I’ve ever owned, is Aaron Allston’s Strike Force, (for Champions). The page 7 list of types of RPG players, 13 different subtypes, has been incredibly useful over the years.
I may get shot for this but… here goes nothing.
If you want to make a blend that keeps Storytellers and Munchkins happy, take your GMing cues from Star Wars. And before anyone asks, no I’m not that great at doing that style of game. But it does seem to work if you can pull it off.
One of the best tips the old Star Wars RPG had was how to start a session. You literally hand the characters a situation in progress along with a line or two to get them into the action and bang, off to the races. A cinematic example of this is the beginning of the first Star Wars movie. We start with a rebel ship failing to get away from Lord Vader and being boarded.
Generally you wouldn’t want to railroad your PCs into separating like Lucas did there but the basic idea of landing with an action sequence that gets your players into the story is an excellent one. It’s much simpler to plant the plot hooks that will grab both Storytellers and Crunchy types in an encounter like that than have to struggle to introduce them independently later on. The old Star Wars rulebook seemed to urge a gamemaster to start every session this way. I’m not so certain you’d want to do that but I think if you try it once you’ll end up wanting to using some variant of it quite often.
@Lanir: I like that kind of “directly into action” type of sessions. It works really well in superhero type of games. Thorg, DC heroes, Trinity, Marvel, etc.
@Lanir: My players are a healthy mix of butt kicking and storytelling and I’ve done ‘in media res’ adventures many times. It does work wonderfully. Another thing that worked wonders was me asking ‘Okay, why don’t you explain to me how come you’re an adventuring party? How did you meet and how was your first adventure before the one we’ll start in a few minutes’
🙂
I’ve been running a Storytellyer Champions game for over 4 years, and in that time I’ve lost and replaced 2 players – both of them butt-kickers who never fully bought into the stories being told. In retrospect I can see the difference in personality, and I should have weeded them out in the first place, but they are (and continue to be) friends, and each of them had more than 10 years of gaming (notice I do *not* say “Roleplaying”) experience.
My game has some kind of combat potential about every other 4 hour session, but usually averages an actual combat every 3 sessions. The rest of my players are fully and completely immersed in the world, the NPCs, the multiple stories and the various types of danger and drama in the game. The two I lost had a difficult time even relating to NPCs they weren’t fighting, and made no in-game effort to explore thier contacts, wonder about thier background, or to grow as characters other than to acquire more abilities or more power.
As a Storyteller running a game with actual Plots and NPCs that have meaning and history, I’ve found it useful to ask prospective players how they’d feel if there were an entire session of not only no combat, but of Never Picking Up the Dice. If they roll their eyes, I have my answer. If they suddenly energize, anticipating an entire session of honest-to-god RolePlaying, then I also have my answer.
Dice are a tool, not a requirement, for a good game. Anyone can sling dice and crunch numbers. A Game occurs when all the players are focused on the situation at hand, In Character, and the world outside the table ceases to exist.