A few weeks ago I was at a nice little con called Almacon. As it was about a mile from my house it a must go to. While mostly an anime con it did have some role-playing, along with some seminars. I went to one that was called Winging It!: Doing Things on the Quick, or something along those lines. It was interesting but not in the way I believe it was intended. If I were giving out titles I believe How to Punish Your Players For Getting Lucky would have been appropriate.
I don't mean this as an insult or anything. The guy doing it was lively and was very passionate about running his game, and his present players seemed to greatly enjoy his style. Several people there were on the verge of shouting, "Preach it Brother!" while waving arms in the air, so I do believe that there were targets for the seminar. To myself what was far more interesting was the contrast in styles between how I approach gaming and how other people play the same game.
Differences in play styles have always intrigued me. The true strength possessed by RPGS over other games is that two people using the same game engine can come up with something completely different that is equally enjoyed by all. I ghost around at several RPG forums, and I'm always amazed at where people take RPGs. While at times it's aggravating to wade through forums and their vernacular (I feel the terms "nerfed", "play balance"and "tier" need to be shot out of a cannon into the side of a large, solid wall) I find people's issues with and discussions about their system of choice as an endlessly fascinating window into their games.
To get to the point what I'm curious about is what makes a great game to different people? What keeps bringing people back to the table time after time? What as a DM can I do to insure that my players are having a good time and leave the table raring to play again? There is a certain magic when everything clicks in a RPG, and I want to know what triggers that in different people so that I might incorporate that in my games.
A difficult quest to be sure. I've played with and read about all manners of players and DMs, some of which have quite different play styles and methods than mine. I've gotten lucky. Even when I've had players that were polar opposites from myself in terms of play style I've usually managed to insure they've had a great time. I'm fairly proud that in 25 years of DMing I've only had one player that I truly couldn't handle running games for, and judging from his reputation as RPG poison I'm not the only one. Regardless though, there is always room for improvement.
Of my own gaming style I prefer a rules-lighter game. I'm not as comfortable with the Pathfinder ruleset as I was with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and I like maintaining a certain pace to my games, and I find having to stop and look at a rule book repeatedly during play to be a very tedious slog. I've played with people however, that enjoy that aspect of the game very much and tend to treat it as a tactical war game where you simply don't play if you don't have a map or minis available. I've played with others that simply seethe at the mention of minis being used and run the game without them or any sort of map. It can be an extremely hard time striking the right balance between the different, often extreme views on what player's derive their fun from.
So to me there it is. There is no right and proper one way to run a game and have everyone enjoy themselves. A good DM is willing to shift between play styles to accommodate their players, often within one game. A session can start off as a game of cat and mouse between the players and the villain before turning into a running battle through moon lit streets against his henchmen. Even the most harmonious party is going to have a different opinion between the players on what constitutes a great game. Any good DM is going to learn what that is and make the effort to insure that each player gets at least one moment of their preferred style.
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