sword-dancer wrote:Daikuma wrote:B) the character they want to play. If they cannot, upon choosing a character, provide me with a decent backstory as to what the character is doing there and why they would be involved in adventuring in whatever setting we are playing, then they have to choose something else.
Sorry i learned a while ago that i don`t need crutches to walk or play, a backgroundstrory is nothing mere than an explanation or excuse.
I need only one explanation,
This is the character i want to play, and only one measure of judgement from the gm fit the PC campaign and group.
Of course, since I look for role players and not combat machines,
No that reads for me i look for players who play accrdingly to my tastes and when i hear the word storyline i would go, strorylines are good for books, movies but not for roleplay, a stroryline don`t work with freewilled protagonists.
The Storyline says the fortress must be hold and fall to the enemy, my pc asks why hold them, attack them, soften them up and we ´ve a good chance, holding the fortress is not possible.
I value storyline over rules
Experience told me this is an excuse for forcing my story, equal what the pcs do, cheating and railroading
If all they can think of to do in 90% of situations is open fire,
then it means normally whatever else trying it is useless, because the gm blocks it every time it don`t fit his storyline.
If the only solution who works is the hammer, all problems begin to look like nails.
they get to be the big target, and either choose better characters or shift their playing style. Also, if a player can't keep track of all the things their PC can do, they can't play it, because they just don't know it well enough.
You gotta earn the lead roles, kids.
Yes,point is i don`t want to earn, i want to´ve fun playing NOW, not in 5 years.
and tougher to role play because
elves are so different from humans and priests need so much background knowledge.
I heard this so difficult to roleplay very often, convincing i found it never.
In fact, look at cinema for a great example: Hellboy
which is a fim with a script, the actor could not decide what his role would do, the regisseur/author decided that, a very different media than roleplaying.
http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/the ... tion1.htmlAny good roleplayer needs these things or they should buy an PS2 and plug in to FF11 or WOW and forget tabletop.
Or they should look for GM who didn`t tell stories but taking part building one .
Then hand them a pregenerated juicer/crazy/borg and tell them to have at it, cause it is all they will need for their style of play.
which is really all they need for your style of play.
Personalitie, Values, ethic motivations,
I'm too tired to figure out the quote coding here, so let me better explain my position to express this.
A Background story is
never an
excuse. That is like saying the reason you are a psychotic killer is that mommy never loved you. A background, IMHO, is what differentiates tabletop roleplaying from video game roleplaying, which I have no use for and never really did.
EVERYONE looks for players who play according to their own tastes. That is what makes gaming fun for the GM: I hand them a well thought out and crafted story, written from the antagonists' point of view, and they write the counterpoint, from the protagonist perspective. Together we have written a story, which is really the essence of what role playing games are: You're supposed to be playing a
role, NOT a video game character.
I have never had to railroad a storyline with a decent group. Role playing is a group endeavor (which is why it is also rare that i let players use alignments radically divergent from that of the group - I just do not believe that they would stay affiliated with each other). When you have a player that just wants to spend the game advancing their own agenda, and ignoring the way the storyline evolves, then they really wanted to be run on a single, and have every right to request one when I have free time.
If the storyline is that the fortress must be held, and the PCs want to attack, make sure you have a viable reason for why that is a bad idea (in the perspective of the PCs, not the game mechanics) i.e. if the PCs attack first, they have declared war, and when the smoke clears they have to deal with the legal or lethal repercussions of their actions.
You don't have to cheat to keep players on track; simply motivate them, with both positive and negative motivators, and unless they are radically touched in the head (and if they play that way, there had better be the appropriate insanity info on their character sheets) they will play to their alignments (which you, as the GM should have taken into account when writing the game) and take actions that are both character and setting appropriate, even if they are outside what you as the GM expected.
A good GM never needs to use the hammer, and that is not what I meant at all. A lot of players don't think through the situation at all and just pull the trigger. If the combat monster shoots everything that comes through the door, then any any reality, that individual is going to start drawing more and more return fire from the rest of the world, and there is NOTHING unfair or cheating about that. Touch not lest ye be touched, as it were.
I really had this problem when gaming with drug users and drunks, who showed up half baked to begin with; also noticed it a lot with "little rich kid" players.
That is what I meant by "Squishy Nintendo": a GM who has be relegated to servicing the players like some sort of intellectual prostitute, and has no fun themselves. These GMs burn out fast and tend to not want to do it anymore. It's the equivalent of throwing a nice get together with friends and someone posts flyers all over the local college campus. It's an abuse of the player-GM relationship.
If I put days or weeks into constructing a storyline, then I am going to have a plan B and C for where that storyline can go, but outside that, the PCs can eventually find a "Graph Paper to the Horizon" situation, where they have gone so far off the beaten path that they find the area where I have just written nothing and to keep the other players happy I have to ignore the player because he is ignoring the rest of us.
Actually, role playing (notice I did not say gaming) is an form of acting, but much like
Whose Line Is It Anyway? where the actors are coming up with the script in an impromptu fashion based on a situation/response format. Yes I mentioned a film with a script, but the actor has to infuse the character with obvious response to motivators, otherwise he is just reading lines, and the portrayal is awful. In fact I mentioned Hellboy because Ron Perlman is the hands-down master of costume / make-up actors, and could act convincingly through a block of concrete if that was the costume. A player has to infuse the character with some life, or again, he's just using me as a video game deck (in which case, he better be plunking in quarters into a cup next to me for the whole game).
Again, the GM is supposed to tell stories,
as part of building one. A GM who shows up and says "OK, you're all in a bar, what're you gonna do?" has NO BUSINESS running a game (unless everyone agreed it was a "Lazy night", so BYOS - Bring Your Own Storyline). As far has having fun RIGHT NOW, as opposed to five years from now, I'd like both, thank you very much, and the only way I've found that it happens that way is if the GM and the group have some synergy.
I have never had a problem keeping the games I have run fun for the players. I have run games in candle lit rooms that had players jumping at their own shadows. I have had groups of players paralyzed with laughter based on something in the storyline and players that have had me laughing so hard I had to call time out just to get my composure to keep playing.
I award experience for players who, within the course of the game, completely trump my storyline through creative role playing and skill use, mostly because as a good GM, I ALWAYS have a BACK UP PLAN that can be inserted in most places. If I know what powers my PCs have (and I should know all of that if I am the GM) then it behooves me to make solving the problems of the game
based on the use of those skills and powers.
If a player uses a power or ability in a new and creative way, that makes me have to scramble, that is perfectly OK, because I knew he was powerful, and I knew it when I approved the character.
When a player hands you a character radically out of scale with the campaign, it is well within the rights of the GM to disallow it, because at that point, what the PC is basically saying is "I want to have my fun my way and !@#$%% you if you don't like it!" But I don't just have that person to consider. As a GM, I have to make sure the game is fun for EVERYONE playing, and to do that, the player who is so selfish as to say "Ok I got mine, pull up the ladder" is not someone I'd want to roleplay with anyway.
Wow, I just figured out something. Thanks for proving MY point by making YOURS.
Pyrobird wrote:If a god's off to fight an Alien Intelligence, his first thought probably isn't going to be "OOO! Lets take Bob!"
"You didn't tell me you were gonna yell BLACK RAGE, I nearly pissed my self......."
Pyro, I'm still laughing!!!