RPG Expectations

Discussion of all things relating to roleplay (Tabletop and LARP).
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BlanchPrez
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Post by BlanchPrez »


[quote="Dragonmaster Zoc"]I expect players to treat their characters as people, rather than as game pieces. I expect everyone to promote the suspension of disbelief by not exploiting poorly written rules. Some systems are not written with the intention of facilitating one or both of these expectations, and I like to avoid those systems.



That's mostly what I mean by "traditional" fantasy, as contrasted with Warhammer, Eberron, or Forgotten Realms. I want something that at least tries to take itself seriously.[/quote]


Dude, if I can say so in a way that is not at all intended as insulting, I'd have to say that I think you have some pretty unrealistic expectations of your game systems. I've never played a game that facilitated either of those ideas. Those are the kids of expectations that should be set with the players before the game begins, not with the game rules.



Also, what do you define as "taking itself seriouslly?" In my opinoon, Eberron and FR both take them selves as pretty serious settings. You want a setting that's not serious? Check out Low Life. Or for a little less silly, try SpellJammer. Giant Space Hampsters, anyone?



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Post by cczernia »


[quote="Dragonmaster Zoc"]I expect players to treat their characters as people, rather than as game pieces. I expect everyone to promote the suspension of disbelief by not exploiting poorly written rules. Some systems are not written with the intention of facilitating one or both of these expectations, and I like to avoid those systems.



That's mostly what I mean by "traditional" fantasy, as contrasted with Warhammer, Eberron, or Forgotten Realms. I want something that at least tries to take itself seriously.[/quote]


Actually, you might like [b]Burning Wheel[/b]. It has no setting but promotes traditional fantasy. It is fairly crunchy with lifepaths but has a lot of interesting ideas. Even if you don't like the system I bet it would give you a lot of ideas and concepts you could introduce into your other games.

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Dragonmaster Zoc
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Post by Dragonmaster Zoc »

I never meant to imply that I want a rule system that actively promotes roleplaying with game mechanics. I just meant that some systems have rules that actively discourage you from doing so. D&D is a big offender here, with things like the Gather Information skill (in 3E) that is explicitly supposed to take the place of role-playing so you skip right to the action, and spontaneous backstory re-arrangement in 4E (despite the fact that I was speaking Elven just twenty minutes ago, I actually only speak Common and Dwarven now). The former is an example of a rule that circumvents role-playing, while the second is an example of a rule that prevents someone from believing in these characters as anything more than game pieces. AD&D was better in this regard.

As for settings that take themselves seriously, did you know that Eberron has 12 moons with shifting orbits that brings a different moon closest each month? Pretty much any setting that describes itself as "pulp" is going to be relying on rule of cool instead of logic or reason.

Forgotten Realms is just a ridiculously high fantasy setting that fails to take into account what that means. I'll grant that it wants to take itself seriously, but that's really hard when there are so many powerful wizards around, so it's almost impossible for anyone else to take it seriously.
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Post by Skyman »

I'm not particulary sold on all that but then who needs too its your opinion anyways, gotta respect that.
I love AD&D but the part where ya had to declare everything a player did and everywhere one talks or searches got tedious for me...that is from my DM point of view. I think the gather info circumvents a lot minute detail action so folks can get to the role playing main points believe it or not.
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I found Eberron more Steampunk than pulpy. I distinctly remember getting smoked hard

I found Forgotten Realms...a good setting for fantasy.

More toward the topic at hand. I was talking with my group last night and the guys started talking about the expectations of a GM who wanted to recreate LoTR and the players kept going against his expectations. Such as having the Rocks fly in and take Frodo to Mt Doom to drop him in.
This made me think.
I know in my earlier days(which is more like a couple of decades ago) I used to get bent out of shape when players would do things outside my expectations. This lead to rail roading games. Which lead to players to actively looking to get off the rail road. Which lead to me saying you guys are idiots and don't know how to play this genre, game, or role play. Leading the players going to the "You're not the GM of me" moment. In the end, I said WTF am I doing this is stupid. So basically I'm making the observation that sometimes expectations are great if your willing to be flexible with them and not end all be all with it. I think some of the best games I have been in where the ones where we had expectations but the game went some where we did not expect. IMO
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Post by Uber_snotling »


[quote="Dragonmaster Zoc"]I expect players to treat their characters as people, rather than as game pieces. I expect everyone to promote the suspension of disbelief by not exploiting poorly written rules. Some systems are not written with the intention of facilitating one or both of these expectations, and I like to avoid those systems.



That's mostly what I mean by "traditional" fantasy, as contrasted with Warhammer, Eberron, or Forgotten Realms. I want something that at least tries to take itself seriously.[/quote]


As an avid Warhammer player, I think your statement here is way off base. Warhammer does a much better job than most fantasy systems in promoting the character as person goal you have listed here. It is a lot more believable for the typical medieval peasant to be employed as a rat catcher, camp follower, or town watchman than to be a fighter, ranger, or cleric. And the rules of Warhammer are internally consistent enough and facilitate a style of play that is in line with the setting. Combat is brutal and to be avoided if at all possible because you might lose your arm. That makes a lot of sense in a medieval society where medicine is pretty bad.



WFRP has black humor and is occasionally over the top. It is not humorless and sterile like D&D. That's partly the point in playing it.

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Post by Skyman »


[quote="Uber_snotling"]As an avid Warhammer player, I think your statement here is way off base. Warhammer does a much better job than most fantasy systems in promoting the character as person goal you have listed here. It is a lot more believable for the typical medieval peasant to be employed as a rat catcher, camp follower, or town watchman than to be a fighter, ranger, or cleric. And the rules of Warhammer are internally consistent enough and facilitate a style of play that is in line with the setting. Combat is brutal and to be avoided if at all possible because you might lose your arm. That makes a lot of sense in a medieval society where medicine is pretty bad.



WFRP has black humor and is occasionally over the top. It is not humorless and sterile like D&D. That's partly the point in playing it.[/quote]


Nice...BTW congrats

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Dragonmaster Zoc
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Post by Dragonmaster Zoc »


[quote="Uber_snotling"]Warhammer does a much better job than most fantasy systems in promoting the character as person goal you have listed here. It is a lot more believable for the typical medieval peasant to be employed as a rat catcher, camp follower, or town watchman than to be a fighter, ranger, or cleric.[/quote]While I agree that it makes sense for a random peasant to have one of the less glamorous jobs, I disagree with the concept that a random character is more believable as a real person. I think that it is easier to believe a character that the player cares about, and that's easier if the player gets to play the character he wants to play; random is just another way of saying, "we want to tell you what to do, instead of letting you do what you want."



Peasants are boring, unless that's what you really want to play. Thinking back to traditional fantasy like Lord of the Rings and the Belgariad, or even The Slayers, the vast majority of the characters are either wizards or royalty; I can't think of a single rat catcher or dirt farmer among them.

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Post by devlin1 »


[quote="Dragonmaster Zoc"]Thinking back to traditional fantasy like Lord of the Rings and the Belgariad, or even The Slayers, the vast majority of the characters are either wizards or royalty; I can't think of a single rat catcher or dirt farmer among them.[/quote]
Well... that's because WFRP isn't intended to tell those types of stories. It's not high fantasy -- it's [i]low[/i] fantasy. And low fantasy is populated by unlikely heroes, like peasants and rat catchers and scum, as opposed to the "wizards or royalty," the [i]likely[/i] heroes who save the day in high fantasy.

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Dragonmaster Zoc
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Post by Dragonmaster Zoc »

The key word is "likely"; even your standard prince or wizard is unlikely to be a hero. The odds are like four to one against.

A peasant is a whole different degree of unlikely. We're talking a million to one chance.

Now which one strains disbelief? Which one, to contrast, is more believable?

Where one draws the line between high and low fantasy is a matter of continuing debate and personal taste. I usually see it based on the degree to which the fantastic elements alter the setting away from a mundane one (i.e. how common is magic and how much does it matter), but regardless of the level of fantasy it will be the rich idiot with no day job who will come to the rescue because the dirt farmers are all busy farming dirt.

Warhammer does fit a different definition of low fantasy, though: some say the level of fantasy is based on the scale of the problem. LotR is high fantasy despite the incredible lack of actual magic because their quest determines the fate of the world, while Warhammer deals with the local problems of your home town sewers. These terms are very imprecise.

I don't mean to say anything bad about Warhammer, but it doesn't meet the expectations I have in a game system. I'm sure there are plenty of people who enjoy that kind of thing, and I don't want them to stop having fun on my account, but it's really just not my thing.
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Post by Dragonkin »

Suspension of disbelief is all in how you play the game. You could have the shoddiest written setting or game, but if the GM and players playing the game run it as if it were "real," it doesn't really matter, does it? Even the best written game system or setting can have its SoD ruined by a single metagamer. It's unrealistic to hang your "disbelief expectations" on the system, I think.

As to the OP of this thread, I try to avoid having any specific expectations from a new game or group. I expect there will be a group of people, there will be game-related activities, there will be off-topic conversation. I HOPE there will be fun. That's about as far as it goes for me. When I start running a game for a new group of people, I think having expectations beyond that can ruin the experience, for everyone involved.
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Post by ekomega »


[quote="Dragonmaster Zoc"]As for settings that take themselves seriously, did you know that Eberron has 12 moons with shifting orbits that brings a different moon closest each month? Pretty much any setting that describes itself as "pulp" is going to be relying on rule of cool instead of logic or reason. [/quote]

How does a planet having 12 moons make it cool, or unbelievable? If your character was on Jupiter there would be 63 moons (that we know of) and only [i]eight[/i] of those moons would stay the same distance from the planet. The other [i]fifty-five[/i] would be like on Eberron.



As for Eberron being pulp, it's more pulp-noir where the gritty realism is defined by the post-war bleak world. Nothing about that says "cool" or throws away logic or reason. The only pulp part is the part it shares with 4E in general - the PCs are sensational and do interesting and sometimes awesome things.





I'm defending Eberron because it is the one of the best setting ideas to come out in recent years (in my opinion). They really changed things around, but still managed to keep the DnD feel to it. I can't wait to see the new Dark Sun.





In general -

Players nowadays want their characters to be more than badger-hunting wilderness dwellers just trying to survive an orc onslaught so they can go back to badger-hunting. And they don't want their badger-killing peasants who somehow manage to save the kingdom even though it doesn't make sense. Even LOTR had this - every character in the story was special, be it they were elves or kings or treemen or they had a magic ring. Even the other hobbits had exceptional bravery, loyalty, and courage and then they set themselves apart further when they came back taller than before.



Nothing's changed except some people's idea that it was never like this, and the new edition made it this way. It was always like this.

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Post by Dragonmaster Zoc »

He could have intended the moons to be the tiny little distant rocks rather than anything like our moon, but I think he just made them do that because it would be cooler (by whatever measure he was using at the time). Likewise, I think warforged exist just because it made the setting more interesting and provides plothooks, without nearly enough consideration put into how thousand-pound metal/wood construct types would interact with assumptions made about player characters by the d20 system.

It's just my opinion.

Your mileage may vary. Eberron isn't for me (and neither is Dark Sun, for that matter), but I'm glad that someone can enjoy them. I think anything that far toward the gritty end on the sliding scale of idealism vs. cynicism is reither unrealistic or un-enjoyable, or both.

Again, just my opinion.
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Post by Uber_snotling »


[quote="Dragonmaster Zoc"]The key word is "likely"; even your standard prince or wizard is [i]unlikely[/i] to be a hero. The odds are like four to one against.



A peasant is a whole different degree of unlikely. We're talking a million to one chance.



Now which one strains disbelief? Which one, to contrast, is more believable?
[/quote]


Taking a step back, I'd like to point out that we are discussing make-believe games, books, and movies where elves and wizards exist. Regardless of that, your stats are awesome in concept, but wrong. Peasants have a 1 in 10^12 chance of being a hero.


[quote]I think anything that far toward the gritty end on the sliding scale of idealism vs. cynicism is reither unrealistic or un-enjoyable, or both. [/quote]

This is more helpful.

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