I'm sure this subject has been covered before, but it is new for me. So what is your groups gaming style? Is it epic Good v. Evil, super heroic, gritty realism, maunty haul? Is you groups gaming session driven by strategy & tactics, story, setting or character motivation?
If I were to label my gamings group's style I would call it Saturday morning action/ adventure cartoon. Not in the old D&D cartoon way, but more like the old Thundar the Barbarian cartoon or the old Tarzan cartoon.
IN my game world Good, Evil, Law, Chaos are real. Protection from good will work against a paladin as well as a protection from chaos will work against a Slaad. But most of my players do not care for alignment, so they are neutral. They can be kind and compationate to thier friends and allies, but have been cruel and brutal to thier enemies. So many of the PCs are motivated by fame, fortune, glory and prestige (an assumption on my part I really don't know). 2 out of 8 are good aligned, but thier motivation seems the same.
Like many Saturday morning cartoons our group can be very campy. One character is a halfling from the hillshire, who learned his ranger trade from the kebler elves. One character has a bed of flowers on his head instead of hair. HIs magic missiles manefest as flowers that shoot from his fingers (Now that company is in the underdark, the flowers have been replaced with mushrrooms. One character is a 7 1/2 ' tall 1/2 orc, who weilds a ten foot long full blade (straight out of Inyusha baby).
All though heroic our group is not super heroic (after all I have been able to kill 5 out of 8 in one battle). Now at 7th level my groups characters runs on walls, scout invisibly, leap of cliffs (feather fall jumping), wield over sized weapons and throw fireballs.
I am using the shakled city adventure path, so although most of the PCs are not motivated by a desire to combat evil. all the bad guys are difinitly evil. So I guess by default the PCs are fighting for the side of good like any Saterday morning cartoon hero.
Using the adventure path makes our game difinitly story driven. But each PC reacts to the situation in the game as individuals and for thier own reasons. They do not always act in the most strategic or tactical way, actually prefering to react out of thier own PC's motivation.
Most of the gaming sessions are full of action and adventure. But we have had a few games where not a single die was rolled. Those are what you call role playing sessions as opposed to roll playing sessions.
Also, like a good Saturday action/ adventure cartoon are gaming sessions are lots of fun.
I like to think that we like nice overarching stories with flavour and memorable NPCs. In reality though I find my DMing style lends itself more to dungeon crawls with sporadic roleplaying. And when I play in my other groups there are mixed storyline/crawl elements. Rarely are we involved in epic good vs evil type games.
igi
Well let's see. I have one group that for the most part is pure hack and slash. I have another group that is more on character development and tactics and I have a third group that falls in the middle. So I guess you could say I get a little bit of everything.
Well let's see. I have one group that for the most part is pure hack and slash. I have another group that is more on character development and tactics and I have a third group that falls in the middle. So I guess you could say I get a little bit of everything.
Dude, where to you find the time?
Ultradan
Let's see...my Monday night game is pretty much 'kick the door in and Cleave everything you see." My Thursday night game is much the same (same players, different DM). My bi-weekly game in much more roleplaying-with-a-hint-of-powergaming. My bi-weekly Friday night LARP is pretty much R-P-S and powergaming, while the Sunday night LARP I run is much more political roleplaying.
Somewhere in there, I manage to pretend like I'll work on my writing, pay attention to my girlfriend, work, and allegedly clean the house.
I can't believe that two months ago, I was complaining to my brother that I don't get to game anymore.
I'd say our group likes powergaming and roleplaying. I personally like well-developed, on-going plots, recurring villains, etc. As long as I have something to do in combat and it makes a significant contribution, I don't care too much about my abilities, so I'm pretty sure I'm not a powergamer myself.
The group can be pretty unforgiving to those who have crossed them, or even been percieved to have crossed them, which I think is common enough.
The group also tends to have a very chaotic bent. Lately, they've been staying within the bounds of the adventure and containing themselves a little more, but when combat comes up against anything other than a BBEG, they generally like to play around a bit. They also do this when confronted with something unusual but not overtly dangerous; just choosing a rather (actually, extremely) random response to deal with it.
Well let's see. I have one group that for the most part is pure hack and slash. I have another group that is more on character development and tactics and I have a third group that falls in the middle. So I guess you could say I get a little bit of everything.Dude, where to you find the time?
Ultradan
Well two fo the games are on alternate Fridays. I run one and play in the other. My wife plays in both. The other game I play in on Sundays for about 4 hours. The game that I run I am using the AoW AP so not a ton of prep time there. So I guess I find the time by having a very understanding wife and no other real hobbies. ;)
Our style is fairly realistic, with the PC's being basically mercenaries and/or thieves. Think Conan, Subotai and Valeria in the movie Conan the Barbarian. The adventures often have elements of horror and the dark side of human nature. Because we don't use alignments for mortal beings it makes it alot harder for the PC's to figure out who is dangerous and who is not.
The action is pretty stealth-based with a good fight every now and again, the characters being a rogue/sorceror, a rogue and a fighter. So far most of the action has been in a city, but at the moment the PC's are travelling to a distant desert as guradians of a dead priest's ashes (for money of course).
There are thus more human and humanoid opponents than fantastic monsters, so the PC's are more likely to be facing off against a crazed human enemy and his minions than a displacer beast or a purple worm. When they do meet a monster it's a big deal, and pretty scary, as creatures as common in an average D&D campaign as, say, a werewolf are very rare in our campaign.
The PC's tend to avoid killing when they can as most enemies are human or humanoid, but they have no compunctions about killing someone who is trying to kill them. That said, our games are mostly storyline, heist planning and roleplaying (as you can imagine when 2 out of 3 PC's are stealth characters) with a fight or two thrown in for the fighter PC.
That said, our games are mostly storyline, heist planning and roleplaying (as you can imagine when 2 out of 3 PC's are stealth characters) with a fight or two thrown in for the fighter PC.
Even though as a Dm I like Alighnment this is the style of game I would like to play in as well as GM. But my group can be cheesy. I must admit the cheese is fun cause I am having the most fun DMing I can ever remember.
I'd say our group likes powergaming and roleplaying. I personally like well-developed, on-going plots, recurring villains, etc. As long as I have something to do in combat and it makes a significant contribution,
When I think about it some of the most fun games I have had included powergaming, role playing well developed ongoing plot and reoccuring villlians with something to do in combat which lead to significant contribution to the story .
Even though my characters don't have over powering stats ( I take abilitiy scores as a I roll them best three out 4d6) I am a power gamer at heart and can squeeze the most out of a game system to gain as much of an advantage as a GM allows
I have an extremely diverse group and as a consequense we are all over the rainbow for group style depending on who takes the reins that day. Some days we are Hack n' Slash and others we are role playing maniacs. One player is convinced that "inter party conflict" is a healthy thing in D&D and another is a bit of an overbearing taskmaster.
All in all, I wouldn't trade them for the world because they talk about the adventures as if it were really happening and speak of the NPC's with true respect or hatred. That tells me they are suspending their disbelief, and isn't that worth the headaches?
Our gaming sessions tend to be driven by a combination of roleplay and character motivation. Many of our characters have elaborate written background stories, and the main DM likes to take things out of those stories here and there to introduce new plot lines, NPCs, villians, allies, etc. In terms of the feel, it runs on a continuum depending on which world we're in and who's DMing. Some are very light and tend to be hilarious, others are very heavy and edgy.
Our gaming world has a lot of shades of gray as opposed to cut and dry traditional D&D plotlines. For example, as most of our PCs are (and have been for years) traditional monster races of demons, dragon, lycanthropes, etc., many of our games have as the bad guys a group of what you would think of as "normal" adventuring groups (as in: those out to kill the demons, dragons, lycanthropes, etc.). Makes for an interesting twist.
I'm not too sure. Certainly not hack and slash (though I include battles too.) The group I dm now, has a fairly complicated out-game history. It started with a different dm, for three characters (including my own). But, we troubles with the dm after a while and lost contact. After a period in between, I started dm-ing along for the group, once switched with a friend of mine (also plays one of the characters.)
The first dm had a big roleplaying part, but we had sessions too where it was all hack and slash (though we rp-ed it out, after the twentied slayed kobold, got rather tired of it).
The original group certainly doesn't have a 'battle' against evil feel. It was very diverse, different personalities, with all different goals of why they would enter an adventure/quest. Now, we have three new characters (new players of my very old group) added, and the feeling of battling for the greater good is definitly coming up again. (More good aligned characters.) Though, every character still has his or her very own personality. The smallest thing or conversation can drag out to a real 'event' because of this. (Really tiring for the poor DM.. ;p) It's fun, because the characters feel very real.. but the downside is, that if one dies... oh my. One of the last sessions the rogue half elf (have been in the group from the start) was down to -9 hp. I can assure you, everyone jumped to the rescue.
Hmm; my game is now very dark and has high fantasy realism. Cuthulu (sorry bout spelling) is the main protagonist. Most pc's have been seduced and have given their alligence to various evil npc groups or personae ie 3; one remains neutral and is pro dwarf nothing else matters; one is a true good guy trying to reclaim the fallen pc's and generally save the world. All pc still work together amazingly; all the mostly evil pc's still give a nod to whatever the good guy wants to do to save the world they just do evil on the side; so to speak; granted the good guy is flabbergasted but the pcs now at about 16th to 18th level are the strongest guys around still willing to defeat the bad guys so he uses them and still after 6 years is trying to reclaim them; interesting; but there style is dark and secretive to promote a good end; yep; weird.