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Hi guys,
while reading the forums and talking to other players, I got the strong impression that play styles very greatly between continents or even countries.
Let me explain what I mean, how I come to this conclusion and what my theory is. Up front: I'm German and I have never played P&P outside of my country or even outside of my general living area, North Rhine-Westphalia, though I participated in some online groups with players from all over Germany.
To make my point I will exaggerate, so beware.
The American player sees Pathfinder as a tactical game. A PFS scenario can be handled in 4 hours, and if you need more time you're just slow. An American player wants the situation presented quickly so he can solve it. Something like "You walk up to the door and find it locked. After looking around and asking some people you determine that the owner of the house has died quite some time ago." is something that is pretty much expected to keep the game flowing.
The German player doesn't rate combat that highly. A PFS scenario can take 6+ hours, if you do it quicker you just glance over parts. If you tell a German player "You walk up to the door and find it locked. After looking around..." he will instantly stop to explain what his character will do, maybe with a bit of "How dare you tell me what I'm doing!". Also there are not enough skills.
I get that this will not match every player - it's just a general tendency I noticed or think to have noticed. The German player might as well extend to all of Europe, I don't know that.
So...am I completly wrong here? Did I just get the totally wrong impression?
It should be noted that German players more often than not grew up with The Dark Eye, the biggest German role playing system. (Its literal translation is "The Black Eye", but for obvious reasons this translation wouldn't work - in German we don't have this problem, since our expression for that translates to "The Blue Eye"...but I digress...)
The Dark Eye is pretty low fantasy — mages and stuff exists, but are not nearly as powerful as a high level caster in D&D, and magic items are VERY rare — and the world is extremly detailed, to the point where you know how to adress every nobleman from every region, how the certain kinds of bread are called and whatnot, the skill system has 18 skills in the "body" category alone (which is just one of 7 categories).
So you can see while a seasoned TDE player might find Pathfinder overly simplified. It also fully supports creating characters who did nothing but being a baker beforehand. Not in the "Crafting: Baker" sense, but in the "There's a class for that" way. And while quite a few players sooner or later go over to other systems, I think the general play style is already in their bones by then.
So yeah...that just went through my head.
What are your opinions on the matter?
Did you experience it differently?
Am I just talking nonsense?
Might this become an interesting discussion?
Discuss, my puppets, discuss!
Greetings
Blackbot
I think generalizations are just that: generalizations. ;)
Pathfinder is, after all, only one RPG system. I (an American player) have personally done a lot of roleplay that is 100% story-based, where none of the characters even have stats or character sheets. There's no 'GM', it's very immersive, and conflict arises from between the PCs or from agreed-upon external threats, which are resolved by discussing where we would like the story to go.
Obviously, when I play in that type of system, it's fairly ludicrous for me to try and think 'tactically'. Whereas in Pathfinder, especially in Pathfinder Society play, I do think more tactically, because it's a more tactical game.
That said, I can count the number of Society games I've been in that lasted for only four hours on one hand. Five is much closer to my average, and many of mine have hit six, both when I GM and when I play. The amount of roleplay to strict combat varies a good deal depending on who among my local players I am seated with.
I've never played with enough European players to really judge if there's a difference based on region or not, but I definitely think that there's more variation among American players than you have perhaps had experience with?
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If you tell a German player "You walk up to the door and find it locked. After looking around..." he will instantly stop to explain what his character will do, maybe with a bit of "How dare you tell me what I'm doing!".
This bit is very interesting, as my group of French players (and especially me) do have this trend too. And it drives my GM crazy as he does not like being interrupted when reading boxed text.
BTW, the reason why I interrupt boxed text is that it often ends with Roll Initiative without giving us any opportunity to take precautions that were becoming obvious when we got the new info given in the boxed text.
I thought it was due to my GM's style, but your post makes me think it might be something bigger. Nice catch
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If you tell a German player "You walk up to the door and find it locked. After looking around..." he will instantly stop to explain what his character will do, maybe with a bit of "How dare you tell me what I'm doing!".This bit is very interesting, as my group of French players (and especially me) do have this trend too. And it drives my GM crazy as he does not like being interrupted when reading boxed text.
This was the main thing that inspired me to write this thread. I read Brewer's GM Guide, which is awesome, when I stumbled over a similar example and thought to myself: "There is now way my group would let me read this in one piece..."
OP: If that is "the German Style" of play, then it seems I've been playing "German" from the beginning; from Wyoming to southern California and then up to north-central California. I've played, long term, with 5 different long-term groups over the 30+ years of gaming, and all have played in that style; DM presents the situation and the players say what their characters do, the DM never initiates a PC's action, then the DM relates the outcomes of the PC's choices based on the die rolls and the situation itself.
Combat takes up approximately half the evening, regardless of how long the session lasts and typically, for the games I've played in over the last 10+ years, goes:
1st evening - Role-play then combat then role-play up to rolling of initiative for next combat.
2nd evening - Combat then role-play and maybe smaller second combat.
3rd evening - Repeat 1st evening format...etc.
Though of course there's a good amount of variation where some evenings are all role-play and others are all combat/exploration.
Most evenings run between 3 to 4 hours due largely to real-life work constraints. Back when there was only school to worry about and utterly free weekends, sessions could run between 8 to 16 hours.
In the past few years I tried playing with a DM that dictated what your character did. When he moved my miniature through a pool, a pool that turned out to be a deadly ooze, without asking me "what do you do" after describing the hallway...I came to the conclusion that that was not a DM/campaign I wanted to play in.
Largely, for me and my regular group of players, combat is a tactical situation but role-playing the actions during combat...and relationships and actions out of combat, are what keep us coming back to the table (the fluff is the stuff that brings life to the game).
Specifically, for me as a DM, I describe, "the door is locked" if and only if one or more of the PCs attempts to open the door normally. After I say that it is locked I then ask, "what do you do?" and let the players come up with a plan which I then referee as appropriate.
In summary, of the 30 or so players and DMs that I've played with, all in the U.S., only about 3 have played in your described "American-style."
On the subject of playstyles, I've seen a good mix within people from the same country, the same game, and the same generation. I can't really find much of a pattern to it at all, so personally I believe it's just down to how individual peoples brains are wired.
I'm in the UK, and am very much a "German" player in your example, but I know others in the UK that fit the "American" model so I can't really attest to it being a European thing.
However, the important thing I'm taking away from the OP's post is... it looks like I really need to get hold of an English translation of The Dark Eye :)
Specifically for me I dont tell the players the door is locked until someone says "I try the door'
I'm a 2e grognard and apparently my style is also what the OP would consider european. It's not a question of tactical or not. It's more a question of is your gamestyle a colorful dynamic place to be or is your world more the gamist 'players vs ogres.... FIGHT!' kind of game.
I wouldnt go so far as to say american gamers even 'on the whole' gravitate towards gamists... I do agree that the pathfinder system is more crunch/tactical so it invites more crunchy players.
So it's not the culture that determines the playstyle, it tends more to be the system you started out with. I think gamers in all cultures as a whole are distributed pretty evenly... The fact that we're talking about pathfinder gamers specifically does have an effect on the spread. I'm frankly surprised that that spread isn't true in other countries. Perhaps the only people plaing pathfinder are people who played the older less crunchy game systems. Perhaps the op hasn't met as many people who 'started with 3.0/3.5/PF so that playstyle is all they know.
Australian here.... I think age and maturity have an effect on play style. When I was young it was about killing stuff and looting the corpses, in my teens it was all angst, and pain, smash crash and trying to score with the barmaid (cause no real girl would have me), at uni it was about shades of grey, impossible moral choices corruption, and politics and now that I am old I like to have a balanced mix.
We alternate between tactical and heavy RP depending on the mood of the group that session. We drive our GM insane by following wild goose chases or circumventing his plot and somehow skipping straight to the bad guy.
I have been playing all sorts of games at Oakland University in South East Michigan (those who don't know, hold up your right hand :D )
One popular game with all sorts of skills has been GURPS. Then there was Fuzion and Champions. We also played a little bit of Amber so it was not always about Combat. I remember certain D&D games (not PF) where we had to get our thieves into a building and it wasn't all about combat.
On the other hand, I have read on these boards about people in Michigan who have had problems and I think that we must be the stable bunch!
BTW, the reason why I interrupt boxed text is that it often ends with Roll Initiative without giving us any opportunity to take precautions that were becoming obvious when we got the new info given in the boxed text.
Yep, I recognize that as a DM. Sometimes I describe boxed text and I am just about to tell the players that there is a monster in the room as well, and the players are already in the room.
No kidding, we play European style, too. I am from the Netherlands. Even my group with players aged between 12 and 15 years old is playing European style. I have even seen them playing gathering food in the forest and cooking a meal. I had never seen that coming.
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Yeah I think I encountered as many as a dozen different play styles in university alone. This is NOT regional. People just play differently than the next group. We are all forced to make our own etiquette from scratch when we get together as a group to play.
That said, I do see a small difference in generational play styles. People who grew up on MMOs and social networking seem to approach things more specialized than people who grew up on single player RPGs or even those old timers who didn't have computers growing up.
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I'm a US player, in the western US. From my perspective, having played with one European player before and several people from other parts of the US, it's not a regional difference of play styles. It's just a difference of personalities and goals.
There is one player in our regular group for whom his character is just numbers on a sheet. This player doesn't roleplay anything; what his characters say and think is what he would say or think if placed in the same situation. Other players in the group could spend an entire 6-hour session just roleplaying walking around town chatting with all the NPCs. They would roleplay cooking dinner and choosing outfits to wear (and just as a side note, most of the group are male).
My point is, these people want different things out of the game. For the first player, it's a controlled method of social interaction. For the other players, it's the fun of pretending to be someone else and trying to imagine themselves in a different world. The players the OP describes who don't want to deal with "flavor text" and just want to get to the combat may enjoy tactics, or they like the excitement of imagining the combat as a movie scene, or perhaps they like showing off the skills and abilities they gave to their characters.
On the other hand, maybe they just have a limited amount of time to play and they don't want to spend that time roleplaying dinner, because dinner is something you can do in real life, but most of us don't get to have sword fights or cast spells in real life.
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Since I have participated in maybe a dozen groups in my life all of which have been in the same state, most of which have been in the same city (Both state and city are New York), and all of these groups have had very different play styles, no I dont think its regional, or national. I think its based on the people involved, and will vary group to group, person to person.
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Also, I find your declaration of what an American gamer wants to be insulting... or perhaps just an accurate description of why I only play Pathfinder at my house, rather than joining a local PFS game run twice a month within walking distance.
If you really feel insulted and are not exaggerating, I do apologize for this. As I said, I tend to go a little bit over the top when describing stereotypes to make it clearer what I mean.
As I already stated, I do agree with most of you that my initial hunch was completly off. ;)
while reading the forums and talking to other players, I got the strong impression that play styles very greatly between continents or even countries.
I neither agree nor disagree with your assessment, just wanted to chip in that I have heard this sentiment expressed before among board gamers and wargamers. Americans play more "competitively," "by the book," what have you. Often seems to boil down to that Americans are jerks who are aggressive, stubborn, and have no self-awareness / sense of humor.
It's kind of like the role-player / roll-player [false] dichotomy, but with a nationalistic gloss.
I would be willing to bet dollars to donuts that you see the exact same debate in SCA / Historical recreationist forums, classic car forums, or competitive cribbage forums.
Yeah I think I encountered as many as a dozen different play styles in university alone. This is NOT regional. People just play differently than the next group. We are all forced to make our own etiquette from scratch when we get together as a group to play.
That said, I do see a small difference in generational play styles. People who grew up on MMOs and social networking seem to approach things more specialized than people who grew up on single player RPGs or even those old timers who didn't have computers growing up.
Another American here. I apparently play in what is the "German" style above, so not sure what that does to the theory.
ITT: People arguing against a hypothesized generalization with anecdote, and patting themselves on the back for it.
Hogwash. I grew up in Northern California, and I still live here. Over 32 years, I've played with tons of people, most of whom were also from here (and a few from the Midwest). I've also socialized with, and swapped stories with many times the number I've played with.
Their styles, likes and experiences were of every imaginable type.
My own style has been an evolution unto itself. Do any of us remain the same person from the age of 11 to the age of 43 and beyond? So how can any of us be expected to remain static in our playing styles?
Also, again neither agreeing nor disagreeing with anyone's post, in my experience -
Anytime you post something like
"I heard only 2% of the population have green eyes, is this true?"
98% of the replies will then be from people who have green eyes, telling you your numbers are way off.
EDIT: But the thread will not be complete until someone helpfully tells you to "Speak for yourself!"