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I was inspired to write this after reading through the forums. Off the bat, please keep it civil. How do you define fun? Is it eeking out every last possible point of damage? Minmaxing your character to the peak of efficiency? Effortless role-play? What do you consider a must-have at the table?
I'll start. I'm easy. If my friends are there and having fun, I'm good. I'm not trying to create fine cinema at my table. I miss rolls. My monsters take it easy on the players. Five adults sit around a table every other week and don't think about life.
Crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentations of their women.
More seriously, good role play, have an engaging story and stakes that make the story matter. Rules that allow you to build a character that fulfills some ideal you have about what they should be capable of and what challenges they can face.
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Tough challenges, good roleplay, ambiance, funny moments, compelling stories, satisfied players, creative solutions, etc...
My answer is a bit unhelpful as fun is such a complex notion.
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My most enjoyment from playing the game is in the character interactions. How do the characters think and feel about each other. How do they help each other. Do they argue? Do they plan? What do they do to show that they are a team when push comes to Strike?
And that can even extend into the enemies. I love a well-played enemy.
It is also this type of thinking that makes me like seeing failed rolls. Whether that is an attack that misses or a skill check that fails. Those become opportunities to show how my character responds to setbacks - whether their own or those of an ally.
I really enjoy the same things. Getting together with friends and having a good time.
I do enjoying writing/worldbuilding and then sharing it with my friends through the game.
As a player I really like developing a character and seeing that my actions have an impact on the story and game world.
Tough challenges, good roleplay, ambiance, funny moments, compelling stories, satisfied players, creative solutions, etc...
My answer is a bit unhelpful as fun is such a complex notion.
It's not unhelpful! I agree it's also a complex notion. I'm terrible at even basic math, which makes it so amazing to watch all these forum threads where the math is ripped apart, considered, and rebuilt again. But some love that part of games. I find the differences most interesting.
What do I consider fun? There are different aspects of fun, so I'll focus on some aspects.
1. Characters: I have fun building character ideas. I come up with an idea for a character like I have a character with the name Gideon Doomwhisper. I built him as a The Silent Whisper psychic. The idea being his telepathic type of powers are the Doomwhisper he draws his name from.
The fun comes from taking things like Forbidden Thought and Shatter Mind and Contagious Thought with spells and fashioning this theme of a powerful psychic character whose mind can crush his enemies and help his allies.
I have the most fun when the class abilities allow me to fashion a character around a theme and it is both effective and interesting.
There is no point in building a theme that isn't effective because then you look weak. If the class doesn't allow interesting builds around the theme and you're trying to fit square pegs into round holes to fit the character build, then that isn't very fun either.
For character build I find it fun when I can build a theme I find effective and interesting that fits what I think this theme should be like. If the character feels weak or has boring build options that don't fit the theme, then it's not a very fun class to build.
2. Campaign: I want a campaign with an interesting story. I want good role-play opportunities, developed relationships between PCs and NPCs, a touch of side stuff like romance or politics or rivalry is always good to include because you want the PCs to feel invested in the adventure and that the NPCs are "real" whether the villains or victims. High stakes. Well designed and challenging encounters that push the PCs to have to use their abilities intelligently and effectively to achieve the campaign goals and beat the villains.
3. Role-play: I want developed personalities. I want to know backgrounds that fit into the campaign. I want the PCs and DM to make their characters and NPCs seem alive. I want them to engage with the story and show a genuine interest in progressing it. I want the PCs engaged or I'll get bored and won't have fun.
Gaming is a creative hobby for me. It is somewhat social and I do enjoy the company of friends. I can enjoy the company of friends without gaming. I put a lot of work into building a character from developing the background, the theme, and finding a way to put it all together using available material. I do engage in role-playing and tend to engage the game trying to feel the experience of being in a story while also enjoying the combat tactics and strategy as I find well done tabletop RPG combat more interesting than video games because it is often more dynamic and less scripted and repetitious.
But it's pretty hard to find all of that, so if I get quite a bit of it I'm pretty happy. I tend to have fun if I get in the 70 percent or so of the above.
Fun cannot be exactly difined. Fun is a felling and will vary for each people.
Some can consider to face a great challenge as a fun thing (winning or not) other will define fun the sentiment of victory others can consider role play a character full of defects and limitations as fun while others will have more fun being a superhero and so on.
Here in forums we will see some people saying that some class or character is unfun due its efficiency for both sides "fighters are very efficient but boring" or "wizard lacks of many useful abilities that other casters have so they are unfun".
It's something very personal but there are some general things that I noticed that most talks about:
Lacks of versatility: In general many people like that your char needs to be efficient even if this could lead to a lack of versatility but in practice I saw many people avoiding to play as very efficient characters because they...lack of versatility and this lack of versatility is leading to repetitiveness that ultimately leads to unfun. So it's common that some people likes the high efficiency of a strong martial but later complains that they become a one skill monkey that always does the same thing in the same of effectivess.
Competitiveness: TTRPGs aren't competitive games. PCs aren't fighting another PCs and GMs are storytelles not your adversary yet many people are competitive and the feel bad when they are left behind. These people doesn't like when the char that they are playing are being subpar. They feel unfun when they are not one of the strongest members of the party and always was trying to get the best META possible in the game or in the role that they want to act.
Participative: This is closer to competitiveness but a bit different. It's common that some players wants to have a spot light close to their friends in the table. It's unfun for these players when they think that they are shining less than its friends or that they aren't colaborating enought to the party (felling that they are being a dead weight for them).
Roleplay: Some people can value roleplay more or equal to the mechanical efficiency as a way to have fun. It's not uncommon that this people searchs for fun playing as a char full of problems, defects and inefficiencies because they want to interpret an complex character. While others like the idea of roleplay a superpowered Isekai protagonist. The fun of this player is to roleplay some type of character and vary way much.
And so on.
So fun vary from player to player. If someone says "this class is fun" or "this class is unfun" this is subjective to that player personal preferences in general.
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I find the most fun in taking the characters that are running around in my head out for a spin in a world with consistent rules, unexpected challenges, consequences, and interactions with other players.
The more dissonance between how my character is imagined in my head and how it is expressed mechanically, the less fun I have.
The more predictable or cookie-cutter the challenges, the less fun I have.
The less dialed in and engaged the other players, the less fun I have.
Novelty, interactivity, and helping others get their time in the spotlight. I lean toward action comedy with just enough pathos to keep it from feeling frivolous. Basically, I have a swashbuckler mentality.
I enjoy being clever, but I don't want a big reward for it other than making the table laugh. I'd rather have slapstick that keeps up with the expected pace rather than a decisive whammy that finalizes the encounter. Even better if the whole party can get in on it.
If I'm fighting a giant, I want to stub their toe and make them bonk their head on a tree branch, causing them to slide down a hill into a pig sty, where my allies can pin them down and demand surrender rather than just use my best attack round after round until it stops moving. I don't want everyone being annoyed at me for slowing the game down when I do so.
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Options to grab a theme, reflect it on the table, then ultimately ham it up in roleplay execution is how I have fun at the table. As a dm, I just like being quick enough to keep the players guessing whenever they meet a new npc or step into a new combat
My wife and younger daughter find fun in creating motivated characters with development arcs.
My elder daughter finds fun in getting experimental builds to work. These are not optimized builds, they are builds that defy common sense such as Tikti the high-dexterity unarmored champion and Roshan the rogue with two spellcasting archetypes.
A housemate and I find fun in creating a good story. (You might notice that I often retell the stories from my campaigns.) I view my job as a GM to give the players opportunities to demonstrate that their characters are awesome.
We also find find fun in the social interaction of playing with friends. I like that I talk with my daughters every week over gaming Discord.
Let me contrast the fun with a game where I failed to create fun. I played the dwarf paladin Gardain in Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. I could not find his personality. He remained an abstract collection of mechanics and playstyle rather than coalescing into a fictional character. When this happens, I can enjoy the roleplaying game as movements in a game, but the story has an emptiness inside it. Then at 4th level, while using a short-range power on an enemy, Gardain had to stand in a fire to get close enough. The fire dealt only 1d6 fire damage a turn, so he said, "I can take it, I am tough." Then his personality gelled: he was proud of his dwarven heritage. He viewed himself as tough because he was proud that dwarves are tough. He challenged himself as a hero to bring glory to his people. That was Gardain's story.
I'm terrible at even basic math, which makes it so amazing to watch all these forum threads where the math is ripped apart, considered, and rebuilt again. But some love that part of games. I find the differences most interesting.
I analyze everything mathematically, because I am a retired mathematician. Math tells a story.
4. Sometimes, watching a kid completely derail a scene by doing something no sane adult would ever have thought of doing.
Sometimes, my wife or daughter completely derails a scene by doing something sane rather than what adventurers typically do. I have a few examples in Iron Gods among Scientists in which the party brought a mystery to the proper town authorities rather than trespassing to investigate.
Narrative storytelling that everyone at the table gets to contribute to. We're all writing a story together in real time with our interactions, and that's pretty amazing. The more dramatic, the better!
Mechanics that don't get in the way of #1, but enable it. PF2 is probably the most complex system I can handle, and I find myself having less patience for PF1 these days (which I used to like) because the added complexity isn't giving me anything except complexity.
Characters that can feel effective and contribute. "Effective" is a broad term here, I'm not talking damage specifically. I usually play support/healers/faces/etc rather than pure damage dealers. What I really want is to have a way to contribute to a scene and feel like that contribution mattered. Just being present while the broken OP character handles everything or sidelined constantly because I don't have any relevant skills for anything we're doing really harms my enjoyment.
Ultimately I'm here to tell a story, and the mechanics of my character and the game should help enable that. If they're doing that, I'm probably having fun. If I'm fighting with fiddly things or feeling ineffective constantly, I'm unlikely to be having fun.
The intersection of my planning, and my roleplaying, and the right situation creates moments that have a certain vibe to them that I can feel inside and feel immersed in. That could be a good roleplaying moment where I connect well with my roleplaying partners to produce a sense of energy we can both feel, or a moment where my plan comes together in a fight and I push through something and feel really elite.
In mechanics, it can be things like the feeling I get when I bring down a big boss by blasting it over and over, with the successes and failures stacking up (or deterministically cutting it down over a few rounds with) and finally bringing it down, the relieved payoff of the effort of it all, or the feeling of putting my will against a boss monster's when I step in and heal someone for the massive amount of damage they just took.
It can be putting forward a challenge, a bet, they can't refuse and surviving the heat to crit them back on my barbarian, it can be a decisive moment where I push an NPC or execute a scheme.
Fun for me, is a broad word for a collection of engaging experiences that get my blood moving and where I feel immersed in the world of the game or connected to other people, the more areas I can do that in the better.
My wife and younger daughter find fun in creating motivated characters with development arcs.
My elder daughter finds fun in getting experimental builds to work. These are not optimized builds, they are builds that defy common sense such as Tikti the high-dexterity unarmored champion and Roshan the rogue with two spellcasting archetypes.
A housemate and I find fun in creating a good story. (You might notice that I often retell the stories from my campaigns.) I view my job as a GM to give the players opportunities to demonstrate that their characters are awesome.
We also find find fun in the social interaction of playing with friends. I like that I talk with my daughters every week over gaming Discord.
Let me contrast the fun with a game where I failed to create fun. I played the dwarf paladin Gardain in Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. I could not find his personality. He remained an abstract collection of mechanics and playstyle rather than coalescing into a fictional character. When this happens, I can enjoy the roleplaying game as movements in a game, but the story has an emptiness inside it. Then at 4th level, while using a short-range power on an enemy, Gardain had to stand in a fire to get close enough. The fire dealt only 1d6 fire damage a turn, so he said, "I can take it, I am tough." Then his personality gelled: he was proud of his dwarven heritage. He viewed himself as tough because he was proud that dwarves are tough. He challenged himself as a hero to bring glory to his people. That was Gardain's story.
I'm terrible at even basic math, which makes it so amazing to watch all these forum threads where the math is ripped apart, considered, and rebuilt again. But some love that part of games. I find the differences most interesting.I analyze everything mathematically, because I am a retired mathematician. Math tells a story.
4. Sometimes, watching a kid completely derail a scene by doing something no sane adult would...
This is what I like about a forum. Lots of different perspectives.
I like math too, but I analyze the math like an investor. Cost-benefit analysis. How often something is effective. Impact on measurable metrics I find important. The type of mathematical analysis you do in investing requires the creation of particular metrics, most already existing, but some you create yourself to determine company performance and its impact on a stock or investment. So for PF2 I had to create meaningful metrics to measure performance, then analyze how those metrics performed across different classes and situations to determine their value when measuring the various options.
Math does indeed tell you something. Some folks don't enjoy it. It's very important for some of us that invest money based on math. Game metrics aren't as important as money, but I can learn a lot using the same type of analysis in terms of how options perform.
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Great thread idea Jonathan, and props to everyone (so far) keeping it civil!
4. Sometimes, watching a kid completely derail a scene by doing something no sane adult would ever have thought of doing.
Yep. As my RL games all involve my son, my nieces/nephews (and my brother, who I gamed with when we were….kids) I can attest to this.
I will say that this isn’t just the wheelhouse of kids. Adults often have this spark of…naive creativity that just sometimes absolutely refreshes everything.
And sometime the derail is an absolute “failure”, but the consequences are immensely fulfilling narratively.
Personally, the way I like to play and the way I like to run things changes around. The kinds of players I'm with tends to change things up too.
When I'm playing, my goal is to make a character that plays to a specific theme that offers good roleplaying opportunities and functions well in combat. So, games where I get enough time to play the build in combat and RP the theme and story I want to do with others is my ideal. I tend to bounce off of games where there isn't a good balance of both, especially if there's too many players less interested in RPing a character and/or playing tactically in combat. Essentially, I want to play with others who feel competent and are invested in telling a story or just playing their characters in interesting and fun ways.
When I'm GMing, my goal is to make sure everyone is enjoying themselves. I'm having the most fun when making interesting encounters that are difficult, but always winnable, and everyone else is having fun beating them. Additionally, I like it when players feel invested in the game, they're excited to tell a story with their character, whether it's a small and short arc or affects the whole campaign in a major way I can build around. I spend a lot of time teaching new players how to play as well, so helping new players understand their character and seeing them do great is always a delight for me as a GM.
Overall, a simple way to put it would be I like it when people take the game seriously in a fashion where they know what they're doing and want to tell a story too. When it comes to GMing for new and inexperienced players though, I have fun when I can help them improve and they discover the cool things they can do with this game!
At the table, the most essential bit of fun for me is the friendly banter between players. I've sat down to some awfully-designed games for hours and still had a good time, purely because I was with friends with whom I got to talk and joke with. When the game itself is good, the banter makes it even better.
One thing I find particularly conducive to the above in TTRPGs is when the mechanics and narrative work together to let a player make moments truly theirs. When the Wizard makes smart use of their spells to pull the party out of a sticky situation, or the Fighter pulls a masterful weapon combo, that's a moment everyone celebrates and talks about after it's happened, and an opportunity for everyone to celebrate the player who made that play as well. The best games of this sort are the ones who let different playstyles shine in their own way while giving them equal value, which is one of the reasons why I enjoy Pathfinder so much.
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I want it all:
Good roleplaying.
Combats that are tight.
Different tactics.
Well themed worlds.
But I'll pause everything for a good laugh, then get back into it.
I find it fun when participating in a game using rules which simulate a fantasy physics system precise enough to be plausible verisimilitude (and the session running smoothly without hurt feelings including grudges is a close second). Personally I find character sheets for such systems having more value for me "immersion"-wise...