this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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Hey, not being judgmental, just curious. Are the games you enjoy more almost entirely combat? Or do you just skip roleplaying stuff like shopping? What would your ideal split be?
My first game I participated in (it ran for several years, with a bit of a ship of theseus situation, by the time it ended the GM and I were the only original ones left) was basically entirely combat. It was a super drag, but that was half 4e's fault. Tbh it wasn't good after we swapped to 5e but it was better. I still had fun because, you know, spending time with friends, but I really didn't enjoy it that much. I started playing with another group of friends and it was almost exactly opposite, almost entirely RP with very little combat for the most part, except for the occasional dungeon delve or something along those lines where it would be mostly combat for several sessions. I really loved that game and it really opened my eyes to how much fun the game could actually be. It's also really group/dm dependent though.
That game ended, and we're doing a new one with the same group, but one of the players is now co-dming, intending to do more of the combat while the original dm does more of the roleplay (splitting planning, equally active during sessions). We're only a couple sessions in but it's working out really well so far
Tl;dr I’m a crotchety old fuck and I have a different idea of fun from some people; I like rolling dice.
I like a little bit of RP. Like there’s a quest giver in a tavern and he says there’s a monster in the forest, and you go there and you meet a witch, and she tells you about a curse, and then you go to the forest and use the curse knowledge to slay the monster. Traditional 1980s on-rails D&D shit.
The most important thing to me is that my character sheet and decisions determine what happens in the game, not my own personal charisma or rhetorical prowess. I don’t need to be an expert in fencing to stab a guard, or an expert in ninjutsu to sneak across a courtyard. Likewise, I shouldn’t have to be a master orator in order to convince some dude to tell me where he saw the monster. Let me just say I do that, and roll for it. And if other players get to talk their way out of shit, that makes me feel bad. Like you didn’t have to roll? Fuck you.
Also what I despise is when the game devolves into any one of the following very common tropes:
You meet some NPC and one of the players just wants to talk with them forever about lore and story and shit. It doesn’t matter. She’s there to give you a McMuffin. Get the scroll of water purification or whatever! It’s fine if you have to do a bit of RP to get there, but the objective is not to learn about her grandchildren and their pet toad.
Shopping, as mentioned in the OP. It is a huge waste of time. Just say “I go to the store and buy 3 healing potions” and you can look up how much they cost in the DMG or wherever. If the DM thinks you’ll learn something important while shopping, they’ll say “when you enter the store, a busty lizard woman winks at you with her second pair of eyelids. Roll perception”. “8”. “You notice she’s not wearing any underwear, but you don’t see any reason to be suspicious”.
Combat is cool, and it’s like 60% of the character I made. It’s the most cooperative part of the game, and I think it’s fun.
People who do voices drive me fucking insane, no, I don’t care if you listen to some podcast where people do that. It’s grating. This is a party preference thing and I know some people think it’s fun. I just don’t.
The party splits up in a city and does different things. Oh great now the DM is going to be sidetracked by Glarfblarg’s lost eyebrow tweezers, and 2 or 3 people are just going to sit there watching other people play the game they showed up to play.
This is a player problem, but “my character is so unique and important, please give us a side quest relating to my own personal tragic backstory”. No. Fuck off with that shit. If the DM decides to work that into the plot in a way that’s fun for everyone, WITHOUT BEING ASKED OR NAGGED, great. But if a player is insistent and tries to railroad the campaign into something narcissistic, fuck that.
So yeah I think RP is generally bad in anything above low doses. But that’s my personal preference and I think other people are free to enjoy it. I suspect people who got into the hobby more recently like RP more than others, because apparently podcasts exist and there are podcast people who make it fun to listen to, I don’t really know. But BACK IN MY DAY there was a necromancer in a cave beneath a gnarled tree, and he’s been stealing children from the village, and you have to go down there and kill him and his army of zombie babies. And no you can’t talk him out of it and make him good.
It sounds like you need to force more discussion in session 0 talks (or earlier). Do you want an RP-light, fairly linear game? Great! You're not alone. But everyone at your table needs to agree to that, or at least one of you is not having a good time.
I like a good hack and slash dungeon crawl. I also like RP heavy games. But those are two very different games, and it's good to have consistency within whatever game you're playing.
I found this post by sorting by ALL and I've never done any role playing games. But I wanted to thank you for a great comment to read and an A+ old man rant. Upvoted from a fellow crotchety old fuck.
Absolutely nothing wrong with games like that! I feel you on player vs character charisma, and in backstory hooks and the like. Our DM really likes to hook our backstories into the game, and I frustrate him a little sometimes by usually keeping my background simple. Done right, the backstory hooks into current events, so it's not a "why are we doing this instead of the main quest" deal. Some of my favorite game memories are of conversations amongst the party characters dicussing what's going on with those hooks and helping the related character through it. I think it's really good for me though because our players are really good. We make sure that everyone gets involved, or if someone's not feeling it tonight we can steer more clear of them. We're not afraid to hand waive unimportant things, especially if/when the party gets split up. Everyone's really working together to make sure everyone's having a good time, and I feel like that's not as common as it should be.
Nothing against more strategy and combat focused games though! The teamwork is really what makes combat come alive in my opinion, and there's nothing more satisfying than a well laid plan coming together (except maybe everything going wrong and pulling it off anyways)