2009-09-04 DM Profile

About two years ago, I wrote about player and GM types. At the time I said I was “Director first and Provider second. I do like the occasional Plotmeister session. I used to be a World Builder.” A while ago, Michael Wolf wrote about D&D 4E, and I replied with a link to Dissociated Mechanics, a (long) article about the effects of the rules being hard to imagine and explain in common sense terms. Stuart Robertson picked it up and produced a list of of differences between the various editions. This in turn motivated me to try and determine where I fit in.

Bold is what I prefer:

Comprehensive Rules vs. *Minimal Rules* – nothing breaks immersion like looking up some rules
High Power Fantasy vs. *Low Power Fantasy* – I think this results in more problems being solvable by players instead of stats, skills, and spells on a character sheet; that is, I don’t really mind high power fantasy, I just think low power fantasy [WhatIsAffordance affords] players solving problems instead of using their character sheets to solve problems
Narrative Mechanics vs. *Simulation Mechanics* – it’s not that I like simulation or a lot of mechanics, but if there is a rule, I’d like to visualize its effect in a movie; if I cannot picture the effect of the rule, I get confused
Strategic Chargen vs. *Simple Chargen* – I found that complex character generation is boring; I had this relevation when I realized that my wife was unwilling to read all the spell descriptions and dive into the rules for character creation – I did not feel like making a spell selection for her and realized that we both don’t enjoy complex chargen
Tactical Encounter vs. *Strategic Adventure* – I prefer NoBattlemap and “fast & furious” combat without agonizing over choices
Combat Balance vs. *Adventure Balance* – if combat is fast & furious its no longer a problem if some characters have nothing to do in a fight
Balanced Encounter vs. *Balanced Adventure* – or only vaguely balanced, ie. it’s possible to have areas that are off-limit for characters; part of the challenge is figuring out where they are and how to get around them
Wargame Combat vs. *Abstract Combat* – I think abstract combat affords fast combat resolution; I like strategy games from Final Fantasy Tactics to Go, but not as part of my roleplaying
GM as player vs. *GM as referee* – as soon as rules are being used *against* me, I start to use the rules against the players which might be one of the causes for adversarial tendencies at the table – I don’t enjoy that and a referee role is what I strive for (there’s still a lot to do)
Fantastic Characters vs. *Common Characters* – I think the same reasoning applies as for high power vs. low power fantasy
Established Setting vs. DIY Setting – I actually don’t have much of a preference in this area; in recent games I have noticed Text Paralysis, however; I wrote a German post about it; in short, the problem is that a lot of text makes me suspect that a particular piece of information is somewhere to be found in the text, so I go looking for it instead of improvising, dragging the game down
Resource Optimization vs. *Creative Problem Solving* – there’s also an aspect of resource management in classic D&D variants (encumbrance, detailed equipment lists ranging from pitons, hammers, rope, torches, and rations to water skins); I don’t think I’d mind that aspect of resource optimization, but in the absence of detailed rules “creative problem solving” enables the party to just move on instead of trying to find a justification in the rules (skills) for what they’re doing

NoBattlemap

Final Fantasy Tactics

adversarial tendencies at the table

a German post about it

What a cool list of properties. If you go through the list for yourself, add 1 if you picked the same, subtract 1 if you picked the other option, skip if one of us had no preference. What’s your score? Mine is 11. ;)

#RPG #Balance