Quote:
Originally Posted by Kromm
If you play a lot of different, short-term campaigns in a variety of settings with rotating GMs, you'll appreciate the generally skilled roleplayer much more. If your gaming group tends toward long-run campaigns which have a specific flavor set by the predilections of a go-to GM and go-to genre, you'll probably favor the specialist.
My experiences have largely been with gamers who appreciate a well-played character, but whose definition of "well-played" includes "portrays an essential type really well, and for a long time." That you could roleplay any 10 characters in any 10 campaigns competently (say, at skill 12) isn't relevant in the open-ended fantasy campaign where people expect you to play "gruff warrior" or "dutiful healer" consistently every week for years – for hundreds of game sessions, thousands of hours – and keep it expertly entertaining the whole time (say, at skill 16).
Perhaps it's just my general life biases showing, but while I appreciate the effort that goes into being a jack of all trades or renaissance man, I don't seek out such people when I want something done. I seek out the master or the specialist. For instance, my landlord's handyman who's merely an adequate carpenter, electrician, glazier, mason, plumber, roofer, etc. scares me . . . I'd never contract a person like that. But maybe if I were the HR director of a company that needed someone to wear 10 hats, I'd see it differently.
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That's probably an accurate diagnosis.
In San Diego, I had a group of around fifteen regular players. Each time I started off a new cycle of campaigns, I would reassign and regroup them based on which proposals they liked. Commonly I would have a new person or two join in with a new cycle.
My usual practice was to have a cycle last two years, one session per month for each game; that is, a "campaign" for me was around 24 sessions and around 120 hours. In general, that was long enough for me to explore the premise and theme of a particular campaign, and to have the player characters come to life. There was one cycle where, as the end of the second year approached, all three campaigns were still very strong and had material left to explore (that's the one trooper6 has been referring to), so I extended that to a third year, or close to 200 hours.
Now, I'd say I was the go-to GM for that group; at least five of my players ran campaigns of their own at one time or another, but none was as consistent as I was or had as large a player circle. On the other hand, I didn't have a go-to genre. I ran a lot of fantasy—but "fantasy" includes many different options: present-day British teenagers strayed into the realm of the fair folk, voyagers on the Pearl Bright Ocean serving as privateers hired by the Atlantean Empire, inhabitants of an isolated castle in the midst of magically chaotic wilderness, and others; a lot of supers, ranging from streetlevel to the team who kept the world safe from the worldshakers; and a variety of other genres.
I had players who ran to type. There's the woman who nearly always ran the combat monster. There's the woman who used to run the prostitute (or ex-prostitute, in at least one campaign). There's the man who really loved playing dragons, or humans with draconic ties. But I also had players who wanted to try something new.
And a big part of the fun, for me, was coming up with a concept for a new game world and figuring out how things would work there. So having players who were ingenious about finding something to grab onto in my settings and developing it were really rewarding for me to run games for.