Robin D. Laws Player Types Quiz

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

That does not encompass the whole of my experience of playing RPGs. It is a poor description of running or playing RPGs at conventions, it is an inadequate description of playing RPGs in gaming stores and clubs where there is an element of "come who may", and it does not make sense of people who post "looking for players" and "looking for group" ads, especially on VTT sites.

All of which I'm ready to give you. Except that it has no bearing on my experience, which is the only experience I can write from, both here and professionally. Expressed as percentages of hours of roleplaying – and I have played a lot of hours – I'd say 97% is with friends in private groups in homes, 1-2% apiece is in clubs and conventions, and near 0% is in shops or online. So, when I take a quiz about what kind of gamer I am, that profile is encoded in the answers I give.

Originally Posted by Agemegos

I play them because I enjoy the actual games.

I read all the rest, and I'm happy to acknowledge that you are correct for you, as you are writing from your experience, which is the only experience you can write from.

That said, I do want to point out that "games" might be the locus of our difference of opinion. I don't believe that RPGs are "games" except in name – a name they gained by historical accident (largely tied to growing out of wargames). Thus, I feel odd when someone says they "enjoy the games." As someone who writes for RPGs, I of course appreciate it when someone enjoys my writing. But trying to play the actual rules of an RPG as if they were a game, and enjoying that, seems oddly alien, because they're nothing but guidelines for a complex social interaction mediated by the GM.

Originally Posted by Emerikol

I also feel that a roleplaying game is not a novel.

Very much so! Again in my personal but hardly insignificant experience, the quest to turn campaigns into novels or movies in some way lies at the root of most bad gaming experiences. Because such tilting at windmills puts something that in gaming has no self and no existence without participants – a plot – ahead of the desires of gamers who do exist and have selves.

Originally Posted by RogerBW

What if the players are currently enjoying non-story things?

I'm what you'd call a "reactive GM": What I do – what happens next in the game world and sometimes the very structure of that world, what NPCs say and do, how I interpret the rules and what house rules I make up, what I reward (with loot, character improvement, or just a verbal compliment) and what I punish (with a rare "Okay, that's enough.") – is all decided in real time as I listen to the players talk (both words and subtext) and read their faces, and figure out what they want. If they're enjoying a battle, they get more battles like that. If they're enjoying ignoring the nominal plot to pursue something they believe is a side-quest but wasn't meant as such, a side-quest appears. If they're enjoying Monty Python quotes or singing "Low Rider," I shut up and let them do it.

It's no different from my two other major pastimes: When mixing cocktails, I don't mix what I want and thrust it upon others, however disgusted they are by it, with some lecture about how it's a classic and they should like it; I mix what my guests want, to their specifications, even if it results in something that I wouldn't enjoy. When dancing Argentine tango, I don't decide how my partner and I will interpret the music and push them through the steps I want to dance; I play a subtle game of proposal and counter-proposal in which we each contribute and create a collaborative interpretation. Fundamentally, I don't "get" participatory pastimes where only some people get to participate in ways that are enjoyable for them.

Originally Posted by RogerBW

One idea that I've found useful, though certainly not fully explanatory in itself, is to say that the story output of an RPG is the tales told afterwards. It is certainly possible to play with an eye to this.

That's precisely what I meant here:

Originally Posted by Kromm

The label "story" is being used for something that unfolds in real time, in a way that no omniscient figure can reliably predict; it's a story after the fact.

I always play with an eye to that. I guess I was railroaded too many times as a young gamer and came to resent it.

Originally Posted by RogerBW

And while everyone there has turned up because they saw the game writeup and decided they wanted to play it, there's still a social group formed round the table even if everyone there's a stranger to everyone else. (And sometimes there's even a classic Laws casual gamer, who turned up because they're with a friend at the convention and that friend wanted to play.) By the end of the session we're a group, and quite often may end up getting beer or some food together, even if we'll never see each other again after that.

That's fully consistent with my very limited convention experience.

I should add that I started gaming in a smallish city with no games conventions (then . . . it has them now!) and games sold only at "hobby shops" where they merited a small shelf but hardly tables and gaming space. Then I moved here, where there are both games conventions and larger games shops, but where for my first few years all the gaming was in a language I didn't speak well enough for gaming. Then I got into the RPG business and became a Known Quantity, and all my convention and shop appearances were as an ambassador of a company and a brand. So, I've never gamed with total strangers, but always with people who "knew" me at least a little as "Kromm, the GURPS Line Editor," which meant I was really gaming with acquaintances.

Even so, those games generally end with social interactions, not people haring off into the night. I imagine at least a few people reading this have had a beer with me.

[Kalzazz]

Power Gamer: 75%
Butt-Kicker: 88%
Tactician: 42%
Specialist: 46%
Method Actor: 42%
Storyteller: 50%
Casual Gamer: 63%

Butt-Kicker - Blood for the Blood God! I love a good fight as a player, and as a DM I love running a good fight. Line the minis on the table and lay on. Sometimes my DMing involves some kind plot linking together a series of cool set piece battles like Shining Force or Fire Emblem

Power Gamer - I like the actual game mechanics and I hate chargen and all those annoying fiddly tasks that get between me and actually playing already, so I feel if I must do something I want to do it rightly as nothing feels worse than being forced to make a character then watch them flop at their intended use. Plus I definitely enjoy watching characters grow and dropping bigger and bigger numbers on folks (as a DM I really enjoy seeing the characters get more awesome and stronger to)

Casual Gamer - I also love the food and drinks aspect and the hanging out with friends and you know what maybe we just play Smash Brothers instead. I also loathe actually doing chargen and any other parts of role-playing that don't involve actually playing the game, and am perfectly happy to let other people handle that.

Storyteller - I do like a good story and can try to follow the plot. I definitely dislike sandbox player directed play. You ask me what I want to do and get a blank look.

Specialist - I have preferences but not exclusively so. Whatever my character is though I prefer to be good at it.

Method Actor - I want to play my character appropriately, but I am more motivated by cool or comic than 'true to character' as it goes

Tactician - scouting? Planning? GAH! Get in there and slug already! And a perfectly executed mission plan that simply avoids actually rolling init? Awful! I am very interested in Tactics _after_ a fight has kicked off X and O type stuff, Deceptive Attacks, Hit Locations, Unit Facing and so on oh my I love, but before init is rolled ugh

I also notice a distinct lack of Comic Relief as an player archetype, which I think I would score pretty high on

[johndallman]

Tactician: 83%
Method Actor: 62.5%
Storyteller: 58%
Casual Gamer: 50%
Power Gamer: 46%
Specialist: 33%
Butt-Kicker: 17%

Tactician: I do like out-thinking opponents, and sometimes the GM. The moment when the GM finds his set-piece had a loose piece of string, and pulling on it collapses the whole problem has a special enjoyment for me.

Method Actor: I do want to play as my character, to view the setting and the problems through their eyes and mind, and to solve the problems their way.

Storyteller: I think I mostly do this through thinking about things that might happen in future game sessions, and how to deal with them. That gives me time to think of interesting things. In a session, I don't think quickly enough for that, except for occasional flashes of inspiration.

Casual Gamer: In times of face-to-face gaming I was often the host. I could usually keep track of how people were relating to the game and the environment.

Power Gamer: I do keep track of mechanics fairly carefully, and I usually do have a list of things I want to buy.

Specialist: There are things I like to have on characters, some of which, like high PER, are over-compensation for my own limitations.

Butt-Kicker: I'm much more interested in the outcomes than the process of the fight.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Huh. That's about right.

Power Gamer: 33%
Butt-Kicker: 21%
Tactician: 71%
Specialist: 4%
Method Actor: 96%
Storyteller: 88%
Casual Gamer: 54%

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Kromm

All of which I'm ready to give you. Except that it has no bearing on my experience, which is the only experience I can write from, both here and professionally.

I'm sorry. When you wrote "Gaming is social, though not necessarily casual, first, and all else second. It involves assembling a group – in practice, almost always a group of friends or at least acquaintances…" I took you to be generalising in a way that included my games.

That said, I do want to point out that "games" might be the locus of our difference of opinion.

Very likely. Greg Costikyan wrote a sadly influential article called "I Have No Words and I Must Design" in which he took the definition of "game" from John von Neumann's work on mathematical models of strategic interaction by rational decision-makers, and applied it dogmatically to a word that has an older and wider sense. He concluded that RPGs must be made into Neumannite games, to which I object. I consider that games are what people (and sometimes other animals) play. I use "game" in the sense in which Rugby, tennis, hide-and-seek, whispering telephones, truth-or-dare, spin-the-bottle, and even chasies and fetch are included, not just chess, poker, and global thermonuclear war.

I suppose that you and I agree that Neumann's definition of a game does not cover RPGs. You take the view that the definition is valid and that RPGs aren't games, whereas I take the view that it is invalid because they are.

Originally Posted by RogerBW

One idea that I've found useful, though certainly not fully explanatory in itself, is to say that the story output of an RPG is the tales told afterwards. It is certainly possible to play with an eye to this.

When I describe RPGs as participative, collaborative, extemporary games of improvised storytelling — which I do from time to time — I am not referring to a story that the GM plans before the game, nor to the reminiscences that the players might relate afterwards. I'm not talking about story as an input, nor as an output, but as the matter of the process during the process. Telling¹ each other things during the game is the process of playing an RPG. The story is the things we tell each other while we are playing.

_____

¹ Not always entirely verbally.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

When I describe RPGs as participative, collaborative, extemporary games of improvised storytelling... I am not referring to a story that the GM plans before the game, nor to the reminiscences that the players might relate afterwards. I'm not talking about story as an input, nor as an output, but as the matter of the process during the process.

My own point of view and experience agrees with this description. RPGs are a collaborative creation, and with all those inputs, you don't know the endpoint. But that doesn't mean it's not a "story". Most readers' experience even of auteur fiction in the form of a story or a movie is still not that of predestination or peeking at the end of the book first; their experience unfolds as they read or watch, and it's not the same experience the second time you see that story unfold. Was the work not a story the first time, or second? Or is a still a story either way?

Railroading is usually harmful because it affects participation in the collaboration, not because plot is bad. Railroading means one person has taken over the entire creation, which removes everyone else from participation in the creation, and turns them into passive observers. Sometimes you'll see a similar problem from the player end rather than the GM end, when a character is created with a dominant backstory that demands certain events unfold in the future, lest that backstory become completely irrelevant. That's not a problem in a single-author story, but it can be a problem when it takes over that shared collaboration and collapses it to just one driver with a bunch of passive observers, just as when a GM insists on having only their plot appearing. Part of the trick to creating good RPG characters is embedding the potential for story without that potential demanding a single resolution. Other people are going to be using that potential to drive things in ways the creator of the character doesn't know beforehand, so a good character has to be satisfying in many possible ways, not just one.

Players are like actors (and those kinds of questions show up on quizzes) because that's the closest word we've got to the means by which they communicate parts of the story to everyone else at the table. That communication is a lot like an acting performance, whether improv or directed in a scripted film. Not identical to either of those, certainly, but that doesn't make the comparison useless. RPG players are there for fun, certainly -- and part of that fun is being entertained by the other people at the table. The social experience is driven by that acting to communicate choices and results of the ongoing story.. (Imagine an RPG session where everyone sat at the table and didn't communicate about their game with each other at all. They just thought about it internally. That might be a party, and it might be fun from other interaction the people have, but it's not an RPG.)

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Part of the trick to creating good RPG characters is embedding the potential for story without that potential demanding a single resolution.

That's well put. I'd add that the like is true when creating situations and conflicts for RPGs.

[Celjabba]

Power Gamer: 58%
Butt-Kicker: 38%
Tactician: 75%
Specialist: 50%
Method Actor: 58%
Storyteller: 83%
Casual Gamer: 83%

Interesting ... I would have thought Method Actor would be lower and Power gamer higher.

Otherwise, it certainly feel right.

Seems the more you answer on the left of the table (avoiding "rarely" because most affirmation are at least sometimes true), the higher the overall percentages will be - which make sense I guess.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Celjabba

Seems the more you answer on the left of the table (avoiding "rarely" because most affirmation are at least sometimes true), the higher the overall percentages will be - which make sense I guess.

There were quite a few things where I said "rarely" because it wasn't quite "never."

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by whswhs

There were quite a few things where I said "rarely" because it wasn't quite "never."

I gave just about no extreme responses ("Definitely" or "Definitely Not"), moderating all my strong opinions to "Often" or "Rarely." Where I lacked strong opinions, I turned off my brain and chose "Sometimes or No Preference or Not Applicable" in the sense of "No Preference." That's probably why all my scores were in the 38-79% range, with nothing way up in the 10 or 20 percentiles at either end.

This isn't surprising for me . . . I might sound like one of those "Always! Never! Rah, rah, The Cause!" extremists in my writing, but that's just because I like to write with conviction. I can't stand wishy-washy words. In person, I'm essentially the consummate moderate, always seeking diplomatic solutions, consensuses, and compromises. I'm like this at the gaming table, too. I think it's linked to my rather high "Extroversion" scores on other kinds of quizzes: I play the "social game" by choice, and enjoy it, while I dislike antisocial approaches and just find asocial people difficult.