A survey to players and GM: what do you want in an adventure

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dungeonlord
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A survey to players and GM: what do you want in an adventure

Post by dungeonlord »

Hi everyone

I'm a GM since a long time and i am curious to hear what players find interesting in an adventure. Is it the story? is it the fact that they can start of high level ? Moreover how do people play nowadays ? still the old fashion way or more and more taking advantage of VTT (virtual tabletop)?
Since here unfortunately it is not possible to make a poll i set it up here ( http://rpggeek.com/thread/953104/a-smal ... to-players ) on RPGGeek (i hope that is not a problem).

I hope to learn something from it and that you will enjoy
cheers

Gabriele

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wolph42
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Re: A survey to players and GM: what do you want in an adven

Post by wolph42 »

well you can create a poll here. But only on one question IRC

o and you go wrong in your very first question: I play Warhammer 40K rpg. And there are a lot of other systems out there, so at least add 'other' to the mix.

dungeonlord
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Re: A survey to players and GM: what do you want in an adven

Post by dungeonlord »

the one i made is with several questions and multiple choices in some case... i didn't thought it was the case to open a post for each of the 10 questions :P

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wolph42
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Re: A survey to players and GM: what do you want in an adven

Post by wolph42 »

dungeonlord wrote:the one i made is with several questions and multiple choices in some case... i didn't thought it was the case to open a post for each of the 10 questions :P
no exactly, thats why i made the remark.

by the way, bestsellers according to amazon in the top 100:
1. Pathfinder DD3.5/4
2. Cthulu (around 50)
3. Warhammer 40,000 (around 70)
4. Shadowrun (around 80)

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aliasmask
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Re: A survey to players and GM: what do you want in an adven

Post by aliasmask »

  • 3.5/Pathfinder
  • VTT
  • Fantasy (dungeon crawl?)
    • Order of importance (1 low, 5 high)
    • Story: 4/5
    • Characters: 3/5
    • Maps: 3/5
    • Fights: 3/5
  • Level: 3 (1-4)
  • Pregenerated Character: No
  • Ever bought online: No

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CoveredInFish
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Re: A survey to players and GM: what do you want in an adven

Post by CoveredInFish »

Me too cant answer the first question (would also check "other" as I mainly play smallish indy games), so didnt bother with the rest. :|

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JML
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Re: A survey to players and GM: what do you want in an adven

Post by JML »

Ok, just to give the big picture, my location is in France and I belong to a RPG club of nearly 40 persons. The club is almost 25 years old by now which is quite a lot for France. The club is opened every friday nights and we usually have around three games every week, which means a bit less than 20 persons.

So as you can guess I play face to face and I'm just toying with MapTool at the moment, but I plan to make a MapTool demo at the club in the coming weeks. By now, at best floor plans are drawn on white boards and often on plain paper, if they are to be drawn at all.

So what games are played at the moment ?

Very few D20 or any other of its cousins. In fact none for a very long time now. The club's name, "Les enfants de R'lyeh" (R'lyeh's children), is coming from the fact that the ones who founded the club were big fans of The Call of Cthulhu. The main emphasis is put on role playing and ambience. Which doesn't mean we don't enjoy a good "hack and slash" from times to times.

Generally speaking people are willing to try new games in the club, even if we usually play campaigns. Current club campaigns are Deadlands, Fading Suns, WOD, Maléfices, Battletech, Tribe 8, Pendragon, Hellywood, Street Fighter, Anima, Vermine.

We used to play Call of Cthulhu of course, and will again, but also Agone, Amber, Runequest, 7th Sea, Brigade chimérique, Capharnaüm, Conan, C.O.P.S., Dark Heresy, Earthdawn, Final Frontier, INS/MV (french version which is quite different from its english translation), L5R, Marvel, Mutant Chronicles, Les Ombres d'Esteren, Qin, Polaris, Rêve de Dragon (Rêve : the Dream Ouroboros), Shadowrun, Stargate Atlantis, Tenga, Trinité (different from Trinity), Trône de fer (A Song of Ice and Fire) and others I forget.

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Jagged
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Re: A survey to players and GM: what do you want in an adven

Post by Jagged »

Although I am playing D&D at the moment, that is something of a departure for me as I usually play (and my preference is for) Hero System and Super Heroes. So most of your questions don't work for me.

I play with friends I've know for almost 30 years. We play face to face when we can, but life being what it is, that is rare, so we are currently using Maptool to provide a weekly venue.

We regularly start new campaigns but I also realise that the last super hero campaign I ran lasted about 10 years :o

Its rare that I'd buy an adventure module but since we have be playing D&D I have bought 1 or 2.

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Xaelvaen
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Re: A survey to players and GM: what do you want in an adven

Post by Xaelvaen »

Hmm. I got my start with classic DnD (boxed sets) and eventually graduated to 2nd Edition. During this era, it was pretty much nothing -but- dungeon crawls. Since the induction of 3.0, I've slowly delved more and more into the actual Role Play of the genre. Afterwards, my gaming has drastically changed and I play a great deal of many things:

Whitewolf (I love the mechanical balance here, at least for a while.)
Warhammer (40k and Fantasy) I love the 'loner' feel of the mechanics. Your stats determine if you hit, not so much your enemies' stats. They can separately dodge/parry and the like, but there's no AC as it were. Good balance.

Lately, however, since involving myself with the Numenera beta testing (see my sig), that has taken up all my gaming time and experience, and I will openly admit it has taken my story-driven role-playing gaming to an all-time high. The system takes a second page approach to story-driven combat and adventures. So, that's all I play anymore, aside from an occasional Pathfinder game with my friends who just love that stuff ^^ (Since Paizo is a nifty company, I dun mind it at all).

As far as the adventures themselves, I prefer at least the -attempt- at catching me off-guard and surprising me with interesting twists and turns. Even if I predict them, the effort gives me much happiness. I don't like anything to drudge on in monotony - only so many blind turns with beholders behind 90% cover per dungeon please.

We play using Maptools and Excel. When there is something visual and tactical, MT (via projector or just local networking). But its a face-to-face tool for us, rarely played online. Excel is just to have a copy of our character information for the more RP elements that don't really require much work, the more story-driven battles, and the like.

The level range varies. When we start a campaign, as the core DM I pretty much assign the levels, but what I love playing the most is what I call the 'drops of water' type of campaign, where we play absolute nobodies, like the classic Warhammer system. (Oh, I'm a Woodsman, cool! I start with an axe.)

Importance - Characters come first. I'll stop playing during the very first adventure if there is no chemistry between characters, so I suppose that'd have to be a 5/5. Story comes next at a 4, with combat at a 3. Maps is purely dependent on what I'm doing, and there's a lot of instances where words can describe a scene to me much better than a picture, so we'll stick that at 2.

Never use pregenerated characters.

As far as online purchase, I buy nothing but my mp3s, netflix, and Kickstarters - online.
"An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life - becoming a better person." - Leo Tolstoy

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JML
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Re: A survey to players and GM: what do you want in an adven

Post by JML »

So we had our usual "one shot" session, like every fifth friday of the month, when we dedicate to play something else than the current campaigns. A good time to play other games, with other players, other GMs, just for one night. And a good time for newcomers to discover the club.

Rules for those nights are GMs volunteer in advance not saying which games they'll come with. They must have a scenario with pregenerated characters and that can be played in one night's time lapse. Games are all disclosed at the beginning of the night and players chose among them.

This time we had two oldies and a new game: Kult, Jorune and Mournblade.

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