After 20 years of playing through different rp games with the same bunch of friends something odd has happened, I do not enjoy the gaming sessions

I always thought that for a GM to have fun the most important condition is that the players must have fun. Well, indeed my players do have a lot of fun with wfrpg 3 but I do not, so I guess it is a necessary condition but not a sufficient one.

Then I thought, well, the setting should be also important (although I have enjoyed Rune Quest a lot which didn't have a very developed setting). But then again, I do love the warhammer setting, that is why we moved to this game around the early 90s with its 1st edition, and we have kept playing it ever since. Again, this must be a necessary condition but no sufficient.

Then there should be something else. When I think what I do not like from wfrpg 3 all my concerns spin heavily around its mechanics. Therefore, by a simplistic negation method it means that for me the mechanics of the game are important.

So (and by order of relevance?)

1) Players must have fun

2) World setting

3) Game mechanics

I do not know the weight of each one (the 1st one being for sure the most important), but it seems that these three conditions make the pack I need to have fun when I play rpgs as a GM, or may be there is a fourth and a fifth which I haven't discovered yet.

and for you?

Cheers,

Yepes

What inspires creativety and motivation will vary over time, and YMMV.

Well a big part of the motivation of indie designs is releasing the GM from doing all the heavy lifting for the three things you list. Maybe some time for some Spirit of the Century, Inspectres or the like.

Hmm…I enjoy myself if:

• I have to prep. (I actually like it, so I stay away from games with "light prep.")

• I love the setting and the scenario/adventure.

• My players bring creative ideas to the table.

• My players push back against the setting and react in non-obvious ways to the scenario's prompts.

• I have lots of neat Stuff (cardboard buildings, minis, etc.) on the table.

• The game mechanics are easy to learn and get out of the way during play.

For the players to do something stupid. Sad, but I love it when there's something I know coming and they do the least helpful thing; I have trouble not chortling at the upcoming train crash.

Also them doing something really silly (like stealing peoples trousers).

And when the party falls apart in the face of disaster, thats pretty funny too.

Oh yes, and that moment when you have completely forgotten the plot and the unexpected comes up and you make up something really ridiculous and the players just run with it, that's cool (But then you have to fit it into the scenario).

I suppose basically it's just having a good bunch of players that don't take it too seriously

In my experience the group of players are the key to the GM having fun. I can enjoy a game with the right group of players and get bored with the same game if I have the "wrong" group of players. I believe it's a balance of the players following the adventure in their own fashion and doing their own things at the same time. This makes the game "unexpected" and surprising for me as a GM as well, and adds to my fun. Furthermore there should be roleplaying both within the group of PCs, as well as between the PCs and my NPCs.

If you're not having fun, I'd probably suggest a change of scenery. We played another roleplaying game in another world for a long time and had a lot of fun. But it became less and less fun for me (and also the players). Changing world and gaming system (to WFRP3e) made it fun to roleplay again. Having another person GM can also help. This change doesn't have to be permanent, a few sessions in another game might trigger the fun and then WFRP might be more enjoyable when coming back to it again.

Playing a few sessions with a goofy game might be enough, in sweden there's a parody roleplaying game called Svenil (which is in swedish) where you play crazy adventures with goofy characters. That might be enough to re-kindle the passion for roleplaying.

1 - Players must have fun but positioned more as "players must be as dedicated to everyone having fun as the GM is dedicated, they must commit to their characters and at the same time respect others' commitment not just be 'my guy would do that even if it screws up the evening for everyone' sorts". One of the first sets of posts on my blog is about how players can bring the fun to a table.

http://valvorik.livejournal.com/1960.html

The tradition of "GM is responsible for the table's fun" (and for dealing with problem personalities, scheduling, snacks etc etc." is just plain wrong-wrong-wrong and contributes to GM burn out.

2 - Rules - rules that are broken, time-consuming, unclear, create drastic differences in player ability to affect what goes on at table, don't fit the "promise they make" on cover can reduce/spoil a table's fun. E.g., bad rules are rules that stop play while tables are looked up, rules that make everyone spend precious time in math or book keeping rather than roleplaying.

3 - Setting and fluff are important (I love the grim and perilous old world, i love Lovecraft's bleak world of horror) but are not as important as the first two. I like In a Wicked Age and wish i could play more Universalis. IAWA has "evocative of a setting" elements but really is "players create setting each game" and Universalis has no implicit setting.

I'm with Valvorik on this one. The fun in roleplaying can come from different places for different people but it all requires a whole table that is committed to everyone having a good experience (especial if different players actually enjoy slightly different aspects of the game). Players who sit back expecting the GM to entertain them whilst offering nothing in return are a quick route to GM burn out.

Bad rules can damage a game. One of my favorite things about WFRP3 is the level of GM fiat that is written into the rules. When games try to write rules for every situation then some of them inevitably end up broken. Deciding things on a situation basis at the table will normally result in a better solution.

For me the other big factor is character influence on the story. As a GM I want the players to derail the story. I can think of nothing worse than starting a campaign and knowing what is going to happen in it a very stage along the way. I think I would rather read a book. I recently ran a campaign in Ubersreik where the players characted characters that all worked for a Crime Boss. I developed a whole mafia style story set in Ubersreik and then, in the third session, the boss gave them the job of sinking a river boat belonging to a merchant. The players at this point decided to steal the river boat and flee the city (shortly followed by bounty hunters sent by their former boss). From that point on I never knew what was happening more than 1 session ahead and it was great. Similarly as a player I want my character's actions to influence the story. If the story is going to unfold regardless of what my character does then, again, I guess reading a book would be a better bet.

Captain Fluffy said:

Agreed, good players surprise the GM the same way good GM has plot twists etc. to surprise them. Holding plans lightly and going with what emerges at table is important for "table play to write the story". My own experience in 1000 Thrones of having players simultaneously resist the influence of the holy child, extract him from Crusade and then unwittingly hand him over to one of the factions in the conspiracy (which was either never supposed to get him or only get him about 4 chapters later in the official text) left me constantly rejigging "so what now" but having so much fun doing it.

A good setting with lots of elements to draw on does help a GM run that kind of game as it gives implicit suggestions and helps decide what to do in response to player actions.

..to crush the PCs

..to see them driven before me

..and to hear the lamentations of their women

jh

( … or men)

Our group's enjoyment comes mainly from jokes we tell and puns we use without disturbing the immersion to Old World and the story. Everyone makes a lot of fun comments or real-world references that make us all laugh. Luckily, no-one overdoes this or is simply bad at it so it sometimes gets hilariously verbal. As GM, I tell everyone the main intention is to have fun - no matter how we do it. But yes, we get through our sessions and there's no lack of drama either.

1. Recognize that anything you do repeatedly is going to ultimately get boring, even you’re most favorite thing. It’s just a part of human nature.

2. GMing is a job you can do in many different ways, but most GM’s, in fact I would go as far as to say ALL GM’s at least part of the time are too ambitious, they attempt to make their story’s and preparation far too complicated and they create way too much work for themselves than is actually necessary to have a fun session.

I have been GMing since the beginning, literally started GMing my first game the day of release of 1st edition D&D. It took me **** near 20 years to realize these two things and it wasn’t until I did, that I started to truly enjoy GMing as a “play” session rather than seeing it as most GM’s do, “I need to prepare”. Truth is that a good GM can enter into a game session in a system they have never heard of and run an amazing game session. Most of your best ideas for a campaign happen at conception, during a moment of inspiration. Everything else is just busy work and most of it is unnecessary. You don’t need to create the perfect monster, or sketch out every room of a dungeon. You don’t need a whole **** load of stats or hundreds of pages of house rules. Way too many GM’s spend all their time adjusting rules, adapting material, re-inventing the whole bloody wheel with some pursuit to fix something they conceive as being broken.

I think if you just “play” the game as it is, without all the fuss of trying to “invent” or “reinvent” everything, just play it out of the box, don’t spend more than an hour preparing and see how your sessions go, you will find that very little is actually improved by all the technical tid bits except your energy level towards running games. Stat keeping, house ruling and trying to expand the game beyond what’s already there for you is the source of your problem.
Think about it Yesepnopes, just the material in your Sig probably represents hundreds of hours of creative work. It’s great, don’t get me wrong and we all appreciate it, but it’s really not necessary at all, in fact, I would say it’s not even that desirable for anyone except other GM’s who “overkill” preparation. What you have is a case of GM burn out and it’s really no wonder.

The best advice I can give any GM is, relax, just play the game, enjoy. Don’t make it a job, don’t spend hundreds of hours “preparing” sessions. It’s completely unnecessary. Don’t invent 20 professions, when you already have over a 100 to choose from. Don’t create complex rules for critical hits, when you already have a simple system for critical hits.

Don’t know if it helps but your situation is as common as seconds in a minute.

Well I hate the idea but may be I have to admit it, may be wfrpg 3 is not a system where I fit as a GM. As I see it, it is a very loose system where the GM has the responsability to decide over (too) many things on the fly, what to do with boons and banes, sigmar comets and chaos stars, which action cards to give to the NPCs, how many ACE dice spend in each check…from what I read on this forums this is what most GMs of wfrpg 3 like about the system, but I have the feeling this is nothing for me. I feel that things depend too much over the GM, I know this is a rpg and it should be like this, but the same encounter will change dramatically if I pick these or those action cards for my monsters, or the encounter will resolve in one way or the other depending on how many dice from the NPC budget I use to oppose the player characters.

I think I am a GM which needs more rules, a bit less freedom, like character sheets for NPCs with skills and actions (I will modify the NPCs if needed, but here I have to build them nearly from scratch)…I have the impression that all this freedom makes me react "over-preparing" everything too much, I haven't had this before in other rpgs. So it may be this, it may be I don't really fit into the system, which it would be a pitty because I think it has some very good things.

Anyway, In two weeks I have another set of games, I will see how they go, I will try to do a bit of Zen an relax.

Cheers and thx all

Yepes

I think that’s a pretty fair assessment Yepes. From my perspective the question "what kind of game should we play" doesn't just apply to the players, but to the GM and his own style and preference. Really it may even be more important. The writer and creator of a role-playing game should be its biggest fan and if the system doesn't quite suite and you don’t enjoy running it, it will ultimately come across to your players and the quality of the sessions.
I usually advise against changing systems, sure minor niggles are ok, but if you’re effectively re-writing every rule, its simply not worth all the work. If you don’t love most everything about the system and feel a pressing need to constantly house rule and change things, or find it to be missing key elements and constantly write them in, its probably not the right system for you. Switching system is the better option even though it sucks to some degree, after all it means the expensive set of books you just bought aren’t going to be used and you are going to have to buy new ones. In the long run however, I think it’s better to spend 100 dollars on books than spend 100 hours of your gaming time and not enjoying the experience.

I honestly think you should take a look at GURPS. From what you have described here in terms of preference and style, I really think this is a system that will work for you, not only because its probably one of the most defined game mechanics rules wise covering every conceivable detail imaginable, but it’s also one of the most flexible capable of handling virtually every kind of game world you could conceive. Google GURPS warhammer fantasy and you will get dozens of hits.

Though still I also often warn GM’s about GURPS simply because by design it’s a very labor intensive and slow system, you may very go from spending time creating rules, to spending countless hours trying to adapt them to your vision, the system is very modular. Also because it’s a very slow system in every regard, a single combat in GURPS can take hours. But this is the trade off and there really is no way around it. More rules, means slower game, less rules means less definition in the rules and ultimately more “on the fly GMing.

I will however say this about WFRP 3.0 and why I think it’s one of the best role-playing systems ever made. Very few games, if any at all, are as dynamic as WFRPG 3.0, in fact most are not dynamic at all and anything dynamic in most systems comes from nothing more than GM fiat.
This is really the aspect of the game that is both the most creative and wonderful thing about the game, but also the greatest burden on the GM. Deciphering what to do with that dice pool for example can be seen as an opportunity to be creative or a burden on the GM to “make stuff up”. But unlike most mechanics, you’re not making stuff up out of the blue has your players have made decisions, you have identified how that dice pool was build and what it represents hence the results are guided quite restrictively by all those aspects going into the dice pool.

Another words you can’t get a comet unless you have skills for your action. You can’t get a bane, unless there is a dice in the pool that could give you one. Players get to know what risks are involved and what difficulties are involved in each die role and have control over them to a degree. Most dice system simply give you a “number”. Which says very little other than succeed or fail. What does it mean to fail by 3 or by 7 or by 20? What aspects of that single number represent a failure? Is it physical, mental? Is it because of the conditions of the situation, or the lack of ability by the character? You have to make that up in most systems, but in WFRPG 3.0 the dice tell that story for you so your only burden is the cinematics.. how do you describe that bane that was rolled on a misfortune dice representing the bad weather or the beastmens armor?

You won’t find those dynamics in games like GURPS. For all its rules and mechanics, at the end of the day you will get two kinds of results. You will succeed or fail. Making the complexity of that system kind of worthless because you can get that out of a simpler game like D&D 4th edition without all of the complexity and calculations.

Hey BK, it is nice to see you again posting around the forums.

BigKahuna said:

Wow GURPS, what memories… I played Traveller GURPS back in the 90s, it is even too much for me . I have tried rpgs like GURPS, Champions and Role Master and they are definitively too cumbersome for me and my party of players.

BigKahuna said:

Indeed, the dice mechanics are from my point of view the very best of warhammer 3, and a huge step forward in the rpg industry. But I think that we have to be a bit more honest and/or critic with it. The opportunity that the dice give to narratively describe why you failed or why you succeed in a check, or why you got banes or boons is very limited, you can only got this flavour in small dice pools. Once you start having large dice pools everything gets mixed up, and you cannot tell if the check failed because the challenges appearing in the challenge dice or those in the misfortunes dice, and if those in the misfortune dice are due to the dice budget of the NPC, the weather, the armour, or the intrinsic action card difficulty; the same happens with banes and boons. Therefore in a large dice pool exit / failure boons/banes arise from a complex combination of things and effects, and as a GM you end up more or less in the same situation as in other games, saying "you succeed /failed due to a combination of factors". Still, the dice pool give in some situations a narrative tool that other systems do not.

True the dice system isn't perfect. Certainly in complex and large dice pools differentiating between 4 different types of misfortune dice can't be done with any reasonable level of accuracy but at the same time, role-playing games by design are abstractions. Even games like GURPS who attempt to quantify the physical world with complex formulas, ultimatly pave the road to GM fiat. For anyone who has ever designed a game be it role-playing or otherwise you'll know exactly why that is.

Simply put, the only thing really differentiating role-playing from a table top miniatures game or board game is the clear and intentional absence of rules in particular as they apply to results. In a sense, this is the only thing that seperates a role-playing mechanic, from a board game or table top game mechanic. The "story" layer is a seperate topic, after all, you can role-pay when you play RISK, or Twilight Imperium (in fact in my TI3 games its extremly heavy role-playing taking place) but the mechanic itself is defined, leaves nothing to abstraction and is as clear as it humanly can be in other games. Another words, its always a "This is how it works.. PERIOD", mechanic. But in Role-playing games designers intentionally leave large gaps in the mechanics to ensure that part of every activity requires someone to use their imagination and make something up.

In essence part of a good mechanic is one that is vague. As strange as that may seem every good role-playing game does this and every major role-playing game that can be said to have been successful has done this in spades and those that didn't are heavily criticized for feeling like board games (4th edition D&D comes to mind).

So in a sense I do understand what your going for, you want clarity and rules coverage, but ultimatly as a GM part of your job as the host is to be a creative one and bring your imagination to the table and let others enjoy it.

Good luck on your search though. I thought I would leave you with a list of my personal favorite role-playing games and why I liked them, don't know which you have tried or not, but I thought it might be nice to be able to get some direction from your post.

Alternaty (TSR) : This is an amazing science fiction based role-playing system that has a heavy focus on character customization and probobly one of the strongest and most creative communities in role-playing. You'll find a lot of definition in this game, it lives within some very solid borders. The Star Drive Campaign by Richard Baker is a masterpiece which I hold in the highest regard, easily one of the best campaign settings ever made.

Noctum (Wicked World Games): When it comes to create "fear" in a role-playing game this mechanic has an uncanny ability to portray it. Great source material full of some of the best writing you'll ever have the pleasure to read and its great mechanic that has very good coverage. Phenomenal game.

Star Wars (D20): May seem strange but of all the games made under the D20 license the Star Wars Universe was best suited for it I felt. It portrays the action like the movies with great percission and its simply a lot of fun, but noteably it has suprisingly good rules coverage with its expanded materials, you really get a very complete game with few holes.

Star Trek (Decipher Version): You know you can count on Trek fans to push publisher to create detail and this game system has it in spades though admitadly you have to get a lot of the expanded material to get a full picture of this game. It is kind of narrow, being Star Trek universe based, but I believe that the best systems are those that are designed with a very specific world in mind and in a way this is the case with most games on my list. Great system and if your a Star Trek fan, this is the definitive role-playing version for you.

BigKahuna said:

Oh thanks for the recomendations, very kind! I have never played these games before, I will search for them. I was pondering to go back to some classics I have played like Warhammer 2 (or 1) ed, Rune Quest, Ars Magica or Marvel Super Heroes (TSR); with this last one, Oh my god! we had so much fun. Another possibility I was considering is to try some more "modern games", I got my attention caught by The One Ring, Mouse guard and A Song of Ice and Fire. Nevertheless, before running away from the 3rd edition I will give myself a last shot (I am very stubborn and I think the game deserves the effort). In two weeks I have a rpg weekend marathon where I plan to run 4 sessions of wrpg 3, afterwards I will decide.

Cheers,

Yepes

I'm checking out FIASCO presently. Wow, what an interesting RPG. It is not a campaign game, but really brings some interesting stuff to the table and I'm hoping to adapt it to my current GMing approaches.

jh