{"id":278,"date":"2012-01-04T21:01:28","date_gmt":"2012-01-04T21:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/reverb-gamers-2012-3\/"},"modified":"2023-03-04T19:50:36","modified_gmt":"2023-03-04T19:50:36","slug":"reverb-gamers-2012-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/reverb-gamers-2012-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Reverb Gamers 2012, #3"},"content":{"rendered":"

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #3: What kind of gamer are you? Rules Lawyer, Munchkin\/Power Gamer, Lurker, Storyteller\/Method Actor, or something else? (Search “types of gamer” for more ideas!) How does this affect the kinds of games you play? For example, maybe you prefer crunchy rules-heavy systems to more theatrical rules-light ones. (Courtesy of Atlas Games. Visit them at www.atlas-games.com<\/a>)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

My favorite aspect of role-playing is telling a good story, so I broadly fall into the “storyteller” camp, but from what I understand* most people use “storyteller” to describe someone who’s main concern is the plot of the game. To me, though, a good story means an interesting setting, well-developed characters who do cool things, and a plot that allows the characters to interact with the setting in an entertaining way. So in gaming terminology, my style is probably equal parts role-player, storyteller, and world builder. Even if I’m just playing a game, I usually fill the storytelling\/world building urges by providing the GM (or introducing on my own, if I get the chance) plenty of plot hooks, supporting characters, and character-driven subplots to integrate my character with the setting and story as much as possible. <\/span><\/p>\n

I should probably note that even though my main interest in story, I’m not one of those people who thinks that a good story has to be some kind of high art. I’m just as happy (maybe even happier) playing a game about drunken fratboys fighting zombies as I am playing a dark horror game full of atmosphere, literary allusions, and thematic content–especially since the latter tend to also include a healthy dose of pretentiousness and bad acting (and are rarely as clever as they want to be). My tendency is usually to start with a simple idea that sounds like fun and let the fancy stuff develop naturally (or not) as the game goes on.<\/p>\n

At least one of our writers has referred to me as “the rules guy (or at least the closest thing there is to a QAGS ‘rules guy’),” and it’s true that I enjoy playing around with game mechanics from time to time and can appreciate elegant game design when I see it. When it comes to actually playing a game, though, I don’t want to think about the rules–the more transparent, the better. That’s why in a lot of games (especially Qerth), I have a tendency to completely ignore the rules I’m supposed to be using (and in many cases, rules I myself wrote) in favor of quick-and-dirty rolls that keep the mechanics in the background. The only time I’ll reference charts and tables or bring in specific sub-systems or detailed rules is when there’s a chance they’ll actually make the game more fun by heightening the tension or something. The way I look at it, everybody knows how the story’s going to end, so as long as the players and GM trust one another, the rules are really just there to add a little excitement anyway. That can be done just as easily with a random die roll as with a complicated rules set.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

*And I could be wrong. I usually run away screaming when people start trying to come up with taxonomies of play style.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #3: What kind of gamer are you? Rules Lawyer, Munchkin\/Power Gamer, Lurker, Storyteller\/Method Actor, or something else? (Search “types of gamer” for more ideas!) How does this affect the kinds of games you play? For example, maybe you prefer crunchy rules-heavy systems to more theatrical rules-light ones. (Courtesy of Atlas Games. Visit…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2009],"tags":[43,61,74,129,1009,1116,1125],"class_list":["post-278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prompts-and-challenges","tag-qags","tag-world-building","tag-qerth","tag-storytelling","tag-roleplaying","tag-reverb-gamers","tag-play-style"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2814,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions\/2814"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}