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GoblinGilmartin
2013-12-04, 10:00 PM
I spend a lot of time reading D&D books. The old school ones, the new ones, all of 'em. I've sort of settled into a specific style of DMing, very story-based, dungeoncrawls bore me. My question is this: How do you get players to agree on a style? I read a lot of the D&D novels and other fantasy stuff, and everyone seems to fall into archetypes. I want to run a game like that.

A lot of the players I've encountered like to make skill based or at least non-archetypal characters, so I'll end up with a party of rangers, spelltheives, maybe a warmage. Why can't I just have a Fighter, a Wizard, a Thief, and maybe a Bard? Can't the classics be cool too?

Airk
2013-12-04, 11:18 PM
I spend a lot of time reading D&D books. The old school ones, the new ones, all of 'em. I've sort of settled into a specific style of DMing, very story-based, dungeoncrawls bore me. My question is this: How do you get players to agree on a style? I read a lot of the D&D novels and other fantasy stuff, and everyone seems to fall into archetypes. I want to run a game like that.

A lot of the players I've encountered like to make skill based or at least non-archetypal characters, so I'll end up with a party of rangers, spelltheives, maybe a warmage. Why can't I just have a Fighter, a Wizard, a Thief, and maybe a Bard? Can't the classics be cool too?

Have you tried asking?

Slipperychicken
2013-12-04, 11:37 PM
Have you tried asking?

Yeah, if your players are on board with the idea, they might have fun with it.

GoblinGilmartin
2013-12-04, 11:59 PM
Have you tried asking?

Well, yeah. Thing is, while they will agree, it always seems begrudgingly so. I'm trying to think if a way to present it to them that it seems like it could have been their idea. I have diplomacy as a cross class skill..

Findpathfencer
2013-12-05, 12:08 AM
Ask them is a good idea really those other odder classes out side the core books seem boring or under powered but pathfinder fixes that and pathfinder most are mostly but not completely the core classes but better with more options and stuff

Pathfinder is really good for what you are seeking and I beat they will like pathfinder too with all the awsome options of new powers and stuff

Hint hint play pathfinder or at leased look it up its a good game and what your looking for

[and note I'm just some kid who likes pathfinder not some walking add [zombieand really who don't support what they like I want to Shar it with others]
Brainssss......

Rhynn
2013-12-05, 02:59 AM
My question is this: How do you get players to agree on a style? I read a lot of the D&D novels and other fantasy stuff, and everyone seems to fall into archetypes. I want to run a game like that.

This is a bad way to run a game. Using novels as your model is not conducive to a good game, unfortunately. Unless your players are specifically all for some sort of interactive book based on your plot, you're not going to get them to go along.

Anyway, the answer is "talk to them," but don't be surprised when/if they don't agree.

You can run story-based games without making them plot-based or controlling the characters or story. Just create environments, characters, and situations, work with the players to give the PCs motivations and goals, and then unleash them on the setting you've created.


Well, yeah. Thing is, while they will agree, it always seems begrudgingly so. I'm trying to think if a way to present it to them that it seems like it could have been their idea. I have diplomacy as a cross class skill..

This should be a pretty big warning sign. You're wanting to persuade them to do something they don't want! That's not going to make for a fun game for them.

SiuiS
2013-12-05, 07:17 AM
I spend a lot of time reading D&D books. The old school ones, the new ones, all of 'em. I've sort of settled into a specific style of DMing, very story-based, dungeoncrawls bore me. My question is this: How do you get players to agree on a style? I read a lot of the D&D novels and other fantasy stuff, and everyone seems to fall into archetypes. I want to run a game like that.

A lot of the players I've encountered like to make skill based or at least non-archetypal characters, so I'll end up with a party of rangers, spelltheives, maybe a warmage. Why can't I just have a Fighter, a Wizard, a Thief, and maybe a Bard? Can't the classics be cool too?

Character generation and social conditioning.

In the games I've played over the last five years, I've seen two trends; either each player goes off on their own and then comes back with a complete character, and says "this is what I'm playing, deal with it", it they all work together and smash out not only the sneak character trends but also the inter party dynamic and prior relationships and such. The second works better for me, and works better for story-based games.

These also come from the dungeon master being very, very clear. That's a problem D&D and it's ilk have, that is less likely to show up in atory games (unless the players all came from a D&D background of course), the need for secrecy. Everyone is trying to surprise everyone else. Encourage a level of trust and open communication, and you'll get players who will fall into habits because they trust you'll alert them when needed. For example, when the rogue goes to steal from the rest of the party, the player should not expect "are you sure?" But "are you sure? You know Rogar has good perception skills, and with te mission at court coming up you can't afford to have the party not trusting you, not if you plan for them to support you when you assassinate the duke."

The key difference here is stuff like clear discussion, and also the implication that clear discussion continues all the time; the rogue is planning to assassinate a duke, for example. The other players know this, they aren't surprised. They aren't put on the spot. THey are able to play from their character instead of their guy reaction. Putting folks on the spot makes them react like themselves, not like their characters.

Clarity on the DM's part, too. I've seen too many "this game is about pirates and you are level 6", and not enough "here's a map. You are in Detroit in the 1800's, and working with organized crime. The chief of police recently caught the godfather, and you'll have to navigate three factions vying for supremacy in addition to evading the law".

If you want players to be archetypes, tell trm before the game starts. Have conversations about what kind of story and game you want before any dice are rolled and before any character is made. Communication and guidance.

Tone can mostly be maintained by DM effort, too; voice, word choice, and whether you lean in or sit back.

Spore
2013-12-05, 07:39 AM
Archetypes are boring. They're like the stereotypes of fantasy. It's simple at best and if I wanted to play anything like that in a generic environment I'd play a Offline RPG or MMO of some sorts.

I don't want to be the sneaky thief anymore. I have done this to death in all stealth games, some RPGs and even MMOs. I don't want to be the healing priest anymore. I was the moron that patched up retarted companions for several years in MMOs. I won't be the melee brute since it offers NOTHING outside of combat. It's the kind of class for very sleepy or disinterested players that take a nap between fights.

Only the archetypical wizard is interesting since the variety of spells offer a great amount of flavor text that stems directly from the game and not the player. Getting to describe the gore of a fighter or the various ways to sneak around becomes boring very quickly. Healing up and buffing offers no fluff potential whatsoever if you don't force it onto the spells as Cleric. A Wizard can turn his victims into squirrels and sheep, they can force enemies to kill themselves with confusion or charm spells or they can blast them to hell and back (figuratively and literally).

If you have only read fantasy literature about archetypes maybe you are getting a wrong angle to things then. You can press almost every character into a bland archetype. But with the extended D&D universe, you can define every notch of your character so much better. Archetypes are anything but ways to pigeonhole heroes into as few classes as possible for simpler games. In World of Warcraft, Drizz't would be a Hunter (and be forced to play with ranged weapons), Katniss (Hunger Games) would also have to have an animal companion, Priests would be forced to wear cloth robes and Paladins would still have restricted races. Use the freedom to your advantage instead of being moody about the shift in Pen & Paper Class systems.

Remember: It's what your players roleplay in the fictional world, how the class is named on their sheet and what their class features are is not as important.

valadil
2013-12-05, 09:08 AM
I don't. I tell them what the tone will be when I introduce the game. If it's not a tone they're interested in, they don't join up. If I've communicated the tone properly, that will get the gears turning and they'll come up with characters that work within that tone.

Case in point, I ran a thieves guild game where all the players were at least half rogue. Had I been running a typical game and everyone showed up with a rogue, it would have been monotonous. But they knew that coming into it and played rogues who had non-generic personalities and had quirky skillsets since they knew that no one person had to cover all the rogue bases.

Airk
2013-12-05, 09:55 AM
Remember: It's what your players roleplay in the fictional world, how the class is named on their sheet and what their class features are is not as important.

Your post seems inconsistent. "Archetypes are boring!" "But it doesn't actually matter what it says on your character sheet". Perhaps you are forgetting that archetypes are not stereotypes.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-12-05, 11:08 AM
Yeah, I'm gonna agree with the consensus here: pitch them the idea. :smallsmile: You can just say "hey, I'm running a game that uses the basic, basic archetypes of D&D, and here's why..."

It might be a tough sell, because later editions are not designed to highlight the basic archetypes. They went a bit crazy coming up with other classes.

In that vein, you might actually try Basic/Expert D&D (by far, in my opinion, the cleanest of the early D&D games). Alternatively, since you're already tackling a drastically different approach, you might check out Dungeon World (http://book.dwgazetteer.com/); it's a game that was specifically designed to mimic the adventurous early D&D books, and its focus is on making the archetypes interesting (and in keeping it fairly basic). (Bonus: Dungeon World is already story-driven, but in a way that discourages pre-planning a story, letting the players push it in directions you didn't expect.)

GoblinGilmartin
2013-12-05, 03:45 PM
Sporegg, I will point out that archetypes are archetypes for a reason.

So I'm seeing that I need to be clear in my approach,and just tell them, probably have everyone work together during character creation.

Honest Tiefling
2013-12-05, 04:25 PM
That reason can also be bad writing, keep in mind. But I agree with the pitch: Don't demand it for reasons I don't understand, make me see the reasoning and make me want to ditch my spellthief.

Also, you might want to recommend them the novels you've been reading. In the days of TvTropes and wikis, they don't even need to read 'em.

TheThan
2013-12-05, 04:55 PM
Wait I’m confused

Do you want help establishing tone in your settings. Or do you simply want your players to stop picking Identical classes to each other?

i can help either way, but i need to know which one to focus on.

prufock
2013-12-05, 06:15 PM
I'm failing to understand how their class choice impacts the tone. Ranger, spellthief, and warmage are basically the same archetypes as fighter, thief, and wizard. You have the martial character, the sneaky skilled character, and the spellcaster.

If you wish to play a more classic game, try second edition.

Rhynn
2013-12-05, 07:50 PM
If you wish to play a more classic game, try second edition.

:smallcool: Or one of the many awesome retroclones of old D&D, many of them free. A bunch happen to be linked in my sig! You can't lose, checking them out. (ACKS is the best, though, but it's not available free.)

GoblinGilmartin
2013-12-05, 10:33 PM
:smallcool: Or one of the many awesome retroclones of old D&D, many of them free. A bunch happen to be linked in my sig! You can't lose, checking them out. (ACKS is the best, though, but it's not available free.)

I'll take a look at your sig. I've heard of OSRIC but never played it.

Thethan, I'd really like them to diversify. It seems they always go with the "cool" classes.

TheThan
2013-12-05, 11:36 PM
Well ok.
This doesn’t seem to be about setting tone.

You have several options. Restrict players to ONE of each class. First come first serve.

You could heavily restrict what base/core and Prestige classes are available to the players. If they ask why, simply tell them that those classes simply don’t exist in the setting you’ve been working on.

Another way is to restrict which books you’re using. Simply tell them that you’re not allowing the complete series or expanded psionics handbook this campaign. They’re expansion books for a reason.

You could subtly try to influence their decisions to play different things. Find classes that are related to their interests that they wouldn’t normally play and try to get them to play it (show it to them, talk about how cool it is etc).

you could also veto characters until they start producing something different. though that may get some players mad at you.

As others have already pointed out, there’s plenty of other RPGs out there that does what DnD does. You can always choose to run one of those.
It’s really hard to pin down one specific method to use, as I don’t know your players.

SiuiS
2013-12-06, 03:26 AM
Your post seems inconsistent. "Archetypes are boring!" "But it doesn't actually matter what it says on your character sheet". Perhaps you are forgetting that archetypes are not stereotypes.

That post you quoted started with "archetypes are the stereotypes of fantasy", so I think you'll have to make effort to prove your stance instead of just saying the other stance is wrong.

Archetypes and stereotypes are very similar and overlap. An archetype is a typical example, or a recurring theme or motif, and a stereotype is a held-to-be-true typical example, but usually simplified and fixed. The difference is in dynamism; the player who comes to the table and says "I'm a sneaky rogue" and plays it to the hilt is playing a stereotype. The player who comes to the table and says "I am a sneaky rogue" who plays it to the hilt and builds the personality on top in such a way that it draws from and feeds into being a sneaky rogue is playing an archetype.


More importantly, we should look at what the OP intends and feels when they say they want a game more like the stories with archetypal characters. He wants party synergy without soulless "I have a seventeen in this let me do it". He wants characters who take their roles because it makes narrative sense not numerical sense. He wants a sense of camaraderie to form based on characters making up for each others' personality weaknesses as much as mechanical.

In short, the DM wants better players and wants to know how to engineer them instead of finding them. The idea to not limit people to archetypes, but have them grow from archetypes, is a good one.


I'm failing to understand how their class choice impacts the tone. Ranger, spellthief, and warmage are basically the same archetypes as fighter, thief, and wizard. You have the martial character, the sneaky skilled character, and the spellcaster.

If you wish to play a more classic game, try second edition.

Class generates a tone of its own. You can make a first level ranger and first level fighter and make them identical, but despite this people will still see and think different things about them. Psychology and social engineering are VERY important.


I'll take a look at your sig. I've heard of OSRIC but never played it.

Thethan, I'd really like them to diversify. It seems they always go with the "cool" classes.

A technique I've used before is to utterly stop and detail conversation whenever they bring up a pre-decided but of crunch.

"What kind of character do you want?"
I was thinking a ranger—
"No, what kind of character; personality, who are they, why do they do what they do, that sort of thing."
Oh, well, if like a woodsman, but more like, all terrain, maybe two weapon—
"No, no feats. That's not who he is, that's a symptom. What are the causes?"
Well, I like high dexterity—
"No, not numbers. Come on, think. Ignore classes, races. If you were making this guy in a brand new game, you'd never played, what idea would you pitch?"


Etc. Sometimes this fails utterly; when a guy gets excited about a mechanic, for example, he'll build around that, not choose mechanics to ft the idea. If "cool" and some mechanics go together ("spell thieves are hella cool!") this will be a slog. But otherwise, it works.

I've done some freeform RP, leaving everything generic, to see how characters handle situations. Had a faceless, classless, sexless character wake up in a dungeon with a concussion and temporary amnesia. Throughout this dungeon, he turned out to be short, good with mechanics and common sense, hearty; capable of basic psychic manipulation and skillful stealth.

By the time the guy got out, he had functionally built an entirely organic Dwarf Lurk with personality and backstory, by accident. He didn't even know that class existed until we were done and I showed him my notes and books, and he thought it for perfectly.

Shake things up, really. Kick players out of the comfort zone but make establishing a new comfort zone fun.



I would also heartily endorse ACKS (Adventurer Conquerer King) if you're willing to stray from dungeons and dragons. It is the 3.5 of retro clones, in that the basic system is surprisingly robust, and like 3.5 the math is easy to get a baseline feel for and easy to start hacking and tampering with to achieve exactly what you want.


Well ok.
This doesn’t seem to be about setting tone.


I would suggest against restrictions myself, if you want characters to open up. It forces them to think about mechanics, which isn't where you want them to go. They'll be more fixated on "how do I get this effect with only these feat sources?" Instead of "why is my guy the person and archetype he is?". Restrictions can be fun, but are usually – usually! Not always – higher end stuff, where the players are skillful enough at the meta game they appreciate the challenge and handicap.

That said, one of my most successful immersion sets happened early in 3.0, where I got the oriental adventures book, designed the campaign, and then wrote out everything the players were allowed to use by hand and let them build from those sheets. I rewrote the fighter as a Bushi (and added in some stuff from the 1e Bushi class), home brewed some silly feats, and explained the basic setting. It was the first time I had a player try to cut off a description of the fluff, and had another player tell them to shut up, this was interesting. XD

NichG
2013-12-06, 03:57 AM
I'm going to go against what is usually good advice here. Instead of just 'pitch this to them', I'd suggest buttering them up for it first. Don't run this as the first contact with your gaming group, instead do something to try to show them why it could be cool without explicitly asking them about it.

Basically you want a few things here:

1. You want them to trust that you can run a good, fun game. If they don't know your DMing abilities well, they may hear 'this DM is afraid of powerful characters and wants to cripple us/railroad us' instead of 'I want to do a really archetypal fantasy game because I think theres cool stuff there that we're missing'.

2. You want to understand why each of your players individually plays what they do so you can figure out the reason that player might enjoy the archetype-game.

3. This is a bit sneaky, but I don't think its too bad: run something first that is on the opposite side of what you want the players to crave. I always tend to alternate the 'feeling' of campaigns that I run, in order to keep old things fresh - for example, I might run a high-powered epic-scale game with insane numbers and convoluted combats and all of that, and then immediately switch to a low-powered gritty mystery campaign with very little combat, and then back to high-fantasy again. Players get saturated on one, so the other becomes fresh even if its not their favorite thing.

So if you want the players to be hungry for a traditional, archetypal fantasy campaign, start them out with a shades-of-grey, magic-is-technology kitchen sink game. When they get that out of their system, that may be a better time to propose the archetypal fantasy campaign than right off the bat.

Of course this particular approach takes a lot more time than just 'pitch the idea and hope they bite'. But I think if you have a set of players who trust you, and you've sort of gotten to know their tastes and explored some ideas with them already it's going to be much easier to ask them to try something they might have a predisposition against.

Oh also, change up the system when you do this. It'll be a lot easier for them to discard certain assumptions about the game if you pick something that isn't quite what they're familiar with. Even if this is just something like using a D&D 3.5 supplement exclusively (lets all make Black Company characters), basically you'll need them to think about the game differently as a whole to make it work anyhow. This might require some research to find the right system (or run OSRIC/2e/other retroclone things).

Mastikator
2013-12-06, 05:43 AM
Archetypes are boring. They're like the stereotypes of fantasy. It's simple at best and if I wanted to play anything like that in a generic environment I'd play a Offline RPG or MMO of some sorts.
[snippety goodness]

To be fair "rangers, spelltheives, maybe a warmage" aren't more interesting than "Fighter, Wizard, Thief and maybe a bard". It's just different archetypes.

Any character can be interesting if he has a core personality that isn't just a race/class/alignment group, those are mechanics.

In my experience it's sadly beyond many players to actually create a character with a core personality.

ElenionAncalima
2013-12-06, 08:34 AM
I think the key would be to get to the bottom of why your players choose the classes they do. Is it the draw of the mechanics or the roleplaying that those mechanics offer?

If it is purely mechanics, you may be able to compromise. Perhaps they don't have to be fighters, wizards and rogues mechanically...they just have to roleplay/backstory the traditional roles. They could be any class, while still being a soldier, a schooled spell caster or a thief...it really just depends on how you interpret those classes into your world.

However, if it is a roleplaying issue you may be stuck. If your players just aren't interested in playing those archetypes, I don't think there is much you can do. They won't have as much fun playing and ultimatley you won't get the gaming experience you are hoping for either.

Jay R
2013-12-06, 11:00 AM
If you want the players to play fantasy archetypes, stop playing a game whose rules discourage doing so.

Go back to 2E or 1E or even the original D&D. They encourage what you want.

GoblinGilmartin
2013-12-06, 01:46 PM
3. This is a bit sneaky, but I don't think its too bad: run something first that is on the opposite side of what you want the players to crave. I always tend to alternate the 'feeling' of campaigns that I run, in order to keep old things fresh - for example, I might run a high-powered epic-scale game with insane numbers and convoluted combats and all of that, and then immediately switch to a low-powered gritty mystery campaign with very little combat, and then back to high-fantasy again. Players get saturated on one, so the other becomes fresh even if its not their favorite thing.

So if you want the players to be hungry for a traditional, archetypal fantasy campaign, start them out with a shades-of-grey, magic-is-technology kitchen sink game. When they get that out of their system, that may be a better time to propose the archetypal fantasy campaign than right off the bat.

Of course this particular approach takes a lot more time than just 'pitch the idea and hope they bite'. But I think if you have a set of players who trust you, and you've sort of gotten to know their tastes and explored some ideas with them already it's going to be much easier to ask them to try something they might have a predisposition against.

Oh also, change up the system when you do this. It'll be a lot easier for them to discard certain assumptions about the game if you pick something that isn't quite what they're familiar with. Even if this is just something like using a D&D 3.5 supplement exclusively (lets all make Black Company characters), basically you'll need them to think about the game differently as a whole to make it work anyhow. This might require some research to find the right system (or run OSRIC/2e/other retroclone things).

I'm not so sure. In my experience, something similar to that has lead to a "So, can I do this, like in the other game? No? Ohh......"

NichG
2013-12-06, 03:46 PM
I'm not so sure. In my experience, something similar to that has lead to a "So, can I do this, like in the other game? No? Ohh......"

Thats why the system change can be useful. There's a psychological difference between a player seeing (or being familiar with) a large list of options and being told 'you can only take these 4' and a player seeing a list that has been pre-limited to only 4 options, because those are the only options in the system.

CombatOwl
2013-12-06, 07:06 PM
I spend a lot of time reading D&D books. The old school ones, the new ones, all of 'em. I've sort of settled into a specific style of DMing, very story-based, dungeoncrawls bore me. My question is this: How do you get players to agree on a style?

You winnow the players in the group down to the folks who want to play in a particular style. It's no fun for anyone to be stuck playing a game in a style they don't like, so it's honestly better to split off the group if there is enough disagreement over style issues.


I read a lot of the D&D novels and other fantasy stuff, and everyone seems to fall into archetypes. I want to run a game like that.

As much as the books build upon character archetypes, D&D as a system is just plain bad at doing that. FATE is a better system for that sort of play, even if what you're wanting to do is high fantasy. No one wants to play archetypes that aren't capable in a fight in D&D--but FATE rewards that sort of play as much as it does combat-oriented characters.


A lot of the players I've encountered like to make skill based or at least non-archetypal characters, so I'll end up with a party of rangers, spelltheives, maybe a warmage. Why can't I just have a Fighter, a Wizard, a Thief, and maybe a Bard? Can't the classics be cool too?

Play Pathfinder, it at least makes the core classics so much better that it's hard to argue that you ought to leave those classes.

Lanaya
2013-12-06, 11:20 PM
Play Pathfinder, it at least makes the core classics so much better that it's hard to argue that you ought to leave those classes.

Not really. Fighters and rogues might be slightly better, but not enough that it actually matters, and wizards and clerics have been ridiculously powerful all throughout 3.5.

GoblinGilmartin
2013-12-07, 01:58 PM
Not really. Fighters and rogues might be slightly better, but not enough that it actually matters, and wizards and clerics have been ridiculously powerful all throughout 3.5.

Plus the entire setting is marinated in dungeon-punk.