Why do you play?

[Britsky]

Simple question, why is it that you play d&d/pathfinder/rpg's in general? What is it you want to get out of sitting down for a few hours to roll dice?
Do you do it for the challenge, playing the game to win, doing your best to make the most optimized character possible? Do you do it as a social activity, an excuse to get together with some friends and have a laugh?
Which parts of the game do you prefer? The combat, the dungeon crawling, the social interactions, the general adventure?

Personally I see it more as a social activity, a chance to see some friends. I try to make a decent character and play properly, but I'd drop optimization in favour of something that was funny any day, a half orc rogue weilding a double greataxe, poorly, a half caster who despises magic, an alchemist who just wants to watch the world burn.
And personally, dungeon crawling and combat in general is probably my least favourite part, i enjoy it, but i enjoy travelling round as a party interacting with npc's getting up to shenanigans more(usually involving combat of course)

But that's just me, let me know how you feel.
No wrong answers of course, so long as you're having fun it's all good.

[Calthropstu]

Simple question, why is it that you play d&d/pathfinder/rpg's in general? What is it you want to get out of sitting down for a few hours to roll dice?
Do you do it for the challenge, playing the game to win, doing your best to make the most optimized character possible? Do you do it as a social activity, an excuse to get together with some friends and have a laugh?
Which parts of the game do you prefer? The combat, the dungeon crawling, the social interactions, the general adventure?

Personally I see it more as a social activity, a chance to see some friends. I try to make a decent character and play properly, but I'd drop optimization in favour of something that was funny any day, a half orc rogue weilding a double greataxe, poorly, a half caster who despises magic, an alchemist who just wants to watch the world burn.
And personally, dungeon crawling and combat in general is probably my least favourite part, i enjoy it, but i enjoy travelling round as a party interacting with npc's getting up to shenanigans more(usually involving combat of course)

But that's just me, let me know how you feel.
No wrong answers of course, so long as you're having fun it's all good.

I think the major call most gamers have is the adventure. It is a safe environment in which to embark on an epic story, and help shape the events of a world all your own. And to share that adventure with close friends. It is a chance to establish new friends, bounce ideas off of others, shape characters to help each other. It is a chance for competition, camaraderie, and story telling.

It is the ultimate in childish make believe.

It is a chance to do all the things you want to do, but can't. All the dreams you can't live in reality you can live in a fantasy setting. It is a chance to unleash frustrations on giant dragons in your way. It is a chance to unleash the full potential of your imagination... however great or meager it might be.

It's a chance to be the you you'd like to be. Or think you would be in such a situation.

It is a chance to outsmart your friends and GM. It is a chance to flex your mental might, pitting your skills against that of the GM. It is a chance to be clever, daring and bold.

To me, D&D represents a freedom that simply doesn't exist in reality. We, in the US, like to tout "freedom" as a virtue we should all have, but I never realized what real freedom was until I played D&D. Needless to say, we don't actually have it.

[Zanos]

I play games with randoms on roll20 in order to bear witness to the worst humanity has to offer.

It's like the zoo, but with idiots!

Other than that I enjoy most aspects of tabletop games. With people you know it's a fun social activity, cooperative storytelling can create really entertaining moments, and tactical combat is mentally engaging. Even character creation and optimization is fun, trying to organize the hundreds of different pieces of information you've picked up from books and guide and other forums to smash it together into something that does what you want.

[hifidelity2]

err for fun!!

Any reading Hobbit / LotR far to often when I was young

[BWR]

Because it's fun. I like getting together with my friends and talking, I like fiction and RPGs are a very good way of experiencing fiction because you are intimately tied to the protagonists and have actual power to decide what they do (bad railroading GMs aside).
I can have epic adventure without the effort or danger of doing so IRL, I can avoid the unpleasant illnesses, death is at worse worth a few tears as you say goodbye to a much loved character before moving on, you can be important, can have magic or supertech and can be a complete ******** without hurting any real people (and enjoy the thought of violence as a morally acceptable and encouraged solution to many problems).

[Crake]

Since I seem to be part of the 1% that prefer DMing over playing, and not just getting shoved into the role because I dislike it the least, my main reason for playing is by far the chance to tell a story. Whether that story is as simple as the tale of a farmer embarking on a quest of revenge for on the orcs that raided his home, or the bard seeking to make a name for himself, or an epic tale spanning the world and the planes in a quest to stop an ancient evil from changing the world as we know it, in fact many of my tales start as the former and then, once the players have become legendary heros, their attention is taken by legendary events.

I love building depth to characters, spending time away from the table doing just slice of life roleplay (even if that slice of life happens to take place by a campfire in the wilds while you hunt a werewolf, or in a cave in the underdark while you search for an ancient artifact) which generally means I'm more than happy to have NPCs in the party, usually player's cohorts, or those that the characters have strong relationships to, or sometimes even just strays they pick up along the way temporarily.

I also love world building, and shaping the world around the actions of the players, watching their actions ripple out into my creation, whether they realise the consquences of their actions or not. I love building compelling villains, defying expectations and tropes, making everything believable in a world of magic and wonder.

[Pugwampy]

Because its my drug . I literally get a buzz after a 6 hour game session .
My brain is all lit up like a Christmas tree and this feeling can last me for 2 days .
Its the greatest trip to imagination land , there is no limits .

Its so personal and intimate . I cannot explain this game to others , they think i am a retard or a pervert and yet its the opposite . they have no idea what they are missing out on . their brains are dead compared to mine .

Thank you Gary ...

[TheYell]

fun with friends. we goof off a lot in rp, lots of inappropriate references. like when i cast bless I say "live long and prosper" and i like shouting at the gunslinger to "get that hog going"

telling a story. i get to shape my character so i get to influence the outcomes

and ive had health trouble and memorizing rules is good brain training with no pressure.

[Eldariel]

First, there are reasons I play RPGs. Those include the desire to have an outlet for various ideas and mental constructs that I produce and to see other peoples' mindscapes and to essentially share our imagination in a free manner, then enjoying the symphony the various concordant voices produce, greater than the sum of its parts. I enjoy fantasising and I enjoy being with people who have rich imaginations and the willingness to let themselves get immersed in the world we create together. It also serves as a social outlet that enables me to spend time with many childhood friends.

Then there are reasons for playing tabletop RPGs. Certainly, organising them takes less effort than organising live-action RPGs. Further, there's more room for imagination without visual stimuli; based on studies the visual channel is the strongest for the vast majority of the people - certainly for me - and thus lacking visual stimuli gives us more freedom in imagining the circumstances and the world we're experiencing. Further, it's easy enough to find places where tabletop can be played and the half-immersive experience can be really rewarding.

Finally, why do I play a rules-heavy game riddled with balance problems such as D&D 3.5 or PF? Well, first of all, rules provide the framework that can be bent as needed but never broken. It is the conduit of our common story and the best part is, it can produce outcomes unexpected to even the gamemaster, which maintains the constant chance of something beyond our own imaginations and mindscapes being added to the whole by the rules themselves. The epic can include passages none of us could've foreseen and indeed, that were orchestrated by little more than chance. That's one of the beauties of specifically this kind of fairly rules-heavy system; as long as the DM too abides by the rules, the world and the events can be truly surprising. The rules also free up our mental load as we don't have to think about many things that would go into running an immersive medieval world otherwise as the rules work as a reference guide for everything from carrying capacity to object weights or mental alacrity.


3.5, the caster edition itself, features particularly spellcasters truly changing the world; something few enough games do. It's truly limitless - raising continents, destroying the moon, ascending to divinity, there's nothing you cannot do if you truly put your mind to it (in a vacuum; of course, there are others like you that might stop you if they disagree with your goals). There's something exhilarating about playing a mage who starts off putting creatures to sleep eventually comes onto his own and begins creating his own demiplanes, binding fiends, moving mountains, raising and reducing empires, playing the games of kings and matching wits with the deities themselves.

And on the other hand you have the ultimate underdogs in the non-casters who are hopelessly left behind in all this but through quick wits and strength somehow try and manage to hang on and turn the world to the way of theirs for a change. Certainly, I think high level caster D&D is a beautifully crafted experience and bringing it all to bear in a competent group can be a great joy indeed. At the same time they system caters to many other playstyles too, particularly in the lower levels, and I do think the richness of options and the amount of pure power available in the system is one of its great selling points.

EDIT: Oh yeah, the reason I visit here occasionally and play around with the mechanics is that it's another wonderful game within game, building what I want with the building blocks offered by the system. The richness of the options offered by the game truly shines there; you can do pretty much anything as long as you're willing to put your mind to it. Finding new broken exploits is also a reward onto itself as well as building various characters that would be amusing to play.

[Âmesang]

1: It helps fuel my creativity, stemming from my desire to draw and to write. I like shaping a character from the ground up that could potentially match the likes of Gandalf, Conan, or Robin Hood; it's also why I love video games that have a character creation mode like Dynasty Warriors or SoulCalibur. It also stems off my love of adventure, of wanting to see and explore new vistas (I grew up in a very small, very boring town).

2: I also love playing around with the mechanics, stemming from a love of knowing how things work; however any attempt at optimizing is often stymied by a desire to add flavorful characteristics to a character, too, such as having a sorceress take the Master of Poisons feat since she can manufacture them with Craft (alchemy)*—it gives her more versatility but at the same time there are definitely better feats to take. I suppose that's the thing, though; I like trying to challenge myself in creating a half-decent character that has some flavor to boot (and, often, trying to recreate a character I made in one of the above-mentioned games as accurately as possible).

*See "Using the Alchemy Skill" from the Book of Vile Darkness, page 45.

[Mjr Lee Fat]

I love RPGs for many of the reasons that have already been mentioned, notably for the fact that they allow me to be someone else in a different world.

But the main reason that I got in to D&D was because of my family. My mother played it with her sister and some friends back in the 80's, and she introduced myself and my siblings to it with 3rd Edition. There are six of us kids, and we grew up on a farm, so having something that allowed us all to play at once in a cooperative fashion (we tend to get really competitive) without needing multiple consoles, computers, or a decent internet connection was a really awesome experience for us. Even now when some of us have moved away, the fact that platforms like Roll20 exist make it easier for us to continue the game, and the lag isn't deadly.

[ryu]

The challenge of playing four dimensional hyper-chess. Otherwise known as playing the game with all sides of the conflict being high tier one in power. Everyone is scary. Everyone has hundreds of options open on their turn. If you underestimate someone or let your guard down you'll die. Sometimes you'll have to disengage and run or you'll die.

As a secondary to witness the glorious silliness that occurs with conflict on this scale.

[MisterKaws]

First, I'd like to point out some stuff about the character concepts you've mentioned:

That Half-Orc rogue wannabe has already been built on these boards, although I do not remember the post's name. It used Intimidation to generate an SEP field that basically replicated the effects of Hide("You don't see me. You don't."), Power Attack to simulate Sneak Attack(he literally screamed "Sneak Attack when used it"), and his Greataxe to open locked stuff(he nicknamed it 'Lockpick').
Pyromaniac Alchemist is a very common trope.
I have a Karsite Sorcerer build nearly ready to go, and pretty much viable at all levels, from 3(LA+2) to 20.


Now, with that out of the way, let's proceed to the main subject.

I play the game because I find every single aspect of it genuinely fun. From the character building to the backstory and the role-playing, from the combat to the social interactions, even worldbuilding and storytelling as a DM, all of that is fun to me. I especially love making silly viable stuff and discussing rules with people who know what they are doing, and I also love teaching new players the silly stuff I found myself - who knows, maybe they'd return the favor in the future, and teach me about any silly feat or template interactions they find?

This is one of the few games that never get me bored, no matter how long I play, and I love this. There's always something new to do, a new world to save, a new pedophile priest/gay rapist prison guard(the other local DM loves those archetypes for some odd reason) to kill. I never seem to have enough of it, and that's what keeps making me come back to it.

I don't see the same appeal in any other tabletop game, not even the other editions. 3.X was just so big, it ended up having nearly infinite possibilities, and the inherent imbalance of the system made it so that you could play at any given power level. This system is just genially stupid, and that makes it great.

[erok0809]

I play games like this and read books for escapism. It lets me be someone I'm not, who's story is (hopefully) compelling and fun to play through and exist in. The challenges presented by the DM, or that I can make when I DM are always fun to beat/make, but I really play to be someone I'm not. I try to make that someone good at what they're trying to do, because that just adds to the fun, but it's about the characterization and escape from regular life.

[Endarire]

For a long time, I played or tried to play tabletop games (especially D&D 3.x and Pathfinder) because I couldn't find video games that gave the same feeling of epicness. (I enjoyed playing with friends, but really wanted to explore the systems. As a PC, my characters were primarily vessels to explore the game multiverse and game rules. As GM, I cared a lot more about campaign worlds, plot, characterization, challenge, and 'GM Stuff' because that was my role.)

I played Minecraft with a buncha mods on a friend's server and found it to be a lot of what I was looking for: Adventure, base building, dimension hopping, visiting the moon, and beating the Ender Dragon with super-powered Enderium (ranged?) weaponry. It was my first Ender Dragon kill and I got to see the Endering! Minecraft was spiffy as a multiplayer experience with lots of freedom, cooperation, exploration and base building, but didn't have a large catalog of enemies nor a cohesive plot.

Then I played Baldur's Gate II Enhanced Edition (in its entirety, and not just the sidequests in and around Athkatla, though the side quests could take 100+ hours) and I feel that I finally found a D&D video game that lived up to its tabletop potential!

Then I found Artifact Adventure (http://store.steampowered.com/app/359440/) and realized that this had a lot of the freedom and open worldness that I wanted as well!

[Milo v3]

I like to tinker. RPG's let me go "hmm... If I change this to this, what happens?" not only in mechanics but also in thinking out cultural differences, cosmological differences, and in technology.

[2D8HP]

OK let me try to clear my mental cobwebs away and think back:
In about 1978 I picked up the D&D "Basic set", the guy who later became my best friend (R.I.P. last year) saw me reading the "blue book", and invited me to play at his house were his older brother was the DM using the '74 original rules plus supplements. So the "gang" was High School classes of '83 (the first DM, and his friends ('83 & '84), his brother, me and a couple others of the class of '86, and my brother (class of 1989), so a six year age difference spread, but with most within three years of each other.
Fortunately my best friend's brother (our first DM) was accepted into U.C Berkeley and stayed in town, so we had eight years of gaming before "real life" broke up "The Fellowship".
IIRC I was the one who introduced most of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons materials, Gamaworld, Ringworld and GURPS, while my best friend introduced most every other RPG (Traveller, Runequest, Paranoia, Champions and MERP/Rolemaster), his older brother of course introduced us to original D&D/Arduin, with minor detours into Villains and Vigilantes, Chivalry & Sorcery, and Stormbringer!, and a major detour into Car Wars. My brother (class of 1989) started us on Empire of the Petal Throne, and Top Secret, which fell on me to GM which I did but using mostly Call of Cthullu rules! I'm not sure who introduced CoC (mysterious that)?
After high school I very briefly played "variant" D&D with "grown-ups", but that ended because of something the DM's girlfriend put on my shoulder that I objected to (and I was attacked by their Ferret!), and then Vampire, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk and now 5e D&D (as well as my buying and reading a mountain of RPG's I've never played).

Easiest to hardest to GM?

1) Call of Cthullu (easy system and the plots are amazingly easy to make up).
2) Basic D&D (fun setting and a 48 page rulebook!).
3) Ringworld/Runequest/Stormbringer! (pretty much the same rules as CoC).
4) Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (the more and closer you adhere to RAW the harder it gets).
5) Every other RPG (mostly because I don't seem to be able to remember for very long any other games rules I read accept for Pendragon which I've never gotten to play).

Most fun to least fun to play?
1) Original D&D (first love is the strongest).
2) All other versions of D&D that I've played.
3) Traveller.
4) Runequest.
5) Shadowrun.
6) Every other RPG I've played that I don't list.
7) Champions/Villains & Vigilantes/superheroes in general.
8) Vampire
9) Cyberpunk.

Games I've never played but want to?
1) Pendragon
2) Flashing Blades
3) Castle Falkenstein (the setting just looks so fun!).
4) Dungeon World.
5) All the various other versions of D&D that I haven't yet played including the "retroclones", "homebrews" etc.
6) All the "Fantasy Heartbreakers".

Games you would have to pay me well to play:
1) Werewolf (I actually like Lycanthopes in most Fantasy settings, just not W.O.D.).
2) Pretty much any modern day, near future or "dark future" setting, I just don't see the point. Most of my work in real life is spent doing building repairs for the police and the jail, I don't want any settings close to that in my games, I crave escapism (gas-lamp fantasy, swashbuckling, Swords and Sorcery, Space Opera etc.)!

For my earliest "inspirations", I was probably most influenced by seeing Sinbad vs. the scheming sorcerer Sokurah, when I saw "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tGCuLWdZTDs&itct=CBgQpDAYAiITCJ3h5IKW0c0CFUHcfgodyloJHzIHcmVsY Xhttp://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QTIeBuLnD-A/UR_ToMA9-VI/AAAAAAAAAKA/q8g2RT4XY-s/s1600/holmes+box.jpglZEjCz6XC1bmil_AB) at the drive-in (since I later learned that the movie was made in the 1950's it must have been re-released in the early 1970's). I can specially remember first watching it through the back window of a V.W. bug while my parents watched something boring Burt Reynolds movie through the front window, and marveling at the Dragon and the sword wielding skeleton! And sometimes "Jason and the Argonauts" (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg1v5HkpdEA) was on the T.V.!
I read the "Arabian Nights", Greek mythology and a lot of science fiction, but actual fantasy fiction before playing D&D? Maybe a couple of Conan short stories if that. The "Catspaw" episode of Star Trek influenced my vision of the Dungeon, and old Errol Flynn movies influenced my vision of what PC's should be like!
Another big influence was "The Hobbit" cartoon (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qT8jCTUqgzg) which I saw on channel 5 about the same time that I first encountered a Dungeons and Dragons box (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QTIeBuLnD-A/UR_ToMA9-VI/AAAAAAAAAKA/q8g2RT4XY-s/s1600/holmes+box.jpg).
Later fantasy books, films etc. were all post D&D for me. I can remember watching "Conan the Destroyer" and "Young Sherlock Holmes" in the movie theater and thinking of how I was going to steal homage some elements in my games!
Just this month a PC I've "rolled up" was inspired by the "Delilah Bard" character from the novels "A Darker Shade of Magic" (http://www.tor.com/2015/01/21/a-darker-shade-of-magic-excerpt-v-e-schwab/), and "A Gathering of Shadows" (http://www.tor.com/2015/09/28/excerpts-a-gathering-of-shadows-ve-schwab/).

[Wolfkingleo]

Short answer: Because it is fun and I happen to have a quality time with my friends.

Now if I would point a Long Answer, I would start by pointing out how CRPGs/JRPGs felt limited for me in many aspects as you are limited in pre-scripted events to answer in (normally) 1-4 ways to a quest when you imagine if you could do it in at least 5 more ways to solve it.

Also I like the idea of building something unique with other people, a tale that we may remember in other ocasions just for laughs or nostalgia itself, specially with good company and stuff.:smallbiggrin:

And finally, it is a good way to work my creativity toward something that allows me to do so and receive a direct reaction from it.

Cheers

[weckar]

I want to feel clever about choices - both before and during the game.
Because of this I tend to play either highly specialised characters or extreme jack-of-all-trades types (currently a fear-based rogue).

[Zweisteine]

It is the ultimate in childish make believe.

No, it's the ultimate in "adultish" make-believe!

[2D8HP]

I would start by pointing out how CRPGs/JRPGs felt limited for me in many aspects......
"CRPG/JRPG"?
Um...I'm guessing "C" is for "Computer", so video games but "J"?
Wha' dat?

[Eldariel]

"CRPG/JRPG"?
Um...I'm guessing "C" is for "Computer", so video games but "J"?
Wha' dat?

Referring to the Japanese RPGs that have been dominating console markets since NES days (but also exist in some capacity on computers nowadays). Things like Final Fantasy, Vagrant Story, Skies of Arcadia, Lunar, Seiken Densetsu, etc.

[Naez]

For the laughs, the stories, and the friendship. There's normal stories, then there's the time your archer got dominated and tpked the party, or the time your barbarian thought it was a good idea to tackle a golem off a cliff to save the wizard, or the time the rogue got into a grappling match with the BBEG to save the MacGuffin. From all the time's I've played the stories to share with the next group are what keeps it interesting.