Mismatched Play Styles

[Warchon]

I have gotten the impression that a lot of groups fall apart when players are not on the same page. One player over optimizes and crushes every encounter, making the rest feel useless. A rogue insists on stealing everything he sees and the party spends all their time dodging the law instead of progressing their goals. Stuff like that.
It's made me a little anxious because I enjoy optimizing and I've built a clever, resourceful Dread Necromancer who has had a lot of opportunity to animate some really fun critters, and I've been worried about my friends resenting my combat aptitude.

When I approached another player about my concerns they were laughed off--she loves playing her bard, a goofball who is so focused on screwing around that she literally forgets she has spells and bardsong, and actually RELIES on the fact that the more min/max oriented players can protect her when things get dicey.

Similarly I enjoy, rather than resenting, when her antics derail a roleplay situation and we have to scramble to put things back together. To me, it's not so much "aw ****e, more unnecessary work to do" as it is "Yay we get another problem to solve!"

I'd like to know if this sort of harmony is more common than I've been led to believe, or if our arrangement is rare. How cohesive are other people's groups when character power or play styles are severely disparate?

[MesiDoomstalker]

You are suffering from sampling bias; functional and cohesive groups rarely go to the forums to rant and rave about how great their game and their fellow players are. Dysfunctional groups have a much higher likelihood of one of the disaffected players or DM coming to the forums to complain in one fashion or another.

[Minion #6]

I've found that when group members of differing styles actually acknowledge that there's no right way to play, then things usually get along just fine! Conflict most often comes when people have their mind set on the One True Playstyle, and those people are usually visible from a million miles away. More rarely when someone thinks they're hot stuff when they aren't there can also be tension. Say someone who thinks they're amazing at making powerful characters when in reality they're average - if someone who is actually good at it comes along, they feel insecure because they aren't as good as they had imagined themselves to be. Similarly, people can feel inferior over roleplaying or backstory in the same way - if part of their self-image is their skill at an area, having someone casually be better than them can be frustrating or depressing.

[Darth Ultron]

I'd like to know if this sort of harmony is more common than I've been led to believe, or if our arrangement is rare. How cohesive are other people's groups when character power or play styles are severely disparate?

Lets just guess that maybe...just in America..oh, 350 D&D games are played per weekend. Come Monday, how many complaint post do you see. Two maybe? So 1,750 gamers...two posts. Even if you cut that number in half...still it's only maybe two posts. The vast majority of games have people agreeing to things before they even play the game. When I run a game my play style is very different then most others...but I'm very clear about this before the game.

A lot of the problems are more a ''DM Problem" where the DM is not aggressive enough or 'social skilled' enough to do anything and take action.

[Crake]

Lets just guess that maybe...just in America..oh, 350 D&D games are played per weekend. Come Monday, how many complaint post do you see. Two maybe? So 1,750 gamers...two posts. Even if you cut that number in half...still it's only maybe two posts. The vast majority of games have people agreeing to things before they even play the game. When I run a game my play style is very different then most others...but I'm very clear about this before the game.

A lot of the problems are more a ''DM Problem" where the DM is not aggressive enough or 'social skilled' enough to do anything and take action.

Just because only 2 people posted, that doesn't mean that only 2 people were dissatisfied. Not every disgruntled gamer goes to the internet to voice their complaints.

[Warchon]

Thanks for the responses. Everybody made a lot of sense in this thread!

[Florian]

A short tale of mismatched game expectations....

This is how I announced the campaign: Kingmaker - A classic hex crawl wilderness exploration with a lot of dungeon crawling elements set in the Sodden Lands right south of Brevoy (think fantasy Poland), which will include elements of kingdom building, leading armies and lots and lots of swampy hinterlands exploration (think Brandenburg before they drained the swamps). Rules are Pathfinder, no house rules, no 3pp content, player guide to the campaign is available, session zero is required, classic party-centric play style. (We can play at my house)

What I got....

Players A and B: Experienced VtM players, first time PF, tho, they were used to a storyteller style that centered heavily on politics, power play and PvP.

Players C and D: Experienced DSA players, a little bit of WHFRPG 2nd, again, first time PF, they were used to a simulations approach with a heavy emphasis on small details and didn't know anything besides railroading.

Player E: AD&D 2nd veteran with a lot of sandboxing experiences, but not used to the tighter base system PF provides, expecting that a group will always somehow wing it and come up with rulings on the fly.

It.... was a rough start and stayed rough for a while. A and B always tried to make it into a competitive solo game, having their characters always try to strike out on their own, do hidden bargains and such, C and D basically sat there and waited for the plot to come to them and prompt them into action, while planning out endless equipment list, their supplies, spare horse-shoes and such... all at the table, while E was active enough, but always snapped when the things he wanted to do either required feats (which he didn't have), or higher level abilities (which he didn't have at that point).

After the fifth or sixth session, all of us were pretty frustrated and not really enjoying the campaign, so I called it quits but offered a serious after-action talk about what went wrong here and how to possible proceed. That was a good move, because we could take very openly about our expectations and what went wrong, then managed to reboot the whole campaign (without player B, who didn't want to change his style to be more in line with the table) and had a very good playthru of Kingmaker as a result.

[Menzath]

Normally before we even start gaming, our group gets together before a campaign even starts, and we discuss what the DMs direction/theme for the game will be.

Then we make characters.
Normally we don't tell each other our back stories, but we do give the gist of who well be playing and how they'll act, and how we might each react to each other.

So before the game even starts we have an idea of how it will be played and how our group interactions and Dynamics will be.

[Quertus]

So... I suppose I'll at least lean on one or two of my many soap boxes, and agree that different people come to the table with different expectations. One of the keys to making a game work is communication - which means both talking and listening. Understanding that there are different styles, trying to pay attention to what other people's expectations are, and working to accommodate what can be accommodated goes a long way towards making a table work.

The group need not all play in the same style, nor all be cookie-cutter copies of one another (no matter what 4e has to say). I once played in a group that ranged from (functionally) Thor to (actually) a sentient potted plant. I was the potted plant. And I had a blast. It worked, because the group knew to accept a huge range of power level - that "balance" could be completely irrelevant to "fun". Sometimes, some of my tables have attempted to accept a bit too large a range of play styles - IMO, the worst friction is usually between cooperative players and PvP players, but lots of other potential issues exist, and learning how to make groups work can, itself, be quite the fun and challenging minigame. :smallwink:

Can't say as I, for example, really know how to work well with those whose objective is to cause problems for the group. I mean, I'll happily roleplay a character correctly, even when I know that it will cause problems, because I put "roleplay" as a higher goal, but I don't really get those who put "cause problems" as a higher goal. :smallconfused: I've had a few at my table that seem to follow that Path, and... I just don't get it. And neither, from what I recall, have the rest of the people playing the game. So, while it's not the friction of "cooperative vs PvP", the "get stuff done vs cause problems" players certainly have never seen eye to eye. But most play styles can be made to work together, if you care enough to take the time to work at it.

[Concrete]

I'm kinda struggling (Kind of a strong world for it, more like... pouting, I'm pouting about this right now.) with that right now. We're playing through the PF path Strange Aeons, and one of the other players has a character which seems like... You know when you play a computer game, and while fighting an enemy, you end up on a piece of map geometry the game never intended for you to end up on, so that no enemies can reach you, letting you pick them off one by one with no challenge at all? To me, that makes games feel boring. This player has a character that just does that in every battle. And she seems to enjoy it, straight up giggling with glee as she sucks the challenge out of every encounter.

I get that some of us play the game to be powerful, but someone playing what's essentially a superhero in a horror campaign seems so completely off mark that I can't wrap my head around it. It's like she makes up characters before she even hears about the campaigns, and gives the setting no consideration at all. I know that this sounds like I'm whining about someone having bad-wrong-fun, and maybe I am. but yeah, it's surely putting some strain on our group.

[Quertus]

I'm kinda struggling (Kind of a strong world for it, more like... pouting, I'm pouting about this right now.) with that right now. We're playing through the PF path Strange Aeons, and one of the other players has a character which seems like... You know when you play a computer game, and while fighting an enemy, you end up on a piece of map geometry the game never intended for you to end up on, so that no enemies can reach you, letting you pick them off one by one with no challenge at all? To me, that makes games feel boring. This player has a character that just does that in every battle. And she seems to enjoy it, straight up giggling with glee as she sucks the challenge out of every encounter.

I get that some of us play the game to be powerful, but someone playing what's essentially a superhero in a horror campaign seems so completely off mark that I can't wrap my head around it. It's like she makes up characters before she even hears about the campaigns, and gives the setting no consideration at all. I know that this sounds like I'm whining about someone having bad-wrong-fun, and maybe I am. but yeah, it's surely putting some strain on our group.

My advice is, don't have objectives that are dependent on other people, that other people can take away from you, unless you get them onboard with the objective.

"Challenge", CaS, whatever you call it, is just such an objective. If you bring Robin, another player brings Superman, and the adventure is to rescue Squeakers from a tree, well, you're gonna fail at your objective of challenge.

So, realizing that your objective requires buy-in from the other players is the first step. Getting that buy-in is the second step. And defending it is the third.

(I tend to aim for much more individualistic objectives, like "roleplay my character" and "explore this aspect of human psychology", which are much easier to accomplish, regardless of the other players' styles.)

[ngilop]

There was a long psycological study done that I found on a paper I had to write back in my old college days almost 2 decades ago.


Human being are more apt to remain silent they have a good experience to very vocal when they have had an atrocious experience. On a sliding scale ( the more vocal the worse they perceived the experience for themselves)

Take the fact that people tend to go a bit overboard when discussing things on a forum with anonymity masking them and the prevalence of leaving out any form of unbias detail. and You get a perceived 'every experience on X must be this way'



Of course there are going to be mis-matched playstyles at every table. Every person has their own personal favorite. My old group had a: kick in the door 'whats roleplay" type, a storyteller 'whats rules' type, a always play the same exact character with the same backstory and motivation no matter how out of place it is type for just some examples. We managed to play productive games for the most part, because we all a) wanted to play together b) wanted to play the same theme of game, and C) made concessions to our ouwn individual preferences to make the experience enjoyable for others.

[Quertus]

and C) made concessions to our ouwn individual preferences to make the experience enjoyable for others.

This bit got me thinking. Now, this is only a half-formed idea, so expect that I may ramble, contradict myself, or otherwise sound even crazier than usual. Those who cannot afford the Sanity loss, you've been warned.

So, it's said that, in a good compromise, no one walks away happy. And that sounds like exactly the opposite of what one should aim for in a game.

I think that my games that really worked, that were the most fun, involved no compromise. That we all stuck to our higher goals, without compromising. I Roleplayed. The Munchkin power gamed. The Actor gave flowery speeches. The (insert title here) kept lists of every last thing we encountered / took (those lists were nearly identical, of course). We each contributed to the game exactly what we wanted to, without compromising.

Now, to make that work, took some work. Which could be done by trial and error, blindly throwing away characters or games until we got it right. Or it could be done by feel, by intuition, by playing a few one-shots, then forming a party by what we enjoyed, what we felt like would work together. Or it could be done by deliberate construction, by discussing our various needs, and choosing characters who wouldn't step on anyone's else's toes (almost like niche protection for gaming styles).

I'm sure that there are other ways to accomplish this, too - probably even some I've used.

I think my modern gaming experiences are often less fun in part because people compromise more, and have fun less. And that just seems wrong.

(And I feel like I've only gotten half of this idea out, but I'm not sure what I'm missing)

[EldritchWeaver]

I'm kinda struggling (Kind of a strong world for it, more like... pouting, I'm pouting about this right now.) with that right now. We're playing through the PF path Strange Aeons, and one of the other players has a character which seems like... You know when you play a computer game, and while fighting an enemy, you end up on a piece of map geometry the game never intended for you to end up on, so that no enemies can reach you, letting you pick them off one by one with no challenge at all? To me, that makes games feel boring. This player has a character that just does that in every battle. And she seems to enjoy it, straight up giggling with glee as she sucks the challenge out of every encounter.

I get that some of us play the game to be powerful, but someone playing what's essentially a superhero in a horror campaign seems so completely off mark that I can't wrap my head around it. It's like she makes up characters before she even hears about the campaigns, and gives the setting no consideration at all. I know that this sounds like I'm whining about someone having bad-wrong-fun, and maybe I am. but yeah, it's surely putting some strain on our group.

That player sounds somewhat like me. I had two characters in the same game which were adept at avoiding being a target at all (ironically, the reasons for this were thought up independently) and generated a complaint by the GM that he couldn't do anything against my characters. Which admittedly was my goal and a sensible one - who would not wear armor just to make it more dangerous to adventure. But that could have been also an AP issue. Not sure how to solve this outside of agreeing that the tactic isn't used, which might invalidate the character completely as it would have mine. In the end, there was a discussion going on about my characters because I like to optimize and be able to be more flexible, whereas the the others played 10th+ level PF as level 1 characters.

Which caused friction by me being able to do more and more, which I did because the others stayed the same and we were facing new threats, but they felt being superfluous. Which was likely true, but despite me prodding to improve what they could do, they largely didn't want to change anything. In the end, I was thrown out of the group by the other players over a misunderstanding, how to proceed with my characters (I listed all available options which were IMO didn't solve anything, would have made things worse, or would have destroyed my character builds, which I disliked, but it was interpreted as if I was unwilling to accommodate at all). I suppose trading out characters completely would have been a discussion point later and I'm not sure if I had stayed using replacement(s), but it got never to that point.

So in the end, not sure if there would have been a way to reconcile me with the other. But my lesson learned is to discuss things openly and not holding back anything, because no gaming is better than bad gaming.

[Florian]

This basically highlights the core friction between the CaS and CaW approach to gaming. A Paizo AP is always firmly rooted in the CaS mentality and basically only ever promotes exactly that: This is a fair Challenge and your character should be willing and able to engage with it on the ground as laid out by the rules system and all that. Fair play and cooperation are expected of and between both sides of the table when it comes to it.

[Concrete]

My advice is, don't have objectives that are dependent on other people, that other people can take away from you, unless you get them onboard with the objective.

"Challenge", CaS, whatever you call it, is just such an objective. If you bring Robin, another player brings Superman, and the adventure is to rescue Squeakers from a tree, well, you're gonna fail at your objective of challenge.

So, realizing that your objective requires buy-in from the other players is the first step. Getting that buy-in is the second step. And defending it is the third.

(I tend to aim for much more individualistic objectives, like "roleplay my character" and "explore this aspect of human psychology", which are much easier to accomplish, regardless of the other players' styles.)

"Challenge" was the wrong word to use. More, "suspense". I get what you're saying, but it still kinda annoys me that one character can completely change the tone of a story like that. I've always had the understanding that agreeing to play in a campaign is an agreement to play by the premise of that campaign.
It's kinda like going to a haunted house with a friend who doesn't want to be scared. The kinda guy who tries to square up with the underpaid drama majors who try to portray monsters.

That was kinda what got me out of GM'ing in the end. Making a campaign, setting up an atmosphere, discussing it with the players, hearing them talk about how excited they are, even changing some things on their request... And then, when you have played a while, realizing that some players are not interested at all. That they could have been playing anything, with anyone, and it wouldn't change a thing for them. That your input, all your work, all your preparations is just background noise. Why even agree to be in a game when it isn't the game you want to play?

Like planning a dinner party, setting up a menu, asking around and inviting the people who seem most excited, and in the end, most of them just want to have a food fight. Kinda makes it hard to find a reason to cook for them.

[Quertus]

"Challenge" was the wrong word to use. More, "suspense". I get what you're saying, but it still kinda annoys me that one character can completely change the tone of a story like that. I've always had the understanding that agreeing to play in a campaign is an agreement to play by the premise of that campaign.

Well, that's on the GM to get and defend buy-in from the players. Sounds like that fits exactly what I advised. If I want to run a particular style, and don't tell anyone, isn't that on me when the PCs don't match that theme?

Anything that is dependent on others, you need to realize that, get buy-in, and defend that buy-in.


It's kinda like going to a haunted house with a friend who doesn't want to be scared. The kinda guy who tries to square up with the underpaid drama majors who try to portray monsters.

So that's the appeall of a haunted house. I guess I'm not too old to learn new things.


That was kinda what got me out of GM'ing in the end. Making a campaign, setting up an atmosphere, discussing it with the players, hearing them talk about how excited they are, even changing some things on their request... And then, when you have played a while, realizing that some players are not interested at all. That they could have been playing anything, with anyone, and it wouldn't change a thing for them. That your input, all your work, all your preparations is just background noise. Why even agree to be in a game when it isn't the game you want to play?

Like planning a dinner party, setting up a menu, asking around and inviting the people who seem most excited, and in the end, most of them just want to have a food fight. Kinda makes it hard to find a reason to cook for them.

Very evocative imagery. Kudos!

As a player, I claim that I'm "tone deaf". I try to understand the tone well enough to not hinder it / to pick a character who will not hinder it. And, absolutely, most of the time, the campaign is simply background noise, it's simply the backdrop against which I explore the human psyche, the scenery that allows the munchkin to show off, the excuse for the actor to give flowery speeches. Yes, sometimes, if you build the world right, with diverse content that is worth caring about, you'll actually get engagement from the players, as they come to care about "their bar", protecting this villain, defeating this princess, bringing slavery to this city, whatever. Those are the good times.

But there's a difference between not fully buying into the theme, and not caring who you're playing with. I greatly prefer to play with friends rather than with strangers, even if strangers can be friends you just don't know yet. For your sake, I hope it's just a misperception on your part, rather than that you have a group that views the players as irrelevantly interchangeable parts.