Play Style Questionnaire for my next game

[RedWarlock]

In a little less than two weeks time, I'm going to be taking over a twice-a-month Friday-night game.

It's going to be a D&D 3.5e game, but with a few quality-of-life tweaks for my own ease of play. (While the concept of a Gentleman's Agreement isn't bad, it doesn't always define the boundaries. I'd rather fix the problems with the bad material rather than just placing a soft-edged ban on such things. Fix it now rather than tapdancing around it later.)

The thread "The Nature of Railroading" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?584065-The-Nature-of-Railroading) has made me think about player styles a lot more. Some players are more flexible than others, and especially with this group, while I'm adaptable as a GM, I'd rather have a firmer idea of how I need to adapt before I get there rather than twigging to it on the fly.

To that end, I wrote this series of play-style questions for my gamers, to help me understand them better. I co-opted the "combat as war" and "combat as sport" terminology some folks here use, swapped "combat" for "game", and added a third focus on narrative, "game as fiction" to try and establish the three major styles as I understood them.

I've already sent it to the players, but I told them because it was a Google Doc, I might make changes or add more questions.

Link here. (https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UwcBEVrrw8ijmi3M-BXrGLlkzCX5K7RyEHq8khOP7ko)

I'd love some constructive feedback on the idea. If anybody thinks I've majorly mis-identified a style, please let me know. I tried to not have an obvious bias, as much as I could. (I tend towards sport and fiction myself, generally.)

[RedWarlock]

Play Style Questionnaire
These questions are designed to help me as the DM understand your preferred playstyle. While there is no tangible mechanical reward for answering them, the game will be much more rewarding as a whole, because I will understand your needs and desires for the style of game.

There are three primary styles of running a game. Often they compete, but often those styles exist in a complex mesh, where some situations favor one or the other, especially in the face of different styles of challenges (combat vs social vs investigative vs explorative).


The Game as War
Encounters are meant to exist regardless of party composition or level. The DM sets up a complex world that responds to, and exists independent of, the players’ actions, and it’s entirely on the players to survive, and if they die, it’s on them.
The Game as Sport
Encounters are meant to be fair to the PCs and match to their level of effectiveness. The DM is meant to balance the encounters to the players’ capabilities with their characters, and create an appropriate series of challenges.
The Game as Fiction
Encounters are mutable chapters in a flexible story, but the point is to continue telling that story. The DM is allowed to fudge details and guide the plot via mild railroading to create a more enjoyable experience for all.


Select the answer you prefer best to each situation.

(If none of these answers appeals to you, please let me know, with your preferred response.)

Q1: The DM has set up a mystery, with a series of clues, red herrings, and encounters along the way, leading to a grand battle over a magical macguffin at the end. Except that the players keep making good guesses, lucky rolls, and blow through three quarters of his prepped material in half an hour, and less than a day in-game, vs the week he had planned. By this point in the schedule of events, the macguffin is still in transit, and the players will be able to grab it before it finds its way into the hands of the lead villain. What should the DM do?


Allow the players to claim the item and finish the quest. The game evening will end early, allowing the DM to prepare more for next time.
The players can finish the quest, and then the DM invents another adventure on the fly (or from sketchy notes), to provide more interesting challenges for the rest of the evening.
The DM alters his initial plan with minimal contradictions to established details, creates new encounters to fill out more story, and the villain gets the macguffin for the final battle as planned.


Q2: The DM has set up a mystery, with a series of clues, red herrings, and encounters along the way, leading to a grand battle over a magical macguffin at the end. Except the players roll too poorly to find the clues, struggle on social interactions, get stuck on red-herring tangents, and can’t seem to hit on the right choices to make the story progress. What should the GM do?


Leave it as-is. The players lose the mission and the villain wins the day, and eventually overpowers the forces of good and ruins the world, despite the PCs best efforts.
Leave it as-is. The players lose, the villain wins. The DM scraps existing plans, plot arcs and side-threads, and rewrites the campaign to have the PCs resist the villain’s victory.
Alter details to make the clues easier to find, make the NPCs easier to deal with, and provide hints to help the plot along.


Q3: The DM runs a series of encounters, some creatures at party level, some well below but in great numbers, a few high above. The low-level encounters seem to take up an excess of time for little gold or XP reward. How would you, as a player, respond?


“Those low level encounters are fine. The world exists whether we’re level 5 or 15, so they make sense, and I feel more immersed in the world.”
“Those low level encounters are fine. We wipe them out with only a little resource expenditure, and we get to feel awesome and powerful.”
“Those low level encounters are a waste of time, it’s just busywork, and they could’ve easily been glossed over with a comment about how we wipe the floor with them.”


Q4: The DM runs a series of encounters, some creatures at party level, some well below but in great numbers, a few high above. On one of these higher encounters, vs a powerful wraith, a PC dies. How would you, as a player, respond?


“Well, that’s just how it happens. We should’ve retreated when we had the chance.”
“That encounter was totally unfair! We were running without a divine healer this week, so the DM should’ve run less powerful undead to match us.”
“The GM should’ve tweaked that save to give Steve another chance, or allowed Joe to die instead, since he was willing to sacrifice himself for Steve.”


Q5: Everyone has made their characters with particular roles for party contribution in mind, and the rules are being applied with logical consistency, but after a few sessions, one character stands out. One player has made a character that is noticeably stronger, more capable, and flexible than the others, to the point of dwarfing the contributions of other characters in their established roles, and steamrolling the encounters balanced to the party average. What is your response as one of those other players, and how should it be resolved?


“It’s fine, we need all the capable members we can get.”
The other characters step up their build potential if possible, and the DM increases the power level of the challenges, even if it means the powerful PC often saves the day.
“I don’t feel it’s fair to the rest of the group.”
The stronger PC is toned down, rebuilt, or retired, and their player makes a character more in-line with the party’s power level on average.
“It’s fine, that PC can just be stronger and save us when it gets rough. We’re Hawkeye, they’re Thor.”
The DM takes the time to keep equal narrative focus on all the PCs, while the players lean on the power disparity as a roleplay dynamic, earning AP.


Q6: Everyone has made their characters with particular roles for party contribution in mind, and the rules are being applied with logical consistency, but after a few sessions, one character stands out. One player likes their character concept, but the PC is noticeably weaker than the rest, and has trouble contributing to encounters. In group checks, they are the weak link, causing complications when they fail on checks. What is your response as one of those other players, and how should it be resolved?


“Evolve or die.”
The PC concept is unworkable, and the player kills or abandons that character for something stronger. Player may be unhappy with replacement.
“It can’t keep up. Let’s fix that.”
The character is altered to add power to match the other PC. Player may be unhappy with the new direction their character is taken.
“A weaker character makes the story more interesting.”
The DM increases the weaker PCs contribution in some way, such as offering extra AP when other PCs aid or support them. Player may feel patronized.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

This looks like a generally good set of questions.

However, as I read through them, I find that my answers are consistently "somewhere between A & B" and somewhere between C & A" rather than "A" or "B" or "C"- so maybe you should allow for such blended answers.

Also, in some cases you give long answer options that have a certain amount of character voice to them. This feels like you are making the respondent accept and agree with that voice. A more neutral tone of answer would help the respondent to use their own tone of voice to fit in with the answer you're presenting.
Example: "Well, that’s just how it happens. We should’ve retreated when we had the chance.” could become: This is an acceptable part of the game.
It's a little more bland, but by being less specific, you're not making the player squeeze into an answer they may not fully agree with.

[Lapak]

You could perhaps address Altair's blended-answer concern by having them rank the choices rather than pick one. "Rank these from 1-3, where 1 sounds most like your opinion and 3 sounds least like your opinion." That might give you a more nuanced feel.

I'm not sure I agree with the flat statement that starts it (three ways to play) but the questions themselves seem pretty solid. There are a few where I can see adding more options, but I also understand not wanting to bury respondents in a sea of choices.

[Telok]

Might try having it br a 5 point "how much do you agree with" type questionaire.

[jjordan]

I really like your idea and I like Altair and Lapak's suggestions on how to improve it. I'm going to offer a link to an article by Sean Reynolds (http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/gaming/BreakdownOfRPGPlayers.html) who used the 1999 WotC market research study to put together a categorization of player types. He thinks the data identifies five types of players and, I think more importantly, indicates the four elements that can be used to identify them. You might want to consider changing your questionnaire. Or not; if it's going to give you the information you need and start the correct conversations with your players then your questionnaire will work just fine.

[Man_Over_Game]

Might try having it br a 5 point "how much do you agree with" type questionaire.

I'd recommend 4 points.

On a 5 point scale, you have:

1: Extreme
2: Mild
3: No opinion
4: Mild
5: Extreme

When you give someone the chance to pick between two options, they'll almost always aim for the middle. Take away the option for them to stay neutral, and they'll tell you the truth. Because, in the end, a DM is likely going to sway close to the center anyway, to ensure everyone gets a chance to do what they want, and having a little bit of direction to sway things is infinitely more helpful than allowing someone to choose to not have a choice.

There was a nearly identical thread on this topic about a month ago, to determine a solid, universal questionnaire. My suggestion was to consider:


• There are those that prefer combat vs. those that prefer roleplaying.
• There are those that want to always feel like heroes and those that like a gritty challenge.
• There are those who want complexity and those that want their games to be relaxing.
• There are those who want to do crazy stuff and those who want to keep things down-to-earth.
• There are those with experience (and like higher level stuff) and there are those without.
• There are those who are strongly attached to their characters and those that are comfortable rolling new ones.

Keeping it succinct and straightforward might not be quite as fun as a "Choose Your Own Adventure" questionnaire, but it won't run the risk of misunderstandings or overcomplicating anything. The questionnaire shouldn't be the game, it should be for personalizing the game.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

Agreed - part of my job over the years has involved creating questionnaires, and it is a rookie error to leave a middle ground option for respondents. You need them to decide: do they agree or disagree, like or dislike?

[Kyutaru]

I highlighted my replies and answered from the perspective of each player type with reference to DMing and how they would react. I have lots of experience dealing with various player types so I have a sense for how things would go and should be resolved. My opinions are as follows:


Q1: The DM has set up a mystery, with a series of clues, red herrings, and encounters along the way, leading to a grand battle over a magical macguffin at the end. Except that the players keep making good guesses, lucky rolls, and blow through three quarters of his prepped material in half an hour, and less than a day in-game, vs the week he had planned. By this point in the schedule of events, the macguffin is still in transit, and the players will be able to grab it before it finds its way into the hands of the lead villain. What should the DM do?


Allow the players to claim the item and finish the quest. The game evening will end early, allowing the DM to prepare more for next time.
- Perfectly fine. The world is as it was constructed and the players won.
The players can finish the quest, and then the DM invents another adventure on the fly (or from sketchy notes), to provide more interesting challenges for the rest of the evening.
- Problem with this. No sport takes place, you merely flush the encounter. Have enemies appear from nowhere to guard the macguffin appropriately leveled, like the robots that appear on the train during a Final Fantasy segment. The players who fancy a sporting event will appreciate the contest.
The DM alters his initial plan with minimal contradictions to established details, creates new encounters to fill out more story, and the villain gets the macguffin for the final battle as planned.
- Perfectly fine. The story always involved the villain getting the macguffin and player agency never mattered to that result. What it does affect is the path the story takes getting there.


Q2: The DM has set up a mystery, with a series of clues, red herrings, and encounters along the way, leading to a grand battle over a magical macguffin at the end. Except the players roll too poorly to find the clues, struggle on social interactions, get stuck on red-herring tangents, and can’t seem to hit on the right choices to make the story progress. What should the GM do?


Leave it as-is. The players lose the mission and the villain wins the day, and eventually overpowers the forces of good and ruins the world, despite the PCs best efforts.
- Perfectly fine. The players knew the risks when they took the mission and what getting the macguffin would mean. They lost fair and square.
Leave it as-is. The players lose, the villain wins. The DM scraps existing plans, plot arcs and side-threads, and rewrites the campaign to have the PCs resist the villain’s victory.
- Problem with this. Just because the players were the lower tier team in this regard doesn't mean the season is over. If they keep failing along the way, throw a balanced encounter at them that drops a direct access entry point to the final battle. They failed in their investigations to keep the macguffin out of the villain's hands but they can still redeem themselves by beating up some of his guards that were heading that way anyway and reach him just as he's gloating over victory. Runner up prizes are important because not everyone can be a champion.
Alter details to make the clues easier to find, make the NPCs easier to deal with, and provide hints to help the plot along.
- Perfectly fine. The goal is moving the story forward and if the story isn't moving then the story needs to be changed.


Q3: The DM runs a series of encounters, some creatures at party level, some well below but in great numbers, a few high above. The low-level encounters seem to take up an excess of time for little gold or XP reward. How would you, as a player, respond?


“Those low level encounters are fine. The world exists whether we’re level 5 or 15, so they make sense, and I feel more immersed in the world.”
- Perfectly fine. Assuming the encounters can be avoided entirely. Video games usually have Encounter None abilities to bypass mechanically but in a roleplaying game there should be ways of completely bypassing said enemies too. Even the Order of the Stick just flies away from some of them.
“Those low level encounters are fine. We wipe them out with only a little resource expenditure, and we get to feel awesome and powerful.”
- Perfectly fine. If that's how they feel about it then they are enjoying the competition.
“Those low level encounters are a waste of time, it’s just busywork, and they could’ve easily been glossed over with a comment about how we wipe the floor with them.”
- Perfectly fine. The story matters more than the battles and "Auto-battling" is an assured method of getting through the grindy bits of a game so you can see more story scenes.


Q4: The DM runs a series of encounters, some creatures at party level, some well below but in great numbers, a few high above. On one of these higher encounters, vs a powerful wraith, a PC dies. How would you, as a player, respond?


“Well, that’s just how it happens. We should’ve retreated when we had the chance.”
- Perfectly fine. Learning about powerful enemies should be possible within your campaign though. Be sure to have hints available when creating your war scenario to avoid this possibility otherwise it's surprise encounter they had no way of preparing for, which generally is only acceptable for secret bosses.
“That encounter was totally unfair! We were running without a divine healer this week, so the DM should’ve run less powerful undead to match us.”
- Problem with this. Players should not expect to have the exact easy mode button answer to solving a difficult encounter. Part of the challenge is sometimes overcoming an obstacle without the conventional use of the most effective tactics. Truly sporting characters would seek an alternate way of dealing with the wraith or run away knowing they had no chance.
“The GM should’ve tweaked that save to give Steve another chance, or allowed Joe to die instead, since he was willing to sacrifice himself for Steve.”
- Problem with this. Death is a natural part of even story campaigns. It happened to Boromir. It can even be reversed as part of the story. It happened to Gandalf. It can even lend to some greater purpose that furthers the story. It happened to Gollum. Players should never expect immortality in any game, least of all a roleplaying game where chance is a factor. It's your job as DM to help them roll with the punches and their job to see what happens next. Roleplayers understand sacrifice.


Q5: Everyone has made their characters with particular roles for party contribution in mind, and the rules are being applied with logical consistency, but after a few sessions, one character stands out. One player has made a character that is noticeably stronger, more capable, and flexible than the others, to the point of dwarfing the contributions of other characters in their established roles, and steamrolling the encounters balanced to the party average. What is your response as one of those other players, and how should it be resolved?


“It’s fine, we need all the capable members we can get.”
The other characters step up their build potential if possible, and the DM increases the power level of the challenges, even if it means the powerful PC often saves the day.
- Problem with this. In a real war game, making the most overpowered army or build you can to steamroll the encounters is precisely the point. You want every advantage so having the battles raised in difficulty is counter to that goal. Everyone else should certainly step up their game though. If the character is abusively cheating or too strong for the campaign then it's the character that needs to be dealt with as it is outside the parameters of the scenario (don't bring 5000 pts to a 1500 pt game).
“I don’t feel it’s fair to the rest of the group.”
The stronger PC is toned down, rebuilt, or retired, and their player makes a character more in-line with the party’s power level on average.
- Perfectly fine. Avoiding the cheese is part of sportsmanship and fair play. A broken build can be stymied for the sake of the game. The players likely won't have an issue with this if they care about maintaining the challenge. As a DM you can also inflict them with a debilitating wound that lowers their performance in some way. Nothing like losing an arm or an eye to impress the ladies!
“It’s fine, that PC can just be stronger and save us when it gets rough. We’re Hawkeye, they’re Thor.”
The DM takes the time to keep equal narrative focus on all the PCs, while the players lean on the power disparity as a roleplay dynamic, earning AP.
- Perfectly fine. As a DM, it would also be perfectly fine to throw a balrog at them. Once Gandalf dies, he's no longer a problem and can come back later at the turn of the tide.


Q6: Everyone has made their characters with particular roles for party contribution in mind, and the rules are being applied with logical consistency, but after a few sessions, one character stands out. One player likes their character concept, but the PC is noticeably weaker than the rest, and has trouble contributing to encounters. In group checks, they are the weak link, causing complications when they fail on checks. What is your response as one of those other players, and how should it be resolved?


“Evolve or die.”
The PC concept is unworkable, and the player kills or abandons that character for something stronger. Player may be unhappy with replacement.
- Perfectly fine. The character concept couldn't meet the power level of the campaign. The campaign does not get changed for the sake of the character, the character must change instead. If the player is unhappy, he should make another one until he's satisfied. Though technically speaking, upgrading mid-campaign is strange and rare and better have a good reason for it. The player could have simply taken more supportive abilities and switched his role to account for his failures with another player picking up some of the slack in his build.
“It can’t keep up. Let’s fix that.”
The character is altered to add power to match the other PC. Player may be unhappy with the new direction their character is taken.
- Problem with this. It should be unnecessary if the battles are balanced for the party. A lacking supporter simply means the encounters and challenges must be easier or the DCs lowered when the character is involved. If the character lacks in battle, a special weapon specific to their build may be in order. Adjust the challenges rather than the party, everyone stays happy. The players shouldn't have to get to this point but if they do then it makes sense to add power to the character through in-game means.
“A weaker character makes the story more interesting.”
The DM increases the weaker PCs contribution in some way, such as offering extra AP when other PCs aid or support them. Player may feel patronized.
- Perfectly fine. The Hobbits did basically nothing in combat and Gimli/Legolas/Aragon did 99% of the slaying. A story character who is weak is a fine roleplay trope and the player shouldn't feel patronized for it. If they do then simply don't give them the extra role bonuses and allow them to play their gimped character as is contributing just as much as they are able.

[Jay R]

A basic principle of a multiple choice survey is that the answers should create an unambiguous partition of people's beliefs. That is, each person's belief should fit into exactly one of the categories.

What color are your eyes?
Wrong: Blue / Brown.
Right: Blue / Brown / Hazel / Other.

How tall are you?
Wrong: Over 5 feet / Under six feet
Right: Under five feet / Five feet or taller

For your questions, your answers do not form a partition. I am somewhat in agreement with all three choices, and cannot choose any one of them.

For instance, take your first question. I think that "encounters" include things we cannot and should not defeat (including getting hired by a powerful wizard), things that we could easily defeat and have no need or reason to (including rescuing a child who is lost), and some that we should have to defeat.

The ones we should have to defeat should often be beatable in a straight-up fight, but should include encounters that we know we can't. Perhaps we need to defeat an entire goblin village. That doesn't mean the PCs should rush the village with weapons drawn. It might require breaking a dam upstream, or starting a stampede of buffalo, or some such. The PCs might go away and plan to take the goblins on later, or go try to convince the dwarves in the nearby mine to help them.

So all the answers to your first question are "wrong", and all of them are "right", to some extent.

Similarly, the second questions assumes that there are only three possibilities, and that the same one should always be used. I think that's way too simple. Sometimes I'd finish up, sometimes I'd invent a rival group looking for the same McGuffin, and sometimes I'd scale up the challenges to get it. Or I might just scale down the reward. I once had a 2nd level party close to getting a staff of summoning. That's an awful powerful item at that point. So yes, they got it -- with two charges left.

I recommend either re-writing the questions to say some version of "which of these should happen most often", or allowing people to choose as many as they like, or letting them write their own answers.

Because as it stands now, I could not answer a single question.

[MoiMagnus]

I like the concept, and most of the answers.
Except for Q4.

Q4: The DM runs a series of encounters, some creatures at party level, some well below but in great numbers, a few high above. On one of these higher encounters, vs a powerful wraith, a PC dies. How would you, as a player, respond?

“Well, that’s just how it happens. We should’ve retreated when we had the chance.”
“That encounter was totally unfair! We were running without a divine healer this week, so the DM should’ve run less powerful undead to match us.”
“The GM should’ve tweaked that save to give Steve another chance, or allowed Joe to die instead, since he was willing to sacrifice himself for Steve.”

I'm not able to pinpoint exactly what I don't like, but that's the only question which feel "wrong" to me.

It should probably be made clear in the question that the PCs knew that the encounter was more difficult than average, and that the now dead PC was at risk.
(What happen if the DM fail to communicate with the PC that the difficulty of the encounter, or what happen if bad rolls or stupidity make the encounter more difficult, is mostly already answered in Q2, and interfere a lot with this question).

Then, the second answer assume the encounter was indeed unfair, which the question do not assume. An unfair encounter is far different from a difficult encounter for a "Game as Sport" player.

For the last answer, I would generalize it in "giving an opportunity to save/resurrect Steve" (for example, the sacrifice of Joe, Steve being still dying at the end of the encounter instead of dead, ...).

[kyoryu]

The thing about that Q that gets me is the unstated assumptions:

The GM chooses the encounter
The PCs have little or no choice as to whether or not to engage with the encounter.
The only options are really “win” or “die”. Retreat is not mentioned.
(There’s also “Death is the only loss state” but that may be more system-level even if it’s worth examining)

A number of these questions seem to presume that the structure of the game is, essentially, the GM putting up a series of encounters which the PCs must fight through, or die. While that’s a fairly common game structure it’s not the only one, by far.

[Max_Killjoy]

Agreed - part of my job over the years has involved creating questionnaires, and it is a rookie error to leave a middle ground option for respondents. You need them to decide: do they agree or disagree, like or dislike?


Which is how, in turn, those questionnaires end up being thrown out unanswered by people who refuse to sacrifice nuance.

The answer to "do you agree or disagree?" is very often going to be "it depends" or "what are your unspoken assumptions underlying this question?" or "none of the above".

[DevilMcam]

An unfair en counter is something that could "beat" players with just not that average rolls

You got critted 3 times in fine row by thé dragon => badluck
The trol First claw attack brings you to 0 and then the second gives you 2 death save.
You're next, save or die => unfair encounter

[Man_Over_Game]

Which is how, in turn, those questionnaires end up being thrown out unanswered by people who refuse to sacrifice nuance.

That's a worthwhile sacrifice, and it'd weed out players I wouldn't want.

If your indecisiveness is bad enough to not be able to answer a question as simple as choosing:


Highly agree
Slightly agree
Slightly disagree
Highly disagree

On the topic of "You like to kill things in games", I'm not really sure how good of how good our chemistry is going to be.



If a questionnaire asks a simple opinion, and the person refuses to provide one, I'm not sure the fault is the questionnaire's. Seems more like a refusal to participate, and...would you want to play with someone like that?

When you ask them a more complicated question, one that requires them to make a hard choice for the team, would it be acceptable if they just refused to participate?

[Max_Killjoy]

That's a worthwhile sacrifice, and it'd weed out players I wouldn't want.

If your indecisiveness is bad enough to not be able to answer a question as simple as choosing:


Highly agree
Slightly agree
Slightly disagree
Highly disagree

On the topic of "You like to kill things in games", I'm not really sure how good of how good our chemistry is going to be.



If a questionnaire asks a simple opinion, and the person refuses to provide one, I'm not sure the fault is the questionnaire's. Seems more like a refusal to participate, and...would you want to play with someone like that?

When you ask them a more complicated question, one that requires them to make a hard choice for the team, would it be acceptable if they just refused to participate?

Start with... what "things" would my character be killing? Why?

[Tinkerer]

One thing which you should be aware of is the inherent inaccuracies of such questionnaires. This is honestly due to people not knowing what they want. A situation which market research companies run into all the time. For instance when asked what type of coffee they prefer the majority of people say that they want a strong dark blend however most people actually prefer a much weaker and lighter blend. This is one example of thousands, people will choose the result that sounds cool rather than the result that they actually want.

I'm not saying the questionnaire is useless but remember to take the results with a giant grain of salt and do not let the results blind you to what is actually happening at the table. Also do not put a ton of effort into long term plans with a group you are not familiar with, use the questionnaire to set up the initial conflict but the feedback you get from your group is worth more than 1000 questionnaires.

[kyoryu]

Any such poll implicitly pushes the biases of its creator.

That doesn’t mean it’s bad, of course. Just that the creator needs to be aware of this and try to take steps to correct it.

[RedWarlock]

Well, this has been illuminating. Unfortunately, the flurry of comments comes on the day of the game itself, and I don't have any time to revise and send the new version to to the players! 😜

I've gotten responses back from the players in emails, and three of the four were fairly straightforward. One was not. (I did encourage text responses if the pre-set options didn't match their personal inclination. Wasn't expecting an essay per-response. Good thing I only had 6 questions.)

Game starts in 2 hours. Tonight will be mostly discussion and character building, though I have mental sketches for some introductory encounters. (one of the four players will be out for this and next week, he's also my boyfriend and how I've met the other guys. This will be.. interesting.)

[Quertus]

In a little less than two weeks time, I'm going to be taking over a twice-a-month Friday-night game.

It's going to be a D&D 3.5e game, but with a few quality-of-life tweaks for my own ease of play. (While the concept of a Gentleman's Agreement isn't bad, it doesn't always define the boundaries. I'd rather fix the problems with the bad material rather than just placing a soft-edged ban on such things. Fix it now rather than tapdancing around it later.)

The thread "The Nature of Railroading" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?584065-The-Nature-of-Railroading) has made me think about player styles a lot more. Some players are more flexible than others, and especially with this group, while I'm adaptable as a GM, I'd rather have a firmer idea of how I need to adapt before I get there rather than twigging to it on the fly.

To that end, I wrote this series of play-style questions for my gamers, to help me understand them better. I co-opted the "combat as war" and "combat as sport" terminology some folks here use, swapped "combat" for "game", and added a third focus on narrative, "game as fiction" to try and establish the three major styles as I understood them.

I've already sent it to the players, but I told them because it was a Google Doc, I might make changes or add more questions.

Link here. (https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UwcBEVrrw8ijmi3M-BXrGLlkzCX5K7RyEHq8khOP7ko)

I'd love some constructive feedback on the idea. If anybody thinks I've majorly mis-identified a style, please let me know. I tried to not have an obvious bias, as much as I could. (I tend towards sport and fiction myself, generally.)

I haven't read the rest of the thread, but, well, I think you'll see from my answers that you've not only made strange boxes, but that the very notion of making boxes is wrong thinking. Custom tailor your game to the surviving players you have, not to someone's idea of a box. No, not even your own.


Play Style Questionnaire
These questions are designed to help me as the DM understand your preferred playstyle. While there is no tangible mechanical reward for answering them, the game will be much more rewarding as a whole, because I will understand your needs and desires for the style of game.

There are three primary styles of running a game. Often they compete, but often those styles exist in a complex mesh, where some situations favor one or the other, especially in the face of different styles of challenges (combat vs social vs investigative vs explorative).


The Game as War
Encounters are meant to exist regardless of party composition or level. The DM sets up a complex world that responds to, and exists independent of, the players’ actions, and it’s entirely on the players to survive, and if they die, it’s on them.
The Game as Sport
Encounters are meant to be fair to the PCs and match to their level of effectiveness. The DM is meant to balance the encounters to the players’ capabilities with their characters, and create an appropriate series of challenges.
The Game as Fiction
Encounters are mutable chapters in a flexible story, but the point is to continue telling that story. The DM is allowed to fudge details and guide the plot via mild railroading to create a more enjoyable experience for all.


Select the answer you prefer best to each situation.

(If none of these answers appeals to you, please let me know, with your preferred response.)

I've bolded the parts that I think apply to me inline, then given my more detailed response below.


Q1: The DM has set up a mystery, with a series of clues, red herrings, and encounters along the way, leading to a grand battle over a magical macguffin at the end. Except that the players keep making good guesses, lucky rolls, and blow through three quarters of his prepped material in half an hour, and less than a day in-game, vs the week he had planned. By this point in the schedule of events, the macguffin is still in transit, and the players will be able to grab it before it finds its way into the hands of the lead villain. What should the DM do?


Allow the players to claim the item and finish the quest. The game evening will end early, allowing the DM to prepare more for next time.
The players can finish the quest, and then the DM invents another adventure on the fly (or from sketchy notes), to provide more interesting challenges for the rest of the evening.
The DM alters his initial plan with minimal contradictions to established details, creates new encounters to fill out more story, and the villain gets the macguffin for the final battle as planned.


… and then the players can finish out the session in style. The PCs can interact with the NPCs, plan a huge party (like the one where Han and Luke get married (according to the most recent child to watch Star Wars)), and otherwise enjoy their victory.


Q2: The DM has set up a mystery, with a series of clues, red herrings, and encounters along the way, leading to a grand battle over a magical macguffin at the end. Except the players roll too poorly to find the clues, struggle on social interactions, get stuck on red-herring tangents, and can’t seem to hit on the right choices to make the story progress. What should the GM do?


Leave it as-is. The players lose the mission and the villain wins the day, and eventually overpowers the forces of good and ruins the world, despite the PCs best efforts.
Leave it as-is. The players lose, the villain wins. The DM scraps existing plans, plot arcs and side-threads, and rewrites the campaign to have the PCs resist the villain’s victory.
Alter details to make the clues easier to find, make the NPCs easier to deal with, and provide hints to help the plot along.


I'd just bold your second answer, but, to run game in my preferred style, the GM shouldn't have "existing plans, plot arcs and side-threads" to scrap and rewrite.

Also, if the PCs are the only thing that stands between the villain and ruining the world, the world is already ruined, and the PCs should leave.



Q3: The DM runs a series of encounters, some creatures at party level, some well below but in great numbers, a few high above. The low-level encounters seem to take up an excess of time for little gold or XP reward. How would you, as a player, respond?


Those low level encounters are fine. The world exists whether we’re level 5 or 15, so they make sense, and I feel more immersed in the world.”
“Those low level encounters are fine. We wipe them out with only a little resource expenditure, and we get to feel awesome and powerful.”
“Those low level encounters are a waste of time, it’s just busywork, and they could’ve easily been glossed over with a comment about how we wipe the floor with them.”


So, it depends. If the group is happy with it, great! I've been in groups that were happy spending 90+% of their time wading through encounters like they were humans - and it made the challenging encounters even more special, because they challenged these guys.

Still, I'm fine with "hand wave, you defeat these guys", if the group isn't enjoying them. However, I believe that it is *better* implemented by the party developing a reputation, by the weaklings realizing that they're outclassed and fleeing / suing for peace, leaving the area, or otherwise resolving the problem themselves.

However, there's a bigger question here: why did you include these encounters in the game? Did you believe that they could possibly be enjoyable for any group / party? Were you right? They belong here, by world-building. OK, but… does the party belong here, then, if they aren't having fun?

IMO, it is best to run a sandbox where the *party* can (largely) choose what to encounter, and, if they don't enjoy these encounters, it would be impossible (or a feat of epic stupidity) for these unfun encounters to make up the majority of the party's interactions.


Q4: The DM runs a series of encounters, some creatures at party level, some well below but in great numbers, a few high above. On one of these higher encounters, vs a powerful wraith, a PC dies. How would you, as a player, respond?


"Well, that’s just how it happens. We should’ve retreated when we had the chance.”
“That encounter was totally unfair! We were running without a divine healer this week, so the DM should’ve run less powerful undead to match us.”
“The GM should’ve tweaked that save to give Steve another chance, or allowed Joe to die instead, since he was willing to sacrifice himself for Steve.”


This depends. In a sandbox, if a group of new players to "Dungeons and Dragons" decide that their 1st level characters find and charge a Great Wyrm Dragon, that was their bad (although maybe an NPC or handy DMPC could hit them upside the head and call them idiots to prevent the TPK).

But in a linear adventure? No, that's on the GM.

Of course, this wasn't even a TPK, this was just a single character death. So I'd only call "unfair" if something seemed legitimately unfair / off about the encounter. Anyone who's been around the internet long enough knows exactly what I mean.


Q5: Everyone has made their characters with particular roles for party contribution in mind, and the rules are being applied with logical consistency, but after a few sessions, one character stands out. One player has made a character that is noticeably stronger, more capable, and flexible than the others, to the point of dwarfing the contributions of other characters in their established roles, and steamrolling the encounters balanced to the party average. What is your response as one of those other players, and how should it be resolved?


”It’s fine, we need all the capable members we can get.”
The other characters step up their build potential if possible, and the DM increases the power level of the challenges, even if it means the powerful PC often saves the day.
“I don’t feel it’s fair to the rest of the group.”
The stronger PC is toned down, rebuilt, or retired, and their player makes a character more in-line with the party’s power level on average.
“It’s fine, that PC can just be stronger and save us when it gets rough. We’re Hawkeye, they’re Thor.”
The DM takes the time to keep equal narrative focus on all the PCs, while the players lean on the power disparity as a roleplay dynamic, earning AP.


No such thing as "established roles" until the party gets together.

That said, if one character is completely overshadowing everyone, you have several options:

That's bloody cool! Enjoy playing Thor and… whoever.

That's cool… but I want something. Either the other players need to step up, or the GM needs to "take the time to keep equal narrative focus on all the PCs".

That's not cool. Either the other players need to step up, or that PC needs to step down. This is the default for an established balance range.


Q6: Everyone has made their characters with particular roles for party contribution in mind, and the rules are being applied with logical consistency, but after a few sessions, one character stands out. One player likes their character concept, but the PC is noticeably weaker than the rest, and has trouble contributing to encounters. In group checks, they are the weak link, causing complications when they fail on checks. What is your response as one of those other players, and how should it be resolved?


“Evolve or die.”
The PC concept is unworkable, and the player kills or abandons that character for something stronger. Player may be unhappy with replacement.
“It can’t keep up. Let’s fix that.”
The character is altered to add power to match the other PC. Player may be unhappy with the new direction their character is taken.
“A weaker character makes the story more interesting.”
The DM increases the weaker PCs contribution in some way, such as offering extra AP when other PCs aid or support them. Player may feel patronized.


So, a PC who is weak is fine (see "Thor and the sentient potted plant"), so long as the group and the player are fine. If the group has an established balance range, and the PC falls outside that, the PC is not fine. The player is more than welcome to boost their PC / bring a stronger playing piece / have the GM body their PC, depending.

If it's been established that the character cannot do X, and, suddenly, they can do X for no reason, that is not OK. Give an in game reason - any reason. They went into an otyugh hole; did a rebuild quest; they got a blessing from the gods; they got a relic; they are secretly Loki, god of mischief, and simply changed out their "avatar" for a better one; their soul got placed into Trompe L'oeil of a half-golem Paragon Multi-Headed Half-Dragon Silver Dragon; anything. Otherwise, have them bring a new character, who can do X.

Or, if they are not outside the group's balance range, or the group doesn't care about performance / balance, then it's their choice whether to continue enjoying this character, or to follow the steps above.

[Quertus]

So, I Strongly Disagree with those who think that the answer is to have players state how much they agree with vague / leading / otherwise indicative of human failure statements. Long answer expansions of your response to these questions will prove much more valuable.


The GM chooses the encounter
The PCs have little or no choice as to whether or not to engage with the encounter.
The only options are really “win” or “die”. Retreat is not mentioned.
(There’s also “Death is the only loss state” but that may be more system-level even if it’s worth examining)

A number of these questions seem to presume that the structure of the game is, essentially, the GM putting up a series of encounters which the PCs must fight through, or die. While that’s a fairly common game structure it’s not the only one, by far.

And it's one I'm not particularly fond of in an RPG.


Unfortunately, the flurry of comments comes on the day of the game itself,

Game starts in 2 hours. Tonight will be mostly discussion and character building, though I have mental sketches for some introductory encounters.

Well. Looks like I'm late to the party, then.

Still, I think that there are numerous lessons to be learned from this experience - and, when problems arise, you may be better equipped to ask better, more open-ended questions.

Or you may find that this group answers better with… "closed ended questions"? Is that a thing?

Tell us how it went.

[Recherché]

I'd strongly appreciate an option to say "I can work with either of these but not this". I'm in several games right now which vary. One hard mode combat as war where a bunch of veteran players are thrown against an absurd threat and if we fail the GM isn't fudging anything so we'd best be on our toes. At the other end of the scale, another game is a soap opera where the main focus is the characters' relationships to one another and all encounters are secondary to the drama. I can work with either of these when given forwarning about what to expect. I don't work well with combat as sport.

Asking your players to choose only one option means they can't talk to you about kind of breadth they have. No one is only one thing.

[Quertus]

I'd strongly appreciate an option to say "I can work with either of these but not this". I'm in several games right now which vary. One hard mode combat as war where a bunch of veteran players are thrown against an absurd threat and if we fail the GM isn't fudging anything so we'd best be on our toes. At the other end of the scale, another game is a soap opera where the main focus is the characters' relationships to one another and all encounters are secondary to the drama. I can work with either of these when given forwarning about what to expect. I don't work well with combat as sport.

Asking your players to choose only one option means they can't talk to you about kind of breadth they have. No one is only one thing.

Two points - I'm curious if you agree.

One, this reminds me of how I think that "best practices" is to run a series of one-shots, for everyone (including the GM) to show their range, them discuss what people liked and didn't like, what characters they think would make a good party in what style of game, etc.

Two - although I have some strong opinions, I'm less about *what* we do, and more about doing whatever we do *right*. They're are good sandboxes and bad sandboxes - I want a good sandbox. There are, I suppose, good linear games and bad linear games - if we're going linear, I want a good linear game. And that would probably be better than a bad sandbox. Depending on how you define "linear", it definitely is.

[Lorsa]

I'd love some constructive feedback on the idea. If anybody thinks I've majorly mis-identified a style, please let me know. I tried to not have an obvious bias, as much as I could. (I tend towards sport and fiction myself, generally.)

All categories have problems, but when you only have as few as three, I'm sure you're missing out on some styles.

Perhaps a better way of looking at it is like a scale rather than hard categories? How high does your CaW knob go for example? In any case, with the choice of only measuring three things, it is only these three things you will measure. You'll miss any preferences that lie outside of those.

I'll also provide some (now meaningless) thoughts on your questions. In the end it will boil down to "why write them as multiple choice?". When you only have 6 questions, why not simply let the players answer them freely?

Or, to put it in another way; when your sample size is so small as a typical RPG group, why use a quantitative study, when a qualitative would yield much better results? If you are asking a sample size of a thousand people, THEN I would understand the multiple choice method.



Play Style Questionnaire


Q1: The DM has set up a mystery, with a series of clues, red herrings, and encounters along the way, leading to a grand battle over a magical macguffin at the end. Except that the players keep making good guesses, lucky rolls, and blow through three quarters of his prepped material in half an hour, and less than a day in-game, vs the week he had planned. By this point in the schedule of events, the macguffin is still in transit, and the players will be able to grab it before it finds its way into the hands of the lead villain. What should the DM do?


Allow the players to claim the item and finish the quest. The game evening will end early, allowing the DM to prepare more for next time.
The players can finish the quest, and then the DM invents another adventure on the fly (or from sketchy notes), to provide more interesting challenges for the rest of the evening.
The DM alters his initial plan with minimal contradictions to established details, creates new encounters to fill out more story, and the villain gets the macguffin for the final battle as planned.


On this list, I would quite obviously answer either option 1 or 2. Which of them depends on how good the DM is at improvising, which means I can't give a hard answer. For some DMs, it's better to wait for the next week whereas others can easily continue the session on the fly. As a DM myself, I'd go with option 2.

HOWEVER, I would like to answer "I'd prefer if the DM didn't prepare a murder mystery as a linear adventure plot in the first place". That way, you'd avoid running into this problem making the question null and void.



Q2: The DM has set up a mystery, with a series of clues, red herrings, and encounters along the way, leading to a grand battle over a magical macguffin at the end. Except the players roll too poorly to find the clues, struggle on social interactions, get stuck on red-herring tangents, and can’t seem to hit on the right choices to make the story progress. What should the GM do?


Leave it as-is. The players lose the mission and the villain wins the day, and eventually overpowers the forces of good and ruins the world, despite the PCs best efforts.
Leave it as-is. The players lose, the villain wins. The DM scraps existing plans, plot arcs and side-threads, and rewrites the campaign to have the PCs resist the villain’s victory.
Alter details to make the clues easier to find, make the NPCs easier to deal with, and provide hints to help the plot along.


On this question, I really can't answer. Winning or loosing isn't as important as actually having a good time at the table. Getting "stuck" is very frustrating and doesn't do anyone any good. Typically, when players really get stuck in a scenario, I think the problem lies in the scenario creator. That means I'd feel almost forced to answer option 3, as that involves the DM trying to fix what shouldn't have been broken to begin with. Unless of course, the players are having a blast, in which case why not go with option 2 (because the failure point being so extreme as in option 1 seems almost silly). It's very hard to answer this question unless I know how the game feels when you play it. But overall, don't make scenarios that can easily result in frustration through a few missed rolls.



Q3: The DM runs a series of encounters, some creatures at party level, some well below but in great numbers, a few high above. The low-level encounters seem to take up an excess of time for little gold or XP reward. How would you, as a player, respond?


“Those low level encounters are fine. The world exists whether we’re level 5 or 15, so they make sense, and I feel more immersed in the world.”
“Those low level encounters are fine. We wipe them out with only a little resource expenditure, and we get to feel awesome and powerful.”
“Those low level encounters are a waste of time, it’s just busywork, and they could’ve easily been glossed over with a comment about how we wipe the floor with them.”


My response would be different depending on my current mood and what has gone before and what comes after during the session. I do appreciate fights which are easy from time to time, both to make the world make sense AND to make me feel awesome and powerful. HOWEVER, they can also waste time. So I'd want the DM to read the mood of the room and decide what feels best / most desired at the moment; to play through the fight or gloss over it.

Or, if they can't read moods very well - ask. All 3 options can be equally applicable, more context is required.



Q4: The DM runs a series of encounters, some creatures at party level, some well below but in great numbers, a few high above. On one of these higher encounters, vs a powerful wraith, a PC dies. How would you, as a player, respond?


“Well, that’s just how it happens. We should’ve retreated when we had the chance.”
“That encounter was totally unfair! We were running without a divine healer this week, so the DM should’ve run less powerful undead to match us.”
“The GM should’ve tweaked that save to give Steve another chance, or allowed Joe to die instead, since he was willing to sacrifice himself for Steve.”


Generally in D&D you can't really retreat. Things can chase you forever if you go by the rules (unless you happen to have higher speed).

In any case, some encounters might be avoidable, which is really the key issue here.

For encounters the players have a potential to avoid, even if the encounter is heavily weighted towards the NPC monsters, let the dice fall as they may. However, if the DM practically drops an unavoidable encounter into the players' laps, it better be fair. Anything else is just unfun.

So, again, it depends on how the fight happened. What led up to it. And what type of fight it is (does it serve the story or is it a random encounter) etc etc.



Q5: Everyone has made their characters with particular roles for party contribution in mind, and the rules are being applied with logical consistency, but after a few sessions, one character stands out. One player has made a character that is noticeably stronger, more capable, and flexible than the others, to the point of dwarfing the contributions of other characters in their established roles, and steamrolling the encounters balanced to the party average. What is your response as one of those other players, and how should it be resolved?


“It’s fine, we need all the capable members we can get.”
The other characters step up their build potential if possible, and the DM increases the power level of the challenges, even if it means the powerful PC often saves the day.
“I don’t feel it’s fair to the rest of the group.”
The stronger PC is toned down, rebuilt, or retired, and their player makes a character more in-line with the party’s power level on average.
“It’s fine, that PC can just be stronger and save us when it gets rough. We’re Hawkeye, they’re Thor.”
The DM takes the time to keep equal narrative focus on all the PCs, while the players lean on the power disparity as a roleplay dynamic, earning AP.


Well, ideally this would be solved if either the DM or any other player had enough knowledge about the system to forsee this problem. There should be communication in advance in regards to what type of power disparities the party should have. If this turns out to be a simple mistake due to noone having that knowledge, I'd say try to tone down the PC. If this knowledge was there but someone kept it hidden from the rest of the group - I'd say the group is incompatible and someone needs to go (could very well be me).

If it's doesn't feel right to tone down the PC, perhaps its best to start a whole new campaign where people are more aware of what they should / should not make as characters.

I would also like to say that I COULD play under option 3, if I actually knew this in advance when making my own character. But in general, I don't like it when one character clearly overshadows the others - it can easily make things unfun.



Q6: Everyone has made their characters with particular roles for party contribution in mind, and the rules are being applied with logical consistency, but after a few sessions, one character stands out. One player likes their character concept, but the PC is noticeably weaker than the rest, and has trouble contributing to encounters. In group checks, they are the weak link, causing complications when they fail on checks. What is your response as one of those other players, and how should it be resolved?


“Evolve or die.”
The PC concept is unworkable, and the player kills or abandons that character for something stronger. Player may be unhappy with replacement.
“It can’t keep up. Let’s fix that.”
The character is altered to add power to match the other PC. Player may be unhappy with the new direction their character is taken.
“A weaker character makes the story more interesting.”
The DM increases the weaker PCs contribution in some way, such as offering extra AP when other PCs aid or support them. Player may feel patronized.


Again, it depends. Was this an accident or did the player mean for this to happen? And if they meant it, was it in agreement with the other players? As I said, power levels should be a discussion during character creation and hopefully not something that suddenly pops up during play. Generally though, don't use a solution that the player is unhappy with. Due to that implication, it rules out both 1 and 2. Find something that everyone is happy with.



If a questionnaire asks a simple opinion, and the person refuses to provide one, I'm not sure the fault is the questionnaire's. Seems more like a refusal to participate, and...would you want to play with someone like that?

When you ask them a more complicated question, one that requires them to make a hard choice for the team, would it be acceptable if they just refused to participate?

Most questionnaire's don't ask simple opinions. They fail completely as the question is very context dependent.

I mean, let's just go with "I am an outgoing individual who loves to talk with other people" (agree/disagree). Sounds easy? Wrong!

For some people, I would argue even for most, this is extremely context dependent. In some situations, people may be outgoing whereas in others they are not. Sometimes they like to talk with others whereas other times they do not.

Even reducing it to a simple "same location" doesn't work. For example, sometimes when I take the train I like to talk with others that sit next to me, whereas other times I just want to zone out with my headphones. It matters what mood I am in. So how could I possible answer that question in an honest manner with a simple "agree/disagree"?

A better question would be "Describe, to the best of your ability, when you feel like an outgoing individual who loves to talk with other people". THAT I could answer.

[RedWarlock]

In part, I wrote them with those suggested answers (they were not strict multiple choice, but merely suggestions, with an open call for answers that differed from any preexisting ones) because these players are NOT GitP forum-goers with that established knowledge base.

They haven't experienced the discussions of CaW vs CaS (and note I didn't use those terms exactly, either). I'm sure there ARE plenty of other styles, but this isn't about the vast viewpoint of the whole forum, but about 4 specific players and me learning how to be the best DM for their proclivities.

They aren't experienced with the Tier system, though they're familiar with some of the basic effectiveness evaluations from it. Their basis for comparison is much more insular to their ongoing table than to our online standards.

As it happens, some of those scenarios were direct references to the gestalt PF game we just finished, which DID experience one or two players who overwhelmed the power level of the rest of the group, and did include my own characters dying again and again. The only way I wound up keeping up with the group was making a raher overpowered beatstick which mercilessly abused the CR-as-ECL system to make a 23-HD character who barely kept up with level 18 characters.

[Quertus]

So, how did it work out? How did your players answer, what did you learn, and, when you played, how accurate and valuable did their responses turn out to be?

[Beleriphon]

Which is how, in turn, those questionnaires end up being thrown out unanswered by people who refuse to sacrifice nuance.

The answer to "do you agree or disagree?" is very often going to be "it depends" or "what are your unspoken assumptions underlying this question?" or "none of the above".

Its the reason that surveys need super specific questions and often a preface to make sure respondents know what they're actually responding to. That is why some surveys seem to repeat questions using different words; to make sure that the respondent is answering honestly, or at least not just picking at random.

https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/the-same-page-tool/

This has a good tool to use to discuss as a group what each person expects. Important part, this a discussion generation tool, not a survey.

[SamIamNot]

My overall statement is to not worry about railroading. The player seeks only to replace the DM, become worse for it. You most always be in control, never spare them the rod.

[kyoryu]

My overall statement is to not worry about railroading. The player seeks only to replace the DM, become worse for it. You most always be in control, never spare them the rod.

Oooookay then.

[hoaiphong123]

Thanks, I'm looking for this too :smallsmile:

[Jay R]

Actually, I think the questions that matter the most are:


Do you tell Monty Python jokes during games?
Do you mind if other people do?
Are you honest and open with other players?
Do you consider other PCs to be on the same team you are on?
Does your character ever attack other PCs, or steal from them, or hide treasure from them?
Do you help pay for snacks or meals at the game?
What do you like on your pizza?
After the DM makes a ruling against you, how long will you argue?
Do you spend time on your phone during a game?
If a magic item is good for your character but great for somebody else’s, who do you want to have it?
Does your character try to seduce NPCs?
Does your character try to seduce other PCs?
Against the player’s will?
Will you agree to talk only about the game you’re playing, instead of some game you played in the past?
When your initiative rolls around, have you already decided what your PC will do?


If players agree with me on these, then how the game is run is trivial.