This came up in another thread.

Quote from: daniel_ream;910005It's been my experience that whatever people do for their day job, they want the exact opposite at the gaming table.

I'm a teacher at an English as a second language school. I teach two three-hour classes per day, each with 15 international students in it. The students cycle through VERY quickly, most of them staying for between 2 to 4 weeks. I've been doing this since 2009, so I have interacted in depth with an enormous number of people from all over the world, more than many humans will in a lifetime.

When Daniel made the observation above it gave me pause. I've long wanted to run more down to earth, character focused games, especially historical or pseudo-historical stuff, but when push comes to shove I eventually find myself injecting gimmicks, special snowflake NPCs, surreal landscapes and inhuman monsters into everything. My most recent attempts  at pseudo-history with 7th Sea 1st ed (two separate campaigns) petered out partly because I got frustrated with the rules but also because I was struggling to maintain focus on low key character struggles instead of supernatural cataclysms and magi-tech shenanigans.

Maybe after a long day of dealing with every sort of real person earth has to offer and their mundane issues in a cramped room, my heart uncontrollably yearns for giant mushroom forests filled with amoral face-collecting worm-blimps and nary a decent family drama in sight.

Or maybe my problem is something different.

Anyway, TL;DR - What is your day job and do you want the opposite in tabletop?

Attorney for a domestic violence center, and while a) the last thing I'd want to do is deal with domestic violence or child abuse in a game, b) if you set up a game where all I do is punch wifebeating orcs in the face, I could probably play it all day for catharsis.

I disagree, politely.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]267[/ATTACH]

Quote from: Christopher Brady;910027I disagree, politely.

Not only politely, but also amusingly. :cool:

Educator with 20 years in the system. The last thing I want is a lot of paperwork and details. So, the game is light, fast and loose. Maybe Ream is onto something...

How did the knowledge of this truism ever get lost?  That's what roleplaying is about - not being you.  Even a doctor who is playing a healer is probably going to want to have things be different, have their character do things they cannot.  Your entire life you're you - except when you're roleplaying.  When games are just you, doing something else, like engaging in collaborative storytelling, or engaging in a tactical miniatures game, then by definition, being you doing those things, you're playing a tabletop game, but you're not really roleplaying are you?

Another; it depends completely upon the individual person.

Quote from: CRKrueger;910039How did the knowledge of this truism ever get lost?  That's what roleplaying is about - not being you.  Even a doctor who is playing a healer is probably going to want to have things be different, have their character do things they cannot.  Your entire life you're you - except when you're roleplaying.  When games are just you, doing something else, like engaging in collaborative storytelling, or engaging in a tactical miniatures game, then by definition, being you doing those things, you're playing a tabletop game, but you're not really roleplaying are you?

sure, sure.  unfortunately collaborative storytelling is roleplaying.

Physician here. I often play the cleric. And I've played my share of physicians in modern-day and SF games, though I wouldn't say it's a pattern. They are every bit characters — as in, different people than myself — as the barbarians, wizards, starfighter pilots or police detectives.

The issue of "what flavor of escapism people want/look for in RPGs" is so nuanced that I have a hard time identifying patterns even in people I've games with for years. Sure, there are easy ones — the stutterer who plays socially-oriented characters, the engineer who does MMA and plays maxed-out combat monsters — but they seem to be the exception, at least in my experience. But the interaction between everyday frustrations, self-image and preferred playstyles is so unpredictable that I find any attempt at analysis that's not informed by frequent, regular play, so unreliable as to be mostly worthless.

Quote from: CRKrueger;910039How did the knowledge of this truism ever get lost? That's what roleplaying is about - not being you. Even a doctor who is playing a healer is probably going to want to have things be different, have their character do things they cannot.  Your entire life you're you - except when you're roleplaying.  When games are just you, doing something else, like engaging in collaborative storytelling, or engaging in a tactical miniatures game, then by definition, being you doing those things, you're playing a tabletop game, but you're not really roleplaying are you?

This is obviously true, of course. From a style perspective, however, Ream is saying (I think) that the wants, desires and execution of your RP experience is "exactly opposite." Of course, this leads me to consider the idea that the game is just an extension of the person, especially in cases where you have the player expressing something of what they do IRL. For example, one of my steady players of days gone by works in special education. Always plays a healer in the fantasy game. My wife, on the other hand, has a job with wide-ranging responsibilities, to include being the face of her organization, which requires being in constant diplomatic mode. NONE of her characters ever bother being diplomatic. Another, current player is the logical, thoughtful, problem-solving type. He's always a spellcaster, and tends to design his PCs with the ability to address -- ta dah! -- problems. When I do get to play, I lean toward characters that are simple, mechanically, but, by and large charismatic in some way. As a teacher, my job is to simplify concepts in order to facilitate acquisition by the audience. So, I assume there's some argument to be made that Vlad the charismatic fighter is just an extension of how I see my role.

As for what I want from the game, though? I prefer not getting bogged down in details, minutiae, which just happens to be the aspect of my job I find less than scintillating.  

Anyhoo, it's an interesting point to consider, and I have just wasted an inordinate amount of time on it.  I'm think I'm gonna go roll up a fiddly-ass, feat-infested, introverted sorcerer.:-)

A lot of the people who taught martial arts I've gamed with, played characters who were martial. A lot of professors I've gamed with play scholarly wizards. A lot of musicians I played with, play bards. I think if you have an interest in something it often comes out in the kind of character you play and the games you are drawn to. Not always though. Some people do want to get away from daily stresses as well. I think a lot of jobs involve everyday things that you wouldn't want to make the center of a campaign (or you'd rarely do so). But I don't think that is because people are avoiding what it is they do for a living. I could easily see someone who is a lawyer for example, playing a lawyer PC because they'd feel pretty comfortable with all the details of playing such a character.

Quote from: Sommerjon;910042unfortunately collaborative storytelling is roleplaying.

Unfortunately, stating a falsehood doesn't make it a truth.

History professor. Players come to me, naturally I guess, asking me to run historical-style games and to immerse in medieval history through gaming. That's fine, but I vastly prefer pulpy Swords and Sorcery! Conan, Elric, and Kane style masculine, and somewhat adolescent, existential fantasy of courage and swords against an uncaring universe (or Frazetta-verse).

CRKruger is right, in my book.  The point of role playing is escapism by immersion into a character and/or a world that is outside and beyond that of day to day experiences.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;910052A lot of the people who taught martial arts I've gamed with, played characters who were martial. A lot of professors I've gamed with play scholarly wizards. A lot of musicians I played with, play bards. I think if you have an interest in something it often comes out in the kind of character you play and the games you are drawn to. Not always though. Some people do want to get away from daily stresses as well. I think a lot of jobs involve everyday things that you wouldn't want to make the center of a campaign (or you'd rarely do so). But I don't think that is because people are avoiding what it is they do for a living. I could easily see someone who is a lawyer for example, playing a lawyer PC because they'd feel pretty comfortable with all the details of playing such a character.

True, you feel comfortable with what you know, but even if someone is "playing to type", a lot of time it's different.  The policeman who wants the freedom of a western sheriff, the healer who wants to help others without interference, the religious believer whose god is actually manifest and objectively real, the IT guy who plays the chaotic hacker, the MMA guy might have a wife, 3 kids and a mortgage - his barbarian is all about the Ale and Whores, etc. etc.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;910022Anyway, TL;DR - What is your day job and do you want the opposite in tabletop?

I'm in the media, and my job includes writing about down to Earth stuff, a lot of which is dark:).
And while I do play Exalted, I prefer historical or at least down to Earth games for most of my campaigns. In fact, when I started playing, I'd have laughed in your face if you suggested a high-power, high-magic, escapist setting.
I also practice historical fencing, and most of my characters are martially-inclined, though the styles vary, as well as their reasons for fighting.
So no, for my money, that statement is wrong;).

It just so happens that I discuss Exalted the most, because it provokes strong feelings on some forums:D.

Like most vague and generalized statements, there will be some folks who fit the statement perfectly and others who are the exact opposite. I'm a teacher and a physicist and I enjoy realistic RPGs as well as cinematic. I like some with heavy rules, others with light rules. I'm not sure a single statement will fit any of us all of the time.