Quote from: Joethelawyer;372685Here's the link to the video, jump ahead to 9:50 minutes in it and  you'll see what I mean by regional differences in playstyles.

Try here.

He's talking about an earlier age, I think. At this point the Internet has created way more communication between gaming groups, so you don't see the same kind of regional development you once did.

I've seen old-schoolers like Lee Gold talk about regional D&D styles: the Bay Area scene (Hargrave and Stafford), Lake Geneva, Milwaukee, LA, etc. In that case it makes sense because way back in the day there were few enough gaming groups that you could trace the lineage of who learned to play from who.

I seem to remember Tim Hutchins at the Play Generated Map and Document Archive about maps demonstrating regional variation - maps from one area tended to fill in all areas on a page of graph paper, others were more naturalistic cavern complexes, etc. That seems to me like a good place to look for regional style because a) it's easier to compare maps as a concrete artifact of play than to pin down "play style" in the abstract and b) the maps are often old, and mapping style may be less resistant to outside style influences.

And over at the Fighting Fantasist he talks about factors that made the UK scene different from the US one. Note that some of these, like slow mail time from other Anglophone areas and import taxes that made TSR modules rare and expensive, no longer apply.

But yeah, nowadays there are so many different people, games, eras, etc. that transmit different styles within a region, plus the internet shaping things non-locally, that I think it's easy to see how you'd get a lot of different styles within any given area. The point of comparison then becomes how well connected the gamers in group A vs. group B are, because that becomes a stronger force for regional similarity. In NYC, the nerdNYC community is popular enough and organizes actual play events frequently enough that I think it'd be fair to say that a lot of groups here in the city have some commonalities of style as a result (or at least have some shared vocabulary of ideas about gaming).

I've definitely noticed differences from gaming community to gaming community. Can't say I have seen a huge difference by region.

Quote from: jrients;372638I wish I had some material for poking fun at gamers from Indiana.  This would be the perfect thread.

You mean like our use of corn niblets in lieu of dice?

Well, the groups in my area all seem to be uniformly completely dysfunctional to an appalling level, to the point of seeming literally unable to even interact with the functions and premise of the game.

Does that count?

To answer the thread title:

 YES , they are sometimes noticeable differences in how gamers act from region to region.

Some areas use miniatures all the time,

Some regions very rarely use miniatures at all.

Some regions have gamers where they are used to mostly just guys playing RPGs

.......other regions have gamers that have gamed with women gamers all the time amnd are quite used to it. The situation is thought of as normal.


- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;373028To answer the thread title:

 YES , they are csometimes noticeable differences in how gamers act from region to region.

Some areas use miniatures all the time,

Some regions very rarely use miniatures at all.

Some regions have gamers where they are used to mostly just guys playing RPGs

.......other regions have gamers that have gamed with women gamers all the time amnd are quite used to it. The situation is thought of as normal.


- Ed C.

What geographic regions for each aspect Ed?

I have run convention events in NorCal (Pacificon, ConQuest, DundraCon, KublaCon), and SoCal (Gamex, Gateway, OrcCon) and Central California (PolyCon).   These are just my own observations.

The NorCal / SF Bay Area gamers are by far the best roleplayers I have encountered among the three.  Consistently my best RP experiences have been at the NorCal cons.  

I suspect this may be Silicon Valley and SF brain power.  It's not unusual for me to have a full table of graduate degrees.   In 97, I was in a Star Trek game where I was the only dude without an advanced science degree.  So they made me Captain.   Our McCoy was a surgeon and our Spock was a  physics professor.

The Central CA gamers are the most pleasant and most willing to try out something new.  I can run almost anything and people will arrive to specifically try out something they never heard of.   Since the PolyCon event is focussed on the CalPolytechnic campus, most of the players are college age or recent alums.

SoCal has...some friends.   It's always been a weak RPG scene, but in the last few years, its really tanked.   Always bums me because lots of Hollywood tech and video game design guys are RPGers, but they blew off the local con scene years ago.

I have only run out of state twice - Palladium's Open House in Detroit and GenCon.  The Open House was a freaking blast (looking forward to this years!), but there you had people coming from all states and a couple countries.   At GenCon, its a smorgasbord of people from everywhere.

VERY broad brush, but...

Americans seem to be hung up more on rules and procedures and doing things the 'right way'.
Brits seem to be rather eccentric and ecclectic and games tend to delve into humour more often.
The French seem obsessional about canon, about following the story, relatively unwilling to bend it but sometimes going to extremes.
Dutch, eclectic as the Brits and don't seem to want to be hidebound much at all.
Irish - Fun first, above all other concerns, most everything else can go hang int he pursuit of pure enjoyments.
Scandies - No time for the rules, extremely story obsessed and placing characterisation and immersion above other concerns, much more of a LARP culture (or so it feels).

I too think there are significant differences in terms of play styles, or assumptions behind what a RPG is and isn't, when comparing nations at least. There is a difference for instance, to me, between gaming in North America and gaming in France.

This is, I believe, mostly due to the differences in the way gaming penetrated the markets, and the popular games, fads, etc that followed one after the other, which each shape the assumptions of gamers to some extent.

In France, wargames and D&D had the upper hand first. It was during this time period that François Marcela Froideval (who knew EGG, was credited in Oriental Adventures, was in charge of TSR France and later would be the brains behind a famous Fantasy comic named Les Chroniques de la Lune Noire, Chronicles of the Black Moon) created the magazine Jeux & Stratégie, which gradually took on more and more topics on RPGs, as opposed to wargaming.

Jeux & Stratégie then became Casus Belli (CB), and more or less concurrently, Call of Cthulhu exploded in popularity. The popularity of CoC with the staff of CB in particular is important, because it would fuel the contents of the magazine, and would stress progressively that "mindless dungeon crawling" was bad, "true role playing" was good.

Many gamers then start their own publishing ventures, leading to a whole host of homegrown commercial games (In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas, Legendes de la Table Ronde, Legendes Celtiques, Empires & Dynasties, Empire Galactique, Reve de Dragon and many, many others). From the American scene, AD&D is still popular, but as much as games like Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, Stormbringer, Hawkmoon, RuneQuest are at the time.

We are now in the late 80s/beginning of the 90s, and AD&D is now looked upon as an artefact of old gaming, that really wasn't all it could be, i.e. a "true role playing game". That's when Vampire takes the French scene by storm. At the same time, some long-lasting fans of RuneQuest create a game of modern occult of their own. It's title: Nephilim. This is the Golden Age of gaming in France, by and large, with tons of games to play, whether they come from America or are designed in France.

Slowly, RPGs will decline from there. What remains is the enterpreneurial spirit on the French's part. The funds are no longer there to guarantee successful commecializations of home grown games, but the will to create remains. Which leads to tons of privately created games which are shared freely on the Internet, which rises at the time. This whole thing, through forums, mailing lists etc takes slowly shape and coherence to become the French "Indie" scene. Now, players on the RPG scene seem mostly to have come from these internet communities and the Indie scene. With games like Qin, for instance.

4e seems very popular with that subset of gamers in France. This is in part due to the philosophical link between indie games, the Forge, and how 4e came to be influenced by their perspective on game design.

So. Where does that lead us in terms of this thread? French gamers seem to go all the way in their gaming. When they role play, they role play, hard, seriously. Historical gaming needs to be "correct" (pseudo-historical gaming is relatively popular in France, more than it is in America, by the way). The emotions in the game need to be genuine. There's a way to look at RPGs as art in there, not unlike what people imagine of the French stereotype, actually. This comes from the way the scene focused on games like CoC and later VtM.

At the same time, you seem to have very serious gamists on the French scene. This is not related to the wargaming/AD&D origins of the game, but has more to do with an afiliation to indie games and the Forge, at least on the way to look at games and understand their purposes.

It's hard to build a French stereotype, I think.

The major difference is that the French play a shitload of games the Americans don't know the first shit about, since they never made it to America. The French tend to "steal" American games and rewrite them to their likings (which is what happened to Hawkmoon for instance), but the American scene very seldomly picks up on French games, and when it does, it is to disastrous effects to the game, which ends up sucking super-hard (In Nomine, Nephilim in English SUCK compared to their French equivalents, which are awesome games).

The second major difference is that there is no D&D supremacy. The French scene is very diverse, a lot more diverse than the American scene, and feelings regarding D&D are usually polarized, much more so than in America. Either D&D is awesome, or it sucks so bad it is a completely obsolete model of a game.

So yes. There are major differences. As I said, it's hard to pinpoint what exactly is so different about French gamers, but I hope I provided a glimpse as to where these differences may come from.

How can a game be great in French and suck in English?  Did they rewrite the thing instead of translate it?

Quote(...) but I hope I provided a glimpse as to where these differences may come from.

Thank you for that glimpse!

I followed the happenings in France very closely during the 90s, having subscribed to CB and later Backstab, and making several trips to L'Oeuf Cube (a shop in Paris) and the Salon de Jeux et la Maquette (a modelling convention with a RPG adjunct).

Quote from: Benoist;373107Many gamers then start their own publishing ventures, leading to a whole host of homegrown commercial games (In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas, Legendes de la Table Ronde, Legendes Celtiques, Empires & Dynasties, Empire Galactique, Reve de Dragon and many, many others).

I kind of envied the French for their lively and enormously creative scene. In the same time, Germany would "only" produce a handful homegrown games, of which only two were marketed professionally (Midgard and Das Schwarze Auge, and much later a humorous game called Plüsch, Power & Plunder).

Maybe you can help me understand why the French creativity exploded while Germans preferred to "just" translate US games.

One theory of mine (careful, stereotype approaching) was that the French with their national pride and love for their language weren't particularly fond of using English books at their gaming tables. So creating a new rule set from the ground up (and tossing out Hollywood-isms on the way) may have been both a necessity and a desire.

On the publishing side it may have helped that, thanks to the "ninth art", nearly every French gaming group and prospective game designer must have known an artist of (à suivre) quality. The French game books, even the small press ones, were beautiful works of graphic design.

(To compare this to Germany: We had an early form of swinedom in an self-styled elite of gamers who were overly proud in using not a translation of an American game, but of course the original books.)

Quote from: Benoist;373107(In Nomine, Nephilim in English SUCK compared to their French equivalents, which are awesome games).

In 1992 I met a few Casus Belli people at Gen Con, and one of them told me that during that time, the French scene was divided in INS/MV - Nephilim camps -- one more humorous, the other one more somber, White Wolf-ish -- but that in fact both camps used their game to just play mystical super heroes.

What's your take on that?

QuoteSlowly, RPGs will decline from there. What remains is the enterpreneurial spirit on the French's part. The funds are no longer there to guarantee successful commecializations of home grown games, but the will to create remains.

Gradually I lost contact to the French scene, first after the end of the Excelsior run of Casus Belli, and then with the decline of Multisim.

Last July I was in Paris and learned what kinds of games were published during my "lost years". I noted that a grass roots publishing scene must have happened, with books that were less lavishly produced (mostly b/w), and using a smaller format (comparable to US digest), but still showing all the trappings you mentioned: historical themes as in Te deum pour un massacre, Arkeos, Khaos 1795, Pavillon noir, occult mysteries as in Trinité or the new edition of Maléfices).
 
I was most surprised that even d20 had spawned campaign settings (Archipels) and at least two French reimaginations of the rules, Chroniques oubliées and dK System - neither of which would have been imaginable in Germany.

Quote from: CRKrueger;373142How can a game be great in French and suck in English?  Did they rewrite the thing instead of translate it?

Yes, in both instances.

Nephilim draws a lot from history and popular occult theories and conspiracies (stuff like the Templars, Free-masonry, the Kabal of Aleister Crowley, the magical Tarot of Marseilles, the Crusade on the Albigeois, the Table Round... all these sort of things). That's what makes its flair and flavor. When it was translated, its background was stripped of its richness and switched for something "more appropriate for the American audience" (read: with more combat, simpler Americano-centrist background, and such... as if Americans just can't take a rich game... :rolleyes: ).

Same thing with In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas, which is a game rich in humor, particularly cynical, un-politically correct, sometimes very gross humor, and portrays the fight of Angels and Demons on Earth as a complete parody, or comedy, just for laughs. The American In Nomine is much more "serious" in tone, and all the humoristic background went down the drain, focusing on the more "occult" tone the game didn't originally have. Once again, a stereotype about what the American audience can and can't take informed a complete revision of the design, for craptacular results, I might add.

Quote from: Benoist;373146Once again, a stereotype about what the American audience can and can't take informed a complete revision of the design, for craptacular results, I might add.

And yet, I was interested to see what Derek Pearcy would have done to Bloodlust.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;373145Thank you for that glimpse!

I followed the happenings in France very closely during the 90s, having subscribed to CB and later Backstab, and making several trips to L'Oeuf Cube (a shop in Paris) and the Salon de Jeux et la Maquette (a modelling convention with a RPG adjunct).

That's where I met Gary Gygax that one time. At the Salon du Jeu et de la Maquette, in Paris.

Never been to L'Oeuf Cube. One of the most famous hobby stores in the country (always had a bunch of ads in each issue of CB, too, as you remember, I'm sure).

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;373145I kind of envied the French for their lively and enormously creative scene. In the same time, Germany would "only" produce a handful homegrown games, of which only two were marketed professionally (Midgard and Das Schwarze Auge, and much later a humorous game called Plüsch, Power & Plunder).

I've never heard of Midgard. What was it like?

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;373145Maybe you can help me understand why the French creativity exploded while Germans preferred to "just" translate US games.

One theory of mine (careful, stereotype approaching) was that the French with their national pride and love for their language weren't particularly fond of using English books at their gaming tables. So creating a new rule set from the ground up (and tossing out Hollywood-isms on the way) may have been both a necessity and a desire.

On the publishing side it may have helped that, thanks to the "ninth art", nearly every French gaming group and prospective game designer must have known an artist of (à suivre) quality. The French game books, even the small press ones, were beautiful works of graphic design.

(To compare this to Germany: We had an early form of swinedom in an self-styled elite of gamers who were overly proud in using not a translation of an American game, but of course the original books.)

I'd agree with your assessment.

I don't know if it covers every aspect of the issue/differences, probably not, but those you covered are spot on, IMO.

The national pride of the French, which resisted the influence of American culture, and still do, as opposed to Germany, which picked up bits and pieces of American culture as time went on since the end of WWII, sounds particularly accurate. It must have played into it, subconsciously at least.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;373145In 1992 I met a few Casus Belli people at Gen Con, and one of them told me that during that time, the French scene was divided in INS/MV - Nephilim camps -- one more humorous, the other one more somber, White Wolf-ish -- but that in fact both camps used their game to just play mystical super heroes.

What's your take on that?

Yes, that sounds about accurate. INS/MV crowd, with humor, a sort of light hearted (yet very self-conscious) creativity, versus the Nephilim/Vampire the Masquerade crowd, more into serious gaming, RPG as an artform, and so on, so forth.

I loved both games and genres, personally. INS/MV and Vampire The Masquerade are two of the games I ran the most in all my years of gaming. I have a huge loved for Nephilim, but played it more than I ran it. Nephilim, 2nd edition, is a jewel amongst games. The game materials produced for it are just as awesome (whereas Nephilim 3, aka Nephilim: Révélation, sucks ass and sedimented all the very cool background ideas into a ridiculously huge metaplot. That, and the mechanics of N3 aren't based off Basic RPS anymore, and suck really bad. It's a bit like VtM would be read by the forgites of today and re-made into a rules-heavy, abstract sort of a game. Weird).

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;373145Gradually I lost contact to the French scene, first after the end of the Excelsior run of Casus Belli, and then with the decline of Multisim.

Last July I was in Paris and learned what kinds of games were published during my "lost years". I noted that a grass roots publishing scene must have happened, with books that were less lavishly produced (mostly b/w), and using a smaller format (comparable to US digest), but still showing all the trappings you mentioned: historical themes as in Te deum pour un massacre, Arkeos, Khaos 1795, Pavillon noir, occult mysteries as in Trinité or the new edition of Maléfices).
 
I was most surprised that even d20 had spawned campaign settings (Archipels) and at least two French reimaginations of the rules, Chroniques oubliées and dK System - neither of which would have been imaginable in Germany.

Spot on. Good job filling in my blanks there.