Quote from: Andy KI smell someone who's never played D&D at a convention. Conventions are where "Real D&D", "Pure D&D", "D&D to the Letter of the Law", happens (or should happen). I've played in no fewer than 25 D&D sessions over 7 years at GenCon and other cons (including RPGA, which prides itself on being "really true to the rules"). And what you describe above completely misses the mark of what I've experienced firsthand with the majority of gamers.

You're kidding, right??
Conventions are the ass of all RPG places. They're less likely to reflect real use of an RPG than the games that the lawncrappers play at an FLGS.

The real games are the ongoing weekly campaigns people play in their gaming groups, most of the real value of which gets thrown out the window the second you have to make a game for 4 strangers using premade characters within a 3 hour timeframe in a room filled with 2000 screaming people and a guy playing techno music in the anime stand next to your assigned table.
Judging the quality of traditional RPGs by the games of D&D you've played at Cons is like judging the quality of traditional fine dining by your experiences at hot-dog eating contests.

QuoteSure, maybe you and your four friends, and a couple other dudes on the Net, play the game in your own special "Roleplaying matters guys, c'mon! And I'll be responsible, m'kay?" way. But the "Majority of Gamers", which you just love to appeal to authority to, they are NOT playing the way you and your four buddies play. If there's anything I've learned in 20 years of playing the game, You (and me, but that's another story) are in the Minority of D&D players.

Only here I trump you again. I haven't played with 4 dudes my whole career. You see, kid, in the nearly 20 years I've been roleplaying in the course of my world travels I've probably played with somewhere between 200-300 different gamers.  Virtually all of whom played traditional RPGs the way I do.
What you are promoting is the false stereotype of the "retarded D&D player". So go fuck yourself for it.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Andy KThen I get into an exclusive d20 game* at a reputable Con, and there's like One "Drama Guy", 2 medium-autistic guys who rock back and forth in their chairs mumbling and holding their dice, only springing to life when it's time to Fight, and the guy who you forget is there because he doesn't say or do a damn thing. Maybe there's a second Drama Guy, but he's tainted because he's a lawncrapper who can't open his mouth half the time without quoting Monty Python, Black Adder or Buffy or whatever. And wash it all down with a DM who will not, can not, deviate from the adventure she/he wrote or was given: "Wow, Great Speech to the Bandits! They still attack you, though."

That's the majority of Real D&D play.

You see, that's counter to my experience, too...

I've been playing (mostly gamemastering) various shades of D&D for about 20+ years now, and I've run games or campaigns of Call of Cthulhu, FATE, Earthdawn, Mythus, MERP, Paranoia, and many others I'm sure I'm forgetting.

I will grant that my players roleplay a little more when we're doing something like CoC (yes, believe it or not, the d20 version) or FATE.  It's a minor difference, though, and I think it's more related to rules density during combat than anything else...  Outside of combat, all the games I've ever run or played are pretty even for me.  Maybe over the course of running games for 20 years I've just coincidentally collected great groups of players, but apart from middle school, my players have routinely been excellent and have gotten into roleplaying their characters.

I'll posit that convention gaming is not the end-all, be-all typical game.  I have only seldom played a Con game which has come even close to any game I've ever run.  I don't think this means it's the way real people play D&D.  I think it's the way real people who don't know each other, using characters they've never seen before, with a possibly indifferent GM running a module that's not his play D&D.

-O

Quote from: RPGPundit...most of the real value of which gets thrown out the window the second you have to make a game for 4 strangers using premade characters within a 3 hour timeframe in a room filled with 2000 screaming people and a guy playing techno music in the anime stand next to your assigned table.

All your regular fanatical bullshit aside, you do have a very good point here, echoed by obryn.

-Andy

Wow. That has to be one of the most vicious and false characterizations of how D&D is played that I've ever seen.

I've seen bad players and even the really, really obnoxious players before. I've seen the tragically unhealthy (fat?) guys that were into gaming to their own detriment. We've got a guy out in my area named Howard who is practically banned from every game in town, but he's the exception, not the rule. But I've seen those guys also be the ones who sneer at D&D players. In a few experiences it's been the total losers who have been the most likely to sneer nastily at us mere D&D hobbyists.

Most of the people I've met and observed have been cool guys. Normal guys. And they game in a normal baseline way. They don't jump up on the table and start emoting or moralizing or having psychodrama exercises or anything. But thats fine, because that shit is weird. And when people talk about gamers being weird? Theyre talking about all that stuff. D&D players are- by comparison, pretty low key. For most of us, we're just hobbyists. We generally play weekly with friends, (Con games are the not the rule contrary to your ridiculous statement earlier). We have a good time and we don't agonize about it.

I went to Flickr and I was trying to find some pictures of just regular people playing D&D. I quickly found photos of that 'Go-Play' gameday. I even got a picture of some guys getting together to play indie-dahling Dread:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/74537109@N00/170019910/
(Apparently the game was cancelled due to lack of interest. LO...L? But let's not be petty.)

Here's some people getting together for some D&D.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/uberwolf/246062314/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/233478739/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ckirkman/41386289/

I'm saying the idea that you guys are somehow better people than us is ridiculous, and in the ways that you you keep trying to convince each other that you are superior, your'e simply wrong.

Ummm - Andy, I've played with probably 60 to 80 people as they moved through Boston on their way to a diploma or another job over the 28+ years I've been gaming. All of them were bright, articulate, socially adjusted people who loved to play their characters. None of them were the type of maladjusted social rejects you talk about. Until recently, I'd never even played with anyone who had ever been to a con.

I went to my first con this year - Vericon at Harvard. I ran a game of Cold Space with a group of 9 - 17 or so showed up - bright attractive young people who enjoyed the heck out of playing their pre-genned characters in a 3 hour game at my assigned table. I played my regular game, no-one lost a beat, no-one pissed and moaned, and the game rocked. I was on a GM high for days afterward.

Next year I'm going to GenCon to run a few games. Maybe I'll run into a few catpissmen and lawncrappers, but so far, they are as real to me as Sasquatch.

-clash

Quote from: Abyssal MawWow. That has to be one of the most vicious and false characterizations of how D&D is played that I've ever seen.

Oh, great, another idiot who thinks that somehow my REAL EXPERIENCE IN REAL LIFE over 10 REAL YEARS of REAL ROLEPLAYING at REAL CONS is not only FALSE, but a VICIOUS ATTACK (and are taking it personally).  :eek::eek::eek:

I implied it above when I talked about my personal d20/D&D experience, but let me state it out on the table as cold fact for the people who are going to accuse my REAL EXPERIENCES of being false:

1) All of my gaming of d20 with friends and friends-of-friends has ranged from lukewarm (very rarely) to great to fucking awesome. Normally we drift the hell out of the rules (no encumberance, no tracking of arrows etc, loose on XP, and going around the rules when it gets in the way of real roleplaying. Just like most folks here, I assume).
2) I've been in a few sucky house sessions, usually with some strangers and one friend who I joined. I quickly leave and find another good group. But these are rare so I don't include them in the data to somehow blame d20 for the failures of those DMs or groups.
3) When I attend or see Con games of strangers, it's usually a Lawncrapper herd with a few notable exeptions. But these are the guys who are into the game far more hardcore than you or I are into anything else.
4) My assumption above, after being in and seeing many of these games, is that this is how the majority of games get played.  That may be mistaken. But it's hard to say, "All these thousands of people at the con are all wrong  and play wrong and stuff" without thinking about it more.

Oh, and I'll throw this out there too:
* I've been in lukewarm or shitty Con games that WEREN'T d20, too! :eek: OMIGOD!
I was in shitty games of mainstream games. I've been in shitty indie games. I've been in shitty d20 games, and non-d20.  These days, though, I'm very picky about with whom and what I play (even at Cons), and therefore have more awesome experiences than shitty experiences. But the first few times I was at GenCon it was like throwing darts.

Usually it's because there's more damage in the group than good (bad GM, bad players, etc), and I quickly bail and find a good table.

I didn't bring it up earlier because it didn't really contribute to the discussion. But it's obvious after reading your remarks that some people are under the opinion that my statements about the millions of roleplayers at conventions or public gaming groups == the experience of people who play at home. Not true, and I want to clarify that.  Also, it seems that people are assuming that I'm saying that all my d20 games were shitty, while all my non-d20 games were not shitty. This, too, is false, so I want to clarify that now.

If I don't clarify that, people will go on to say shit like:

QuoteI'm saying the idea that you guys are somehow better people than us is ridiculous, and in the ways that you you keep trying to convince each other that you are superior, your'e simply wrong.

Who here said or implied anything like "we are better than you"?  

It IS a ridiculous idea. And no one has brought it up that idea but you.

Oh, or are you doing that thing that Pundit does, where he makes up shit that 'other people say' (they don't) and levels it against himself, so he can crushingly defend himself against it?

Because that's AWESOME.

EDIT: OK, I was a little rough above. I do see your personal experiences as highly comparable to my own. I was only talking about the majority of gamers I have seen and played with at events all over the country. I didn't mean for my words to mean that "...therefore this (lawncrappers and quasi-autistic powergamers) is how things must be with You and Your d20 Group at Home", and it irritated me that people willingly decived themselves to read that into what I said.

-Andy

Quote from: Andy KOh, great, another idiot who thinks that somehow my REAL EXPERIENCE IN REAL LIFE over 10 REAL YEARS of REAL ROLEPLAYING at REAL CONS is not only FALSE, but a VICIOUS ATTACK (and are taking it personally).  :eek::eek::eek:
-Andy

Your'e disregarding my real life experience, and I think when it comes to D&D, mine trumps yours.

In any case, why shouldn't I take offense when you characterize 'all D&D play' that way? It's insulting.

I mean, I guess it's the same as saying "most of the games coming out of the forge are chiefly enjoyed by race-baiters, date rape advocates and people who have failed at life. BUT DONT TAKE IT PERSONALLY."

Both statements have a bit of truth to them.

Quote from: Andy KIt IS a ridiculous idea. And no one has brought it up that idea but you.

-Andy

Are you sure? I could cherry pick quotes from all kinds of places (including Story-Games) that illustrate this exact attitude. It certainly didn't come from nowhere.

@Andy: There is an important distinction to be made here. At a convention, you're sampling from a broad group, in that those who attend are from all the fuck over the place; but you're also sampling from a very narrow group of hardcore fans... and hardcore fans with enought time and money to devote to a convention. Even which Con you go to makes a big diference. Check out Dragon Con sometime. Not so roleplaying-specific or intense, but highly popular and very laid back. Usually there are very few catpissmen (the local slang being Sailor Bacon... 400lb man dressed up as teenage girl anime character... eugh). If you want a broad sampling, you're better off just living lots of places than attending a Con.

Andy:

Just want to be clear that I wasn't disputing your experiences - after all, I've only been to one con as yet, and a tiny one at that. I was more supporting your experiences with your home group, and trying to assure you that most games are indeed more like your home games, at least in my experience.

-clash

Quote from: Abyssal MawIn any case, why shouldn't I take offense when you characterize 'all D&D play' that way? It's insulting.

I mean, I guess it's the same as saying "most of the games coming out of the forge are chiefly enjoyed by race-baiters, date rape advocates and people who have failed at life. BUT DONT TAKE IT PERSONALLY."

Both statements have a bit of truth to them.

...er...

OK, it's usually not the "Cock thump the enemy until they submit" way around here to approach a discussion, but yeah: You do have a really solid point there.

There's what I see and all at cons (relayed above), which is empirically invalidable, but I actually DID want to discuss it instead of just waving my manhood about- So with that I really should have tempered it with the equally (or even "more importantly" actually) empirically invalidable claim - and personal proof through experience - that most people who do play d20 that I've known are, almost to a man, great roleplayers and having a great time of the hobby.

Looking back, it wasn't a good methodology for me to use when actually wanting to discuss things with people, and I really do apologize for that comment. Throwing Pundit's own widely-used rhetoric style back in his face isn't my style after all; it's not for me, in the end. Fantatics don't care about collateral damage that hurtful remarks can make (yeah, even "just about games") and in "being Pundit" up there, just like him, I paid no mind to the collateral damage I was spewing on you and others.  

But when the dust clears, I realized that I do, actually, care about the collateral damage that my words can do, and it leaves me a little ill, and a little disappointed in myself.

Yeah, I'll leave the fanaticism to those who can stomach that bullshit, and stick to my own posting/conversational style from now on, I think.

So from me, again, to you Abyssal Maw (and other onlookers who were thinking the same thing as A.M.), I really do apologize for my lopsided characterization and hurtful remarks. Sure, it's just about "a bunch of fucking games" and all, but hey, we all love games, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about them during work. I should have been more thoughtful.

-Andy

I apologize as well.

I think that we can probably agree here that it's the quality of the players rather than any innate quality of the game. Bad players/gm equals bad gaming session.
I enjoy a fairly wide assortment of games, and have had differing experiences with all of them depending on who I'm playing with.
There's nothing innately wrong with d20 or whatever the hell else you like, especially if you're enjoying it.
I do understand what Pundit is getting at - it's the unfortunate assumptions that some adherents of a particular style of play makes about those on the other side of the table that can be so vexing; problems with systems themselves usually skew toward personal taste.
For instances, I've had some heinous World of Darkness experiences with pompous, navel-gazing drama queens that were very much not to my liking, and then I've had some fantastic episodes of camaraderie, role-playing and seat of my pants excitement with the exact same system and very different players.  
Same thing with d20, and a lot of the indie darlings. Some stuff - of course - really isn't my cup of tea, and I find them objectionable for some reason or the other, but like the saying goes, "There's no accounting for taste."

PS: very adult of everyone to apologize and make nice. I'm not being sarcastic or anything - it really impresses me when people are civil to each other. It's easy to depersonalize folks on message boards like this. The irony is that most of us - even at our worst times - would probably get along famously in real life.

Quote from: Abyssal MawI went to Flickr and I was trying to find some pictures of just regular people playing D&D. I quickly found photos of that 'Go-Play' gameday. I even got a picture of some guys getting together to play indie-dahling Dread:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/74537109@N00/170019910/
(Apparently the game was cancelled due to lack of interest. LO...L? But let's not be petty.)

Here's some people getting together for some D&D.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/uberwolf/246062314/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/233478739/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ckirkman/41386289/

I'm saying the idea that you guys are somehow better people than us is ridiculous, and in the ways that you you keep trying to convince each other that you are superior, your'e simply wrong.

Hey!  That's me!  Or, well, the third one (account lizhenry) is taken by my wife Liz of games at the kids room at ConQuest SF 2006 last month.  That's our friend's kid Ellen in the center left.  I can't tell which game it was offhand from the picture.  I've got a convention report here:

http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/cons/conquest2006.html

In the kids room, I ran one D&D variant game, and one Faery's Tale game.

Quote from: jhkimHey!  That's me!  Or, well, the third one (account lizhenry) is taken by my wife Liz of games at the kids room at ConQuest SF 2006 last month.  That's our friend's kid Ellen in the center left.  I can't tell which game it was offhand from the picture.  I've got a convention report here:

http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/cons/conquest2006.html

In the kids room, I ran one D&D variant game, and one Faery's Tale game.

Thats very Cool Mr. Kim! I honestly had no idea who I was getting pictures of. I did a Flickr search on 'gamers' and went for pictures of people with a battlemat. My point was- we're an incredibly diverse hobby, and (on the whole) a lot more 'normal' than you'd think from these conversations.  

Perpetuating the stereotype is self-destructive.