How Do You Play?

[Virjigorm]

I have been roleplaying for about 12 years and have run and played many different games, but one thing I've never done is play online. I've never figured out how this type of game can even be played in a fun way over the internet. I am, as such interested in what others think of this, so here's the question:


Do you play in person, online, or both?


Which do you prefer?

 

[Ledaal Kajiri]

I play both online and tabletop games. I've also LARPed. Overall, I'd say my favorite is probably a good LARP, with Tabletop and Online games coming about even, if they are good. Really, what I've found is that a good game can happen through any medium, so long as you have the right people involved. However, I personally find limited pleasure in the slow text environment of message boards for RPing. While for certain things in an online game it can be useful, I am much more comfortable with a more immediate form of interaction where people are continually responding to eachother in play in something more like real time. While a shorter text environment can occasionally be annoying when your character is giving a long speech, and you need to break it into smaller segments (I have a habit of going...rather heavily over text maximums at times), I still am much more comfortable with a quick response and people there RIGHT NOW interacting with me. It lends a greater sense of immediacy, and makes it so you can't sit back for a day or two contemplating the best possible response to something that you'd have to respond immediately to.


I prefer games where mechanics are used to determine results in some fashion. All too often ad hoc 'I did this' RP comes down to the exact same problems that plague kids playing make believe, where people power play or bog down into arguments about whether you did or didn't decapitate someone, etc. I'd rather a moderately impartial rules system that everyone has to follow. Still, as a ST, I've been known to quietly fudge a roll here or there to keep the story going, and generally my players are aware they have a single 'get out of dead' card that I'll generally use to save them if something happens that would kill them through no fault of their own. They do something stupid, they get their lumps, but a single bad roll of the dice probably will just knock them out, perhaps have some lasting consequences, but usually won't kill them outright...unless it's either cinematically appropriate, or just necessary to maintain realism. Well, that or a gritty game where people are supposed to be a dime a dozen.

 

[HowlingCoyote]

I've played in table-top, online, and play-by-post games.


I actually tend to prefer play-by-post games, assuming that posting is consistent and fairly quick in pace. The focus becomes the story and RPing, with out-of-character stuff in a separate thread (or several). Additionally, play-by-post games don't have a session time, they just play on continually.


Online games are a close second. While they, like table-top games, are limited to whenever the game session happens, I've found they tend to have a stronger focus on RPing and the story than table-top games, which can get derailed easily (though, that has its own charm too). Also, I love the fact that an online game only needs a wifi connection. My laptop means that I can go just about anywhere and still play an online game. It retains the immediacy of table-top, but doesn't require that people be in the same room (or even on the same continent). It also means that I don't have to be gaming exclusively because I can, and do, watch sports while gaming online, or hang out with my girlfriend while she's doing her own hobbies, or be out on a patio having a pint. Or whatever else I want to do at the same time.

 

[Tsuranis]

or be out on a patio having a pint.

Nitpick: you can do this at a tabletop

 

[HowlingCoyote]

or be out on a patio having a pint.

Nitpick: you can do this at a tabletop

... um... well, yes... but... that's not the point!

 

[MorkaisChosen]

I've done some PbP and face-to-face in my time (though with Exalted, I've so far managed a grand total of one prelude- please don't kill me, I'm new!), and they're... different.


Face-to-face is great for the kind of asides and jokes that make gaming gloriously social, and it helps with immediacy when youre reacting quickly. If all the players and the GM are really good, it can help immersion with some voices.


On the other hand, PbP allows me to refine my flair for the dramatic a bit more- it's easier to get a really impressive description down if you have minutes, instead of seconds, to get it into a coherent form. On the other hand, it does cause a problem for my particular preferences- I tend to want to say what I'm trying to do, as I don't like to dictate the results too much- so I really need to wait for all the numbers to go down, and you won't see me declaring that, for example, my character's weapon "draws a bloody line across his opponent's stomach"- in a face-to-face game, I could roll, get it compared to defences and know how much damage I needed to be narrating, but it's a bit tougher in PbP.


I definitely agree with Ledaal Kajiri about mechanics- I've had one particular experience with freeform games where someone basically trashed most of what I'd done in one paragraph. Not entirely hip...

 

[Gylthinel]

I've done Play by Email (essentially like Play by Post, as far as I understand the concept). It was way to slow, and thus died quickly.


I currently play almost exclusive using instant messengers. This is sub-optimal, because 1 slow typer can really kill the momentum of a game, especially when every single action is a 5-sentence stunt. On the plus side, I find it much easier to RP different character types. My GM has 1 voice that he can use IRL, so his characters are all very similar in the way they act, think, talk and therefore appear. But, on IM he can make them somewhat different. So, that's a boon.


Face to Face is simply better, though. Body language is 70% of human communication, and that's something you can only getting F2F. It's also faster, so the story can keep moving. If you ask for a person's action and they don't respond, you can look and see that they're instead watching sports, playing with their girlfriend, or having a pint instead of paying attention to the game. You can then throw things at them to get them to pay attention.

 

[Persell]

My options are pretty limited, as I don't really have anyone to play with outside of the Internet... I never have, I guess. Apart from my brother, but games involving only two people... aren't really the best way to do things.


So, my options are more limited... but from the experience I do have, I've found that I much prefer games run by chat. Maybe it's just my bad luck, likely mixed in part with my slow writing when not under pressure, but I've found that chat-based games both run faster and need less time devoted to them than do play-by-post games. They also seem to do a better job of staying together, if you can manage to get them together in the first place... which, admittedly, is quite a feat.


I still play in play-by-post games, though, as they're quite a bit easier to find.