Player Questionaire to help you understand your Players

[psychoph]

I wanted to post my questionaire i gave my players for my Lunar game to both get feedback and hopefulyl help other ST's who might be trying to figure out why their group isn't intereacting as well as they would like.


I wrote this to get an idea of what things my players like about rtole-playing and what characters they like to play.  I use it to refer back to as I am writing the story to make sure I am including stuff players enjoy and avoiding stuff they don't.


Game Questions


What genre of games/stories do you enjoy?


What is it about these genres/stories that you enjoy?


What events in a gaming session do you enjoy?


What about combat do you enjoy?


What is it about social situations you enjoy?


Do you like one type of social interaction more than another, like say debating over speech making or PC interaction over pc and NPC interaction?


Would you prefer to have a game with a lot of dice rolling, no dice rolling or somewhere in between? Why?


What is it about a game/role-playing that makes it fun for you?


Character questions


What kinds of characters do you enjoy playing?


Would you say you gravitate towards one class of character all the time or do you prefer to change which kind of character you play from story to story?


What kinds of personalities do you like role-playing?


What do you consider to be character advancement? Ex: Through story, personal growth, through new better powers, through experience and the character sheet?


Is it ok for something bad (death, lose of artifacts, NPCs loved ones, etc) to happen to your character? Why?


If a major change were to happen to your character in story do you want to have input on it or would you prefer for it to be a surprise?


Story Questions


Do you like sub plots revolving around your character? Why?


What types of sub plots do you enjoy?


Do you like games that share the focus of the story or do you like to interact in as many scenes in a game session as possible?

 

[Flagg]

I ran a similar set of questions by my players recently. I didn't get answers that were nearly as detailed as I had hoped.


-S

 

[Jakk Bey]

I will share my secret for getting players to be open and forthwith about what they want in a game.


It's spelled B-E-E-R.  Additionally, you can use W-I-N-E.  A decent sit down, with beer and munchies, pre game, just bullshitting for an hour or two, maybe with a decent movie rolling, and you can learn a lot about what your players want.  The key is to not imbibe so much yourself, and pay attention.


What movies do your players gravitate towards?  What kinds of music do they listen to?  What kinds of books?  Those are huge clues to the kinds of stories and themes they are into.  Which characters do they cheer for in movies?  Who do they mock?  Players give you huge clues to what they want with these things, rather than a survey, because people often lie, because they want to appear one way, while secretly feeling another.  No hoo hoo there.  


A good bull session, where you talk trash, drink beer, eat lots of chicken and chips, and you'll get all the info that you'd want from your players, if you pay attention.

 

[psychoph]

It's spelled B-E-E-R.  Additionally, you can use W-I-N-E.  A decent sit down, with beer and munchies, pre game, just bullshitting for an hour or two, maybe with a decent movie rolling, and you can learn a lot about what your players want.  The key is to not imbibe so much yourself, and pay attention.

HEHE good idea but wouldn't enitrely work for my group, got a couple of people who never drink or don't drink enough to lossen up, part of my problem running for them is I can't get ahold of what they really want and not just what they think is pc to the group of players.  Case in point one answered the type of chracters they like to play question with the exact opposite words I would use to describe characters I have seen them play.


Which comes to a problem with questionaires, how do you get the players to differentiate between what they think they want and what actually is what they want?

 

[Jakk Bey]

Again: what movies do they watch?  What books do they read?  What music do they listen to?  Which characters do they like the best out of the films they watch?  Which characters do they like the best from the books they read?  


If you really want to use a questionaire, these might be more telling than asking them specifics of what they want.  


Which is your favorite Marvel/DC superhero? Why?


Which is your favorite character from a book?  Why?


What is your favorite action movie?  Which is your favorite character? Why?


This will get them to think less about how it will apply directly to the game, and let you get into what they're watching/reading for.

 

[Persell]

Sometimes it's good to give players something they don't like too. I don't mean to be nasty to the player, more to put them in a tense position that doesn't 'avoid' something that 'might' be something that they don't like.


For example, one of my current group of players introduced me to the concept of consensual death. Apparently if her character was to die in the game I needed to get her approval first. Okay. No. :twisted: Requiring her approval meant that I can't give her a sense of fear when the character is in a dangerous situation, the adrenaline (epenephrine) that comes from that fear, and the exhiliration that follows from overcoming the source of that fear.


She's still playing in games I run, and tells me she's having fun. She also knows that there are fates worse than death for her characters too and appreciates that overcoming these 'obstacles' is an important part in the 'drama' and 'fun' of RPing.


Otherwise, I'd just say that listening to them is the best thing you can do. If they don't say or do anything that leads you to think they aren't having fun then chances are they are. Sometimes my efforts to get them more involved in the whole cathartic fun-ness of gaming spoil it a little, and sometimes it's not them that need a little boost it's me.