RPGaDay2024 Day 23 - Peerless Player
What makes a great player? Thinking about this was an interesting exercise; the campaigns and games I've run or played in, with game groups or at conventions, have all been very different experiences/ I've experienced great players and not great players. As I thought back on specifics, I developed a few consistent themes, regardless of system or story.
Supportive
An RPG is collaborative storytelling, where everybody at the table is supposed to be having fun. When players keep that in mind and do what they can to support the table, the game, the other players, and the gamemaster, that's a sign that they are good players.
We have a standard in my long-term campaign: Clarifying rules with the GM is appreciated. If the GM is making a special ruling or wants to run it differently, that's okay, but those of us who have been playing for decades across multiple editions often make mistakes: do you get a free 5-foot move to get out of range? Is an attack of opportunity triggered by moving through someone's threat radius, or only by leaving it? How does grappling work? (Bonus story: One of my players, in a 4e demo game, earned a "Humility Point" for being the first character in history to miss with a magic missile.)
That's supporting the GM. Players can also be supportive outside of the game, of the GM or each other. One of my friends recently joined my RPG-themed Toastmasters group. Another player walked him through the just-started campaign, setting a character up, and helping him develop a backstory.
Do characters write up what happened in a game? My group did this for a while, and I really appreciated it (especially when they traded off and wrote them in-character.) It was less work for me, and created a fun record of how one character viewed what happened.
Adaptable
I can think of two aspects of adaptability offhand, though I'm sure there are many more.
One is players who are adaptable about their character. Players have character concepts. If those concepts don't fit with the game, an adaptable player (and GM) will work on something that gets the player what they are after without breaking the intended game. I mentioned someone wanting to be a gnome. My world doesn't have them, but I created an island of them which were not significant to the world--and got to have fun with the "What on earth are you?" aspect of this. I also don't have tieflings in my 3.x world. In this case, it would need to be a conversation of what the player is after--and adapt the concept and world, to get somewhere in between.
Another example of adaptability is when things go poorly for the player. Bad rolls, bad decisions, and bad luck can all lead to an outcome that isn't great for the players and might even cut off a direction they were planning for the story to take. A good player will take the current situation, potentially adapt the goal, or find a different approach.
Engaged
I neither insist that everybody be 100% focused on the game, nor am I always able to be that focused. In 3-4 hour games, it's hard to avoid every call, instant message, etc. even if you're selective about what's going on. That said, I do expect that everybody (including myself) will be focused enough to be aware of what's going on--or at least send an "AFK/BRB" message to let people know that they won't be available for a few minutes.
A completely different aspect is engagement in the story. The game is a collaborative story; a good player will work to keep themselves engaged in the story--even those arcs or scenes that don't relate to them directly. One of the reasons I run a sandbox game is that I've found it increases engagement in the story, because what's happening is literally nothing more than the outcomes of the player's own priorities and choices.
One of my favorite examples of encouraging this engagement was when the players were at an inn overnight. I created 3 story prompts in the inn's common area: A group of holy warriors at one table, an abusive boyfriend at another, a group of 3 highly competent women at a third. The players noticed all three but went for the abusive boyfriend. The situation escalated from a 1-to-many encounter, to a 1-plus-friends, to the whole group. That turned into a "take it outside" situation, and the players were all personally invested in teaching the abuser and his friends about the importance of civility and proper etiquette, and the unexpected outcomes that sometimes arise when you fail to be respectful.
The party could just have easily engaged with the three women, and found themselves mixed up with their story, or the holy warriors and become part of theirs. I wrote up both groups, and they are part of my world canon, but because the party didn't engage, those stories passed by and barring an interesting coincidence, won't show up again.
Roleplays
This is a variation on engagement but is more personal. This is really about spending the game time as your character: thinking, acting, and speaking as them. While supporting the table and story is important, it's also important to support them the way that your character would. My current character is designed to be the opposite of my previous character. That means he avoids responsibility like the plague, and cringes when he's called on to negotiate on behalf of the party, or to make decisions about what to do next. I personally have no such issues, and my previous character did it all the time, but Prevel hates it--and frankly, he's not very good at it.
I prefer when dialog is in character. It's fine to describe the action and outcome you are after--after all, not everybody is an actual Charisma 22 charmer or a master thief. But then describing what you do in character gives everybody a chance to watch you play it out. You personally might stumble or make mistakes--it still comes down to rolls, but I personally give bonuses (and in one case a huge penalty) for the attempt to role play it out. (Bonus story: Someone went into a merchant's custom boutique, looking for a magic item. He looks around and says "Where's the good stuff?" 24 charisma and a +20 diplomacy check or not, that was a failure--and became an incident of legend. It was also fun when another player had to go in and buy something expensive, just to placate the merchant.) I'd normally never penalize a character/player for misspeaking, but this was so blatant that I decided to have fun with it. (See "adaptable player" above.)
Creative
A bonus behavior is players who offer creative solutions or approaches to problems. The obvious example is the Warlock, who stereotypically casts "Eldritch Blast" at everything. That may be their primary combat damage spell...but how does their patron cause them to act differently? What surprises can they manifest when it matters? What do they do out of combat? These creative differences mean that two warlocks may have identical abilities, but be nothing alike.
I also had a great time with my beguiler. Beguilers have a very limited set of spells, in that they can only cast enchantment and illusion, and a very few others, but they can cast *anything* from their spell lists. This allowed me to make use of those "only comes up in very rare situations, so you'd never use it, and I'd eagerly wait for circumstances to pull out different spells, or use them in different ways. Of course, I had favorites, but there's something memorable about casting a "touch range" spell that reduces an opponent to 0hp (not dead, just reduced to one action and almost dead) by running up and kissing an umber hulk on the head, and making it so bewildered that it just fades into the ground.
To bring all this together, though, I think the best thing that someone can do to be a better player, is to look at the game, setting, and other players, and ask "What can I do, to be a better player, and help the table have more fun?"
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