The long summary

You use a telephone to do one thing, and a radio to do another. Seems like a simple idea.

Different mediums of communication/interaction (let's call them media) are suited to different things, thanks to the laws of spacetime. The telephone is excellent for transmitting sounds between two specific users who are in different locations. The radio is excellent for transmitting sounds from one broadcaster to any number of receivers in other locations.

That doesn't mean you have to use them that way, of course. I could hold up my cell phone to a CD player, allowing the person on the other end to listen to music. Or I could broadcast specific messages to my wife over the radio, letting her know that I'll be home late from work. However, these aren't the optimal ways to use telephones and radio. People use the phone when they want to talk to someone specific, and they use the radio to listen to music or generalized talking. It's a matter of using a medium for its strengths - figure out what it does best, and do that with it.

And sometimes different media replace each other. For example, telegraphs used to be very common. If you wanted to get a message to someone and you couldn't wait for the mail, you sent a telegram. With the advent of phones, though, telegraphy went into decline, and the internet has finished them off as a practical option. Western Union sent its last telegram in 2006. Radio is also an example of this evolution. It was the first medium to allow simultaneous one-way transmission from a central point to many receivers; in other words, lots of people could listen to the same thing at the same time. So radio became the home of music, storytelling, advertising, conversation, etc. That is, until television came along.

Since TV could actually show pictures, it rapidly took away several things that radio had previously done, especially storytelling. People who used to gather around the ol' Philco, listening to all-audio tales of cops and robbers, switched to actually seeing the stories acted out by live people on screens as large as a few inches across! So television displaced radio for certain things, particularly those things that were best served by having visuals. Radio hung on, though, by doing things that lent themselves to an all-audio-no-visual format. If people want to hear music, radio is suited to the task.

And so I circle back to roleplaying. A while ago, I was blogging about GNS Theory. Although not a perfect model, GNS Theory provides us with a useful set of concepts for discussing RPGs. Some people, it says, are Gamists who primarily enjoy the challenge and competition of playing a game. Some people are Narrativists who want to expose themselves to difficult emotional conflicts. And some people are Simulationists who want to emulate things outside the present world, like being a specific character or experiencing a particular location. While discussing this, I said I was working on a robust and philosophical defense of Simulationism. It took a lot of "Matt-likes-this-and-dislikes-that" blogging to sort it out in my head, but here it is.

Roleplaying games are a medium, just like telephones and radio. They're a set of methods and rules for human interaction, for the transmission of ideas. Like other media, RPGs are better at some things than they are at others. So it makes sense to use them in ways that play to their strengths. And what are those strengths? What do RPGs do better than their peers? Pretending. Roleplaying games are superb at fostering the suspension of disbelief, at creating a certain detachment from the rules and constraints of material life in the here-and-now. In short, RPGs excel at simulation. So let's use them for that.

It's not that they can't do other things, of course. They are games, after all, and you can use them to manipulate rulesets and engage in abstract competition with other people. But you can also do that with Monopoly or Axis & Allies or chess, and frankly those games do it better than RPGs do. If you want to compete, play go. Or take up racquetball. Or join a fantasy football league. Those are all better-designed for your competitive urge than RPGs. The rules in an RPG are there to help you resolve uncertain situations, not as a metric for beating other people at the table.

The same holds for people wanting emotional drama. RPGs can and do deliver that. But novels and movies do it better. If you want to focus on wrenching internal conflicts and difficult decisions, try reading Sophie's Choice or watching... I don't know what you'd watch. I'm not a fan of wrenching internal conflicts. But I know they're out there in other media, media that are stronger at providing them and that are weaker in engaging the participants' personal imaginations. For that matter, there's plenty of emotional drama in real life. It's a reflection of my preferences, yes, but I don't grasp why people would want to pretend to make hard choices when so much day-to-day existence involves really doing so.

Simulation is the one component of an RPG that you can't strip away from it. If there isn't pretending, if someone isn't imagining their personal version of a not-here-and-now, it's not a roleplaying game. It may still be a game. It may still have elements of improv acting. But it's missing the core of what makes this medium, this hobby, different from anything else. Roleplaying games offer an unparalleled chance to be someone you're not, in somewhere that doesn't exist, doing things you can't really do. All the other elements are useful, yes - but simulating stuff is what it's all about. It's a powerful theraputic tool. It's a useful creativity exercise. And it's pretty damn enjoyable.

There's actually one more of these en route...

What do I like? What do I dislike? The answer to both questions might be "limits on my characters." In this, our final installment of Matt Talks About Roleplaying At Greater Length Than Anyone Really Wanted, we examine one of my greatest Likes and quite probably my single biggest Dislike...

LIKE: LANGUAGES
Two years ago I was running a D&D game for some teenagers. Most of them had little or no roleplaying experience, so I gave them some props to help with character creation. One was a notecard with around 9 different language options on it. The official D&D language options are boring, so it was a list of languages I made up along with notes like "The language of a rival nation" or "Obscure click-language known only to scholars." Nothing special there - except that they got sooo into it. Forget the decisions about race and class; these new players' imaginations were fired by the choice between speaking Rivan or Jajanya. And of course, most of them took the obscure click-language.

Languages are a fast, entertaining way to customize a character. They provide an interesting choice -- should you be practical or quirky? They also cause you to ask: where has your character gone and who have they known? When I make a 350-point Champions character, those 2 points I invest in Spanish or Arabic have as much to do with defining him as the 60 points I put into Energy Blast.

Languages also let the GM define a world very quickly. How many cultures are there? Are they related in some way? How prominent or obscure are they? Take 5 languages and come up with a sentence for each, explaining who speaks it and why. You've got the foundation of a world right there. Language lists are one of the best setting-generation tools out there.

DISLIKE: CLASSES
Don't tell me how to play my character.

Don't tell me that there are only 8 ways to be, and that I have to pick one for all time. Don't tell me that characters are interchangeable units. Don't tell me that your game defines people by how well they fit an arbitratry role. Don't slap me with limits on how I can play.

Character classes are a barrier to fun and a prison for imagination. I have never seen a game that was improved by them.  Aside from hanging out with my friends, I think PCs are the very best thing about roleplaying. My character is an expression of my interests; it tells the GM what kinds of things I want to do. Give me options. Don't give me classes - they're a straightjacket. Classes are a way of saying There Is One Right Way To Play. And there isn't. So get rid of them.

I've practiced what I preach here. My various abortive Cyberpunk games have been class-free. I created a pretty effective class-free version of D&D 4E. I didn't do the same with my 3.5 stuff, but I did create new classes with great abandon, so that players would have more freedom to play what they wanted to play. For what it's worth, I created a new core class that Monte Cook put in his "Year's Best d20." It's called the yogi, it's rooted in Hindu mythology (and my desire for a Constitution-based character), and it's pretty good. I think I know a few things about how to make classes work.

But it's better to not have classes at all.

Mattifesto?

Hark, it's the penultimate entry in what one person has dubbed the Mattifesto. Nothing too dramatic here -- the symmetry-loving part of me wishes that these somehow aligned, but really they're just the second-to-last entries on the piece of paper I'm looking at.

LIKE: THE SOCIAL ASPECT
I like pretending, I like exploring, I like world-building. But that's not why I roleplay. I do it because I like hanging out with my friends. The social aspect of roleplaying is the most important thing to me. Spending time together, laughing at the same old inside jokes, trying to separate Jason from the popcorn bowl - that's what it's all about. Some people watch football together or go to bars together. When my friends are gathered, I like to roleplay. As a GM, I run a pretty loose table. Out-of-character conversation and interaction isn't a problem to me, unless it's actually drowning out the events at hand.

One odd side effect of this is that I don't particularly enjoy conventions. Playing games with strangers isn't a lot of fun for me, since there isn't much of a basis for interaction. You're all just trapped at the table together, manipulating a ruleset until the time slot expires. Yawn.

DISLIKE: SLOW COMBAT
If I wanted a tactical minis game, I'd play Warhammer 40K. I don't and I'm not. Don't slow combat down to a crawl so that everyone can consider all the ramifications of every possible +2 modifier. DO STUFF AND MOVE ON.

This doesn't entirely square with my longstanding passionate affair with the Hero System. However, most of my other favorite RPGs (Star Wars, Castle Falkenstein, Cyberpunk, 7th Sea) have very quick combat systems. Real combat moves fast. So should roleplaying combat. Otherwise, you've got a recurrence of the split-the-party problem, where one person's doing stuff and everyone else is sitting around, waiting for a chance for their character to do cool things.

...if I were to tie this all together, I could point out that the Social Aspect can be used to fill the holes caused by Slow Combat. But I'm not that compulsive.

According to Chris Sims, Iron Man once fought Frankenstein

After reading these, it shouldn't be a surprise that my current project is making a superhero setting that works like a hexcrawl/sandbox. If I get really ambitious (I won't), the plan is to design it for a version of Champions that's been boiled down to a Castle Falkenstein-like level of detail. Ah, grafting unlike things together... DOCTOR FRANKENSTEIN HAD THE RIGHT IDEA.

LIKE: PLAYER-DRIVEN PLOTS
I have the most fun when the players, not the GM, are deciding what the session will be about. The best games I've ever been in are the ones where players seized control of the action and the GM's job was just to keep things rolling.

When I'm roleplaying, I want the game to be about my character. This is my big chance to be some cool fictional person and have cool fictional adventures. I enjoy the acting/pretending part of RPGs more than anything. So I want that to be the center of the action - my characters Want To Do Certain Things. I'm probably more interested in these Certain Things than I am in the GM's plans. If I want to form my own breakaway thieves' guild, let me work on that. I'll be happier as a player, and you'll have more material to work with.

Same goes for the other side of the screen. As a GM, I consider it my players' job to figure out what happens next. I'm mostly there to provide background and throw in complications. The best campaigns I've run have been ones where the players were pushing to reach certain goals - my task wasn't to set those goals, but to make the pursuit interesting. Perhaps the PCs are sword-and-sorcery rogues who find that the dead monarch's missing daughter has secretly joined their carnival. They get to decide what to do about it - it's not my job as GM. And if they decide to restore her to the throne despite the long odds, all I have to do is keep tossing out challenges and opportunities. Adventures are more fun when the players are in control of the overall narrative direction.

Roleplaying is more fun when the players want to do certain things, and when the GM's main priority is advancing (or complicating) their ability to do those things.

DISLIKE: THE STAR TREK MODEL
On Star Trek, the stories follow a pattern. The spaceship is directed to enter a new area by offstage bosses. This new area has a weird environment, culture, or inhabitant. Said weirdness causes problems for the crew. The crew figures out a way to resolve the weirdness. Status quo is restored, the spaceship moves on, little or no long-term change occurs to characters or setting.

Man, that's boring.

The Star Trek model is little more than a series of mobile puzzle-solvings. The characters don't really grow or change. The setting isn't consistent, and it's not explored in any depth. It's just a series of short stories told by the GM. I can get that from, y'know, a short story collection. I prefer games where the characters are based in a defined area, with recurring NPCs and ongoing subplots, offering chances for them to change who/what they are as the players see fit. I like change. I like consequences. I don't like going from one arbitrary location to the next with a cast of stereotypes and broad caricatures.

My favorite Trek was Deep Space 9, which puts me outside the mainstream of that particular fandom. And I liked Babylon 5 even better. Make of that what you will.

Today we metagame it

LIKE: THREE-PLAYER GROUPS
For me, three players is the sweet spot. With three players, everyone will get a large share of spotlight time. They'll get to play the game their way. They'll get to tell more of their story.

Also, in a three-player game, everyone is important. Each character will have a lot to do (assuming 1 character/player), since there aren't a lot of other people they can turn to for support. At the same time, it's not hard to challenge a three-player group, since they probably can't cover all the necessary bases every session. They'll have to improvise, generalize, and/or turn to NPCs for assistance. Everyone gets to be a lot more resourceful in a three-player game. I enjoy that from both sides of the screen.

DISLIKE: THE WEEKLY GAME
This one puts me pretty solidly outside the mainstream, I know. But as they say in Lake Wobegon, sumus quod sumus - we are who we are. And I'm someone who doesn't enjoy it when my roleplaying is an appointment. As a GM, I can't guarantee that I'll have a good idea every week. More likely, I'll just get burned out by the pressure of prepping that much material. As a player, I can't guarantee that I'll show up that often. This isn't a new development - even before I was an old person with job and spouse and kids, I rarely committed to a recurring game.

Scheduling your roleplaying that rigorously, to me, takes some of the fun out of it. Now it's not something we do because we're in the mood - we do it because it's an obligation. We have to play, whether we feel like it or not. I'd rather only play when I feel like it. And it's rare that I'll want to play once a week.

I did run a weekly game for about a year. It was a good time, too. That was entirely because of the people I played with - close friends all, and we knew that this was a limited opportunity because of jobs and weddings and stuff. If we tried to make it a permanent thing, I think we'd have driven each other crazy.

Never take your eyes off the Aztecs

It's been a while since my last Like/Dislike repost. There are only a few left in the series, so we might as well collect 'em all...

LIKE: RANDOM ELEMENTS
Give me some charts to roll on, and I'm happy for hours. Or, in the internet age, give me a way to generate weird modern-Cthulhu items or maybe some old-school fantasy henchmen and I'll make my own fun.

It's not that I lack for ideas. However, the beauty of randomly generated stuff is that it forces you to consider things that you otherwise wouldn't. Integrating your own tastes/biases with those of an impersonal list can lead to really cool things that you would, by definition, never have thought of on your own. For instance, I don't much like time travel (see below). But when this nifty random Champions character generator gave me a supervillain with Summon - a power I would never, ever use on my own - it sparked all kinds of ideas. So now I have not just a superintelligent apeman from the far future, but I have his time-traveling court and a the outline of a future history and even some thoughts on how medicine will evolve in this setting.

Seriously - randomly generated game elements are awesome. They force you to work with things that you probably wouldn't even have thought of, much less tried. I can't go so someplace like Chaotic Shiny without making a couple of cultures or artifacts. I love fooling around with Hexographer's free map generator. Using random elements is like having access to other GMs' brains. And who wouldn't want a big pile of GM brains around the house?

DISLIKE: TIME/DIMENSION TRAVEL
My superintelligent apeman nothwitstanding, time travel and dimension travel are usually excuses for cheap, lazy storytelling. They're a way to say "what if?" followed quickly by "just kidding!" When used in roleplaying games, in my experience, they're usually used for one of two things, neither of them being very interesting.

First, as an excuse to fight something cool, like dinosaurs or robotic Schwarzeneggers. I'm not opposed to cool fights. It's just that there are other, more creative ways to get them into your game. Saying that a rift opened in time and X stepped out is just weak. You can do better.

Second, as a halfhearted way of exploring what happens if Things Go Wrong. Time/dimension travel plots often boil down to "here's an alternate version of your world, but the bad guys are in charge." You go there, fight some bad guys, maybe fix some stuff - but it's not your world. It doesn't really matter. Even if you screw up, the reality you know isn't in any danger. These plots rob roleplaying of one of its best elements - the ability to show how PC actions have consequences on their surroundings. Not on "some other time's" surroundings, not on "alternate dimension where the Aztecs won our Civil War" surroundings.

I like what I write, I guess

I'm still entertained by this. It's easier for me to write about my Dislikes than my Likes, which is something I'm pondering.

LIKE: HOMEMADE SETTINGS
I enjoy building a world - that's a huge part of the fun for me as a GM. As a player, too. I like coming up with little social, cultural, and political details. It's fun when they have some implied connections to each other. You can use them to suggest possibilities for future adventures. Several times in Gorbadin, players discovered small stone carvings of odd elongated heads - who created the urgol-faces, and why? We never found out, but we could have...

That kind of freedom comes when you create the setting. Things can go in whatever direction you want. They'll reflect the creators. My Gorbadin campaign was easily the best one I've been involved with, not because I created it, but because everybody created it. We all added stuff that we thought was cool, and you know what? That made it cool.

And I have yet to discover a pre-written setting that was satisfying. I feel constrained by the original designers' intent, which is often different than my own. Deadlands is a neat idea, but I can't get past their handwave about slavery. My fondness for 7th Sea is well-known, but the established history is sketchy and has a tone I don't enjoy. Even my perennial favorite Castle Falkenstein needs some revamping before it's something I want to run. I just like stuff better when it's my stuff, or my group's stuff.

DISLIKE: DUNGEON CRAWLS
This shouldn't come as a surprise. I don't like dealing with the physical environment, I don't like maps, I don't like solving puzzles. I had a chance to write for the fairly-successful Dungeon Crawl Classics line, and I blew it - it's the only time I've punted something, but I just could not get myself to write dungeon crawls. They're sterile and boring. They waste all the social and interactive potential of the RPG form. They're arbitrary. And they have terrible stories, when they have stories at all. Dungeons hem you in and take away your choices; RPGs should expand your options and give you freedom.

Judge for yourself. Here's a D&D 3.5ish rewrite of the Gygax classic "Tomb of Horrors," as done by Jason Alexander. There are some clever traps here, all right. Yep. Clever. Trappish. Gonna kill you right dead, they are. Whee. Remind me why my character is doing this again?

Overall, I liked D&D 3.0 and 3.5. But when I ran across the DMG sidebar about "Why we're returning to the dungeon," I swore out loud at my book.

The Merry Marvel Marching Society needs you!

I wanted some Stan Lee hype, but this early in the day I got nothin'. Excelsior!

Well, let me direct you to Zak S talking about how Old School Roleplaying = DC and New School Roleplaying = Marvel. It's an excellent analysis of both comics and RPGs, looking at the different things they focus on. Here's the thesis statement, for those of you who remember your composition classes:

DC Comics--like Old School D&D--are more about the world being interesting, whereas Marvel Comics--like new D&D--are more about the characters being interesting.

Zak is definitely a DC, while I'm Marvel all the way. As should be obvious from today's subjects...

LIKE: EMOTIONAL INVOLVEMENT
Give me something to care about, and I won't miss a session.

Give me something to hate, so I can hunt it down. Give me something to fear, and I'll fight like hell to escape it. Give me something to love, so it's all worthwhile. Give me something to become.

Or let me create it myself. I'm not picky. I want to invest myself in some aspect of the game - my character, of course, but also in the broader world around them and the narrative they're building. This is an area where I think both the old-school Dungeons Must Kill You and the new-school Narrative Matters More Than Characters have gone off the rails. A big part of the fun, to me, is getting wrapped up in what happens. Not just paying attention to events, but caring about how they turn out - being happy when things work and disappointed when they don't. I'm not here to solve puzzles, or to endure a predetermined storyline. I'm here to get excited about what happens to my character (or to the PCs' characters, depending on which side of the screen I ended up on).

DISLIKE: TRAPS
Mind-bogglingly dumb.

I know, I know, mind-bogglingly dumb "to me." But seriously - I'm supposed to get excited because someone rigged up a scythe-blade to swing out of a wall if I stepped on one of the black tiles? That's fun?

Wait, wait, wait. I'm supposed to get excited because I spent 20 minutes of my time - not game time, real time - describing how I prodded things with a wooden pole and tossed rocks at stuff and maybe herded a goat down this hallway, all for the purpose of seeing if a scythe-like blade would swing at anyone stepping on a black tile? That's fun?

Wait, wait, wait. I'm supposed to get excited because after naming my character and designing their stats and thinking of their history, the character died because they stepped wrong? HOW IS THIS FUN?

In the ~20 years I've been running RPG sessions, I can think of two times I've used traps. Once was in 7th Sea, once was in Champions, and the latter was a deathtrap rather than a straight-up trap. The classic dungeon-crawl-style trap is a perfect example of "player vs. environment" RPG thinking. Well, I don't want to wrestle with the environment. And I definitely don't want my character to be killed by it just because I'm not looking at things the way my GM expected me to. Mind-bogglingly dumb.

Bagginsday comes but once a year

A couple of things that make me think of Lord Of The Rings, originally posted in honor of the Baggins boys' birthday...

LIKE: A REASON TO GO ON THE ADVENTURE
Maybe it's a pack of dwarves on your doorstep. Maybe it's a family heirloom with a sinister past. Whatever it is, it's a lot more fun than just walking into a dungeon because your GM told you that's where you were going.

This is especially important to me when I'm the one running the game. It's important to me that the PCs have good reasons to do whatever they're about to do - revenge, curiosity, obligation, etc. It's best when these things come from the characters themselves; my favorite adventures are the ones that come from the characters' ambitions. Failing that, I like having a framing device - an organization that the PCs belong to (such as a superteam), or perhaps a collection of nine brave souls who are walking from here to the big volcano.

As is often the case, this is about immersion. I find it much easier to suspend my disbelief if the adventure grows organically from things that have come before. Shadows from the past, if you will.

DISLIKE; SPLITTING UP
Seriously, people. Don't split up. Stick together.

My "a-ha" moment with this came a couple years ago, after I'd taught my friend Scott to roleplay. Scott made it into his late 30s without ever having tried RPGs, but the news that there was a Star Wars game tipped him into our camp. So we played a few sessions, and then I asked him what he thought about the various tropes and expectations of roleplaying. Turns out he really hated it when the party split up. "It's so boring," he said.

And he's right. It's boring. So when I run games now, I ask the players to not split up unless they really need to. In return, I create adventures that don't require so much splitting up - I design my encounters with the assumption that everyone will be involved. What we lose in reality-simulation, we more than make up for in fun-having. This isn't a novel, after all. We aren't being entertained by Gandalf and Pippin in one place, then Merry in another, then Frodo and Sam in yet another. This is a group activity - so don't sideline each other without a good reason. Don't split up unless you have to - and expect that we'll resolve your solo activities very quickly. Because while one or two players are having fun, everyone else will be bored.

Quirky is an overused word, but it fits here

LIKE: A FIXED BASE
Running a campaign is much easier when the PCs are in the same place from one session to the next. Even if they travel, it's nice to have a "home" that they return to. It can be a house, a city, a geographic region - I like having a fixed base that serves as the starting/ending point of the action. It provides an anchor for the action, a recurring set of backgrounds/experiences, which help with the suspension of disbelief for both players and GM.

A fixed base is also a good place to plant subplots. If the PCs are going to see the fixer Black-Eyed Molli every couple of sessions, well, now we can weave her in and out of our larger action. When it turns out that her bodyguard Gus is the son of the tailor just down the street from the PCs' office, and that the tailor is the only eyewitness to a gangland crime, we can quickly sketch out a sequence of events that provide the PCs with a bigger emotional or material payoff. You save the tailor's life, and now Molli owes you a favor (or you don't and she makes your life harder). I'm a big fan of consequences in an RPG, and it's easier to see the consequences if you're connected to one place.

I'm also a world-builder. I like taking a location and fleshing it out. It's really satisfying to make a detailed and quirky place, and then reveal those quirks over time.

DISLIKE: SOLVING PUZZLES/MYSTERIES
This is purely personal, rather than some broad philosophical point. I don't like solving puzzles. Don't ask my character to do it. Don't make the adventure contingent on my doing it. If there's some cunning tapestry with clues hidden in its description, fine, let me make some kind of skill check to figure the damn thing out so that I can get on with doing the fun stuff. When I'm roleplaying, I want things to happen. Sitting around trying to outguess the GM is the opposite of happen. I think it's boring. This is one of my least favorite things about old-school roleplaying. I don't want to figure out the cunning riddle-box, and I don't want to hear all about the trap's mechanisms. Let me just roll some dice and get past the damn thing so I can get back to doing things.

The same goes for mysteries, Not in the sense of "something is happening and you have to figure out what" mysteries, but the "some clues are scattered around so go assemble and solve them" mysteries. When I read a detective story, I'm reading for the story part and not the detective part. I'm not trying to beat Hercule Poirot to the solution. I'm much more interested in watching the action unfold. If a GM has a brilliant mystery that they want me to experience, great - tell me about your idea over lunch. When I'm roleplaying, I want the focus to be on the actions of the PCs, not on the ideas of the GM.

EDIT: I would be remiss if I didn't point to this excellent piece by Jason Alexander. His "Three Clue Rule" alleviates a lot of my problems with puzzles.

Star Wars, is there anything you can't do?

LIKE: VELOCITY
Adventures should MOVE. Something should always be happening to (or because of) the PCs. If 20 minutes have passed without some kind of conflict or confrontation, throw something in there. You have the entire human imagination at your disposal - don't waste time on unproductive dead ends!

I absorbed this idea in its entirety from the first (and best) edition of the Star Wars RPG published by West End Games. Greg Costikyan is a genius.

DISLIKE: USING MAPS
This is a limited dislike, but a strong one. If I'm running a game, I don't want to use tactical maps. They slow down play, they pull the players' attention away from their own imaginations, and they make it harder for me to improvise some cunning last-minute thing. Tactical maps (and building/dungeon/structure maps) limit your options, which undercuts one of the great advantages of RPGs - the ability to expand your options with a thought. When possible, I avoid using tactical maps. When not possible, I try to use them purely for positional reference instead of for accurate simulation.

Except when I'm running Marvel or Champions. I do love simulating superhero combat.

And I'm a huge fan of world maps. They're great idea-generation machines.

This one probably traces back to Star Wars also. I like their abstract method of handling starship combat; it's much more exciting than actually figuring out the positions and trajectories and stuff. I'm all for simulation - but only if we're simulating fun things. Let's not simulate physics, people.

Mind you, I'm not some pompous Theatre Person

You're in for a couple weeks' worth of these. But if you want a quick summary of me as a GM or player, this is probably it.

LIKE: THE CHARACTERS
The most fun in a roleplaying game comes from playing a role. I like pretending. I like getting to do cool imaginary stuff when I'm playing. When I'm GMing, I like to let my players do cool imaginary stuff. In both cases, I like it when characters are trying to achieve goals and then experience surprising events. I like making characters just as a pastime. Characters should both drive a game's action and be the focus of that action. Not the environment, not the story, not the GM's plans - the characters.

Characters should also drive story design. I agree with Robin Laws, who has said that a person's character is their expression of what kind of game they wish to play. A good GM looks at what the PCs are like, then creates/tailors sessions to fit what those characters do. A fantasy party of Fighter, Mage, Cleric, Thief should be involved in much different situations than Bard, Mage-Thief, Monk, Fighter Who Specializes In Ranged Weapons. Those two sets of characters represent different sets of expectations, individually and collectively, and that should drive everything else that happens in the game.

I love characters.

DISLIKE: DESCRIBING ENVIRONMENTS
This is one of my biggest weak points as a GM. I don't much care what the environment looks like, what's in it, etc. After I toss off a quick description to set the scene, I'm done. The environment is a backdrop to me - it provides a little flavor, but it's not designed to be an integral part of the action. I don't want to tell you how many tables are at the inn, or what you find hanging on the wall of the smithy, or the contents of the ship's hold. I just don't care.

Same goes for when I'm playing. I don't really want to interact with the environment in lots of nifty, thoughtful ways. The space around me isn't what's interesting, be it a room or a cavern or a giant singing tree - it's just a physical boundary inside of which interesting things can happen. Perhaps it's because I don't visualize well. I really don't - I'm almost completely unable to picture things in my head. So I don't want to do it, regardless of which side of the GM screen I'm on, and I don't enjoy adventures that require it.

The bad formatting of the Don't list is driving me crazy

If you know me, you've probably already seen these lists. What do I like and what don't I like in RPGs?

LIKE                                         DON'T
The characters                           Describing environments
Velocity                                     Using maps
A fixed base                               Solving puzzles/mysteries
Emotional involvement                Splitting up the party
Homemade setting                      Traps
Random elements                       Dungeon crawls
Player-driven plots                     The Star Trek model
The social aspect                        Slow combat
Languages                                 Character classes
A Reason To Go                       Time/dimension travel
Three-player groups                   The weekly game

I hadn't intended any sort of correspondence between the two lists, although I did try to keep them to the same length. In many cases, if something's on one list, its opposite is probably on the other list. And there are a couple of opposed pairings that happened to emerge - "Player-driven plots" is the opposite of "The Star Trek model," and "Velocity" implies something different than "Slow combat" does. I'll examine these pairs over the next few days.

Also, do you read Mike Mearls's blog? Did you read the one where he says that the placement of minis on a battlemat, and not the GM's judgement, should determine whether someone has cover from ranged attacks? Has he always been this wrong about everything, and I just now noticed?