Re-Learning What's Important to Players

Yesterday, I met up with some guys that I gamed with for over 10 years. After a few brews and appetizers to catch-up, we came back to “The Dungeon” to discuss gaming.

I wanted to know what they were looking for in a game.

Combat: A good selection of humans and humanoid fights. To them, these are some of the most cunning of opponents. As well, having some mythical or classic monsters is good as well. These should be special encounters for the group not overdone with a dragon a week.

Enemies: I asked about enemies. They had enjoyed common enemies such as orcs in a prior campaign. By that, they meant common from the aspect of being able to point them out but yet to be different as they level. They wanted a nemesis. Not as much an organization but to be re-occurring and not to be faceless.

I am taking both combat and enemies as applying class levels to creatures opposed to always putting in new monsters with a new or higher CR. Also, I am thinking that I need to be a bit more cunning with these monsters to allow escapes, etc. Several times, they mentioned having “the Foil”. The foil for them could be evil or good.

World-Building: This was unanimous and clear. They loved prior campaigns with being able to build their destiny and felt it was unique about my campaigns. One of the pieces that I had been forgetting to include was planning for the foils. This was something I had learned at GenCon about three years ago. For the group I was talking to, they mentioned it would be interesting that they should be too late to save the princess or have another group save her.

Consequences: The conversation switched to the game having consequences and that they loved that aspect of a campaign. Included in this was a personal request that death should be more of an “option” in my campaigns. A special note is that Brian opts not to have his characters die in my campaign.

Being Heroes with Influence and Recognition: The group mentioned they liked campaigns where they were the heroes and did good deeds. As well, they wanted to have a better payment or reward. It would be in the form of Influence and Recognition. Examples were to meet with the King or to be able to have special access to the city, etc.

That covers most of the night. It was good to hear a lot of these things. I still need to blog about what it means and what kind of setting – but it’s a good start and I still have time.