RL PbP Styles

[Pamela]

That's a good point, Ail. My husband and I began playing our first table-top campaign together (my first in years; his first ever) with two other people. My husband was the DM, and when he began reading the narrative provided by the module it did sound rather stilted. Part of it was nerves and shyness on his part, but a lot of it is that people just generally don't talk that way. It takes some getting used to.

You also have to have the kind of group who're willing to take the game a little more seriously in terms of mood-setting...almost as seriously as they take their dice rolls during combat.

[Ail]

That's a good point, Ail. My husband and I began playing our first table-top campaign together (my first in years; his first ever) with two other people. My husband was the DM, and when he began reading the narrative provided by the module it did sound rather stilted. Part of it was nerves and shyness on his part, but a lot of it is that people just generally don't talk that way. It takes some getting used to.

You also have to have the kind of group who're willing to take the game a little more seriously in terms of mood-setting...almost as seriously as they take their dice rolls during combat.

You're right, and that is the bad part. My players are a fun lot, and good role-players too, but what they want is careless fun. I don't think they're much into horror themselves, so they found it odd (and almost unfair) when I forced a Horror check on them (only one so far in my whole campaign). So, I have a hard time balancing what a RL game should be and what my players find fun. Of course, it always ends with them setting the mood of the session, despite my occasional efforts, but I'm trying to make them feel fear for their characters, instead of making the PCs feel fear. I've decided to make hard combats now, since that is the only way they will be afraid.
But when you've got a player that does not mind if her character is killed because she'll make another one, and another player who deliberately wants to fail PC enough to become a darklord, I think you can't really make them afraid. Add to that that most often I use my own adventures and they are my playtesters, so that I only find what I should have done after I haven't done it right... But you learn this way.

Ail

[Pamela]

My players are a fun lot, and good role-players too, but what they want is careless fun....

But when you've got a player that does not mind if her character is killed because she'll make another one, and another player who deliberately wants to fail PC enough to become a darklord, I think you can't really make them afraid. Add to that that most often I use my own adventures and they are my playtesters, so that I only find what I should have done after I haven't done it right... But you learn this way.

Ouch- that is a problem for a setting like Ravenloft. We did a lot of goofing around during our first campaign together; I don't know these guys well, and this was also another player's first time at playing D&D. The humour was useful as an ice-breaker, and in the end, we were thinking how to work together to protect each other's PCs. But that kind of perpetual joking must be deadly when you're trying to do Ravenloft.

I'm DMing the next campaign, and was considering doing Ravenloft, but held off for that reason. I want to wait till everyone's comfortable- and to see if they like a campaign where they're willing to take their characters more seriously. For that reason, I set it in a Faerun setting and lent them a book to get a feeling for the region. It's hard to care about a world if you have no clue as to what it's like. But then, if they're always going to be light-hearted about it, I'll save all of us any future grief and irritation and just focus on adventures rather than settings.

Or at least, that's the plan for now.

[Jason of the Fraternity]

I thought I was the only DM here who could not create a proper environment at the game table for lack of art in the descriptions. Now I see there are more people struggling with this same problem.

Unfortunately, I'm not the most articulate of people, which is why I'm in such a delicate conundrum...

Also, on those occasions that I did read pre-made texts aloud, most times the players didn't care of mocked with the words use (I was aiming for a more literary kind of description).

Which is another similarity we seem to have shared. I've had some great table-top groups in the past, but most of my players don't take things very serious. Now, I don't have a big problem with this, but it does make it difficult to set the mood when premade text(s) create either laughter or mocking remarks. Therefore, I've tended to forego prewritten material.

The problem that I've run into is then trying to come up with descriptive statements that are fresh and orginal but don't sound scripted. Which can become difficult to do after the game has been going for a few hours...