Posts Tagged ‘Player Types’

Player Types

The Strategist
This Player loves outwitting the villain. If a problem can best be solved by punching a bad guy in the snoot, the Strategist will spend his time figuring out how to out-think his foe. This Player has good and bad points. At best  he’s thinking, hungrily evaluating each situation, offering interesting solutions to problems which require analytical deduction. Unfortunately the GM has to work hard to keep up (the GM is thinking for vast numbers of NPCs while the Strategist is thinking for only one character or PC team), and the Strategist sometimes slows the progress to a crawl while he figures out how to outwit the villain. So long as every episode has an intellectual problem to resolve, the Strategist will remain satisfied.

The Terrorist
This Player lives for Player-vs.-Player conflict. Possibly of the lethal kind but also including ruining the lives or chances for success of other Players Characters. They work under the assumption that other Players are the most interesting targets because they’re capable of more independent thought or action than GM-controlled targets. This is very unhealthy for a groups’ morale and can lead to severe disputes. Thus a wise GM steps in to forbid outright this kind of behaviour, upto and including banishing the Terrorist from the gaming group. A sub-variety is the Eternal-Argumentor, whom the GM simply needs to prevent from monopolising all the groups’ time (see the section on settling rules arguments).

The Thrillseeker
The Thrillseeker is the Player that must have Something To Do no matter where they are or what they are playing. This Player craves ACTION more than anything else, even in games where GM-moderated combat leaves little time for role-playing.

Player Types

The Pro From Dover
This Player creates characters who must be the best at what they do. If the hero is a Brick (super-strong, super-tough fighter), he must be the strongest and toughest in the world. If the character is a scientist or magician, he must be the undisputed master of his field. The GM needs to provide the Pro From Dover with occasional opportunities to display his prominence, and must be careful not to allow new PCs to overlap the Pro’s area of interest.

The Romantic
This Player is most interested in the personal relationships of his characters. If the Romantic’s character does not become involved with another PC, the GM should make sure that the PC is supplied with NPCs to meet, get to know, and develop relationships with – not just romances, but professional relationships, familial relationships, etc. If the Romantic can’t develop relationships, the Romantic won’t be happy.

The Rules Rapist
Typically this is an unhealthy variant of The Pro from Dover. In general, the Player wants to create characters with skill or powers which bend and exploit the existing rules. These Players are constantly redesigning their characters for higher point-value efficiency, and, unless they also have other campaign interests, they’re probably not all that involved in role-playing. In mild forms the Rules Rapist can be an excellent friend to new and old Players, constantly suggesting new ways to use the game’s systems to their full potential. Often, the GM will not be able to satisfy the Rules Rapist’s gaming needs, or find himself engaged in an “arms race” of new tweaks and tricks. Something he will always lose if he allows the Rules Rapist to copy his tweaks on the morally blackmailing basis of “What’s fair for NPCs is fair for us”.

The Showoff
This Player needs to be on-stage, at all times, keeping the spotlight on himself. His characters may be well-designed and inventive, or could be unimaginative and ordinary: only the amount of attention he receives, and the number of faces staring at him, are important. It doesn’t make a difference what the setting is, or whether or not their character should be the centre of attention at that point in time, they *will* to do something to get themselves noticed. This Player type can be an excellent source of role-playing for others (who can mock, admire, or interact with the Showoff however they wish), but can also be extremely annoying when taken to the extreme. The GM will have difficulties with the Showoff; he must either let this Player dominate the campaign, or must make sure that all Players get equal time until the Showoff grows out of this phase or leaves the campaign.

Player Types

The Genre Fiend
This Player’s motto is “No, do it right!” This is the Player who loves the Game World so much that they learn absolutely every trivial thing possible about it, and considers him- or herself an expert on everything involved with the game. If the GM (or any other Player) misses a convention or an opportunity, the Genre Fiend is certain to let him know about it. Repeatedly. The GM’s task here is to understand the genre and ascertain what sort of encounters, situations, and themes that the Fiend is expecting to play, and then provide them whenever possible.

The Jester
The Jester is the type of Player who finds the entire concept of role-playing games amusing and can’t quite understand what all the fuss is about when they do something completely out of character for the game universe that they think is funny. In small amounts the Jester can be one of the biggest saviours of a game — lest we become too obsessed and immersive that we forget that the game is also about fun. But as with all the other types, taken to extremes, the Jester can ruin the fun of other Players with excessively silly or stupid behaviour that ruins the setting or scene for other Players.

The Mad Slasher
This Player spent a long, hard week at the office or at school, and when he gets to the gaming table all he wants to do is kill. When a villain confronts the hero, the Mad Slasher kills him. When a cop gives the hero lip, the Mad Slasher kills him. When the villain is shielding himself with the body of a girlfriend or relative, the Mad Slasher blasts right through the hostage to get at the villain. The Mad Slasher says, “I put up with garbage in real life; in my games, I get to do anything I want to anyone I want.” Obviously, the problem here is that the Mad Slasher only belongs in a campaign where everyone is a Mad Slasher. If all your Players want their character to be maniacal killers, you have no problem. If some of them are role-players, the GM is going to have to get rid of the Mad Slasher, or calm him down. Getting him to reduce his target list to bad guys would be a good start…

The Plumber
This Player likes to create a character with a finely detailed and intricate personality, and then spend his gaming career plumbing this character to its depths. The GM needs to provide the Plumber with a variety of different situations, including moral quandaries and emotional scenes, to react to. If he does not, the Plumber will grow frustrated and unhappy.

The Prince
The Prince is a Player who is into power and control. Quickly politicking their way to the top of the political food chain of their choice, the Prince is often a mover and a shaker in the Game World. These are the Players who rise to the top of factions, by hook or by crook, and stay there until pried away with a crowbar or the Player grows bored and drops the Character. These characters can be fun to play with, but sometimes their desire to manipulate and control can render them tiresome to interact with and not fun at all to be around. They’re often too busy trying to deal with the “burdens of power” to take time out to role-play interesting scenes with other Player types or advance the groups objectives.

Player Types

The Chatter
This Player comes to the game to chat with other folks rather than play the game. Just about everyone has a bit of the chatter in them; few people come to role-playing games just to stay in character all the time, and in order to build an in-game team you need to chat out of character sometimes. The Chatter, taken to extremes, is the sort of person who spends all their time talking about something out-of-character, often continuously disrupting other Players immersion in their role-playing.

The Combat Monster
This (often young and male) Player wants his character to fight, fight, fight. This doesn’t mean that the campaign must consist of only combat, but if every single episode doesn’t have some sort of battle, or if the character is prevented from participating in these conflicts, the Players will not be happy. Fortunately the urge to fight directed is towards NPCs, goons, and other GM-generated creatures rather than other PCs, otherwise he becomes a Player-Killer (aka “The Terrorist”)

The Copier
This Player like to run the game-world equivalent of characters he’s seen elsewhere – in movies, books, TV, or the comics. In most cases they are trying to duplicate characters taken from the universe that the game is based on. This can be a very interesting experiment and provide for wonderful role-playing. The problem is, he also expects the hero to be as effective or as universally respected as the original hero. There is a strong risk of disappointment when their character doesn’t get to duplicate the originals amazing success. The GM has to work hard to understand the Copier’s goals for his character; if the GM feel these goal can’t be met, he needs to tell the Player as soon as possible.
A sub-variety of Copier is the Clone Artist : the Player who creates one character and runs the same character – or variant forms of him – in every campaign in which he plays, no matter how illogical or strained the fit might be.

The Drama Queen
This Player is a variation on The Showoff. They don’t necessarily need to be the centre of attention, but everything they do tends to be overdramatized and emotionally extreme. They can be relied upon to regularly undergo – and emote noisily about – some profound tragedy, even if its based on the flimsiest excuses.

The Impersonator
This Player wants to run game-world versions of characters that someone else created. In most cases they are trying to duplicate characters taken from the universe that the game is based on or historical figures. This can be a very interesting experiment and provide for wonderful role-playing, unless, of course, the Player becomes a Copier, which is the much more common version of this type of Player.

Player Types

This post is a part of my upcoming “Game Master Workshops”. it’s rather long (5 pages in all) so I’ll post it in chunks over the next few days…

Here’s a chunk to get you started.

Players : Their Types and what they’re looking for.

Players don’t realise it, but they very often have a “type” of Player they belong to. Each “type” is looking for a different form of role-playing experience. Many Players don’t even know their type, but a good GM can spot a Players “type” and enhance their enjoyment by tweaking his scenario to supply the role-playing situations that they crave.

The Actor
The Actor is the base type of Player, and most people start here and accessorize with various degrees of the types below. This Player is interested in improvisation and acting out the role of a character in an immersive game, writing “their part” in the collaborative work of the Game World they choose to play in. They work out their characters role, spending equal amounts of time starring and in the background, chatting when it’s called for, fighting when it’s called for, and doing whatever seems appropriate for their character. But every Actor’s personality is also made up of varying degrees of one or more of the following Player types…

The Buddy
This Player is involved in the campaign primarily because his friends are. He’d probably rather be at a movie or watching a ballgame, but so long as everyone else is playing he’ll go along for the ride. He usually won’t be deeply involved or interested in the campaign, and wouldn’t cry if it eventually closed down. The GM has two options dealing with the Player. First, he can ignore the Player – the Buddy’s not contributing much to the campaign, after all. This might be the GM’s only option, especially if the Player really has no interest in role-playing. A more rewarding course is to draw the Player (sometimes against his better judgement) into the campaign. Lurking inside every Buddy is another type of Player trying to get out. If you can find whatever the Buddy enjoys and give this to him, he will likely become more interested in your campaign, and might even become a campaign stalwart.

The Builder
This Player is into creating, building, describing, and otherwise adding long-lasting things to the Game World. He wants his character to have an impact on the world – to build institutions, to clean up a city, to change things, to leave a legacy of some sort behind, be it an organization or an object. If your campaign is absolutely static (if Players cannot introduce new technologies, make the campaign setting a better place to live, or substantively change anything though their efforts), the Builder just won’t be happy. He must have some lasting success or he will end up frustrated.

Aknowledgement :

All credit for this section goes to Aaron Allston and his seminal Strikeforce supplement for the Champions RPG that contained the initial version at the base of this section. It is, alas, no longer in print yet still lives on due to the fond memories of many Champions players past and present. These pearls of wisdom have been reconstructed from memory and some of the versions available on the Internet.