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Gamers Vs. Roleplayers (Extended) (Patreon)

Published:
2025-05-19 00:03:31
Imported:
2026-06
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Videos

Content

PDM discusses "Shared Fantasy" by Gary Alan Fine, a sociology book that analyzes the techniques of Roleplayers from the 1970s. This video is both a review AND GM advice.

Files

Previews only

Shared Fantasy

Comments

Bagel-Man

Excited to watch! Just ran my first session of A1-A4, went well!

Flash Gorgon

Did they really want to stop Adhesive Thom's character from interfering with their plan to lynch the countess so much that they were willing to kill him?

Jeff Krus

This was great!!! Can you by this book on-line? Also I played the good guys in D & D until my character fell in love with an assassin and slowly my character changed and in one game I killed 2 of my teammates characters just to prove my love for her.. That was a big shocker for my group but I ran it across the DM and he loved it....

Pinxton

Mrs. Professor Dungeonmaster, you are already a real treat. The look on the professor‘s face at the end, you guys are awesome. My wife refuses to play, she refuses to attempt to play, but she does make snacks and spinach, artichoke dip for game night for us, so at least that’s something.

Trouqe

Haha, I knew all but one of those references. Glad to see I'm not alone with weird quirks for their characters

Bryan Stephens

I played a side kick in Masks of Nyarlathotep in a pulp game. I am often the leader. It was a stretch for me and I loved it. Bottom of the pack. Players who try to keep secrets from me as GM does not get to surprise me with them. That is not how I roll. Your wife was playing in character. You are wrong saying it was metagaming. This was a DM error.

Russell Miller

When I tried to teach my wife the mechanics of D&D, I helped her roll a fighter. I then told her that she was on the road from her village to the big city to seek audience with the king. A goblin suddenly jumped out of the brush and swung an axe at her character and missed. I then asked, "What do you do?" "I stomp my foot and tell it, 'That's not nice!'" It was then that I realized that my wife is not a gamer.

JOSEPH ALKHAZRAJI

Great video. Sam Reigel's choice for FCG was also tied into a real-world reason in that he was about to be gone from the game for cancer treatment so that made that session/choice even more emotionally powerful.

Lance

Some players just need a bit of heat to convince them.

Evil Chad

Happy Mother's Day, Mrs PDM. "SHE HAD TO GO!!" Wave the white flag PDM.

madcurry

Excellent video! Great to hear a player’s perspective as well. In my Call of Cthulhu campaign a character has become addicted to the blood of a god and secretly joined the Arkham coven (major antagonists). A lot of suspicious behavior has led up to this and the other players insist their characters don’t want to collaborate with him anymore. I don’t believe it’s metagaming at this point. He has literally stepped over to the other side. It’s tough to manage a situation where a player is really roleplaying a villain. I have asked him to roll up a fresh protagonist, which he will do, but he is a little hurt the other characters don’t want to hang out with his original character anymore.

Steven Sweet

I don't necessarily think Mrs. PDM was meta-gaming in wanting to kill Tom's character. Her character new the countess was evil, wanted to stop her, and Tom kept defending her. Ally of my enemy is my enemy. I'm saying this without any context for what her character was like up until that moment.

Trouqe

Poor Tom haha

Trouqe

"She had to go"

Scott

Quote of the day "She had to go."

Steven Bogart

My group is mostly gamers but I manage to get in some satisfying conversation between my character and the others. I think we have a balance that keeps everyone, including the DM, happy. I could enjoy a game where a character turns against the party after that player and the DM worked it into the larger narrative. I would not enjoy a game where a character turns against the party because the player just wants to mess with the other players.

The Curious One

I am definetely a Roleplayer. In my last group I had one Roleplayer, one Roleplayer/Gamer and two Gamers. And yes after 8 years I could organically end the campaign after a cool storyarc. Because I wasn't happy anylonger how the campaign was going. Well let's see what lingers on the horizon.

Frederic Schmitt

The bonus content alone was worth my patronage 😁

Squalamoucho!

Haha, I agree with Mrs PDM. A player wanting to (violently) remove an imaginary person from the made up narrative (probably with extreme prejudice), because they annoy that player, is a win! And my PC hating an NPC isn't ALWAYS meta, is it? It can just be me being invested in the story, right? As a GM, I want players to hate the bad guys.

Patrick McConnell

Very funny video! I would also say, that I tend to be a role player. Once I played a flamboyant Acrobat and street performer, and I absolutely loved it. My other players (I think, gamers) were sometimes annoyed by him, but it never got that tense ;-) My wife, who also played in that group, also loved my character. She also is more of a role player, so that was no surprise. And it reminds me of the gamer types, described in XDM (which I startet reading)...

Grendel

Professor, I have been with you since nearly the beginning, and videos like this one are the reason why! In a light and fun manner you teach a great number of lessons.

Salt

The shrill singing was a rare treat. I can see we're both role-players. My favorite characters I've played had abominable dump stats. 4 Charisma. 5 Intelligence. I had more fun with them than OP characters with amazing stats. In a way, the challenge of that underdog play is more satisfying to me, too. I try to be helpful, and since GMs aren't really that hard-core, it's actually hard that way!

MelodicMethod

Tom has no right to do something that he thinks is "fun" and then get butthurt that his friends disagree with him. Sounds like Tom was bound and determined to "be in love" with the evil countess...for the lulz, and he expected the other players to go along with his dumb idea. This is the type of behavior that will cause me to leave a group.

Dustin Hitzing

I have noticed that many I interact with start as gamers and become role players. Also fantastic video, this is exactly how I play characters when I play… although I will admit I like for them to be good at something… even if that thing is useless. Many games I’ve found don’t allow you to be truly good at things or maybe the game masters I play with don’t

David Lake

This concept is something my friends and I have spent endless hours discussing, but this book does an excellent job of giving these types of players clear labels. In our experience, one of the common conflicts arises not just when gamers play with role players, but when players think they fall in one camp but are really in another. (Guy thinks he’s a role player but really just wants to win.)

Scott Miller

I’m definitely on the role player side of this spectrum. I want to create a character and play through an adventure the way they would based on their knowledge, skills, and personality. And sometimes that means making decisions that aren’t optimal from a rules-focus of wanting to beat the scenario. I DM my teenage son and his best friend and they are definitely on the optimizer side of the spectrum. I’ve tried introducing mysteries and foreshadowing and they just don’t grab hold of any of those - it just doesn’t interest them. So I have been trying to focus the game more on what they’re interested in. It is interesting that there was a book published about that so far early into RPGs. Tracy Hickman’s book talks about this concept about player types which I found interesting and useful about tailoring a game differently to aim for what each player is most interested in.

Frank Mitchell

Thoughtful piece, and the bonus content reminded me of my own encounters with the role-player/gamer divide.

MrGunn

Dear Professor, Fantastic video, the Bonus Material with Mrs. PDM was hilarious, I can tell she keeps you in line. She reminded me of Mrs. Gunn, looks like June Cleaver, rages like Medea. Hellurrr! 👊 Given the number of comments here on Patreon I can tell you are onto something. Having been around a bit, a lot of the RPG concepts considered cutting edge today were actually discussed and pioneered in the 70's and 80's. They were being written about in Dragon Magazine, debuted at gaming conventions, transmitted in news letters, debated by electronic Bulletin Boards, and house ruled at tables across the nation. The tension between Gamers and Roleplayers has always been there, for example grids were developed with Gamers in mind, the backstory with Roleplayers in mind. Also, thank you for bringing my attention to the Knock 5 Kickstarter. I discovered Knock through you and love it. There goes another paycheck. Finally, being that it is Memorial Day this coming weekend, it reminds me your son is on overseas deployment, please thank your son for his service. Best regards, MrGunn

MrGunn
>>174448709

@Jeff Krus Interesting, I generally forbid PVP violence because it leads to issues like the one with Adhesive Tom.

Jay

PDM, what an excellent topic to choose. The Bonus Content had me laughing and nodding. I see both sides in the whole Tom and Countess Von Hammerstein thing yet won't pick one over the other. Determining intent or motivation can be a tricky thing. Anyway, I really enjoyed this one as it hasn't been covered by anyone else as far as I know. Great work and always good to see the Mrs. and you in the videos. Such fun chemistry you two must have.

Jeff Jones

I want to run "Frankenstein" using the Deadlands setting for Savage Worlds

Eris Reddoch

Wife is correct. She was roleplaying her character.

Stu Keller

14:07 Didn't Robert Howard write about the Hyperbole Age? Also, 17:04 Wouldn't that mean that TOM was metagaming, as opposed to the other players whose characters saw a pattern of behavior in Tom's character?

Andyjagger

The best bonus content ever. This one of my favourite videos

Scott Spears

Love it!!!! Keep it up you crazy kids!!! I split between Gamer and Role Player. I played a head strong druid once and we had a bone headed Barbarian who wanted to fight anything, so I had to entangle him. I was the new guy to the group and this ticked off the other players. I looked at it as I was helping the group from getting into more trouble. The DM intervened and retconned the whole thing.

Chupacabra Smith

For me, this 'rift' between Role Players and "Roll Players" became evident when the game 'Vampire: The Masquerade' came out. It appealed mostly to the people who wanted to be a little theatrical (and my entire group got into the 'World of Darkness' for a few years, before going back to DnD and Champions, because the setting was just TOO damn depressing ^_^)

Zspider

I had a few kinda crazy ones where I broke my gamers and rp players... the worst where there was a cult aroubd a very charismatic warforged in a D&D campaign. Warforged, for those who dont know, are living war machone people built for a war and now free because the war is done. So this guy collected a looot of other warforged even one of our players. He belived warforged are the superior race, the who needs to role and lead the others. Sadly his cult had agents from a "kill all non robits" cult and that started spreading. The killers let loose on the city while our heroes just defeated the cult leader. So they had a choice: kill the leader and face the fanatics, or let him free so he can wrangle the masses and stop the killing. Well this made a two hour argument at the table and then one of the players just shot him in cold blood before the others realised what he is doing. After the game I was asked not to make choices for them EVER.

Declan Riordan

Nah, I'm with Tom. They didn't [know] what he was going to do, they only suspected. I know he was kinda thwarting their efforts, but that's what they did to him (only their actions were much more extreme). I love a good roleplayer that makes in-game happenings real and exciting.