Greg I don't know what's going on but I love the direction you've been going with the channel lately. Been following since like.....2014ish? It's nice to see consistent content again!
Seconded! Really loving these short and sweet rambles on various TTRPG subjects! Honestly, I think I would enjoy them regardless of whether or not they involved TTRPGs, but I love them all the same!
Greg is alive? Yay!! Role playing guides is neato. Kinda want to know what going on with the wife, kid and dog, but that up to you to share Also stay in kayfabe is great tip for writing characters, that how I go about it
I'm part of a group that mostly tries to stay Kayfabe, but the druid is always the first to try to drop it as soon as he see's a way to meta the situation to his advantage. He destroyed the ranger's childhood home and hurt half our party to get an area affect spell to hit all the enemies, even the ones he shouldn't know were there. He didn't get the in-character anger from the team after the fight, as he thought that it was the best move from a tactical stand point.
I'm actually *extremely* fortunate when it comes to Kayfabe groups. My entire circle of online friends stemmed from RP threads in a smaller community forum, so we're all _really good_ at staying "in Kayfabe." Which means... I've actually had the opposite of your story happen in my games, where everyone is "in Kayfabe" except for one or two players; usually players who were introduced into the group from outside our RP community and had a very different, wargame/munchkin mindset to the game. In their defense, they're not consistently disruptive to the game, and can even get into Kayfebe every so often! But when the game _is_ disrupted, it's usually one of those players min-maxing their turns for far too long, or arguing with the GM over rulings that they won't back down on, or taking an in-game character conflict personally. Put simply, it always seems to stem from the players wanting to "win" D&D, which... Far as I'm concerned, so long as everyone at the table had fun, even if a player's character died tragically and the dragon escaped, you "won" D&D. I think it's a bit presumptuous to say that the two player types don't mix, but it definitely requires everyone to understand the tone of the game ahead of time, usually through a Session 0. (which, by the by, I'd love to hear your thoughts on what to bring up and hash out during a Session 0)
I find that when you do end up with a miz of kayfabe and non kayfabe players it is usually the kayfabers who suffer for it. They tend to be willing to humour a premise that obviously favours tactical play and try to have fun with it anyway, but the guys who are there to crush skeletons get impatient and mean disturbingly fast when anything else is going on.
Hearing these stories makes me realize I really lucked out with my first tabletop group being a bunch of cringe nerds who were fully willing to go all out with the drama. One of the first tabletop campaigns I played had some of the best moments and memories out of all the time I've been playing tabletop because we were all a bunch of teenagers getting lost in the world and the characters. There are plenty of parts of the campaign that in hindsight are disorientating to the overall story but it doesn't bother me that much because of the fond memories I have staying up past midnight just roleplaying my heart out with everyone else.
These have been real fun videos, Greg. Great interludes to go along with the podcast episodes which may be reaching people who have never had the chance to play a ttrpg before.
The cheapest thing I ever did to trick players into Keyfabe was to begin the campaign with players playing their actual selves and then having them be hit by a truck and isekaied into my fantasy setting. They couldn't not be in character when everyone is themselves already.
Curious what your thoughts are on online roleplaying. I find it's nigh impossible to get players to pay attention and stay involved in the moment-to-moment game. On the other hand, finding a real-world group of people willing to actually, physically get into the same room together is an even greater struggle.
I find I'm bad at kayfabe if I don't have at least one other person honestly keeping it up themselves. Some of my favorite tabletop memories is stuff we did with our characters personalities and actions clashing and causing some fun events!
I'm one of two, maybe three, people in my group who likes to be even a little bit in kayfabe. In fairness to a few of them, they are new to TTRPGs in general, but one of the players who isn't new literally had himself bombed and nearly vaporized just for the sake of skipping a maze.
Likewise Kayfabe goes in the opposite direction. I was an anti-elf human racist but I made clear to the elves that I would absolutely still be a team player. And its always funny when people go hard with Kayfabe. "Only a moron would open a door without checking for traps. Anyway... **My barbarian kicks in the door.** "
Sadly the closest thing to kayfabe a lot of people will get is saying "It's what my character would do!" after doing something incredibly stupid that fucks over the rest of the group.
I am not a roleplayer player, but I will try to roleplay a little if the other members want to. However, I have to keep asking if someone is in roleplay mode or not sometimes as it is hard to tell the difference.
My character is a highly trained fighter who has won many competitions and tournaments and is known throughout many kingdoms and is adored by many aspiring fighters. He has has been called upon to join up with other Adventures to defend the realm for a great threat. What is known to no one but my character is that he is afraid of true combat and monsters. He is only brave in the competitions and tournaments because he knows that no real harm can come upon him for it is safe to fight there. But in the real world he knows that he may die and he does not know how to summon the courage to truly take life and death risks! Just a concept idea.
i dont play table top games anymore (i got sick of the people) but i can say, any time i joined a game and the DM said "ok so you HAVE to stay in character the whole time" i would reply "ah ok..." and then NOT TALK! because i only wrote like a bar napkin's worth of character stuff down because its the bare minimum like price of entry for alot of groups and I JUST WANNA PLAY WITH THE DICE! and then i would eventually just leave the group because i already have places where i have to pretend to be someone else, its called working retail and i dont need a 2nd job, i just wanna play a game and to occasionally face horrible consequences when i do something silly which ONLY HIGHTENS the humor for me! yes, i DID punch the little girl in the face, she was screaming and we needed to be sneaky! and then the DM has to choose if he's gonna roll with this or try to punish me in some way and the party has to decide if they're the type of ppl who will completely grind the game to a halt to talk about the ethics of concussive amnestitization.
I like this series cause its obvious you take the RP in TTRPGs very serious, more so then me probably. There are limits to this behaviour IMO. Once i had a game where we were all pretty new and the RP strongest player had a very in Character logical aproach to a players 2nd PC joining the party. Her being hard to teust newcommers worked before but in play that day forced our friends PC to be sidelined because he was dropped into a situation where we were bound to secrecy a bit. While staying in Kayfabe, she made the new PC feel unwelcome and the player didnt get to do much for the first 2-3hours of the session as a result. Just an interesting anecdote.
![Shattered Field of Reflections by David Chaim Smith [Esoteric Book Review]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/p2vM3ydZhho/mqdefault.jpg)
Greg I don't know what's going on but I love the direction you've been going with the channel lately. Been following since like.....2014ish? It's nice to see consistent content again!
This is the mood
Seconded! Really loving these short and sweet rambles on various TTRPG subjects! Honestly, I think I would enjoy them regardless of whether or not they involved TTRPGs, but I love them all the same!
Listening to this series makes me wish I had someone like Greg in my group 😂
Same
Greg is alive? Yay!!
Role playing guides is neato.
Kinda want to know what going on with the wife, kid and dog, but that up to you to share
Also stay in kayfabe is great tip for writing characters, that how I go about it
I'm part of a group that mostly tries to stay Kayfabe, but the druid is always the first to try to drop it as soon as he see's a way to meta the situation to his advantage. He destroyed the ranger's childhood home and hurt half our party to get an area affect spell to hit all the enemies, even the ones he shouldn't know were there. He didn't get the in-character anger from the team after the fight, as he thought that it was the best move from a tactical stand point.
Man, playing with you would be so hilarious! These dungeon crawlers don't know what they've missed out on.
I'm actually *extremely* fortunate when it comes to Kayfabe groups. My entire circle of online friends stemmed from RP threads in a smaller community forum, so we're all _really good_ at staying "in Kayfabe." Which means... I've actually had the opposite of your story happen in my games, where everyone is "in Kayfabe" except for one or two players; usually players who were introduced into the group from outside our RP community and had a very different, wargame/munchkin mindset to the game. In their defense, they're not consistently disruptive to the game, and can even get into Kayfebe every so often! But when the game _is_ disrupted, it's usually one of those players min-maxing their turns for far too long, or arguing with the GM over rulings that they won't back down on, or taking an in-game character conflict personally. Put simply, it always seems to stem from the players wanting to "win" D&D, which... Far as I'm concerned, so long as everyone at the table had fun, even if a player's character died tragically and the dragon escaped, you "won" D&D. I think it's a bit presumptuous to say that the two player types don't mix, but it definitely requires everyone to understand the tone of the game ahead of time, usually through a Session 0. (which, by the by, I'd love to hear your thoughts on what to bring up and hash out during a Session 0)
I find that when you do end up with a miz of kayfabe and non kayfabe players it is usually the kayfabers who suffer for it.
They tend to be willing to humour a premise that obviously favours tactical play and try to have fun with it anyway, but the guys who are there to crush skeletons get impatient and mean disturbingly fast when anything else is going on.
We need more Greg in our daily lives
Theres NEVER anything average about your Joes
Hearing these stories makes me realize I really lucked out with my first tabletop group being a bunch of cringe nerds who were fully willing to go all out with the drama. One of the first tabletop campaigns I played had some of the best moments and memories out of all the time I've been playing tabletop because we were all a bunch of teenagers getting lost in the world and the characters. There are plenty of parts of the campaign that in hindsight are disorientating to the overall story but it doesn't bother me that much because of the fond memories I have staying up past midnight just roleplaying my heart out with everyone else.
Why have you always managed to have the same interests as me for like 7 years?
These have been real fun videos, Greg. Great interludes to go along with the podcast episodes which may be reaching people who have never had the chance to play a ttrpg before.
The cheapest thing I ever did to trick players into Keyfabe was to begin the campaign with players playing their actual selves and then having them be hit by a truck and isekaied into my fantasy setting. They couldn't not be in character when everyone is themselves already.
Kaybe stays in kayfabe!
Please do more of these.
Curious what your thoughts are on online roleplaying. I find it's nigh impossible to get players to pay attention and stay involved in the moment-to-moment game. On the other hand, finding a real-world group of people willing to actually, physically get into the same room together is an even greater struggle.
I find I'm bad at kayfabe if I don't have at least one other person honestly keeping it up themselves. Some of my favorite tabletop memories is stuff we did with our characters personalities and actions clashing and causing some fun events!
Did the word Kayfabe maybe inspire the name Kaybe, baby?
I'm one of two, maybe three, people in my group who likes to be even a little bit in kayfabe. In fairness to a few of them, they are new to TTRPGs in general, but one of the players who isn't new literally had himself bombed and nearly vaporized just for the sake of skipping a maze.
I can definitely do kayfabe, I do need to find people to do ttrpg with though
Likewise Kayfabe goes in the opposite direction.
I was an anti-elf human racist but I made clear to the elves that I would absolutely still be a team player.
And its always funny when people go hard with Kayfabe.
"Only a moron would open a door without checking for traps. Anyway... **My barbarian kicks in the door.** "
Knowing something your character doesn't & not being able to find a way for them to figure it out can be GRUELING o(>t
Sadly the closest thing to kayfabe a lot of people will get is saying "It's what my character would do!" after doing something incredibly stupid that fucks over the rest of the group.
I am not a roleplayer player, but I will try to roleplay a little if the other members want to.
However, I have to keep asking if someone is in roleplay mode or not sometimes as it is hard to tell the difference.
My character is a highly trained fighter who has won many competitions and tournaments and is known throughout many kingdoms and is adored by many aspiring fighters. He has has been called upon to join up with other Adventures to defend the realm for a great threat. What is known to no one but my character is that he is afraid of true combat and monsters. He is only brave in the competitions and tournaments because he knows that no real harm can come upon him for it is safe to fight there. But in the real world he knows that he may die and he does not know how to summon the courage to truly take life and death risks! Just a concept idea.
i dont play table top games anymore (i got sick of the people) but i can say, any time i joined a game and the DM said "ok so you HAVE to stay in character the whole time" i would reply "ah ok..." and then NOT TALK! because i only wrote like a bar napkin's worth of character stuff down because its the bare minimum like price of entry for alot of groups and I JUST WANNA PLAY WITH THE DICE! and then i would eventually just leave the group because i already have places where i have to pretend to be someone else, its called working retail and i dont need a 2nd job, i just wanna play a game and to occasionally face horrible consequences when i do something silly which ONLY HIGHTENS the humor for me! yes, i DID punch the little girl in the face, she was screaming and we needed to be sneaky! and then the DM has to choose if he's gonna roll with this or try to punish me in some way and the party has to decide if they're the type of ppl who will completely grind the game to a halt to talk about the ethics of concussive amnestitization.
I like this series cause its obvious you take the RP in TTRPGs very serious, more so then me probably.
There are limits to this behaviour IMO.
Once i had a game where we were all pretty new and the RP strongest player had a very in Character logical aproach to a players 2nd PC joining the party. Her being hard to teust newcommers worked before but in play that day forced our friends PC to be sidelined because he was dropped into a situation where we were bound to secrecy a bit.
While staying in Kayfabe, she made the new PC feel unwelcome and the player didnt get to do much for the first 2-3hours of the session as a result.
Just an interesting anecdote.