Is fun all there is to roleplaying?

...

I wouldn't say fun is overrated, but fun is the reason why GMs on Veeky Forums vastly overrate themselves. Newsflash: RPGs are fun even with mediocre GMs. If they weren't, the hobby would have never caught on.

"Fun" is a really low bar, and there's a lot of stuff worth pursuing beyond that bar.

Putting more pressure and expected workload on GMs won't create more highly passionate and invested GMs who develop and master the craft.
It's just going to result in there being close to the same amount of those around, by weeding out all the moderately passionate and invested GMs who would otherwise still have done their friends a service by providing them with moderately good, but perhaps not truly excellent, entertainment.

The reason why it would be close to the same amount of excellent GMs is because it would still be lower, by virtue of discouraging people from learning the trade.

It's fine to hold yourself to high standards, and even to sometimes encourage others to hold themselves to high standards (within reason).
Going further than that is just unhelpful, and won't produce the desired effect at all.

This.

There are people who read philosophy, program video games, do sports or even create art for fun. None of which is comical/laughable, but all of it can be fun.

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with running a game that is "merely" fun. But the attitude of "the players had fun so therefore the GM is perfect and above criticism" is obnoxious.

Really good games stand apart because they are compelling and they get people invested. If you're gonna aim for anything as a GM, aim for getting your players to care. It's hard to do, but even if you "fail" your game will still probably be fun.

>Is fun overrated?
Why the fuck do I keep coming back here?

fun is the end all, be all of any game, if you arent having any then why are you here? just to suffer?

some people have a lot of fun doing "serious things" others have fun doing less serious things, seriousness is a different kind of fun as pointed out above

the problem is when people who have different ideas about what fun is start yelling abouy who is having the right kind of fun

personally, I can take both wacky and serious at the same time, I can form a staight man, funny man routine
the two arent mutually exclusive, sometimes people empathize and connect more with clowns or find humor in bleak situations

This says quite to my original question while everyone else is trying to more or less fuckle me beyond or simply reinforce my point yet not giving me more to work against "meaningless fun" in RPGs.

Making everything about fun is cheapening the experience and doesn't help either, much like explained.

Elaborate. OP here.

I think you've made a mistake because every reply to the poster in that screenshot was calling him an idiot.

Please be patient, he has autism.

Well, without fun, tabletop kinda becomes a chore doesn't it?

A good, proper, story is pretty much always fun. That doesn't mean you'll be having fun all the time but overall it HAS to be a net positive experience otherwise...why the fuck are you even playing?

Are you implying that it isn't fun to create good, solid, serious, stories?

The opposite of 'funny' isn't 'serious', it's 'not funny'. Likewise with fun, though you can have moments of intense 'not fun' if your group trusts you and you aren't a stick in the mud.

see
You are applying fun as something irreverent, when fun does not mean that in the case of pasttimes.
You need to stop trying to sound "smart".

>they were running something I really wanted but they're the type that needs their dumb wacky fun and I hate it, complained about it and was made to look like the annoying complaining asshole of the campaign because the main lolrandum dude is GM's favorite.
Have you considered that you are, in fact, the annoying complaining asshole of the campaign? What makes your preference for not-wacky superior to every other player's preference for wacky?

Put another way: Suppose you and several cretins like you were running a super serious game. I really, really want to join because the concept is just so amazing. But I don't like super serious, I want my wacky shenanigans! So I complain about their seriousness ruining the game for me, at which point they call me out on being an asshole. I then come to Veeky Forums and say it's because the supur sirious hurrrrrr guy is the GM's buttbuddy.

Now. From the above mirror of your situation, what would you think of me?

>yet not giving me more to work against "meaningless fun" in RPGs
user no. Literally crusading against fun is a Disney villain thing. You know this.

>You are applying fun as something irreverent
On the contrary! I am trying to make something reverent sound like fun! Though obviously, those are not exclusive sets.

>Is fun all there is to roleplaying?

What more do you want out of it?

Watched "Tyranny of fun" by WebDM, huh?

I do it mostly for fun because I enjoy ttrpg, if you don't have fun what is even the point to play it? I still do rpg for two other reason though:
>escapism
>seeing people more often instead of staying in my appartment just posting on tg instead of playing

Relativistic sophisms like those are bullshit and you know it, gentle troll-san, but I like your style, so you get points.

> user no. Literally crusading against fun is a Disney villain thing. You know this.

Why is "fun" such a god? It's a shitty meme forced collective opinion.

Elaborate, por favor.

If you're not having fun, why are you doing it? Why are you roleplaying if you find no enjoyment in it at all?
Even the rules lawyers can find fun. Even the edgelords and the That Guys and the DM's Girlfriend have fun. Why can't you? What is stopping you from having fun?

>Elaborate
I am using the word fun more in sense of enjoyment, than entertainment. I think 'reverent things' are fun, though probably different kind of fun.

If OP doesn't like like his light-hearted lolrandom game, he can try some serious game and i am sure he will get fun out of it as well.

how do I tastefully add deeper themes to my game?

>how do I tastefully add deeper themes to my game?
By being a good storyteller. Which is something that can't be just taught through a few posts... You have to get your players REALLY invested in the first place, otherwise they'll be goofing around and probably just make fun of anything you wanted to present as serious.
And then you have to have meaningful or deeper theme you want to talk about in the first place.

Generally speaking, it's much easier to do this in character-driven campaigns. If you can manage an entire campaign around well established characters, you'll actually see these "deeper themes" probably popping up naturally, as a well established character will always come with complexity and that will force the player to deal with difficult subjects.

You can look into stuff like pic related for inspiration. It was based on a table-top session to begin with.

was it really? no wonder some of the shit feels so disjointed and non-obvious. Very amazing immersive setting though, shit's spooky and weird and awesome.

I see, thanks

I've started writing up a campaign thats basically "Mad Max.. but with trains" and now I am wondering how do I add a layer of more meaningful dilemmas into my world

>was it really?
Yeah, Dybowsky originally developed the settings and the rought outline of the story for a series of table-top sessions he had with his three friends (hence the whole tri-persona aspect of it and the co-existence of three main protagonists in the universe at the same time), all of it based on a series of dreams.

Later on he attempted to develop it into a theatrical play, but he wasn't satisfied with that thinking that the interactivity is way too important, and started developing the game.

It's pretty difficult to do that with genre-fiction-based outlines. Not impossible (I mean Eva worked in some pretty deep shit with fucking Mecha anime, and Watchmen with the most retarded genre in human history - superhero comics...): but it generally takes a lot more effort.
Meaningful dilemmas always have to come from real world, actually. So the more divorced from the logic of real world you go, the harder it may be to make them work, unless you already base your world on some kind of meaningful dilemma established in reality (like Pathologic, or Planescape Torment did by using classical philosophy as a basis of their world-logic. Or like say, Bastion (if you excuse all these videogame-related examples) did with Cold War and again, some philosophical notions.

But you really don't need philosophy or metaphysics to introduce meaningful or deep themes. In the end, all you need is really good people: good characters having to face a complex world - and if you are good at character anticipation and complexity, you'll just find that "deep" problems are inevitable.

>"Mad Max.. but with trains"
You're doomed if you go any further than that basic setting. Designating a single specific antagonist is a recipe for disaster, because it turns into a simple "protagonists vs. antagonists" game, just with a chance of sunstroke. Instead, set up various forces (warring factions, extreme environmental forces) and let the players figure out which is most relevant to their interests.

yeah, having to develop good characters for every faction is necessary, now I see that, then I can progress from that

there will be factions and whatever
I mainly meant that just simple elements like "city with water", "city with food", trade, raiding is not enough to combine into something meaningful

>yeah, having to develop good characters for every faction is necessary, now I see that, then I can progress from that
Good characters should lead you to good dilemmas and good conflicts (as the complexity of a human being, and the complexity of perception and values that comes with it results both conflicts and misunderstandings of agendas, and those can result in problems that aren't easy to resolve, which constitute a good portion of issue we call "deep").
A lot of so called "depth" comes from acknowledging complexity of matters, and facing your audience with questions that can't be resolved easily, forcing them to use more resources, more thought, consider more factors - sometimes even flat out admit that they don't or can't have an ultimately "right" solution. This is why the simplified sentiment that "morally gray subject matters are more deep than black-and-white", for an example.

Though it's important that there is a difference between "morally gray in that it's possible to sympatize with most or all points of view", and "morally gray in that it's impossible to sympatize with any of them".

That, I think, is generally the most reliable way to introduce depth to your storytelling.

There are other ways too: again, tackling philosophical notions rather than psychological can work, but usually only if you are smarter and more educated in philosophy than your audience, and you had really figured out something that most other people had not yet figured out.

>Tyranny of fun
Just watched it, man, thanks. Yes, this is what I am talking about, the YOU MUST HAVE FUN HURR DURR OR GTFO ideology that forces one to have fun, thus making fun less fun and more about being idiotic or convenient instead of, again, making a damn good story.

I forget that for Veeky Forums and general RPGers today it's all about the G and almost nothing about the RP.

Others ruin my fun with their forced fun. My fun =/= your/their fun.

Shouldn't everyone be having fun?

>Others ruin my fun with their forced fun.
Then you should find another group.

This whole post makes negative sense.

Probably because the word "fun" is being used for some undefined concept that is unrelated to fun.

Yeah. The whole Web MD video is basically "rules of the Dn'D systems have been over time changing to impose less formal restrictions on player options and stream-lining core systems in order to offer more space for instant gratification, rather then through solving your way around imposed limitations, and we don't really necessarily find that a good thing".
Which is a fair point, but what it really says is "the modern Dn'D ideas of what makes a game fun are actually just different from our ideas of what makes Dn'D fun."

To label it as a "tyranny of fun" and claim that it's a principle of "pro-fun" vs "not-pro-fun" is completely and utterly misleading.

Also, in reference to the post I mocked: it also shows that who ever made it does not really understand what the individual letters in RPG stands for, as the G actually stands for GAME (a set of rules restricting and defining options), while RP refers to role-playing, which is just the act of pretending to someone else.

So if anything, it should be that there is too much emphasis on RP, and not enough on G, not vice versa.

nah, they didn't really rule for or against it just that there were flavor-based-restrictions they missed that were in older systems. There has never been any FUN way to handle encumbrance or ammo or any of that so most GMs are gonna houserule anything to their liking anyway.

>nah, they didn't really rule for or against it
They pretty clearly criticize the omission of these systems from the modern edition rules.

>There has never been any FUN way to handle encumbrance or ammo
Again we are back at the problem of what the hell does FUN mean.

The problem in this conversation is people conflating 'fun' with 'funny', and then railing against the first like autists they are.

Nobody has ever thought accounting was fun. Still isn't something you can do without.

See
You have already been given answers to this exact question.

>you play a video game
>video game is not fun
Do you keep playing?No? Then dont expect your players to keep playing your game.
Thats how I see it anyways.

That doesnt mean you cant make a game challenging or difficult or cant have them struggle for their victory, as long as you have a payoff that makes it worth it for them to keep playing for when they do succeed and you keep you game interesting.

If they are man children that expect you to give them everything they ask for and get mad when they face anything difficult than either they or you need to find a new group.

>Do you keep playing?
Depends. Games like Silent Hill 2, Pathologic or The Void can hardly be considered fun. In fact that can be considered a depressing, cruel, exhausting experiences. Yet not only a solid group of people will keep playing them: they will very frequently actually consider those games the best games they ever played.

Same goes for books or movies, too. You think Kafka's novels are fun? Or Shindlers List? Or fucking Passion of Christ?

Yet for some reason, people do keep coming back to them, in fact they have higher chances of being recognized as particularly valuable pieces of work, above most fiction whose primary purpose is to entertain.

>in fact they have higher chances of being recognized as particularly valuable pieces of work, above most fiction whose primary purpose is to entertain
Are you seriously implying any of the media you mentioned isn't enjoyable? People can enjoy things without them being happy. People don't watch horror movies because they think monsters murdering people is positive or inspiring, but it sure as fuck is enjoyable, hell, stuff like Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th is "fun" when it plays with audience expectations to create a stronger scene or more devious murder. If you're implying that people read shit like Kafka because it causes depression and shits on their souls I dare say you haven't experienced any of the media you extol

To me, reading a quality novel or watching a great film is fun, especially if they challenge my worldview with something depressing. It's usually not funny, but it is fun.

>Passion of Christ
That's a piece of crap movie and you know it.

I think the problem is that you're using "fun" as a stand-in for "instant gratification" when it really isn't. Fun is and should be the ultimate goal of a game; if a game isn't fun, you shouldn't be playing it. But that doesn't mean the game has to be constantly satisfying your need for stimulation to be fun. Personally, I find those kinds of games get boring very fast.

>Are you seriously implying any of the media you mentioned isn't enjoyable?
What I'm implying is that no sane person with ANY respect to the common-day use of the word "fun" would EVER describe them as "fun" in any other way than irony. You are mistaking "fun" with being ultimately percieved as enjoyable or worth-while.
Fun is something that is in absolute majority of it's use equated with amusement, joy, gratification. Not just any form of being valuable experience.

>If you're implying that people read shit like Kafka because it causes depression and shits on their souls
That is exactly why they do. Kafka does have a dark sense of humor to it, a form of wit at times, but through out most of the time purposefully unpleasant and distressing in usually non-obvious fashion. People who seek these kinds of works are seeking for catharsis, not amusement. That is why we also seek such fucking GRUELING experiences like say, Grave of Fireflies or Pianist: and to more limited degree much of horror: to confront things that we are uncomfortable with, to cause discomfort to yourself.
Seriously if you deny that, then you had actually never experienced those kinds of stories.

>To me, reading a quality novel or watching a great film is fun
Then you are using the word in a sense that most people find most unintuitive, and which most likely is a secondary-use transmission.

>That's a piece of crap movie and you know it.
Sure, I'm not arguing about quality of the individual works, but rather about their nature and appeal. And as much as we can shit on it, we can't deny the massive attention and views it got. Despite being nothing more than a shitty torture porn.

What I mean is games like silent hill are fun, people watch horror movies or depressing movies to be invested in the story or to feel a certain way because they enjoy it. They look back on the experience and maybe they cant say it was "fun" to watch Shindlers List but it was an experience worth watching because the story kept them intrigued and invested, and aren't those things "fun" to do for the people who like those things?

The things people do choose to do on their free time must be fun on some level for them or they wouldnt do it. They would walk out of the movie theater or stop playing that video game when they stop having fun and start to get bored.

Maybe thats what I should have said originally. Your game doesnt have to be "fun" but it can't be boring.

>equated with amusement, joy, gratification
All feelings I get from watching great films about tragic and depressing stories.

>Is fun all there is to roleplaying?

No there is learning.

I am constantly surprised about how much you can learn about the world through just reading the core rulebooks.

Here is a list of mental softmints to think about.
1.) Adepts who are highly intellegent can go far, can be promoted from simple scholars to high auditors and such, that is, if they can avoid getting caught up in the constant infighting and squabbling of their peers. (DH1e 40krpg adepts ranks)
2.) If humans no longer suffered from disease or famine or birth problems, would they begin to wage war on eachother based purely on a war of ideas? "Their people wanted for nothing, but their material wealth simply left them to crave more intangible things. It was not enough that a neighbor was willing to keep the peace; the neighbor had to agree with them, had to submit to their laws and their ideals." (godbound rpg page 3)
3.) If there were no god and devil to determine respectivly good and evil. Wouldnt that mean anything would be equally valid? Could you for instance live like a viking or a vampire with no reason not to? Or are good and evil determined by physical laws of the universe? Inescapable and logical? (godbound rpg page 3)

>What I mean is games like silent hill are fun
I'm willing to bet money that if you did a survey and looked up what kind of words people would use to describe Silent Hill 2, FUN would not place very high.

>or to feel a certain way because they enjoy it.
Again, to find something enjoyable and to find it fun are not necessarily the same bloody things. How many times do I have to fucking stress that out. There is a reason why we have two words instead of one for this.

>and aren't those things "fun" to do for the people who like those things?
MOST PEOPLE WOULD NOT USE THAT WORD TO DESCRIBE THE EXPERIENCE. It's that bloody simple. Especially when it comes to works that most people value experiencing, but would not chose to experience for the second time. And I really doubt most people are eager to re-read America or re-watch Passion.

>The things people do choose to do on their free time must be fun
No, that is fucking stupid on multiple levels. First of all, again you work off the unwarranted premise that "fun" means "anything that people ultimately find worth doing". Second of all, I can give you a list of THOUSANDS of reasons why people chose to do things they don't fucking even enjoy on any levels, from social pressures and status to future-planning and god-knows what else.

>Your game doesnt have to be "fun" but it can't be boring.
The correct way to frame this is that your game must have a purpose that justifies the time spent on it in the end. This purpose can (and most frequently will) be the mere joy of acting it out. It could be a search for catharsis instead though. Or it can be the simple purpose of exercising.
Ultimately though, it must be something that when you look back at it, you say "yeah, I know why I devoted my time to this". That is really the only thing that matters.

>or re-watch Passion.
Passion is a bad movie, no one should be watching it a first time to begin with.

I get the feeling your initial plan was to troll us, but the only one getting riled up is you.

>Passion is a bad movie, no one should be watching it a first time to begin with.
We got that the first time. I'd personally argue that Grave of Fireflies is even worse but our personal sentiments really aren't important here.

Dude, what the fuck? This is your idea of trolling?

>We got that the first time.
No you didn't, you keep using it as an example as though it were something that was enjoyed a first time.

I'm using it as an example because my point does not IN ANY WAY actually require qualitative evaluation: in other words it does not matter if you consider the work good or bad.
It was a movie that MILLIONS of people clamored for and considered it life-changing invaluable experience. And you can't really say that they were wrong, even if you can make the point that we probably should not be praising such works. It really is a perfect example, because it shows that critical consensus isn't what matters here, and it illustrates how the "forcing yourself to experience something awful and grueling" is still a natural-wide spread phenomenon and commonplace in our culture.

You're asking me when you're the one that can't do it correctly?

>my point does not IN ANY WAY actually require qualitative evaluation
Yes it does. A good comedy is funny, a bad comedy isn't. Watching a good depressing movie is fun, watching a bad depressing movie isn't.

>I'm willing to bet money that if you did a survey and looked up what kind of words people would use to describe Silent Hill 2, FUN would not place very high.

>"silent hill 2" fun
755,000 hits
>"silent hill 2" horror
Only 409,000 hits
>"silent hill 2" scary
Only 182,000 hits

>Again, to find something enjoyable and to find it fun are not necessarily the same bloody things.
Merriam-Webster defines fun as:
>providing entertainment, amusement, or enjoyment
Note the last word.

>There is a reason why we have two words instead of one for this.
Yes, register. Not meaning.

>MOST PEOPLE WOULD NOT USE THAT WORD TO DESCRIBE THE EXPERIENCE.
Only because there are more pertinent words to use, whose meaning does not preclude "fun".

>Second of all, I can give you a list of THOUSANDS of reasons why people chose to do things they don't fucking even enjoy on any levels, from social pressures and status to future-planning and god-knows what else.
But those reasons very rarely apply to games, especially not ones that don't have a competitive aspect or one of monetary gain.

>my point does not IN ANY WAY actually require qualitative evaluation
It's the lynchpoint of your entire argument.
Your say that something which is enjoyable or worthwhile to experience only once isn't "fun"
But your example is never enjoyable or worthwhile at all.

>You're asking me when you're the one that can't do it correctly?
If you think anything I've said is so outrageous and out of the blue or controversial that it could ever be considered "trolling", there is actually something really profoundly wrong with you. You might want to drop the internet and go outside a little more.

Seriously, what the actual fuck?

>A good comedy is funny, a bad comedy isn't.
Millions of people enjoyed Transformers or Twilight series: experiencing tension, humor, or romantic drama.
Are they good or bad?
This is not a very productive way of thinking. People go to comedy to laugh. People go to depressing movies to be faced with melancholy and related catharsis.
The criteria of what one constitutes good or bad are highly relative and irrelevant here.

It's the absolute fucking opposite.

>Your say that something which is enjoyable or worthwhile to experience only once isn't "fun"
No, I'm saying that most people won't use the word "fun" to describe that kind of experience. Jesus are you people retarded? And how does this shit have anything to do with quality?

>But your example is never enjoyable or worthwhile at all.
TENS of millions of Americans disagree you moron. It does not fucking matter what you think about this.

>There is a reason why we have two words instead of one for this.
badlinguistics.jpg

>TENS of millions of Americans disagree you moron.
What does popularity have to do with anything at all?
Trump was popular enough to get elected, does that mean he is an objectively good president?
If nine out of ten people opt to eat undercooked chicken instead of the well-done beef on offer, is food poisoning an objectively good meal?

>D&D isn't (belch) fun Morty! It's literally just some salty faggot angry he's powerless irl so makes a broken build or if not too savy on the mechanics pretends it's a broken build via a one dimensional badass who still expresses the Judeo-Christian values of America by being like I'M SO EDGY AND EVIL BUT RAPE IS BAAADDDD or worse, some stupid cunt who makes a sorceress or other mage and acts like she's some God damn award winning writer because she can have tits AND an existential crisis!
>The only thing fun about D&D M-M-Morty is the (belch) dungeon tiles and making a symphony out of random loot and encounters using the virtues of math and probability to experience a sensation like gambling, reward, and teamwork all while not actually doing any of those. It's just a free way to get some dopamine out of our worthless lives Morty. At least it would be free if all these motherfuckers weren't wannabe bourgeois and roll20 has DM prostitution and the books are out of this world expensive. I'll give you two farts for that Tomb of Horrors module.

The more Rick gets posted the more I remember why I don't watch TV anymore.

>Millions of people enjoyed Transformers or Twilight series: experiencing tension, humor, or romantic drama.
And most of them probably enjoyed it, just because you don't doesn't invalidate the fact that it is a satisfactory experience for its audience

You're just arguing in circles because you can't admit that people might enjoy things you dont