Sounds like my kind of gameplay. I really don't want it to turn into a slog of rules and regulations and I don't get the sense that the friend who's going to be our DM wants to either. But I do recognize that a certain amount of rule-abiding is necessary for game flow and structure. Do you think there's such a thing as being too lax with the rules? I guess it all depends on who you play with. What have you, personally, found to be the ideal?
It does depend on who you play with, you need people to agree on how "fuzzy" you're going to be with the system. Otherwise you get some players who just want to make things up as they go, vs the rules hounds who are really good at looking at a system and figurin out how to leverage the rules to get the maximum effect of the character they want to play. (This is pretty prevalent in MMOs too; knocking down some stats to maximize the stats your character relies on, having the right gear and skills and spell setups to hit the maximum possible impact of the stuff you want your character to be good at; etc.)
Any type can work, if you can play by that particular agreement. I prefer a more medium approach; I'm decent with systems and knowing how to leverage the rules to do what I want, however I don't like to be dependent on the pure luck and pre-writing of the character, I value the talk around the table, interacting with other characters, making a cool dramatic story together. So typically, yeah, people need to still make rolls, but I think everything bogs down when the GM is checking for encumberance and getting really tedious with checking for EVERYTHING when you just want to walk down a hallway. The one game is pretty rational. The GM routinely asks you to make a Perception check, for example; and sometimes there might be details you'll miss but you won't know what they were; players will play within character and not search harder just because they missed a roll. Basically there's an underlying agreement that players won't abuse rolls out of character, and the GM won't make you roll for every little thing along the way.
To help with characterization, my GM for the Redgate game (that's the city's name) I play had us all pick we don't really use alignment (although my character would be Chaotic Neutral, I think... never played that before). Instead, along with Traits (in the Pathfinder rulebook, which give bonuses based on character background), the GM told us to pick Aspects, which are traits of note about your character's personality. These Aspects typically will dominate in roleplaying exchanges, and when you play into an Aspect of your character, he rewards you with a Fate card. This is a deck of cards (purchased elsewhere) that has a general topic on it, plus an effect, plus four potential scenarios listed. You can then spent a Fate card at any point in the game, whenever you want to improve a die roll OR you want to insert one of the things on the card into gameplay.
For example, I got a Schadenfreude card last session, with options on it to bring some kind of harm to someone else... like "It stops raining and the crops fail" or "Your opponent trips and falls in a hole" or other one-liners. I used it when I happened to perceive an alchemist who was stalking our group in some tunnels sneaking up with some fragile bottles in hand.... when I played the card, the alchemist of course fumbled the bottles he was carrying and ended up blowing part of himself up rather than us. ANother Fate card basically allowed us to make an NPC part of the ongoing storyline -- in our case, one grunt survived the zombie onslaught upon the town that we were caught in, and ended up being a local hero and moving up in the ranks. The experience left him a bit crazy from PTSD, but now he goes along with us and serves as an extra character of sorts, although the GM controls him.
Aspects win you a Fate card because playing them realistically often leaves you at a disadvantage. For example, our bard is a Know-It-All... whenver there's a chance to learn something, even when inconvenient or dangerous, he still is tempted to get in there and figure it out... or when it would be best not to create conflict, he gets into a pissing match about whether he knows more than an NPC in their field of expertise. So when he plays into that, he gets a Fate card. One of my character's Aspects is Suspicious -- even when someone is being on the level and could be helpful to me, I will usually still be skeptical and wary of their motivations and might even respond in a way that sours them toward me. The Fate cards help balance things out and make the story more interesting because the players actually get the ability to change the plot of the story when playing the cards, rather than the GM being totally in charge. (The GM still decides what specifically happens, but is pretty fair about the outcomes.)
Aspects also can come up during gameplay based on what happens, and the GM might say, "Hey, add this as an aspect," and you can either agree or not. For example, Jessa (my Witch -- it's a Pathfinder class) deals with hexes and focuses on mind spells as well. In one of her initial forays, when some hired guards tried to interfere with us, she hypnotized one with a skill roll so high that it broke his mind and left him shuddering and peeing his pants on the ground; he's never recuperated from the ordeal. She also got partly possessed by an evil dagger and did some pretty nasty things when interrogating prisoners with it; and her latest hex is Prehensile Hair -- no one in the party knew about it, but she had to use it in the last skirmish and wigged everyone out, grabbing enemies with her 10' long hair (the hex makes it grow) and throwing them around / throttling them with her hair. So I told the GM I was going to add "Creepy Vibe" to her as an aspect, which basically means if she plays into her ability to unsettle people, she'll get Fate cards. She really wigs out other people, including the party.
You might not have the card deck, but the same kind of stuff can be built into the gameplay to encourage people to play character. That's all alignment was meant to do anyway. The more you play character, the less focus there is on die rolls and the more interactivity you get in the group.
But yeah, I think a large part of why we've kind of stagnated in moving forward with actually playing is that a lot of us have become overwhelmed by the details. It's really just that one friend I made the characters with and I who are bothering at all to read the rulebooks. But I suppose we can always teach the others what we've learned. How did you first get into it? Did you read the rules with a bunch of friends and then just jump in together or did you start out with those more experienced and learned the most as you went along?
I learned the system on my own, but I'm an INTP geek and am good with systems and learning the rules/frameworks of things. I think from what you describe, you need at least 1-2 people who are good with rules, to get the rest of you up to speed so you don't get bogged down. It's a pain searching hundreds of pages of rulebook trying to find one piece of information, although the index does help; also, if you can get the online PDFs, you can "search" on them and find things more quickly.
Also! General question for everyone: what's a good number of people to have in a game, in your experience? I hear too few is nearly impossible and too many just gets boring. Is there a "sweet spot" of some kind?
Typically, along with one Game Master, I'd say 4-6 is the best amount. Once you get past 6, people start butting into each other's business and turns take a long time to commence.
We've yet to actually play a game, though.
