What kind of player are you?
Do you test every wall for traps, or kneel beside the dying scout because your character would never leave him? Do you want a world to explore, or a pen to help write it? 24 questions place you on six axes and match you to one of 6 player styles. Then you'll see which GM style suits you best, and which one you should talk to first.
Run games as well? Take the GM style quiz and see what you're like behind the screen.
24 questions, about 4 minutes. Answer for how you actually play, the version of you your group would describe.
- GoalBeat the odds or Feel the story
- EdgeMy wits or My sheet
- StanceInside my character or Above the story
- StakesNothing's safe or Death when it matters
- WorldFind what's there or Help make it
- SpotlightDrive the action or Play off others
A tool for reflection based on published play theory and player advice, with no claim to being lab-grade. Your answers and scores stay within your browser. Our analytics count which style you got, your lean on each axis and which buttons you press, never your answers.
The 6 player styles
- The Dungeon DelverOld School Renaissance (OSR). Your wits against the dungeon. Bring a ten-foot pole.
- The Tactical StrategistTactical Neo-Trad. The build's a puzzle, and the fight's the payoff.
- The Questing HeroTraditional (Trad) play. Bite the hook, and play the hero to the end.
- The Arc ProtagonistNeo-Trad play. Bring the backstory. Expect it to come back for you.
- The Story Co-AuthorStory games. Share the pen, and make your friends look great.
- The Systemic RealistWorld simulation (simulationist). The world has physics. Your character has to survive them.
Glossary
- Creative agenda
- What a group sits down to do, across a session or a whole campaign. Ron Edwards, 2001.
- Fan mail
- When you love another player's moment, you hand them a token. From Primetime Adventures (2004).
- Knives
- Hooks you hand the GM to use on your character: a Tie, a Fear, an Obligation and a Secret.
- Lines and veils
- Limits set before play. Lines keep content out; veils keep it off-screen. Ron Edwards, 2003.
- Neo-Trad
- Trad since about 2015, in two kinds: collaborative (a shared point pool) or tactical (packaged abilities, rules-fluent GM).
- OSR
- Old School Renaissance: classic dungeons, modern player-facing design. Player skill tackles the game, referees use common sense, failure buys information.
- Player skill
- Solving problems by observation and description, ahead of your sheet. "Player skill over character skill" is Matthew Finch's OSR slogan.
- Plus-One rule
- In someone else's moment, add one thing to it, then hand it back.
- Script Change
- Film controls like Pause and Fast Forward that turn a boundary into an edit. Beau Jágr Sheldon, 2013.
- Session zero
- A meeting before play to set expectations and limits, often building characters together.
- Stars and Wishes
- Closing ritual: everyone names one thing they loved (a star) and one thing they want more of (a wish).
- Steering
- An out-of-character choice, dressed afterward in an in-character reason. Montola, Stenros and Saitta, 2015.
- Story games
- A culture of player authority: players trigger flashbacks, successes can win narrative control, and GMs often don't roll.
- Trad
- A storyteller GM with a plot. Mechanics mostly serve combat; the story sits above them.
- X-Card
- Anyone can tap it to cut content, no questions asked. John Stavropoulos, 2012.
Credits and further reading
Built on John Bell's "Six Cultures of Play", Robin D. Laws's player types, Mary Kuhner and John H. Kim's threefold, Ron Edwards's creative agendas and lines and veils, Matthew Finch's Quick Primer for Old School Gaming, steering from Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros and Eleanor Saitta, Ben Milton's player duties, John Stavropoulos's X-Card, Beau Jágr Sheldon's Script Change and Ginny Di on romance.