These are the results of my first campaign survey. I sent this out and requested response on Wednesday, April 21, 2004 at 9:37:28. And now, less than a week later, I received the results from Mark, Arturo, Nadine, Anthony, Tom, and myself.

For your amusement, I present the (summarized) results. I'm not going to invade anybody's privacy by publishing specific answers, but will present the averages. You know what you wrote, and now you can compare yourself to the group as a whole. I also present some conclusions I've come up with for what I will be doing in my campaign.

Why do you role-play?

We were generally pretty similar here: we want to play the part of heroic people who can do things that we ourselves are not capable of doing.

What is your "style" of gaming?

Style	Low	High	Group Average
Role Player	3	8	6.7
Story Teller	2	6	4.3
Power Gamer	1	8	4.3

These are all self-assessments, of course.

Some commented that they are only recently starting to think about what their characters do between adventures. For others, it's been part of their mind-set for a long time.

How do you rate the following types of campaign?

Style	Low	High	Group Average
Combat	3	9	6.8
NPC Interaction	4	8	5.7
Timing Dependent	3	9	5.5
Puzzles	3	7	5.3
Politics and Intrigue	2	8	4.5

Most of us are interested in all of these. I was advised that if I was going to have timing, it needed to be always active: not "on" for this adventure and "off" for that one.

Very well. I had already decided that, fitting with my story-telling desires, time is going to progress, no matter what the characters were doing. Often, it will have no repercussions on the characters, immediately - but events will happen that you will remember, years from now, when they finally do affect you.

And, if you are chasing villains, they will be doing their own thing, both in response to your actions, and to further their other goals.

How do you rate the following adventuring venues?

Venue	Low	High	Group Average
City	3	8	5.7
Wilderness	1	9	5.5
Dungeon	3	9	5.3

Many want a balanced mix, although some have a strong like or dislike for a particular type of locale.

Gary Gygax's Survey

Here is how this group ranked Gary Gygax's eighteen aspects of a role-playing game, and how his survey group of several hundred responded.

Aspect	Low	High	Group Average	Gygax's Average
Environment	8	9	8.8	7+
Role Assumption	3	9	8.2	7.6
Questing	6	9	7.8	7.3
Rewards System	5	9	7.7	7+
Strategy	6	9	7.3	6.6
Problem Solving	5	9	7.2	7.9
Roleplaying	4	9	7.2	6.6
Exploration	3	9	6.8	7.3
Story	3	9	6.7	7.6
Combat	2	9	6.5	7.2
Character Development	3	9	6.0	7.1
Intrigue	1	9	5.7	7.1
Economics	3	7	5.3	4.9 (8+ for DMs)
Random Chance	2	8	5.3	6.8
Theatrics	2	7	4.5	5.1
Politics	1	9	4.0	5.9
Building	0	5	2.7	4.0
Business	0	9	2.7	4.0

The main thing I'll take from this right now is that you want a varied, exotic world with a sense of adventure and wonder.

What "maturity level" are you comfortable with?

0=Light-hearted 3=Standard 6=Mature 9=Vile

Aspect	Low	High	Group Average
Adventures	3	9	6.5
Non-player Characters	5	6	5.7
Slavery	2	9	4.7
General	2	6	4.3
Sex	3	9	4.2
Player Characters	3	6	4.0
Torture	3	5	4.0
Rape	2	6	3.3
Gore	2	5	3.3

You're going to meet NPCs with a full range of motivations. Some will be virtuous, some obviously despicable - and some will be complicated, and you'll probably not figure out what they're really like until later - if ever.

I wasn't planning on playing up the mature aspects of things - usually - and it looks like that's where people are comfortable, anyway.

What level of Campaign Detail do you want?

Aspect	Summary
Language	2 Common only, 1 Regional only, 3 Both
Money	3 GUMU, 3 Currency
Upkeep	2 Boring, 1 Upkeep, 3 Detail

This fits with what I was planning on doing anyway. Not everybody is going to find it quite to their taste, but you'll cope. ;)

Each geographical region has regional languages, spoken by humans from the region. Non-human races have their own racial languages and will also speak the human regional language, if they live in mixed communities with humans.

There is a "trade tongue" called "Common" which will be available to everybody in the world as a "bonus" language, which you can take for free at character creation time, given a high enough Intelligence, or can learn with Speak Language. People who have a lot of traffic with other parts of the world (traders, scholars, diplomats, ...) will know Common, as well as innkeepers and such who get a lot of foreign customers - but if you travel far from home, the random commoners you meet probably will not speak Common. Nor will you be able to say subtle or poetic things in Common: it will allow you to communicate about the needs of daily life and business.

Having read Marco Polo recently, I'm content to have regional currencies which are more-or-less interchangable: the gold Ducat in this kingdom is close enough to the gold Florin in the adjacent kingdom. But, the farther you get from home, the more you might find people squinting and frowning at your Ducats and Florins, and, at some point, you just might have to go to a money-lender to have your gold weighed and exchanged for the local equivalent. It's not going to be a major aspect of your life, unless you spend a lot of time traveling from one end of the continent to the other. I can't stop you from doing that, but I don't expect it from you initially...

You will each tell me what kind of lifestyle your character chooses to adopt, and she will pay a monthly upkeep out of her funds to support it. If you have a Business (recall that people rated this anywhere from 0 to 9 in importance) - points in a Craft or Profession - you can choose to run it, in which case you'll have an income between adventures. You'll also have less free time. Otherwise, you are an "adventurer" and are just living off the spoils of your adventuring, with expenses and no income.

If you want to do something special between adventures or have any special purchases, building projects, or whatever, we'll discuss and role-play it, as appropriate.

It's hard to reconcile the following two desires:

"My character wants to build a medium-sized generic keep." "OK, pay 50,000 GP and you can move in in six months."

and

"I like to roleplay some upkeep but not all. For example, outfitting a keep but not buying the weekly groceries."

One person wants to outfit a keep and the other finds that boring.

What should I have asked that I didn't?

Just one question was offered:

Do people prefer cooperative with the party or competitive against it?

That's very interesting. Since I'm having everybody be non-evil to start, I'm hoping that people will be cooperative. It does seem to end up more fun for all.