Roles players are assigned
In every group, there tends to be certain roles handed out: Map keeper, note-taker, etc. How do you choose who takes what role, and how?
In every group I’ve been in, I’ve almost always been the GM. As such, the players tend to turn to me to decide when and where we’re playing. I coordinate everyone’s schedules so we can play each week.
There’s almost always the leader of the group; the player who stands out the most and usually leads the party in decisions. They often choose roles inside the game that facilitate leadership. In my first RPG, Star Wars, there was one player who was the smart tank, a soldier. He rallied the people, and handled the party’s inventory.
I like to assign the role of map-maker in some games. They take any map I draw up on the battlemat, and translate it to grid paper for the heroes to look over later.
My wife is currently the funny note-taker. She writes down any witty dialogue said during the game.
We have the XP Calculator. I spout off how much experience each monster they fought gave and then he divides up the XP for everyone. He often also keeps track of the group’s inventory.
What roles do you have in your group?
We have a little bit of everything. When I play, I usually take the leader position as I have a strong personality. I also tend to be able to make a decision faster than other folks at the table. But I don’t ever set out to create a character based upon being a leader. It usually just turns out that way.
When I’m DMing, my players don’t set out to create characters based upon their personalities, but they do create characters based upon the needs of the group.
By the way, if you’re looking to figure out what kinds of players will do what, check out my post on Player Motivations.
http://rpgcentric.com/?p=284
I usually play online, and as such, out of game sorts of roles are limited to “player feed back” and “actually show up, please.” Map-making, note-keeping and all of that tends to fall squarely on the GM, in online games. At least in my experience.
I guess we do have assigned roles in my group. We carpool so one of us is the assigned driver to the place where we game and one of us is the host.
On the table, we have a kill tracker and an initiative tracker. The rest of the work gets dumped to the DM.
Nice picture by the way, may I ask where did you get it?
With my group, I seem to end up doing a great deal of the work. There doesn’t tend to be a map-keeper, but if there is, and it’s not the GM, odds are it’s me. If we need a note-taker–usually in offline games because we can’t just reference the chat logs–it’s also usually me. In online games, on the other hand, it’s usually just my job to remember things, since I reread the chatlogs for fun and to hunt down clues; even my GMs tend to ask me what such and such hastily generated NPC’s name was again, what color they rendered that person’s text in, who killed whom…
And then, despite the fact that at least one of the other players is far better suited to it than I, I end up as the leader. And the face. Typically by accident. For some reason I just have a good idea what to do in any given situation; it’s gotten to the point where one other person’s response to an unexpected event was to yell at my character to start giving orders. (Though it was blasted annoying during one session; my character showed up for a negotiation incognito, IC because it would make a point and OOC because I wanted to see someone else taking the initiative for once. The latter goal didn’t work out too well.)
One job you have not listed is the “Mini Mover”. We play at a unusually large table (5′ x 10′) so whom ever is closest to the minis becomes the appointed mover. Each player tells the DM his or her action and the Mover moves the mini accordingly. This started after people had to keep getting out of their chairs and walk around the table to move their mini, delaying the game, and being generally annoying in the progress.
[...] guys and dolls, it’s your old pal Patrick. So I have my own two cents to add to this topic of discussion and I’m going to use my own group(s) as [...]