Roleplaying is supposed to be fun, right?
Aug. 21st, 2006 08:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhienellethThis is one of those posts that at least 90% of you can skip. Cause I'm pretty not even 10% of you actually play RPGs, so...
Mostly in LJ, I talk about the girl's group I play with (mostly because that group has had the most drama lately, and not in a good way) but today I'm going to diverge and talk about the 'regular' group I play in.
Mostly in LJ, I talk about the girl's group I play with (mostly because that group has had the most drama lately, and not in a good way) but today I'm going to diverge and talk about the 'regular' group I play in.
So Bill has been a friend of Mark's for going on 17 years now. Once upon a time, they played epic, all night vampire games that at times got so intense they had to take a break, ostensibly to run to the local 7-11, but really to shake off the characters and the game for a bit. (This was tabletop Vampire, for the few gamers reading this.)
Bill also played D&D with Mark, and one of those games was a pretty high level game for more advanced roleplayers. In it, the characters are pretty damn powerful - enough, anyway, to take out entire armies by themselves, to occassionally challenge Gods (in 2nd edition - 3rd has made Gods more godlike, and thus much more dangerous and powerful) small countries, etc. But the tough stuff wasn't the combat or how much damage and havoc you could wreak, it was should you wipe out that army and save that small country? What are the consequences you didn't see before you waded in to play hero? Uh-oh, you killed such-and-such demi-God, but what you didn't realize what that his father, Zeus, has now declared a blood vendetta against you and yours...etc, etc. It was a wheels within wheels kind of game, and you had to be thinking all the time about all the angles, and still stay true to your character to survive it.
I describe this only so you all know the kind of game Bill has played with Mark in the past, successfully, I might add. Unfortunately, it was also during the play of this game that Bill first started faltering as a roleplayer. We don't quite know why, but several years ago Bill's roleplay ability took a dive, and has continued to dive into the abyssmal ever since. We suspect it has to do with his wife suddenly deciding to roleplay as well. She's been playing with us for approximately five years. And when I say "play", I use the term very loosely, indeed. She flips through catalogs and sleeps on the couch more than she plays, yet her very presence seems to leech the roleplay ability from Bill. A couple of years back, their (then) 11-year-old son decided to start playing as well. He's fourteen now, and the best I can say for him is that he at least knows where everything is on his character sheet, and which dice to roll for what. His mother still has to ask what to roll everytime she makes a skill check or a combat roll. After five years. Since neither one of them do anything, ever, we mostly ignore them and play what and how we play. Mark stopped trying to coax/lead/force them into the game a long time ago.
Fortunately for our sanity level, Bill and his wife work jobs that require them to work nearly every weekend, so we play with them for three hours a week on Tuesday nights, and we only do that because it's the only time Mark sees Bill, and they have seventeen years of friendship that Mark can't just flush. I say 'fortunately' because that leaves our twice monthly weekend gaming group blessedly free of the couch potatoes and Bill's increasingly bad roleplay. Except when they take vacation and have the weekend free. See, the people we play with on the weekends used to play with Bill back in the day. They hadn't played with him in several years until this last year, when 'everyone' got together to play, and both Bryan and Doug took me aside at different moments and asked "This is what you guys have to deal with every week?" Erm, yes. "Why??!" Because Mark and Bill have almost two decades of friendship behind them, and roleplay is Bill's only escape from work and the all consuming hobby of his martial arts (despite his poor efforts, Bill really, really wants to roleplay. He gets very depressed when we have to cancel a week.) Both Bryan and Doug looked at me for a second, and Bryan said "I understand.", and Doug shook his head as if to say "No amount of friendship would make me suffer this every week." And his unspoken words referred more to the wife and kid than they did to Bill, because Doug had spent the last hour in game trying to pull the kid's character into the game, and like always, said character resisted and continued to willfully do absolutely nothing.
We've managed to play several times without them, now, in the game they were in. Mark did not do this behind Bill's back, but told him he set things up deliberately to be able to separate the group, since Bill's family's schedule was such that they couldn't play very often. Doug particularly was thrilled by this. Bryan is more easy going and less affected either way.
This is all background material, so you understand the situation we found ourselves in this past weekend. We have a particular group of D&D characters we've been playing for...about 13 years now. They are, at long last, epic level. So the game has obviously risen to equally epic proportions. Proportions much like that long ago game I described way back in that second paragraph up at the beginning of this post. In fact, more so. Becuase these characters and this game were always kind of special and more of an advanced game. The core group of us - me, Mark, Bryan, and Bill - started out all playing mage characters. Mark, Bryan and I are all playing Wizards of High Sorcery from Krynn. Bill is playing a standard mage from Faerun. Doug entered the game at a slightly later date with a Bladesinger. We have, all of us, far surpassed the book workings for our characters. We've created new spells, a new magic system, Doug completely revamped and fleshed out the Bladesinger class, etc. (All except Bill, who has time and again turned away from the cool directions for his character that Mark has set up for him.) Anyway, Mark plans to run these characters well into becoming Gods themselves. He's always planned that, from the very beginning. They are already, respectively: Queen to the now resurrected Myth Drannor, Master of the Oder of White Robes, Master of the Conclave of High Sorcery, Master of the Tower of Palanthus, Imperial Ambassador of Myth Drannor - I could go on. These are high level characters in a high level game. So when Bill had this weekend off, Mark decided it was finally time to say something about Sherry and Cody (the wife and kid) particularly since Bill proved to us about a month ago that his roleplay ability mysteriously rises back to the way it used to be without their presence. The conversation went about as follows:
M: "Bill...do Sherry and Cody even enjoy roleplay? Cause it seems like they don't, and if that's the case, why have them come? They could spend three hours at home each week doing something they actually like."
B: "Of course they enjoy roleplay! What would make you ask that?"
M: "Um, because Sherry falls asleep on the couch every week and Cody just sits there, and neither one of them ever actually do anything in game."
B: (trotting out his tired excuse for them) "They're just inexperienced roleplayers. They don't have the years that the rest of us do..."
M: "Bill, Sherry's been playing with us for five years. She still doesn't know what dice to roll! This speaks of a certain indifference toward the game..."
B: "..."
M: "And she and Cody don't ever do anything in game."
B: "But they did well in that first level character game you ran last month."
M: "What about Star Wars every Tuesday, Bill?"
B: "Oh, well that's a different system; they don't understand it yet."
M: "Bill, it's exactly the same system as D&D! It's the D20 system!!"
B: "But it's a different setting, and they don't quite know what they should do..."
M: "It's Star Wars. They've seen the movies. If anything, it should be easier for them to visualize than D&D. They just don't seem to enjoy roleplay."
B: "Oh yes, they-"
M: "Look, this weekend's game is going to be an epic level game. They don't have characters of high enough level to play and survive, so they shouldn't play. If they want to come, fine, they can watch a movie or something in the other room."
B: "What about Moki and Kialla [their characters they've played in that game before]?"
M: "Where we're going, they won't survive. There's a big difference between 14th level and 23rd, Bill."
The convo continues a bit more, and Mark tells me about it later. It is clear to everyone but Bill that Sherry, at least, does not enjoy roleplay, and only comes because she's such a control freak she can't stand to let him do something without her. Cody is fourteen. He wants to play hack'n'slash, kill the monster, get the great magic item, and go home. That's not the kind of play we do. And every time cody attempts something in game, it's along the lines of "oooooh, shiny magic item, I'm going to go buy/win/steal it!" Bill comes down on him like a ton of bricks about what a mistake he's making. Dude, let him make his mistakes. He's 14! Let him try to steal from the wrong NPC. He'll learn. Unfortunately, the only thing Cody has learned is to sit still and be quiet or he'll get told how stupid he is. Very sad.
So Tuesday we play our usual night of Jedi and Sith, and both Sherry and Cody actually attempted to do...something. It was clear that Bill had talked to them. But then, at the end of the night, Bill tells Mark "Oh, about this weekend, they're going to play side characters."
Mark thinks back, but is pretty darn sure that wasn't one of the options he gave Bill on the phone. "Side characters? Bill, we're going to a city of the Gods. The guy who runs the stable will be 21st level. Everyone is epic level or higher in this place. If they play Kialla and Moki, they will probably die."
Bill ignores this as if Mark has not spoken, and so I got the happy task of calling and telling Bryan and Doug that yes, Bill, Sherry and Cody would be there. Poor Doug ranted and raved for about half an hour on the phone (not at me, more commiseratively), and then ended the conversation with "Well, I'm really glad you told me ahead of time, so I have the next few days to prepare myself."
Our only option at that point would have been to tell Bill "Dude, your wife and son suck as roleplayers. Don't bring them or don't come." Considering that this is one of only two weeks of vacation they get a year, that seemed pretty petty for one day. we obviously didn't do it.
So yes. They showed up. They played. Sort of. When we broke for lunch Bryan said "Sherry and Cody have sat their for five hours and done nothing. Aren't they bored?" Yes, I'm sure they were. Bill, on the other hand, played, but played poorly. He refuses to make a decision for his character as to a path to follow, or own up to the fact that a necromantic spell that steals hit points from hundreds of people, even if it is seconds before they die, is an evil act. They don't know they're seconds from death, they aren't volunteering their life force, they are having the life sucked from them by a mage who is greedily taking that life force for herself - hello, evil! (Ahem. Of course, I'm playing the whitest white robed Krynn wizard ever, so maybe I'm prejudiced.) But still, he couldn't own up to the fact that what he did was evil when faced with the consequences. He argued and argued and argued and wasted wat too much game time throwing a petulant little fit and making snide comments about it.
Doug, Bryan, Mark and I played as if they weren't there. I deliberately set it up so that we four were at the house early enough to pick seats close to each other, so that we could roleplay without having to talk over Bill, Sherry, or Cody. Because I'm sneaky like that. It wasn't horrible, because playing those characters is always epic and fun. But it would have been so much easier without them.
The good news? We're playing again Labor Day weekend. Without them. Thank Paladine.
Bill also played D&D with Mark, and one of those games was a pretty high level game for more advanced roleplayers. In it, the characters are pretty damn powerful - enough, anyway, to take out entire armies by themselves, to occassionally challenge Gods (in 2nd edition - 3rd has made Gods more godlike, and thus much more dangerous and powerful) small countries, etc. But the tough stuff wasn't the combat or how much damage and havoc you could wreak, it was should you wipe out that army and save that small country? What are the consequences you didn't see before you waded in to play hero? Uh-oh, you killed such-and-such demi-God, but what you didn't realize what that his father, Zeus, has now declared a blood vendetta against you and yours...etc, etc. It was a wheels within wheels kind of game, and you had to be thinking all the time about all the angles, and still stay true to your character to survive it.
I describe this only so you all know the kind of game Bill has played with Mark in the past, successfully, I might add. Unfortunately, it was also during the play of this game that Bill first started faltering as a roleplayer. We don't quite know why, but several years ago Bill's roleplay ability took a dive, and has continued to dive into the abyssmal ever since. We suspect it has to do with his wife suddenly deciding to roleplay as well. She's been playing with us for approximately five years. And when I say "play", I use the term very loosely, indeed. She flips through catalogs and sleeps on the couch more than she plays, yet her very presence seems to leech the roleplay ability from Bill. A couple of years back, their (then) 11-year-old son decided to start playing as well. He's fourteen now, and the best I can say for him is that he at least knows where everything is on his character sheet, and which dice to roll for what. His mother still has to ask what to roll everytime she makes a skill check or a combat roll. After five years. Since neither one of them do anything, ever, we mostly ignore them and play what and how we play. Mark stopped trying to coax/lead/force them into the game a long time ago.
Fortunately for our sanity level, Bill and his wife work jobs that require them to work nearly every weekend, so we play with them for three hours a week on Tuesday nights, and we only do that because it's the only time Mark sees Bill, and they have seventeen years of friendship that Mark can't just flush. I say 'fortunately' because that leaves our twice monthly weekend gaming group blessedly free of the couch potatoes and Bill's increasingly bad roleplay. Except when they take vacation and have the weekend free. See, the people we play with on the weekends used to play with Bill back in the day. They hadn't played with him in several years until this last year, when 'everyone' got together to play, and both Bryan and Doug took me aside at different moments and asked "This is what you guys have to deal with every week?" Erm, yes. "Why??!" Because Mark and Bill have almost two decades of friendship behind them, and roleplay is Bill's only escape from work and the all consuming hobby of his martial arts (despite his poor efforts, Bill really, really wants to roleplay. He gets very depressed when we have to cancel a week.) Both Bryan and Doug looked at me for a second, and Bryan said "I understand.", and Doug shook his head as if to say "No amount of friendship would make me suffer this every week." And his unspoken words referred more to the wife and kid than they did to Bill, because Doug had spent the last hour in game trying to pull the kid's character into the game, and like always, said character resisted and continued to willfully do absolutely nothing.
We've managed to play several times without them, now, in the game they were in. Mark did not do this behind Bill's back, but told him he set things up deliberately to be able to separate the group, since Bill's family's schedule was such that they couldn't play very often. Doug particularly was thrilled by this. Bryan is more easy going and less affected either way.
This is all background material, so you understand the situation we found ourselves in this past weekend. We have a particular group of D&D characters we've been playing for...about 13 years now. They are, at long last, epic level. So the game has obviously risen to equally epic proportions. Proportions much like that long ago game I described way back in that second paragraph up at the beginning of this post. In fact, more so. Becuase these characters and this game were always kind of special and more of an advanced game. The core group of us - me, Mark, Bryan, and Bill - started out all playing mage characters. Mark, Bryan and I are all playing Wizards of High Sorcery from Krynn. Bill is playing a standard mage from Faerun. Doug entered the game at a slightly later date with a Bladesinger. We have, all of us, far surpassed the book workings for our characters. We've created new spells, a new magic system, Doug completely revamped and fleshed out the Bladesinger class, etc. (All except Bill, who has time and again turned away from the cool directions for his character that Mark has set up for him.) Anyway, Mark plans to run these characters well into becoming Gods themselves. He's always planned that, from the very beginning. They are already, respectively: Queen to the now resurrected Myth Drannor, Master of the Oder of White Robes, Master of the Conclave of High Sorcery, Master of the Tower of Palanthus, Imperial Ambassador of Myth Drannor - I could go on. These are high level characters in a high level game. So when Bill had this weekend off, Mark decided it was finally time to say something about Sherry and Cody (the wife and kid) particularly since Bill proved to us about a month ago that his roleplay ability mysteriously rises back to the way it used to be without their presence. The conversation went about as follows:
M: "Bill...do Sherry and Cody even enjoy roleplay? Cause it seems like they don't, and if that's the case, why have them come? They could spend three hours at home each week doing something they actually like."
B: "Of course they enjoy roleplay! What would make you ask that?"
M: "Um, because Sherry falls asleep on the couch every week and Cody just sits there, and neither one of them ever actually do anything in game."
B: (trotting out his tired excuse for them) "They're just inexperienced roleplayers. They don't have the years that the rest of us do..."
M: "Bill, Sherry's been playing with us for five years. She still doesn't know what dice to roll! This speaks of a certain indifference toward the game..."
B: "..."
M: "And she and Cody don't ever do anything in game."
B: "But they did well in that first level character game you ran last month."
M: "What about Star Wars every Tuesday, Bill?"
B: "Oh, well that's a different system; they don't understand it yet."
M: "Bill, it's exactly the same system as D&D! It's the D20 system!!"
B: "But it's a different setting, and they don't quite know what they should do..."
M: "It's Star Wars. They've seen the movies. If anything, it should be easier for them to visualize than D&D. They just don't seem to enjoy roleplay."
B: "Oh yes, they-"
M: "Look, this weekend's game is going to be an epic level game. They don't have characters of high enough level to play and survive, so they shouldn't play. If they want to come, fine, they can watch a movie or something in the other room."
B: "What about Moki and Kialla [their characters they've played in that game before]?"
M: "Where we're going, they won't survive. There's a big difference between 14th level and 23rd, Bill."
The convo continues a bit more, and Mark tells me about it later. It is clear to everyone but Bill that Sherry, at least, does not enjoy roleplay, and only comes because she's such a control freak she can't stand to let him do something without her. Cody is fourteen. He wants to play hack'n'slash, kill the monster, get the great magic item, and go home. That's not the kind of play we do. And every time cody attempts something in game, it's along the lines of "oooooh, shiny magic item, I'm going to go buy/win/steal it!" Bill comes down on him like a ton of bricks about what a mistake he's making. Dude, let him make his mistakes. He's 14! Let him try to steal from the wrong NPC. He'll learn. Unfortunately, the only thing Cody has learned is to sit still and be quiet or he'll get told how stupid he is. Very sad.
So Tuesday we play our usual night of Jedi and Sith, and both Sherry and Cody actually attempted to do...something. It was clear that Bill had talked to them. But then, at the end of the night, Bill tells Mark "Oh, about this weekend, they're going to play side characters."
Mark thinks back, but is pretty darn sure that wasn't one of the options he gave Bill on the phone. "Side characters? Bill, we're going to a city of the Gods. The guy who runs the stable will be 21st level. Everyone is epic level or higher in this place. If they play Kialla and Moki, they will probably die."
Bill ignores this as if Mark has not spoken, and so I got the happy task of calling and telling Bryan and Doug that yes, Bill, Sherry and Cody would be there. Poor Doug ranted and raved for about half an hour on the phone (not at me, more commiseratively), and then ended the conversation with "Well, I'm really glad you told me ahead of time, so I have the next few days to prepare myself."
Our only option at that point would have been to tell Bill "Dude, your wife and son suck as roleplayers. Don't bring them or don't come." Considering that this is one of only two weeks of vacation they get a year, that seemed pretty petty for one day. we obviously didn't do it.
So yes. They showed up. They played. Sort of. When we broke for lunch Bryan said "Sherry and Cody have sat their for five hours and done nothing. Aren't they bored?" Yes, I'm sure they were. Bill, on the other hand, played, but played poorly. He refuses to make a decision for his character as to a path to follow, or own up to the fact that a necromantic spell that steals hit points from hundreds of people, even if it is seconds before they die, is an evil act. They don't know they're seconds from death, they aren't volunteering their life force, they are having the life sucked from them by a mage who is greedily taking that life force for herself - hello, evil! (Ahem. Of course, I'm playing the whitest white robed Krynn wizard ever, so maybe I'm prejudiced.) But still, he couldn't own up to the fact that what he did was evil when faced with the consequences. He argued and argued and argued and wasted wat too much game time throwing a petulant little fit and making snide comments about it.
Doug, Bryan, Mark and I played as if they weren't there. I deliberately set it up so that we four were at the house early enough to pick seats close to each other, so that we could roleplay without having to talk over Bill, Sherry, or Cody. Because I'm sneaky like that. It wasn't horrible, because playing those characters is always epic and fun. But it would have been so much easier without them.
The good news? We're playing again Labor Day weekend. Without them. Thank Paladine.
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-21 06:13 pm (UTC)I can't imagine being that paranoid about my spouse. Of course if I didn't like role playing then I certainly wouldn't hang about wasting my sweet time on it. *sigh*
Ah. How I wish, I wish we lived closer.
It is totally a bummer.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-21 08:41 pm (UTC)but fortunately, both of my games are filled with excellent people.
so not so much of the frustration these days.