A good lesson from bad tabletop gaming.
Alright, so, this isn’t going to be nearly as crazy as some of the other stories on here but I hope it will be educational for those looking to learn from these and entertaining enough to those looking for drama.
So let’s assign names.
DM - DM
DM ‘s Wife - DMW
Me - Me
My wife - wife
My wife’s sister - sister
Friend of DM - DMF
The partner of friend of DM - DMFP
This was about 2 maybe 4 years ago. I was in a 7 person group counting the DM. This would be my wife’s second game, her sister’s first game in person game, and the DM’s friend’s partner’s first game. The DM, myself, DM’s wife, and DM’s friend had all been in plenty of campaigns and even ran games before. I have even done games with wife, DM, and DMW before that went great.
We started this biweekly (twice a month roughly) game by first playing “the quiet year” and that was entertaining enough. Lots of shenanigans and silly things being put onto a map and honestly seemed like a good enough way to put some world building onto the players. Based on this I thought that the chemistry of the group was good.
DMW was playing a paladin, I was playing a changeling bard, wife was playing first an artificer then changed to a warlock, sister was playing a rogue, DMF was a wizard, DMFP was a fighter.
Preface: I do not like playing bards in this game but I love playing support characters in others. I specifically chose this time because I felt comfortable trying to just run a supporting character during combat and to try and do the party face stuff. Typically I play combat focused characters and let the others shine during non-combat encounters. I was surprised how much I really enjoyed this character I had created and still think about trying to make him again when new campaigns are brought up.
Now I mentioned this to the people above the table. Telling them I wanted to do the talking and take a step back during fighting by just supporting them. They all seemed to understand and the first couple of sessions rolled smoothly.
I started to notice some cracks forming when Wife and Sister kept going off on their own to do some hijinks that didn’t directly help the party. There was also a serious lack of communication happening outside of the group. It would be a few days before the session and I would reach out to the group chat seeing if the date was still sticking, only to be met with a cancellation by DMF or a need for a reschedule. On top of all this the sessions were more heavily combat focused. The very few social encounters we got were either trivial with no rolls or being spear headed and hoarded by the sister’s rogue character.
We got to about level 4 or 5 (about 10-13 sessions) and this continued. I brought this up above table to sister after a session that I would like to do the talking if we can. I had a +11 or somethis to the persuasion (from my memory) at the very least and her answer to this was “I know that but my character doesn’t know that.” Honestly, I was taken aback and should’ve just been more forceful with my wants at that point. But instead I reached out to the DM personally concerning the issues at hand (minus the scheduling one, I am used to being the one who confirms dates). We talked about whether or not to continue with the character or switch to a new one. I mulled it over in my head and decided to try one more session with my Bard before switching. I informed the DM of what I would be doing. After another combat heavy session with role play dominated by the rogue I decided to switch to an artificer who was going to be the most armored and had a terrible charisma score. In other words a combat focused character who provides nothing to outside of combat encounters. Now I informed the DM of this and I made sure the character was alright with him. After the approval I got him all ready to go for our next session.
Guess what that session turned out to be? An interrogation. An entire session dedicated to talking. On the session I had told the DM I was bringing my new combat focused character to.
I sat through the session and the way it ended told me that the next session would also be about talking. I talked with my wife about what was going on. I mulled it over in my head for about a week then told the group “it was fun but I am done” and stopped going. Not a single message in the group chat after that. No cancellation, no group ending, nothing. I asked my wife if she was going to the next session and apparently after I quit everyone just stopped going. No one held the dates together, no one talked to each other, the group just ceased to exist once I left.
So always remember kids, no table top roleplaying is better than bad tabletop roleplaying and when your needs aren’t being met you owe them nothing just leave.