roguerouge said:
....The crucial difference is that my girlfriend actually wanted to play. Those married couples wanted to play. They actively participated in the character creation process. In short, they wanted to game because it would give them pleasure.....if someone is not interested in the character creation process, they don't want to game. They are there for another reason.
Roguerouge hit it right on the head, if they have no interest in the game and are just there for somebody else it isn't going to work. I'm having a similiar problem right now with games that I've been putting together for my kids, they have friends participating who are there to be with friends but aren't any good at role playing the game itself. I'm optimistically hoping they improve.
They key is to initiatate a discussion to phase them out of the game after they've played for long enough to realize that they personally aren't enjoying it and to get the person who brought them to the game to agree. And as for my Buddy's Girlfriend story (long but entertaining).....
......my weekly gaming group began in 1982 back when I was in college and my best buddy enthusiastically wanted to play. But the girl he was dating at the time would not allow him to do anything without her so he rolled her up a character so that she could play too. For the next six months she was the bump on the log, who had no interest in the game. She was also angry that one of his ex-girlfriends also played in the group, which was not helped by the fact that this same player helped with her character development too, making both of their playing characters sisters.
I iniitally thought that maybe she just didn't like the character he created for her and suggested to both us them that she roll one up a new one she might enjoy more. She did, a sneaky thief, and did enjoy playing more, using it to get revenge against a male player who she now hated worse than the ex-girlfriend. First she set up his playing character to get blamed for a theft that she did. Then two games later she killed his playing character in-game.
It turns out that the murder was her 'swan song' as she then convinced my buddy to do other things on game nights the next two weeks, during which the other characters moved on without them. But he still wanted to play and asked me if I could set up a pick-up game to bring their characters back into the game. None of my regular players were interested so my Buddy convinced two of his other semi-gaming friends to join them.
So myself and two other guys block out a night for the pick-up game. The couple are 45-minutes late in arriving and we promptly begin. She sits and says not one word while the four of us game for an hour or so. She then declares that the two them have to leave. This annoys not only myself and the other two friends as we have all been enjoying the game plus storywise they still aren't even close to catching up with the other game.
This conversation gets exacerbated when we discover the reason they have to go - she wants to watch a program on television (this was in pre-VCR days). I offer to let her watch it on a tv in our home but that is unacceptable to her. The other three of us turn to my buddy, as we had all changed our plans to play this game at his request. He says nothing, stands up, and leaves with her. Needless to say, the two of them don't return the following Sunday.
He and I stay buddies but the only games he comes to again for the next eighteen months are ones that take place when she is out of town. He starts his own gaming group which includes both guys who were at the pick-up game but she eventually sabatages that too and it folds. When he eventually breaks up with her he rejoins our game on a weekly basis, which lasts for two years until he starts dating (and later marries) a Fundamentalist who convinces him that D&D is evil.
