Aesthetic Monk
Explorer
I need a bit of game-related counseling here, I think. I'll try to not ramble on too much.
I just got an email from a guy who's been DMing a campaign for our little once-a-week D&D group. I don't actually know him all that well "IRL," even though I helped him move and I've gamed with him for parts of a couple years now, but I know that he's been going through some hard times, and his annoucement today that he was suspending his playing and DMing for (at leeast) the rest of the summer was a little surprising, but maybe not much, under the circumstances.
I understand that people have busy lives, that gaming isn't and shouldn't always be a priority, and all that, and I'm not upset with this DM (although I was having fun, and I'll miss the character I was playing if we don't get back to it, as it looks like we won't).
But I have to put this in the context of how this group's gone. I helped form a group with this DM midsummer last year with the intent to run Age of Worms. I would DM, he'd play, and we'd find some other players, which we did. It was my first foray into 3.5 DMing, which he knew, and although I sunk a lot of prep time into it, it wasn't quite going as well as I'd wanted it to. Suffice it to say that after about three sessions, I was informed by this guy that, more or less, my DMing services were no longer wanted. It hurt; I won't lie. And I skipped the next session, but I've (mostly) come to terms with it and found it to be the best decision, though I still don't like how it was handed to me, and the reasons I was given for it were less than completely honest. (Though this was never mentioned, I'd ended up killing his housemate's character, and the housemate more or less stomped out and said he wouldn't continue. It was a bad kill on my part, but the response was irritating.)
Anyway, like I said, I mostly got over that, and, lo and behold, the housemate was back playing again, with my cofounder DMing. I went back to playing and had a pretty good time, but the homebrew campaign ended prematurely due mainly to personal reasons on the DM's part. Sometime along the way, the housemate had dropped out anyway.
To speed this up a bit, one of the other players took over DMing, and he ran two abortive FR campaigns before annoucning earlier this summer that he and his wife, who was also playing but who'd stopped coming recently, were taking the summer (at least) off. By this time, we'd brought a couple of other people in, so we weren't down to zero, but we'd lost three of the more-or-less original group in less than a year. We started up Shackled City, got through several weeks of that, and then this.
So, here's the rub. I've enjoyed playing, I've liked the individual members of the group, but I'm (maybe selfishly) frustrated that things are, once again, not working out, and I'm leery about resuming playing with this group should it ever re-form. Not sure if I'm asking for anything here, but ... is my experience *kind* of extreme, even for a group of busy adult gamers? I feel like this group is snakebit.
I just got an email from a guy who's been DMing a campaign for our little once-a-week D&D group. I don't actually know him all that well "IRL," even though I helped him move and I've gamed with him for parts of a couple years now, but I know that he's been going through some hard times, and his annoucement today that he was suspending his playing and DMing for (at leeast) the rest of the summer was a little surprising, but maybe not much, under the circumstances.
I understand that people have busy lives, that gaming isn't and shouldn't always be a priority, and all that, and I'm not upset with this DM (although I was having fun, and I'll miss the character I was playing if we don't get back to it, as it looks like we won't).
But I have to put this in the context of how this group's gone. I helped form a group with this DM midsummer last year with the intent to run Age of Worms. I would DM, he'd play, and we'd find some other players, which we did. It was my first foray into 3.5 DMing, which he knew, and although I sunk a lot of prep time into it, it wasn't quite going as well as I'd wanted it to. Suffice it to say that after about three sessions, I was informed by this guy that, more or less, my DMing services were no longer wanted. It hurt; I won't lie. And I skipped the next session, but I've (mostly) come to terms with it and found it to be the best decision, though I still don't like how it was handed to me, and the reasons I was given for it were less than completely honest. (Though this was never mentioned, I'd ended up killing his housemate's character, and the housemate more or less stomped out and said he wouldn't continue. It was a bad kill on my part, but the response was irritating.)
Anyway, like I said, I mostly got over that, and, lo and behold, the housemate was back playing again, with my cofounder DMing. I went back to playing and had a pretty good time, but the homebrew campaign ended prematurely due mainly to personal reasons on the DM's part. Sometime along the way, the housemate had dropped out anyway.
To speed this up a bit, one of the other players took over DMing, and he ran two abortive FR campaigns before annoucning earlier this summer that he and his wife, who was also playing but who'd stopped coming recently, were taking the summer (at least) off. By this time, we'd brought a couple of other people in, so we weren't down to zero, but we'd lost three of the more-or-less original group in less than a year. We started up Shackled City, got through several weeks of that, and then this.
So, here's the rub. I've enjoyed playing, I've liked the individual members of the group, but I'm (maybe selfishly) frustrated that things are, once again, not working out, and I'm leery about resuming playing with this group should it ever re-form. Not sure if I'm asking for anything here, but ... is my experience *kind* of extreme, even for a group of busy adult gamers? I feel like this group is snakebit.
I just finished writing up a single "module" and it is literally over 300 handwritten pages! Yeesh. But the details can help the rp experience, so I think it's worth it.
