Walking away from a game...

[Hussar]

I've been pretty fortunate that most of the people I've gamed with have been reasonably decently socially adjusted. There's been a few exceptions, stinky gamer being probably the most memorable (it's bad when you have gamer funk at 12 oclock on a Sunday morning, miss). But, overall, I've never really had to deal with the truly socially dysfunctional.

Although, I did have a narcoleptic guy in my online game for a while. Could never tell if his connection dropped or he did. Fortunately, that was a short experience.

 

[scourger]

The last game I left was a 3.5 D&D game. It was run by a long-time player, first time DM. He made a couple of rookie mistakes at first but genreally did well. What did me in was other players dominating the story and the action. After a few months of play, it all started to feel familiar; and a bit of a grind. When my character finally died with certainty, I took a "break" that lasted several months. I came back and played another character whose player quit. That was fun because the other player really min/maxed it. But, I missed one session where the module concluded; and that was the end. The DM ran 2 of the trilogy but was done in by the other players' actions: greed and lack of appreciation. I know he'll never run that game again, and he may never DM again. Kinda sad for him, but he and two others of us still game together and have fun with other RPGs.

Before that, I quit a 1e nostalgia game for similar reasons. It was the same group, but we had more members back then. I felt betrayed by the other characters' cowardice that resulted in my paladin getting killed. I had another character, but I realized that I was just doing the same things and expecting different results (the definition of insanity). I understood that I would always be looking for a more heroic (storytelling & powergaming) game but the others were perfectly happy with a more "cautious" brand of tactics & strategy. The same thing had happened with the same group in some prior games, and I didin't want to be accused of bringing in a "revenge character" when my replacement was as cowardly as everyone else. So, I didn't show up for the rest of it.

 

[Dave0047]

Haha! I wasn't done yet:

Game #1.5 - Star Wars Saga Edition
This was right after Star Wars Saga Edition had just come out. I got a couple of friends together for a game since the books were new, and thought that the new rules were vastly superior to the Revised d20 stuff Wizards had previously done. I was going to try to GM a roleplaying game for the second time ever, and this time it was a setting I was more familiar with.

Two of the four of them rolled Jedi, but we also had a Scoundrel and a droid. I explained theat we were going to be playing a Rebellion Era campaign (where there were few Jedi) but I wasn't opposed to the concept of two Jedi sticking together to increase their chances of survival. We used David Bezio's intro adventure for our first session, and it went swimmingly. We continued on for a few weeks, until I tried to have a cool encounter where the party would be captured and taken aboard a Star Destroyer for further adventuring. To accomplish this, I had them come across an Imperial outpost that was being used as a staging point to land troops in the area (sorry, don't remember much else about it at the moment lol). The party entered the outpost only to find it empty, and were then suddenly surrounded by roughly 20 Stormtroopers and two Stormtrooper sergeants. Instead of surrendering and getting detained, they tried to stay and fight.

The way I designed the outpost, it was nearly impossible for the Stormtroopers to throw grenades directly inside the structure (I made it at least somewhat defendable). So, I started off having them conga-line into the outpost where they quickly met their end at the hands of two Jedi using Force Slam and Move Object. I then started to flood the outpost after sending the whole unit in, but the party had a pretty decent set-up and managed to completely decimate the Stormtroopers, even turning the last two troopers on each other with Mind Trick.

I had written the encounter supposedly "overwhelming" enough to scare them into submitting, but they didn't care, and weren't fans of getting caught.

Later, I thought it would be funny to lead them to a Rancor cave. I was planning on just scaring them again, having them run like crazy out of the cave, but once again they decided differently. In an awesome display of power over the Force (and the rules), one of the Jedi used Move Object to lift the Rancor into the air by about five feet. He maintained it from round to round which allowed the rest of the party the time (and safety) to shoot the crap out of it until the Jedi was no longer holding an extremely dangerous enemy at bay, but using it as a puppet, making it move around the cave as he willed it.

I was actually impressed with their creativity in solving the situation, but as a participant in the game I was displeased with the level of power-gamey-ness they displayed on a regular basis.

I'm not sure if I've explained exactly how much they tried to destroy the game (which they had said they were trying to do a few times), but they constantly tried to overwhelm NPC's and have 100% control of every situation. It was one of my first few times GMing as I said, so this was my first experience with players who had read more than I had, and were trying to take advantage of everything they could.

After a week or two more of similar things, I magically had a "schedule change" come out of nowhere and couldn't run the session any more. I know, it was a cop-out, but I was honestly not having any fun and didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings.

 

[Phat Lute]

I think I've walked out on a total of three different games.

The first one was Vampire: The Masquerade. I had the books for a good long while, but this was the first time I had tried playing with a group, and I found one online. The core group was all friends, but they didn't seem so overtly cliquish enough that I felt like an outsider. The storyteller was extremely organized and knowledgeable about every possible rule and variant.

However, the first problem was that they would only share knowledge about the chronicle in session and in character, there was no "out of character" knowledge within the group. And in character, they weren't sharing much. So my first session, when someone sent vampire hunters to kill us, I immediately started to retaliate. No one said anything or tried to stop me. The NPC behind it turned out to be the "big bad" of the chronicle and it made things very ugly.

Still, I was really getting to like my character.

What I also didn't know at the time was that every single one of them had ideas about "winning" the game with various secret plots against their fellow PCs. I had no idea and no secret plots of my own. This turned out to be the main reason why they didn't share knowledge with other players. It had nothing to do with roleplaying. They were all hoping to get the advantage over one another. And I wasn't in on it at all.

It turns out that one of the players, the one who hosted the game in his basement, had invested quite a bit of time and effort into how and when he would kill each of our characters off when he got bored with the chronicle or (it seems) the focus turned away from him.

Fortunately (?) one of the players was the storyteller's fiance. She 'found out' that the other player was an assassin and was about to kill us all off one by one. We confronted his character. His character was secretly a tricked out Assamite with every combat advantage possible. He was certain that even though this wasn't according to plan, he'd kill us all off regardless.

But I was a Ravnos, with illusion powers, and he knew from experience that I could a fairly creative one at that. I created several dozen copies of myself, scattered, and while he tried to figure out which one was me, I explained how completely hosed he was. "I'm going to walk out of here, and if you come after me again, you'll never know what hit you. Is the light at the intersection really green? Is that really a truck rushing toward you? Is that the handle or the blade of your sword? You will never be sure of anything ever again." And so on.

As I went on, his face got redder and redder. He finally leapt up from the table, overturning it, and yelled at everyone to get out. So I did, and I didn't bother coming back either or even trying to contact any of them again.

The other two were fairly pathetic Dungeons and Dragons groups. Disorganized, uncreative, predictable, players with poor hygiene and ill manners, both with a significant other in the mix that wasn't all that interested in playing. They could have been ripped out of a bad web comic.

 

[Sean-Khan]

Mort, I don't know if anyone's mentioned this before, I didn't have time to read whole thread and it seemed to derail a lot - to me it looks like GM described what he'd like the game to be, and then all the munchkin players decided they want to be one of those rare magic users in the world, and exceptionally powerful - and you are the only person who did as GM wanted.

The poor GM just don't have stomach to say no to players who are excited about their character ideas.

 

[Tewligan]

I will agree with this. In my games, nothing is off the table, at least in theory, as long as it's well and tastefully done.

"Seriously, guys - if you're going to make your character a rapist, be tasteful about it, okay? I run a classy table!"

 

[pogre]

I usually DM and have had to kick out a few players, but I did walk out on one game as a player:

1991
Get invited to a D&D game. Roll up a character as per the DM's instructions. I show up and there are 17! people sitting around a giant playing surface created with two ping-pong tables. We start playing and 90 minutes later are still haggling over the price of torches in town. I thank the DM. Grab my stuff and remark that it looks like he has plenty of players and take off.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

"Seriously, guys - if you're going to make your character a rapist, be tasteful about it, okay? I run a classy table!"

The wise suggestion was given to drop this subject, but you just had to dig in, eh?

Have you ever watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the TV series?

How far did you get?

[sblock=spoiler]Did you ever see the episode where Spike tried to rape Buffy? I think it was Season 7. It was absolutely chilling. Even the actors said afterward they were uncomfortable with the performance. But you know what? It was believable. It was dramatic. And I think it got the point across.

That said, the character of Spike was still not beyond redemption. He did some horrible things. He was a soulless vampire, a liar, a murderer, and now, a rapist. But still not beyond redemption. And still, he did these horrible things, but had good qualities.

Yes, this basically illustrates that you can be a "likeable" rapist, if nobody knows your dirty secret.

As soon as your secret is out, all bets are off. But it is do-able.[/sblock]

Like I said, it isn't for everyone, and nobody has yet done such a think in-character in our games, but NPCs have been known to. Several PCs have been portrayed as believable victims of such heinous acts. 'Tasteful' doesn't mean what you think it does in this case.

What we do at our game table is our business, but thanks for your (uninformed) opinion. I guess that was like shooting fish in a barrel for you, eh?

We're mature enough to handle it. Others have said there is nothing mature about portraying this stuff, but like you, they don't seem to know the context. Like the entire point of this thread, you can always walk away. Hasn't happened to me or the others in my group who DM though, so I guess we're doing something right.

 

[Mort]

Mort, I don't know if anyone's mentioned this before, I didn't have time to read whole thread and it seemed to derail a lot - to me it looks like GM described what he'd like the game to be, and then all the munchkin players decided they want to be one of those rare magic users in the world, and exceptionally powerful - and you are the only person who did as GM wanted.

The poor GM just don't have stomach to say no to players who are excited about their character ideas.

This was a well established game, with my friend and I being the only 2 not in it since high school, so maybe the DM was just comfortable with the other players doing what they wanted.

That said, from what I recall, the DM certainly had no problem saying no to EVERYTHING else; part of the reason I bailed.

For example, I built a tracker. Yet in the 3 sessions I was there, despite the fact that our actual mission was tracking someone down, the DM did not once let me successfuly follow a trail; this in spite of the fact that on one of the rolls I got ridiculously lucky and rolled a 45 when an "impossible" check is around 20 (deadlands has exploding dice and I think I just kept rolling 12 after 12), the DM was "generous enough" to tell me magic was blocking any tracking attempt (which in D&D I'll take, Deadlands not so much). He didn't have any qualms about sending us in the wrong direction when I critically fumbled either (can't succeed but can easily fail is a bad recipe in my book!).

This was one of several issues that had me call it quits after 3 sessions.

 

[Wik]

We're mature enough to handle it. Others have said there is nothing mature about portraying this stuff, but like you, they don't seem to know the context. Like the entire point of this thread, you can always walk away. Hasn't happened to me or the others in my group who DM though, so I guess we're doing something right.

So it was done on an episode of buffy, it has to be okay? Weird defence, but okay.

You know, I'm not gonna chime in on your games or anything. But if I were at your table, I'd be walking out. I don't play in games where things like this become a component.

Does that mean I'm not a "mature" gamer? Maybe, maybe not. I'm okay with being "immature" if it means that there are certain things in my life that I don't feel comfortable acting out.

After all, your cast of buffy were getting paid to act it out, so an audience could ponder the scene second hand, and the scene would have an ending that the crew knew about beforehand. Your average RPer isn't getting paid, is experiencing it all firsthand (along with his unwitting tablemantes), and has no idea how the scene is going to be resolved when he goes into it.

So, do what you will, but I don't think getting angry at someone for jokingly teasing a pretty strong comment is the way to go. Because I for one can tell you that I'd be walking away from your table, because in my mind, the "mature" thing to do would be to not discuss something so serious in what is, basically, just a game.

My two cents.