How would your group handle this somewhat delicate situation with a player?

[Charwoman Gene]

I'm crediting joe (per his own admission) with being tactless but not unobservant. I am willing to assume that if the player were of the mind that "If my wife is around I'd rather be with her than gaming." that he'd have picked up on that vibe.

That's a huge assumption. Huge.

Why do gamers fall for this type of post? People post a biased, possibly misleading take on a situation, then people start jumping in on all sides.

 

[Rel]

That's a huge assumption. Huge.

Why do gamers fall for this type of post? People post a biased, possibly misleading take on a situation, then people start jumping in on all sides.

I "fell" for nothing. I've simply given my thoughts based on the information given and from here I trust that joethelawyer will mishandle the situation to the betterment of his group.

 

[Cadfan]

Cadfan, I'm quoting this part of the OP.



I'm crediting joe (per his own admission) with being tactless but not unobservant. I am willing to assume that if the player were of the mind that "If my wife is around I'd rather be with her than gaming." that he'd have picked up on that vibe.

Instead he says that the "rule" appears to be that "if she is home, he has to be home". The implication I draw from that is that she may have stuff come up that she wants to do in the evening and, if so, he may have the "night off to do as he wishes". That smacks rather too much of a master/servant relationship for me.

Again, I'm not saying this is the way it IS. Only that our available information seems to point to this impression. As I mentioned before, if the player is the only one passing this impression along to the rest of the group, it might represent things as they truly are or he could just be scapegoating his wife for his lack of spine.

The implication I took from it is that she graduated from nursing school, and now works as a nurse, which often means working nights and weekends. I took "if she's home" to indicate her work schedule. The stuff about whether its a need to be with his wife, or a lack of freedom, is Joe's impression, and I do not view it as trustworthy in this instance.

Affecting my interpretation of that impression are three things:

1. The fact that the OP doesn't actually say that this guy is missing games, or that they can't play. The OP is just upset that he can't schedule a regular day of the week, not that he can't game at all. When viewed in comparison to the friend's interest in being with his wife, scheduling uncertainties that have not yet managed to be a problem (save Thanksgiving weekend) don't rate.

2. The fact that the OP says that he's free most nights. This suggests that they CAN get together and play, he's just offended that he can't schedule a regular week night.

3. The fact that the OP called his friend the "wussy" in the relationship. That bespeaks a certain... frat boy attitude that views the incursion of women into his ability to hang out with his friends when and how he wants as some sort of attack.

I'd find it offensive if my friends told me that they couldn't deal with ad hoc scheduling so that I could, you know, have a healthy marriage. My interest there vastly outweighs theirs. And in the meantime I already find it offensive that people are discussing whether this woman is a domineering harpy, or whether this guy is, I quote, "p-whipped," because he's making something that is extremely likely to be a very reasonable decision which his friends admit they could very easily accomodate if they could just be bothered to do so.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Fifth Element & justanobody - stop sniping at one another (in fact I recommend stop replying to one another in this thread at all, and it might even be worth using the 'ignore' feature, since you appear to be winding each other up.

Thanks

 

[Rel]

The implication I took from it is that she graduated from nursing school, and now works as a nurse, which often means working nights and weekends. I took "if she's home" to indicate her work schedule. The stuff about whether its a need to be with his wife, or a lack of freedom, is Joe's impression, and I do not view it as trustworthy in this instance.

I understand and respect your points. That I and others have a different interpretation of the information given, no doubt based on different mindsets and experiences, surprises me not at all.

I'd find it offensive if my friends told me that they couldn't deal with ad hoc scheduling so that I could, you know, have a healthy marriage. My interest there vastly outweighs theirs.

I think that I'm holding open the possibility that theirs is not turning out to be a "healthy marriage". If (and again I freely concede that this is an enormous "If") this turns out to be the case, perhaps bringing the situation to the fore, even over something as trivial as gaming, will improve their marriage. But hey, I'm just some guy on the internet who has absolutely no stake in this whatsoever. I'm just sippin' coffee and dashing off a few spare thoughts.

 

[jbear]

I have two groups. Every player is married and has one, althogh most two kids. The logistics is a nightmare, and from a dnd junkies point of view, I have had to chill out about arranging game nights big time.

No one is p-whipped, no one has a psycho control freak at home beating them when the come in the door. Everyone has families, responsibilities and a lives that doesnt have the game in the centre of their orbit.

So I take it with philosophy: once a month for 3 or 4 hours or not at all.

Definitely if I was the player and the DM came at me with an agressive attitude like some who have posted here the only response from me would be just as agressive... and it would probably all spiral down the rabbit hole into some wierd street fight with katanas... ehem... actually no it wouldnt, but it would be a good reason to stop playing...

So I don't know what advice I can give you that you havent already received apart from breathe deep, stay chilled and spend some feat slots on enhancing your diplomacy skills...

Meanwhile see if you can interest new players in joining the game, or beginning a new campaign. That way if you play the new game 3 times a month, it doesnt matter if you only play the other game once a month.

 

[Krensky]

3. The fact that the OP called his friend the "wussy" in the relationship. That bespeaks a certain... frat boy attitude that views the incursion of women into his ability to hang out with his friends when and how he wants as some sort of attack.

Careful with the offensive stereotypes there Cadfan. The word you want is chauvinist or jack-ass, not frat-boy.

 

[Obryn]

Assume for a moment that some of the theories here about the wife "forbidding" the husband to have a weekly game night are correct. If that situation were reversed and the wife were posting to complain that her husband refused to allow her to spend an evening with her friends once a week, the cries of "Lose that Zero and get with a Hero" would be deafening.

If that is really what is going on here, I don't think it is the place of the gaming group to intervene in their marital issues. BUT, I do think it bodes poorly for their marriage if she's making demands like that. Because he will grow resentful (probably quietly resentful from similar marriages I've seen) and that kind of poison leads to all manner of bad things eventually.

I will concede that there are any number of other possibilities, not the least of which is that he really would rather spend time with his wife and is simply using her as an excuse to bow out of the game. I think that makes him a jerk for painting her as the "bad guy" and is why they need to be direct with him about wanting to set a regular day and time so they can all quit this little dance.

Well, here's the angle I'm taking...

I'm fairly-recently-married, and I remember how other married folks used to look to me. And I'm noting that joethelawyer is not married, and trying to look at this situation as if I were still unmarried, and trying to understand the dynamics of a married couple.

Again, I have zero idea what's actually going on, but I'm giving the guy & his wife the benefit of the doubt, rather than the self-professed negative-charisma, unmarried guy.

-O

 

[Desdichado]

This is one reason why I like gaming with a bunch of guys who are more or less in the same situation as me. We're all (with one exception) married, and we all (with two exceptions) have kids.

Do we have times where familial conflicts make it difficult to schedule gaming? Yes, absolutely.

Do we have times where professional conflicts make it difficult to schedule gaming? Yes, occasionally.

Do we have a regular gaming cadence and schedule? No... we tried but there were too many variables, so we decided the best we could do was approximate once every other week for 5-6 hours or so on a Friday or Saturday night, whichever ended up being most convenient to the most players.

Do we have occassions when most of the group can get together except one or two guys? Yes, frequently.

Do we do our best to work with the guy in that situation? Yes, of course. We're friends, after all.

Does everyone always get exactly what they want in terms of the gaming schedule? Of course not.

Sometimes we reschedule. Sometimes we game shorthanded. Sometimes a player has a bad run of it where his schedule doesn't align with the rest of the group for a couple months or so at a time.

However, we understand that that's the realities of playing with a bunch of people who have real lives and real life responsibilities, who can't reasonably be asked to make gaming their #1 priority, so we work around it as best we can.

Sucks for me sometimes; since mid-November or so, I've been the guy who can't make a session. But that's the way it works.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

I don't think it really matters what kind of relationship the schedule-disrupting gamer has. The other three guys should just play the game when they can, leave the invitation open to have the fourth gamer show up whenever he can, and don't expect much attendance out of him.

Maybe he's disinterested in the game; maybe she's over-bearing; maybe he can't be trusted and she's making sure he won't cheat again; maybe gaming is very low on his priorities; maybe she has a terminal illness and he's choosing to spend as much time as he can with her, and it would be extremely douchey to make him pick gaming over her; maybe the other three guys smell bad; maybe the guy is a demi-lich and needs to guard his phylactery every now and again because adventurers keep storming his tower, and he's using his wife as an excuse. None of that has any impact on joethelawyer's best course of action, though. He's best served by playing with the other two guys who show up more often, and not expecting the fourth guy to show up very often. He might also want to try to get another player or two.