Why the beer hate? (Forked Thread: What are the no-goes...)

[Desdichado]

It's not unusual for my group to have a few beers at a game session. I haven't seen any appreciable difference between pre-beer and post-beer behavior.

I personally don't drink at all, but a few beers with a game isn't a no-go.

 

[Desdichado]

It seems like an unfortunate barrier to construct when we could all benefit from having fewer barriers dividing us all...

I've gotten much less kumbaya over the years. I'm not interested in breaking down barriers between gamers anymore; I'm interested in finding gamers that are more compatible with me.

 

[Morrus]

We're perfectly happy to have folks drinking during our game. I don't tend to, but that's because I'm often driving. Nobody gets drunk.

Then again, we also smoke around our gaming table.

I can see how it would bother some poeple; but we're all fine with it, and so that's how it is.

 

[bastrak]

I don't encourage alcohol consumption at my table on the basis that it can have negative effects such as players making poor decisions, accidentally knocking beer over the table top, contributing to inattention, etc.

I personally don't drink alcohol during games I run or when I am a player in someone else's game.

However saying that I don't object to those players who want to drink beer or wine doing so in what I consider a reasonable fashion at my table or in anyone else's game.

 

[EricNoah]

I'd rather have them all totally wasted than have one bit of cigarette smoke in the room. I have pretty sensitive allergies. We do have a smoker in my game, and he's the only smoker I've known who wasn't a litterbug (he goes out for a smoke an hour, and he carries a container to take his butts home with him, god bless his heart!).

Working through the logic on my side, w/regards to the drinking thing ... a) it really isn't practical given the driving nearly everyone has to do; b) I'm friends with - but not super-duper-BFFs with - my gamers, and I think even years into our relationships we are probably not at the "let my hair down and be a total doofus - or drink in front of each other" stage; c) I don't know that I would ever truly be able to be a super-duper-BFF friend with someone who drank more than occaisionally (I don't know that we would have the opportunity to even meet).

I was at a game where one of the players was just little tipsy from a little drinking before the game. The rest of us found it to be ... just ... awkward. A faux-pas. A social no-no. None of us saw it as normal.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

I deal with it on a case by case basis. Some people are awful to game with while drinking. Others are perfectly fine.

This is reasonable.

The problem for me is that I don't want to find out who is awful to game with while drinking.

I don't consume alcohol. I'm not a social drinker, I've never acquired a taste for it. I've tried it a few times but I cant remember the last time I've had an alcoholic beverage, it's most certainly been years. It's not that I'm a religious person or my faith requires me not to. I've spent more time that I wish I had around people who consumed alcohol and while not all of them acted like asses (happy drunks are AWESOME), the few who have have made it pretty much a deal breaker for me.

If we're playing in my place, there's no consumption of alcohol and if you want to smoke you've got to go outside.

If I'm playing some place else and there's smoking inside the gaming location, I leave and I won't be back. If you want to poison yourself, that's fine. If you want to poison me, I have to option to not allow that to happen.

If people want to drink, that's fine. But I don't have to hang around you long enough to find out which one of you is going to start with the idiocy or the outbursts or the urinating into someone's book-bag when the leave the room. I understand that not everyone is going to act like that, but you cant tell me that alcohol doesn't aggravate the chance of otherwise rational people acting like idiots.

Don't get me wrong, I'll walk away from sober people who act like idiots even faster.

 

[Gilladian]

My friends and I play dnd to play dnd. We don't play to "hang out". We have one player who never drinks, because alcohol caused her serious family problems as a child; another player is diabetic, so he has to watch his sugar intake and alcohol can play havoc with that; the third and fourth players are father and 12-yr-old son - I'd be shocked if Scotty drank in front of Kyle; and my husband is number 5 - he's allergic to hopps, so it would have to be wine for him - and I'd kill him if he wasted our good Port drinking it up at the game table!! As the DM, I feel that drinking would impair my abilities too much - I get sleepy and silly when I'm tipsy.

I'm just as happy this way - the only drinking and gaming friend I had was fine with one beer, became a bit of an ass after two, and was unbearable with the third. But you could NOT explain it to him; he couldn't see his own behavior deteriorate. So we just quit gaming with him, and that was sad.

 

[Somebloke]

We sometimes drink in our games. The Sunday afternoon game, generally not (though we made an exception last time to celebrate the finish of Thunderspire and one player's new job), the Wednesday night game, generally yes, though it's usually only one other player and myself (the third drinker moved away and we miss him). One guy never drinks, though I haven't pried as to his reasons why. I honestly don't see the big deal.

I'm all for banning players who behave like jackasses, but alcohol consumption doesn't factor into that equation in my experience—it's usually an underlying character defect that can be exacerbated by booze. I'd find any game that sought to regulate my behavior with regards to alcohol unacceptable, especially if it's a game with food; I don't get drunk, but as food is usually part of gaming for me, so is wine or beer. To be fair, I have a pretty strong passion for alcohol: I work at a fine-dining restaurant and will be taking the next step of the Court of Master Sommeliers Exams soon.

I'm with others who have found the whole idea of "dry games" completely fascinating. I'll continue to read this thread with interest.

I can attest to this. In Australia, all of the gaming groups I was part of didn't drink. When I moved to England all of the gaming groups I ran with either drank or gamed in a pub. Oh, and the one time we perceived that overdrinking was having a detrimental effect on the game, we all agreed to cut back. No further problems.

 

[Nymrohd]

We almost always have a break for food and drinks. I love cooking and I always make up some finger food and maybe a light dish or two for the group. If they go well with alcohol sure, people will drink alcohol. At the gaming table itself noone seems to be drinking though, except for whatever was left over from our dinner break and then maybe water.
Smoking is banned in my house. Period.

 

[Dausuul]

In my current gaming group, most of the participants drink moderately (a few beers) over the course of the evening. I don't drink myself, but I haven't seen any problems resulting from it, so I'm okay with it. If people were getting hammered, I wouldn't be - my experience of drunk people suggests that I wouldn't enjoy gaming with them in at least 90% of cases. But a few beers spread out over 4 hours or so don't seem to cause issues.

In most of my previous gaming groups, there has been no drinking at the table, not by any explicit rule but just because it wasn't the done thing. Of course, that was in social circles where a number of us simply didn't drink and most of the others drank quite rarely.

If a new player came in and got trashed and started being obnoxious, I expect our solution would be to not invite that player back... same as we'd do, and have done, for a player being obnoxious while sober.

My own preference, all things considered and all other things being equal, would be for a non-drinking table, but that's a very very long way down on my list of concerns and has more to do with my own personal quirks than anything else.

I'm just as happy this way - the only drinking and gaming friend I had was fine with one beer, became a bit of an ass after two, and was unbearable with the third. But you could NOT explain it to him; he couldn't see his own behavior deteriorate. So we just quit gaming with him, and that was sad.

Yeah, I can see this. As I said, we don't ban alcohol in my current group, but I can understand why the groups that do so, do so. It's all very well to say "Ban the behavior, not the booze," but in practice that's not so easy to implement, especially when you've got somebody who's a perfectly good player except when they've had a couple. Good players are not easy to come by. Simply banning booze involves a whole lot less drama and may be the best solution for a given table.