Oryan77
Adventurer
Oh I get it. My being easy going about my friends tardiness is selfish cause my other friends might actually care about tardiness. So how's it going gaming with your group of "friends"? Still going strong? Oh wait, that's right.
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- Thread starter Kzach
- Start date
Oh I get it. My being easy going about my friends tardiness is selfish cause my other friends might actually care about tardiness. So how's it going gaming with your group of "friends"? Still going strong? Oh wait, that's right.
Well if you are gaming at the pub and have an actual time limit because they close, then that's another matter. But then again, it's the pub! That would probably cause me to care even less about a tardy player. A beer in one hand, friends around a table, I'm in a great atmosphere, and I'm out of the house? Doing some gaming would simply be a bonus. In this case, I definitely would not be ticked off for losing 30 minutes of gaming time.
Well, 30 minutes is kinda my limit. Less than that and I'm not too bothered. Beyond that I start to get annoyed. And possibly inebriated.
How long are your game sessions?
Sammael
Adventurer
Out of the ~15 friends I game with, only 2 or 3 ever show up on time. I am usually punctual, but since most other people aren't, I stopped caring about it a long time ago. I only game on weekends, usually from 4 pm until 10 pm, so if we start an hour late we still get about 5 hours of gaming which is plenty (and these days, I have trouble staying focused and alert for more than 4-5 hours anyway).
I think the key difference in opinion here is whether you mostly play with friends, i.e. people you would spend time socializing with anyway, or you play with other gamers who are not in your usual social circles. I don't do option #2 anymore - I only play with friends or friends of friends, and so I'm perfectly fine spending half an hour (or even longer) sipping coffee and chatting with a couple of people until everyone shows up. One thing I do like, though, is being notified - sending a text only takes a couple of secs.
What bothers me more than tardiness is when players don't pay attention to the game and play with their tablet PCs/smartphones/whatever instead.
I think the key difference in opinion here is whether you mostly play with friends, i.e. people you would spend time socializing with anyway, or you play with other gamers who are not in your usual social circles. I don't do option #2 anymore - I only play with friends or friends of friends, and so I'm perfectly fine spending half an hour (or even longer) sipping coffee and chatting with a couple of people until everyone shows up. One thing I do like, though, is being notified - sending a text only takes a couple of secs.
What bothers me more than tardiness is when players don't pay attention to the game and play with their tablet PCs/smartphones/whatever instead.
Pentius
First Post
Whether or not my players are friends(they generally are) doesn't make a difference in whether I care, it just makes a difference in how willing I am to forgive. If I'm playing with acquaintances(obviously I don't game with people I actively dislike), and tardiness gets to be an issue, I might not invite them back or I might not return myself, depending on the specifics. With friends, I'll wait until they arrive and make a joke about how I need to keep a DM Stick to beat unruly players with, we share a laugh, and all is forgiven. As I've said, if you have a real reason to be late, traffic, kids, something, or even if you just call and apologize, I'm pretty forgiving. It's when you show up 45 minutes late, without calling, because, "Sorry, dude, Ultimate Warrior marathon." that I get annoyed.
Just out of curiosity let me ask you this:
How do you feel if a player completely forgets a game?
I remember once when we only have three players signed up for a D&D session, which was agreed to be played about a month in advance. So plenty of warning?
So when one of the players was about 15 minutes late, I sent a friendly text msg saying "hey you, come here ok?
"Soon there was a reply that she was in another city and not coming to play, with awful amount of drama included in the message.
This is something I can't understand. How can people forget things that were agreed about 4 weeks ago? And we are talking about an adult here.
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Lol, what a weak attempt at a personal insult.
All my gaming friends no longer play D&D because they're too busy with life. I'm the only one still interested in forming a group. And for your information, I ran an informal once off for them a couple of months ago and it went swimmingly. They just can't commit to anything more than once offs every six months or so.
That is why I am constantly trying to put together groups of randoms, as you are obviously referring. It's nice that you have a group of friends who can commit time out of their busy lives to a game. My friends, however, have grown out of D&D and I happen to be the lone hold-out.
Pentius
First Post
Just out curiosity let me ask you this:
How do feel if the player completely forgets a game?
I remember once when we only have three players signed up for a D&D session, which was agreed to be played about a month in advance. So plenty of warning?
So when one of the players was about 15 minutes late, I sent a friendly text msg saying "hey you, come here ok?
Soon there was a reply that she was in another city and not coming to play, with awful amount of drama included in the message.
This is something I can't understand. How can people forget things that were agreed about 4 weeks ago? And we are talking about an adult here.
I would probably be quite angry, especially since when the date is agreed upon that far in advance, I send reminders as it gets close. "Man, I can't wait for the game next friday." sort of thing.
JamesonCourage
Adventurer
I know you've got a ton of replies to this already, but I wanted to come at this from another point of view, and I'm sure you may have thought of it already, but I wanted to explicitly express it.
For some people, D&D is a fun game to play with their friends who they do still see regularly. Hell, I live with three members of my group. I've known another since he was a freshman in high school (I'm kind of like his big brother, was the best man at his wedding, etc.). I've known the fifth member since before he was a freshman, but we're only just now catching up over the course of the past 3 or so months. The newest member has been playing with us for about a month, and I just met him.
Outside of the two newest members (who are good guys, but I don't know them very well yet), I see all of the other members regularly. So, when my roommates decide to leave at ten minutes before the game starts to get food, I cringe, because I don't know if they're grabbing something from Subway two minutes away, or if they're going to spend 45 minutes waiting for Mongolian food.
This annoys me, because as the GM, I'm supposed to set the pacing for the night. That means I don't want people eating during the first 30 minutes of game (I've found that there's way too much, "can I trade you some chicken fried rice for a slice of pizza" going on for the players to immerse, though if I wait about 30 minutes, it's not an issue). I don't want three players waiting for three others players because they didn't schedule their time very well. They could have grabbed that food an hour ago, but didn't leave until the last minute.
The reason this annoys me is because it's inconsiderate to me, as the GM (since it's pretty disruptive to me pacing the session), and to the other players who showed up to play the game (since I see one of them regularly, and he sees the other two regularly). We're good on socializing. We have a "Game" group of Facebook that we post in, talking about next session, posting maps, sharing backstory. We used to talk about mechanics when I was still testing my game. We socialize on other days besides game day.
Thus, while it might be within your social contract (essentially your group's expectations) to be okay with people being late, it's not for everyone. Not everyone is lacking in social interactions with their group. To that end, I'm not sure why it's surprising to you that tardiness can be a problem. Maybe this shed new light on it, maybe not. Just thought I'd share my thoughts with you.
It works for your group, and that's awesome. This is why it doesn't work for mine without annoying me. As always, play what you like
I guess that I wouldn't mind if someone was thirty minutes or so late, we're all still settling in by that point. It just doesn't happen in my experience. People are either on-time (within ten minutes of starting time either way), or they are insanely late--two/three hours or more late, once we've already gotten into an encounter or two... And they expect the entire table to stop the game to greet them, shoot the breeze, and otherwise get off-track for thirty minutes or so.
Since my sessions are typically around five hours, a thirty-minute disruption represents a loss of approximately 10% of the allotted time for the game. Some people don't care about getting off-track and some do. I'm one that does. Partially, this is because we hang out outside of game too--we have lunch on the weekends and go see movies and just hang out and all that, so it's not like we haven't seen each other for weeks on end when it's time to game. I'd rather game during game time and hang out during hang out time--after all, I'm not asking for initiative or Perception checks when we're cracking open a beer away from game. Just a personal preference, I don't think that either one of us is right or wrong there.
Without trying to de-rail the thread, yes. Many times. To be fair, these sorts of things are especially common in one particular game system that I've played, which I will not name for the sake of avoiding an edition war. But it's very common among the gamers local to my area.
"You see a dusty old shrine engraved with runes."
"Can I tell what deity it's dedicated to?"
"Roll Religion, DC 15."
"I got a seven. Do you want me to roll a different skill, or should I just re-roll Religion?"
"The gnoll savagely smashes his axe into your shield arm. You take sixteen damage."
"Sixteen? Ouch! I drink a healing potion."
"You gave Avnica your last healing potion two encounters ago."
"Oh, that's right. Can I just mark off my treasure for it and say that I got an extra healing potion before we left town?"
"How are you guys all fourth level? I'm still first level!"
"We've been playing for eight sessions now, have you been tracking your experience awards?"
(awkward pause) "I thought that the character generation software tracked that for you automatically and the DM uploaded experience awards."
