"I Quit" Public Play - Am I just an impatient jerk? (LONG)

[Summer-Knight925]

No, not an impatient jerk. I don't think I've ever enjoyed a game that I had at a gaming store. The noise, the flakey people, the cramped space - the last time I went to a gaming event at a gaming store, one of the players who showed up had some... mental limitations.

And the chronic lateness would upset me even more.

I can't handle chaos/distractions like that in general. And when I come to game, I come to play.

I hope by mental limitations you do not mean a sort of mental retardation...one of the best role players I ever knew was a guy who lived across the street of my grandparents, he had down syndrome, introduced me to D&D and was able to calculate THACO is a matter of seconds, as to why he played the thief/magic-user APOCALYPTO (before the movie came out, this was over ten years ago) I do not know, but he WAS that character, and even when he played other characters, his Paladin Alkbar (a scimitar wielding badass from a middle east like land) he was chivalrous.

I did not mean to take away from what this thread is actually about, but public gaming is good for when you need to meet new people to play with, or try out a new game, things like that, as for Living X (X referring to the setting) I am not a fan, nor do the encounters crit my fancy, and if I were you I would have left as soon as they started eating, not that eating at the table is a bad thing, but D&D is known for snacks, junk food, not meals, don't eat dinner and play, your dice will fall into your mashed potatoes.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Suggesting I volunteer to run it is a fair point. I am sensitive to the fact that I am complaining about a free service. I don't think it will solve my immediate problem, though. Even if I volunteered, I can not do much against a culture that is so tolerant of people arriving VERY late and making other people wait around. Even if I were DMing last night, I could not have started with 3 PCs and I would not have wanted to deal with 4 more people coming in at 20-30 minutes late, ask to play, and then realize they did not have their characters, dice, etc. One even complained that the dice I lent him were not rolling well and " should just go home and get my own dice."

I've never played at a public event, so maybe this is a stupid question, but can't you as the DM enforce a culture of common courtesy?

For example, if only 3 players show up, edit a monster or two out of each encounter. If the tardies show up more than 15 minutes late, say "We've already started, you can join us next week if you get here on time." You can have a similar response to anyone who doesn't bring a character, or their own dice.

It'll make the first week or two tougher to run, but then people will start to realize that your game is more fun than those without courtesy rules. More players will start asking to join, and you can weed out the bad ones.

 

[Rechan]

I hope by mental limitations you do not mean a sort of mental retardation...one of the best role players I ever knew was a guy who lived across the street of my grandparents,

No, I don't think he had full on downs syndrom. He was slow. He needed a calculator to do simple addition to compute damage. But the issue I had was he just talked loud and out of turn, often with non-sequitors. He didn't have good socialization.

I'm handicapped too and it impacts my gaming slightly, so I'm not ragging on the fact someone with some mental disability was there. It's more the social behavior that went along with it which contributed to a poor experience.

 

[Hussar]

It's funny. I talk about how many people have such terrible experiences with DM's and get told that it's not the DM's, it's me. It's nice to see that I'm not alone here in having some real winner's around the table.

It simply boggles my mind that people are this inconsiderate. Whether I'm playing in person, or online, or whatever, it's just basic courtesy to be reasonably on time and prepped.

This kind of thing does more damage to the hobby than anything else. GRR.

 

[carmachu]

But then, what are my choices? Finding good gamers is damned hard because none of them are looking for games; they're already in good groups and have no need.

Thats not necessarily true. But you wont know until you look. In my current awesome one, none of the folks were really in a good group until we got together. Every good group has to start sometime.

 

[Dedekind]

It's funny. I talk about how many people have such terrible experiences with DM's and get told that it's not the DM's, it's me. It's nice to see that I'm not alone here in having some real winner's around the table.
...
This kind of thing does more damage to the hobby than anything else. GRR.

I'm pretty much with you. The only reason I've ever played open gaming is because I didn't have a "real" group for awhile. And then the "good" players and I split off and now do home gaming. I'm grateful for open gaming for that purpose.

Not to say good experiences don't exist (see [MENTION=34534]carmachu[/MENTION] 's post), but an irritatingly high proportion of open players don't have a group for a reason.

 

[carmachu]

Not to say good experiences don't exist (see @carmachu 's post), but an irritatingly high proportion of open players don't have a group for a reason.

Look, I can only tell our story- over 4 years ago I was fed up with wargaming group I was with and wanted to go back to RPG's. But I live in a gaming dead zone.

SO I started looking. I had some prospects around but nothing realy good. Meanwhile, DM and two guys were in another group, one that met so infrequent it wasnt funny- he put out and ad. soon we had 6 players and a DM. Eventually we all jelled together.

However 2 years in one guy gets a job transfer. So we look for a replacement. First guy doesnt work out- his schedule doesnt allow him to keep up in person or online. Second guy turns out to be a dick, he left on his own, but there was no way he gets to stay anyway. He didnt quite grasp the concept of work well with others. SO the DM recruits two other guys who work out fine.

The point being, yes they happen. But they dont just happen- they take actually work, footwork, recruiting, screening....

 

[Steel_Wind]

Without putting too fine a point on it -- I think a lot of you guys are playing to stereotypes. The same stereotypes that if they were applied to you? You'd FREAK at the "bigotry and injustice of it all."

I am a PFS organizer. One of the players at my event saw this thread on his own and posted a different point of view within this thread. It seems that a discordant viewpoint -- where somebody expressed none of these things had happened and he was having an enjoyable experience -- was not of much interest.

So, in this post (which is extremely long, I warn) I wanted to provide you with a different perspective on the topic.

It's not much use trying to persuade somebody that they had a "good time" when, fact, they had a rotten one. But not all sessions of Organized Play are the same. It might be that you have overlooked some positives while focusing on the negative.

 

[Feeroper]

Its unfortunate that so many people here have had bad experiences, and certainly anyone who experiences these types of occurences would rightfully feel poorly about pubic play in general. However, I just wanted to add to what Steel_Wind said, and say that not all experiences are the same.

Ive been playing D&D social play for a while now (Presently I mostly play encounters, and Im looking forward to Lair Assault when that gets organized. I also used to play a fair bit of LFR). My experiences have been very positive indeed. I have a couple home games I am part of and I consider my soical play groups to be on the same level of quality. Ive made many new friends in the gaming community this way, and the group dynamic always works well. At encounters we see a few tables running every week steadily, and quite often we will get surges of players who are new, but rarely do we need to turn anyone away, there are a nuumber of DMs among us who can start up a new table if the need is there. Overall the experience has been really rewarding for me.

I just recently (within the last week) began attending PFS games at a couple of local stores. Initially I was nervous, as I felt like I had a really good group with all the 4e public gaming Ive been doing, I wasnt sure how it would be with PFS. Added ot that was the fact that my girlfriend decided she wanted to join me for this (which would be her first time in a public play game, and her 1st time playing PF or even a 3.5 based game for that matter) and I have never been able to keep a stable home group with PF and havent played 3.5 in what feels like eons. When we got to our first game though, all those fears vanished quickly. We had a great time! I found the people to be just as friendly and welcoming as the 4e games I have been playing. They were patient with us, but managed to keep the game moving at a good pace for everyone. We really felt just like one of the group.

They told us that on the coming Thursday they would be starting PFS play at another local store (as in just starting up at this new location) and we were invited to come and play. On the 1st night my girlfriend and I had brought Pre-Gen characters due to lack of time to roll any new ones up. Howeverm wehen we were invited on Thursday, one of the GMs said that if we wanted, he would meet us 1 hour ahead of time and help us rtoll up our own custom characters. So we made the trip there on Thursday and had a great game night! We are definetly going to be returning for more PFS gaming.

So for what its worth, for anyone turned off by the thought of public play, its not all bad. Ive had great experiences myself, and obviously others above have had unfortunate experiences. Dont let that dissuade you if you were interested though, you never know how its going to be unless you try it out. Its like anything in life, you just gotta roll the dice sometimes, or I guess in this case, roll the d20's.

 

[Hussar]

I'm pretty much with you. The only reason I've ever played open gaming is because I didn't have a "real" group for awhile. And then the "good" players and I split off and now do home gaming. I'm grateful for open gaming for that purpose.

Not to say good experiences don't exist (see [MENTION=34534]carmachu[/MENTION] 's post), but an irritatingly high proportion of open players don't have a group for a reason.

I'm going to disagree here too. My experiences with online gaming, by and large, have been positive. Certainly overall. I wouldn't say that people who play over VTT's are somehow dysfunctional in any way. Most of the people I play with have busy schedules that simply don't allow for weekly or even bi-weekly get togethers at times when other people can come.

This is where open gaming is great. Geography is no longer an issue. Without VTT play, I couldn't play at all - there simply isn't anyone to play with in my area.

So, no, I don't think that open gamers are somehow only playing in open gaming because they're so socially inept that they can't stay in a regular group. Heck, I've seen far too many people in regular groups that were socially inept to say that.

It's more perception bias than anything else. The annoying people tend to stand out more.