Bonding between DM and Player

[Nebten]

I have a mixture of sorts. I only have one friend from my first gaming group and we were neighbors and still best friends. My gaming group from college are nearly family with one another, a majority of them still live in the same town and we all try to get together around 4 times a year for a weekend of gaming. We've been in each others weddings and now becoming each others kids' uncles. My current group is a mixture of 2 day to day friends, girlfriend and 2 people I've met through the gaming community. I don't hang out with the later 2 because they have their own families and D&D is currently our only connection. That is not to say they aren't great people since they are.
I do wish to game with people I would like to hang out with and that can get along with everybody else within the group. I feel that everybody plays RPGs to have a good time. If you are not enjoying the company you keep for 4-8 hours, then you have to decide if such a game is worth it or not. When I am hosting a game, I try to bring people together that shouldn't have to make that choice.
I have had to remove a player from my game from time to time. It was mostly due to the fact his their presence was a detriment to the enjoyment of others. I only knew them from the gaming community so it wasn't like I was kicking a long term pal to the curb.

 

[Jack99]

I play with my childhood and best friends. We have been friends around 25 years, and played D&D together for 20 years this year. For us, D&D is an excuse (or a structure that allows us, if you will) to meet once a week without wife and kids and hang out with the old friends.

I doubt I would ever spend THAT much time on D&D if I was playing with anyone else.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Considering that all of my players are usually people I consider close friends, no, I do not just drop them from the game.

 

[Asmor]

If your players don't soil themselves in fear every time you deign to address them from behind the cardboard wall separating you from their pathetic little player-ghetto, then you are failing as a DM.

 

[Silversun]

Since my gaming group is entirely online, and is scattered throughout the globe there really is minimal friendship between us.

It's mostly business. We are hoping to get together at GenCon 2011 though.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

It's a mix for my group.

A couple of my players are long-time friends that I socialise with outside of gaming.

Another is a long-term gaming friend that I always think of if I'm starting a new group or game.

The rest are becoming friends over time, but at the moment the only time I see them is at the game. If we had a major falling out I would talk to them about it and see if they wanted to continue.

 

[Darrin Drader]

I'm pretty lucky at the moment. When 3E came out, I was gaming with a group that I only knew because of the game. I went to the local WotC store (back when such things existed) and asked if they could hook me up with some local gamers. They couldn't because of store policy, but they could schedule a time for me to be in the store and then tell others who were looking for a game to come back at that time and talk to me. I accumulated players using that method and for the next few years we hung out a little outside of our usual gaming sessions, but not much.

When I worked at WotC, the games took on a different element. People there like to play a lot of different games, so a lot of the time D&D or Star Wars would end up being a limited time engagement. I did get some co-workers involved in a longer-term game that ended when I took my leave of the company and moved out of Seattle.

Now I'm gaming with an interesting group. Two of the guys I've known since middle school, one of whom happens to be one of my best friends. One guy is a student at the university, as I am at the moment, though there is quite an age gap between us. One guy teaches at a nearby university and the other is a researcher alongside that guy I mentioned earlier who is one of my best friends. I like all of them quite a bit and consider them all friends so if something bugs one of them in the game, I try to work it out with them.

Generally, we get along pretty well. In the past my attitude towards my players has been pretty much my way or the highway, and there have been some players that I booted, but I try to involve the current group in aspects of the game that I usually reserve for myself. For instance, I'm currently working on a Reign of Discordia True20 to Traveller conversion, so I've put them on a big ship and put them out of the known regions of space to track down this big nasty ship that's supposed to come along and lay waste to a bunch of planets. I've assigned the PCs as command staff aboard the ship and they're telling me where they want to go and what they want to do as we go from one adventure to the next. I've also run conversion material past them before using it to see if everyone agrees on balance and design issues. It's been pretty helpeful overall and they're enjoying the fact that they're calling the shots.

Outside of games, almost all of us are on Facebook and we talk about a lot of non-game related stuff there. I usually have lunch once a week with my best friend, not to mention the fact that we get our kids together to play, we see movies together, and do other fun stuff together that has nothing to do with gaming. I'm open to doing that with some of the other guys if there's something we all want to do.

So yeah, depends on the group for me.

 

[Jack7]

With the very rare exception I almost always play with friends, family, or people I am friendly with (like associates, or people from my church).

I don't think I've ever met someone first through gaming (that is I've almost always known someone from some other place or activity before gaming with them) though I have become better friends with people through gaming. And I think role playing allows you to get to know different aspects of a person in an interesting way that makes friendship more, not less, likely.

To me gaming is not a business activity (though I try very hard not to become involved in business matters with anyone I do not like and cannot trust, so to me business is never "just business" cause that's bad business and can only go wrong in time) or my primary social activity.

It is a social activity and therefore sort of an extension of my other activities, social or not.

 

[Desdichado]

The thread title is a bit misleading; it seems you're asking how close of a friendship exists within the group, and would you ask someone to leave who's playstyle differed from your own. Or leave yourself if you were different from the rest of the group.

I have been in groups where that was true. When 3e first came out, I met a group through a game-store posting. We didn't really gel all that well, and after a few months, I quit going. They were also really far away from me, so I was driving 45 minutes one-way to get there.

My group now is made up of people that I consider to be pretty good friends, though. I would never consider telling someone to hit the road if we disagreed about a gaming philosophy. We'd figure something out. We'd also be a lot more patient and understanding and frankly, just long-suffering to a certain extent, with stuff we don't like because we recognize that others in the group might.

 

[Mallus]

This scenario does not compute to me. No friend of mine would 'hand in their character sheet after after a campaign twist (they didn't enjoy)'. We'd talk it over and work something out in lieu of making a dramatic (and drama queen-like) gesture like that.

So, do gamers play with people they don't otherwise consider friends? Yes.

Do friends make drama queen-like gestures when something happens in the campaign they don't like? No (well, yes, I'm sure we all know people like that, but they shouldn't ).