Do close friends make less-effective players?

[mhacdebhandia]

I don't agree that the DM must be authoritarian. The DM doesn't even necessarily have that much authority, in my ideal playing style.

That said - the reasons close friends don't necessarily make the best fellow players have nothing to do with DM authority intruding on the presumed equality of the friendship. They're the same reasons anyone does or does not make for a good person to play with: playing style and preferences.

I play with friends because I don't enjoy spending my leisure time with strangers, but I have quite a few friends I won't play with simply because we don't have compatible playing styles or want the same things out of a game.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Of the people I'm gaming with at this time, I've been gaming with 2 of them since the mid-1980's, a third one I've known since then (though I didn't know he was interested in gaming), and the rest I've known since about 1996 or so.

Also over that 20 year period, I've gamed in several other groups (during my college & grad school days)- about 50% of which were stable enough to last 1 or more years.

Of all of those gamers I've gamed with, I'd have to say I considered most of those people to be only acquaintences...but good ones.

And I have never noticed a difference in the quality of the game based upon my closeness to one gamer or another, just in the quality of the skills of the individual players.

 

[Glyfair]

For most players, friendships are about equality..DMing requires a certain amount of authoritarianism..so in your years of gaming experiences, do close friends make the less-effective players?

IMO, close friends gaming tend to make better games overall. However, I do think the worst disasters (the one's people remember for ages) deal with the extremes.

At one extreme you have the player's you'd never have associated with if you hadn't sat down at a gaming table with them (whether in a public game, or a friend brought them). Usually they turn out to be the sociopaths.

At the other extreme, you get the player cliques that are very close and tend to cut off those outside of their groups. The most vivid example I've seen mentioned before are the romantic partners who give preferential treatments to each other in the game. Yes, this deals with bad skills and habits, but it is made worse by the closeness of the relationship (and made more obvious).

 

[MonsterMash]

Not for me, but then again both groups I game with are largely made up of people who have or do GM so we understand the importance of the GM's role and authority.

 

[SiderisAnon]

Close Friends As Players

I have to answer both "yes" and "no".

A majority of the players I have gamed with over the years have been friends. There have been a number of campaigns where people who were my good friends really added to the fun of the game, and that was at least partially due to the fact that we knew each other well and knew how to game well together.

However, there have been some truly horrible failures with good friends in my game.

Because a player (we'll call him "Fred") was a really good friend of mine and going through some rough times, I let things he did in game slide. Then let them slide some more. Then some more. I let my friendship blind me to the fact that Fred was ruining the game for everyone. Now, since everyone at the table was also good friends with Fred, they had been letting everything slide too. Unfortunately, Fred's bad attitude, poor playing, and what became constant cheating, effected and infected the rest of the group. It created so much bad blood that half the group won't game with the other half anymore, and no one wants to game with Fred.

So, while gaming with good friends can make for a much better game, a DM has to remember to keep a certain level of professionalism about themselves. If a player is hurting the game, don't let it continue just out of friendship. The game is about the whole group, so everyone should be having fun. Don't make the same mistake I did. It could wind up costing you your play group.