Does your Spouse/Significant other game with you?

[TrizzlWizzl]

Back when I was sixteen I had a huge crush on this girl and for some inexplicable reason I invited her and her friend to play D&D with my gaming group. I have no idea why or how but she accepted (this was in the early nineties... remember when it was cool to be different? remember how when someone would be all like "I guess I'm just weird" you'd roll your eyes and think to yourself "yeah, so's everybody"? damn I miss those days, when creativity and multiculturalism hadn't yet succumbed to the grinding antipluralism of the transnational corporations). Her friend dropped out but she kept playing. Turns out she liked me too... flash forward nine or ten years and we're engaged and she plays every other week in my group. She's evolved into a damn fine player and it's definately a great component of our relationship. I DM, which is to my view probably the best way to play with a SO. If you're both players things can get dicey... real world issues can, in fact, wind their way into the session if you're not careful.

My fiancee is actually really really good about keeping real world issues away from the table. When we're playing it's totally compartmentalized from whatever else is going on, which is how I recommend all SO duos approach gaming together. "Real world" issues should be off limits once the character sheets are pulled out.

 

[G.A. Donis]

My wife & I game together all the time (2-3 times a week). It's just another thing we can share with each other.

 

[Dingleberry]

Nope. Never has, probably never will. My wife enjoys the genres, and listens (or at least pretends to do so while her brain goes to its "happy place") to the never-ending and oft-repeated stories, but she has no interest in ever playing. In fact, she enjoys having the civilized parts of the house to herself when the guys come over and we retreat to the basement (the "geek pit") to roll dice (most often referred to as "geekapalooza" or "getting your geek on").

 

[Celebrim]

I would have found it difficult to date a woman with no interest in gaming, sci-fi, science, computers, and the other classic interests of geekdom. I would have found it impossible if such things were disdained. When I met my wife, her interest was only casual. She very much enjoyed Scrabble and Othello, but had no exposure to geek board games. Her younger brother played D&D, but she had never been invited to a group and knew no peers active in gaming. She read some fantasy and science fiction, and she adored Bradbury, but didn't have much guidance on where to look for good stories beyond the authors she had discovered in junior high. She wanted to become a Biologist, but had little exposure to the technology of science and was not excited about it.

Since then, she has involved into something of her own gamer. She loves to game, but it isn't necessarily the same things I love to play (though there is overlap). She loves science fiction and fantasy, and enjoys most of the books I enjoy, but her favorites are different and some authors that one likes - the other just can't get into. She has worked on the Space Shuttle, so now we have common excitement and affection for all 'cool things'. So in short, she is a gamer - but she isn't a clone of me - which I respect. And while her tastes aren't mine, she has very good taste.

So, in short, yes.

Given the fact that women are no longer taught (at least on the whole) that they have to be stupid in order to attract a man, or even that attracting a man ought to be the thing that they value themselves by, I shake my head in confusion at the number of hard-core-this-is-what-I-do gamers who seek out spouses who aren't gamers given that there are a lot of female gamers out there. It always seems like such relationships are for doomed to burn down after six years and two kids. What do you actually have in common with a small-talk conversing, socially competitive, socially conforming, intoxication as play, non-geek person? Who are these non-geeks that gamers are marrying and why? And if they are working (and that is a significant achievement in today's society), how are they working? Please explain.

Must be love I guess.

 

[Celebrim]

"i'd do it again too, maybe when we get married and have more time together." -BOZ

Now there speaks an unmarried man.

 

[Ashrum the Black]

Yesd she does. Mrs. 'the Black' has even gone so far as to tell me that she has become 'addicted' to the campaign I'm running. Nice to hear she's enjoying herself. She's been gaming with the group for three years now and is enjoying herself very much. Of course the fact that I've been hereing complaints about killing off her favorite NPC for the last three months has been a touch trying.

 

[haiiro]

My girlfriend doesn't game, although she understands why it appeals to me. I'll turn her eventually.

My regular gaming group includes a married couple, and they complement each other very well during play. My semi-regular gaming group also includes a married couple, and they are also a pleasure to play with. In both cases, the husband introduced the wife to gaming.

My ex-wife used to play when I DMed, and we also played together on occasion. We didn't get along very well overall, so it sometimes didn't work out that well -- but for the most part, it was OK.

 

[Enceladus]

My wife does not game at all. At the same time she doesn't get in the way of my gaming and pretty much lets me have my "game time" with group. Very cool lady.

 

[Aitch Eye]

My wife and I were (and still are) players in one game since well before we started dating, and I play in the campaign she started a couple years after we were married. It helps that our gaming group is entirely a subset of the people we'd be spending time with anyway. I'm not sure how many more non-gaming marriages the group can take and remain functional.

 

[Taren Nighteyes]

haiiro: Don't turn her! Command her, like all good, err...evil clerics do!

Had to....just ignore me. Nothing to see here....move along...


Taren Nighteyes