Drinking While Gaming? Warning -- mature content (I hope)

[billd91]

We live in copenhagen denmark, the land of beer, offcourse we have a few occasionally, but it's not a habit for us to bring alcohol to the game. As for drugs... no way.

Denmark the land of beer? Feh! I'm from Wisconsin. We're weened on the stuff (I'm only partly kidding). We cook everything in it from cheese curds and brats to the friday night fish fry.
We drink beer while playing at my Thursday night game. I usually have 3 over 4 hours whether I'm playing or running. But we're also eating take-out food too, making it a big weekly social event and so the alcohol absorption is slowed and nobody drinks to excess. We have one player who is under 21 as far as I know but is otherwise adult so we don't complain if she drinks with us (she usually only has 1 and I consider that pretty responsible).
I don't think I've played drunk since grad school an increasingly frighteningly long time ago. We used to drink more while gaming in college, but that was usually for games like Paranoia or Awful Green Things from Outer Space (which was played AS a drinking game).

 

[WizarDru]

huh, I'm underwellmed by krispy kremes. I guess they're a little better than other chain stores, or donuts you would buy at the supermarket or whatever, but so what? What isn't?

Well, prior to this Friday, I felt the same way. He's brought KKs before, but they were never this good. Ever. This is the first time I could actually understand why people rave about them so much. Usually, I'm more of a Cinnabon kind of guy, myself.


Although truth be told, we eat fewer and fewer snacks every year. Coffee remains my strongest vice, especially now that I've stopped drinking coke.

What I was talking about are the people who've said, "I would never game with anyone who used drugs."

Well, as I said before: I think most folks meant specifically "during the game" and I suspect many are correct. I'm sure there are some who have, but I'll be honest, most of the geeks I've ever played with didn't smoke, drink alcohol or have a lot of money after gaming. Have I gamed with people who have used marijuana? I know that I have. But they were more of the exception than the rule, IME.

 

[DiFier]

If someone chugs a beer or two prior to your gaming session or smokes some pot or takes a pain killer are you gonna notice? JW is right, probablly not. I don't think that is the point.

Should you allow drinking at a game. That is an question up to the individual but I think that it shoul be a majority rules DM get final say kinda thing.

The problem with drinking is that it can easily get out of control. i'm not talking throwing chairs around the room, stumbling, shoving people, can't speak, drolling on the battle mat out of control. but having your charachter stab another charachter in the back cause he stepped on his foot, or looked at him funny. this stuff happen in real life but it is rare. but when you add the dual elimination of reality of gaming and drinking (or other things) then the game quickly spirals out of control.

It can also lead to bad roleplaying. shure a few beers losten you up a bit make you more social, less caring about what people think about you. but too much alchol (and the amount differes from person to person) and soon your totally stone sober lawful good cleric is sneaking up behind the princess to see what color panites she has on, cause the player is drunk and thinks doing so would be funny.

I am no teatodler. I do enjoy social activities that revolve around drinking. but I don't need to drink to have a good time.

I guess my rules would be:
no drinking
no drug use
you have to smoke outside

 

[Jeff Wilder]

most of the geeks I've ever played with didn't smoke, drink alcohol or have a lot of money after gaming. Have I gamed with people who have used marijuana? I know that I have. But they were more of the exception than the rule, IME.

I don't doubt you, of course, but I find that extremely odd. I've been gaming on a weekly basis since I was 16, back in 1984 or so, and every gaming group I've ever been in (including my first, which I discovered in a tiny gamestore in Louisville, Kentucky) has included stoners, geeks, punkers, and pretty much every social misfit that exists. (And, more rarely, even non-social misfits!) I honestly cannot remember being in a group in which the majority of adults, at least, didn't occasionally use recreational drugs. (In my current group of six, all of us professionals, only two people don't occasionally smoke pot, and that's just because they hate the smoke. They'll both drop X in a heartbeat.)

As I said before, though, I personally don't much enjoy playing while stoned, and nor do most of the others. (Someone summed it up best by pointing out that the need for concentration in RP is a buzzkill, and the need for mellowness caused by pot is an RP-kill.)

 

[Jeff Wilder]

My son, you ever been to Nutkinland (he asks in the same tone as Peter Graves would about Gladiator movies)?

I fears it.

 

[Bloodsparrow]

Back in the day, when I was playing LARPs (I was young and didn't know any better, forgive me ) intoxitants were right out as a genneral rule. ((Though what you would find at a party with the same group of people was a different matter.))

More recently, playing tabletop D&D, a six pack or two of beer or possibly a bottle of wine is consumed between 3 or 4 of the players over 4 or 6 hours.

The one time anybody got anything close to drunk, we convinced him to sleep over.

Smoking cigs has always been relagated to outside in all groups I've ever been in, because it smells foul and there's gennerally at least one asmatic around somewhere. (there was one group where that was not the case actually. In that group, Game Night was the only time it was okay to smoke indoors at the DM's place... Don't ask how that works.)

As far as the other stuff goes, it doesn't usually come up.

 

[Belegbeth]

The problem with drinking is that it can easily get out of control. i'm not talking throwing chairs around the room, stumbling, shoving people, can't speak, drolling on the battle mat out of control. but having your charachter stab another charachter in the back cause he stepped on his foot, or looked at him funny. this stuff happen in real life but it is rare. but when you add the dual elimination of reality of gaming and drinking (or other things) then the game quickly spirals out of control.

It can also lead to bad roleplaying. shure a few beers losten you up a bit make you more social, less caring about what people think about you. but too much alchol (and the amount differes from person to person) and soon your totally stone sober lawful good cleric is sneaking up behind the princess to see what color panites she has on, cause the player is drunk and thinks doing so would be funny.

I guess that's the experience of some people (obviously). It still strikes me as strange for anyone beyond their early 20's, though.

In recent years I've generally played with people who know how to pace themselves when they drink. Nobody I've played with gets even close to drunk by drinking 2-3 beers over 5 hours. I always thought that was normal... :\

SERIOUS drinking involves single malt whisky (preferably Balvenie or Lagavulin), and there's no way RPGs can interfere with that!

As for weed, it was never my thing (though I think the legal/moral opposition to it is crazy), but stoned players can be insipid. Some are fine though, and all the more power to them!

 

[Belegbeth]

After spending this semester in London, I've found I'm more than capable of holding my liqour. But why tempt the devil, y'know?

But Asmodeus loves you, KingJayIII!

 

[Mystery Man]

Oh yes, I also made a Marzipan voodoo effigy of The Fonze while I was in coma after smoking some Peruvian prayer hash, but who at the end of the day can honestly say they haven't done that?

 

[barsoomcore]

Oh yes, I also made a Marzipan voodoo effigy of The Fonze while I was in coma after smoking some Peruvian prayer hash, but who at the end of the day can honestly say they haven't done that?

Oh, I hate it when that happens...

It's like when you take a, a, a linoleum knife, yeah, you know, and you, uh, you work it in, you know, uh, between your toes, you know, so that it, yeah, you know -- oh, I hate it when that happens...