Gaming groups: friends or all business?

[Teflon Billy]

For my normal group, I'll only accept people whose company I also enjoy away from the gaming table. This means that our players tend to be interesting, fun and well-rounded - all of which makes them excellent gamers as well...

Exact same situation here.

One of my players (and my sometime Gm) put it best when we were clearing out the chaff in our Vampire LARP years ago. While we were deciding who stayed and who went we tried to use his "decision maker" which was...

I don't want to game with anyone who I wouldn't want to hang out with outside of gaming".

...and if you ask me, that's just good sense.

There were some true screwups in the Vampire LARP, but I also met people who are amongst my best friends to this day. Same with Convention gamers; by and large I find them borderline abhorrent, with the exception of three people who I feel I can trust with my life

The fact that somone knows how to play D&D is enough to get them an invite to my game. They need more than that to get invited back and a lot more to get a standing invitiation.

 

[BSF]

For A game, I am willing to see what someone is like. I have picked up a few friends that way. But, only after they established that there were somebody that I can get along with. If it was somebody that I am not comfortable hanging out with, they really aren't welcome for another game...

So, I voted as a combination, because somebody doesn't need to be a friend before I game with them.

 

[The Lemon Merchant]

I would call the people I game with close associates. While on friendly terms with all of them, the only social interaction I have with them is when gaming.

Of course, this only applies to my current group. My previous gaming group I grew to be very good friends with, in fact one of them married my sister-in-law.

 

[Teflon Billy]

...Of course, this only applies to my current group. My previous gaming group I grew to be very good friends with, in fact one of them married my sister-in-law.

I'm not sure I understand this relationship. Are you saying that the player who married "your sister-in-law" was your genetic brother?

I thought that was how "in-Laws" worked...ie. Married into your family=in law

 

[Davelozzi]

I'm not sure I understand this relationship. Are you saying that the player who married "your sister-in-law" was your genetic brother?

It sounds like the person married his wife's sister.

At any rate, my main D&D group is all friends (and family) who I've known for many years and hang out with all the time outside of game sessions. Most of them probably wouldn't be playing at all if I wasn't running a game.

In the past few years, primarily thanks to EN World gatherings, I've started to play games with several other folks, a number of whom I'm quite friendly with now, although it happens that we've never gotten together on a non-gaming occassion.

 

[kreynolds]

I'm not sure I understand this relationship.

I do...and it's kinky.

 

[der_kluge]

I think it's important to game with people you'd be willing to spend time with outside of gaming. The previous long-running game I was in, we would always set aside some time every evening of gaming to watch porn on my satellite dish. (this was, of course back in my single days), and we all had a blast just cutting up, and BS'ing throughout the entire game session. That was an awesome group to be sure.

The current group is a little more mature, I suppose (no porn written in our gaming bylaws, for example), but I have, on occasion gone out to eat with them, or gone to a movie. Some I'm more friends with than others, but some of that is largely due to geographic reasons (all the gamers drive at least 20 minutes in from the four compass directions to a central location to game).

edit: I would also add that I met them all prior to forming up a group, and decided on a meeting whether they would be ok to game with or not. If it was some socially awful person, I would have decided to not game with them. It didn't hurt that my little flyer said "mature group wanted".

 

[Capellan]

I guess a lot of it depends on how narrowly you define the term "friend". Some of the people I game with, I don't really know well enough that I'd call them "friends", but I enjoy gaming with them just fine. Others are close friends.

Almost all that are friends, however, became so through gaming.

 

[Wolv0rine]

I'm not sure I understand this relationship. Are you saying that the player who married "your sister-in-law" was your genetic brother?

I thought that was how "in-Laws" worked...ie. Married into your family=in law

Well you're half-right, Billy. Either that, or if his wife has a sister, she's his sister-in-law too.

Oh, and to bring the post to topic... I prefer to game with people I know. So at least part of a group has to be people I know outside of t he game.

*wanders off humming "I'm my own gram'pa"

 

[d4]

unfortunately, i don't have any "old" friends around any more -- one of the problems of having moved something like 17 times in the past 12 years...

i like TB's litmus test -- if i wouldn't consider hanging out with someone, i sure don't want to game with them either.

for my current group, even though i generally only see them on game days, i still consider them good friends.