Good players, bad schedules

[S'mon]

Hiya

To all those who like to tout out the "My girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/etc won't let me play on weekends"...I have to ask. Would they let you join a bowling team? Softball team? What about volunteering at the homless shelter, or old-folks home?

Seriously, if your S.O. "wont let you" spend time with your friends for a few hours every week...well, lets just say that I wouldn't stick around. Anyone that selfish and unconcerned with you having friends doesn't deserve your time.

Paul L. Ming

Well, Paul, marriage involves putting the other person first, not yourself. Hence the vow to "love, honour & cherish". If you obsess over (un)fairness and (in)equality, you're unlikely to stay married for very long.

I could play on Saturday afternoons or Sunday afternoons. My wife would let me, but she wouldn't be happy. I like to keep her happy; it's better for everyone.

Edit: I think my wife would treat bowling or softball the exact same way as RPing. I expect she'd be pretty surprised if I volunteered at a homeless shelter or old folks home; but in the case of the old folks/peoples' home I could bring our 3 year old son with me, so she wouldn't mind that, it'd give her a break from childcare.

 

[Jon_Dahl]

I still would like to point out that saying "never weekends" is a bit different from "weekends are usually bad for me".

I understand that having wife and kids really kill your weekends. That's acceptable. But dating someone and saying "ok, now I have a girlfriend, so no more weekends!"... Now that really rings badly in my ears. My understanding and sympathy are limited, unfortunately.

But I do know that some day we'll all have families and our youth of gaming will be over. I just hate the fact that any slightest hint of opposite sex in your life destroys the games. And at the moment - despite the excellent arguments made by Umbran and Morrus - it seems that most of the gamers here aren't willing to just smile and tolerate "no-weekenders".

 

[Umbran]

Seriously, if your S.O. "wont let you" spend time with your friends for a few hours every week...well, lets just say that I wouldn't stick around. Anyone that selfish and unconcerned with you having friends doesn't deserve your time.

Ah, but you see, the issue isn't that they won't let you spend time with friends for a few hours a week - that would be "no gaming at all", not "no gaming on weekends". The issue isn't about how many hours, even, but which hours you get to spend with them.

I'm married, but we don't have kids, and my wife is herself a gamer - I met her when she joined my D&D game years ago. She plays in my campaign. And we still don't play on weekends.

Why? Because the weekends are when everything else happens. All the birthday parties, all the clubs open for dancing, all the friends going in bunches to see movies - all the social and entertainment events that take more than a couple of hours take place on the weekends.

Meanwhile, on the weeknight, the only things going on are probably TV shows that your group is likely putting on their DVRs anyway.

Put your game in conflict with all the other entertainments, or not - how is that a difficult choice? Seems like a no-brainer, to me.

 

[SuperJebba]

Pming, you are absolutely right. If you're significant other is going to be a hag about spending time with your buddies, they can go fly a kite. It's important to spend time with your friends.

On topic, or kind of on topic, I have the exact opposite problem with my group. I am the one with a wife and kids and a real job, and they all are the ones that would fall into the stereotypical gamer type. I work so hard to schedule sessions for us all to play and they just don't make an effort out of sheer laziness.

Original poster, it sucks that people don't realize the importance of carving out time for themselves, but ya just gotta roll with it. That's just how it is.

 

[Summer-Knight925]

I run games for my friends, I try to keep a steady schedule but life happens, granted its not "we cant do blank blank blank" its more of "I have this big project" or "my mom just died.."

both of which are valid reasons to delay a session, im not going to penalize a player because of the passing of a close relative, or because he has to write a big paper by tuesday

but I have a player who (i guess, not sure, and dont want to be mean to him but it really does seem this way) has nothing to do ever and so if I have to cancel a session for any reason he gets PISSED and it's really kinda sad

just, for whatever reasons parties cant meet up, remember that somewhere, in another realm, there are dragons to be slain, no matter who (or what) is going to slay them

 

[Abraxas]

My situation is different - we only game on Friday or Saturday nights or on Sunday ending before 7:00pm - because every other day we have to get up for work the next morning. The people I game with don't see the game as conflicting with other entertainments - it is just one of many we choose to take advantage of. Also, for the SOs that don't game, it's all part of the give and take of a relationship - it makes the gamers happy and the gamers make efforts to reciprocate with activities their SOs enjoy.

 

[S'mon]

I run games for my friends, I try to keep a steady schedule but life happens, granted its not "we cant do blank blank blank" its more of "I have this big project" or "my mom just died.."

both of which are valid reasons to delay a session, im not going to penalize a player because of the passing of a close relative, or because he has to write a big paper by tuesday

I strongly feel that games should not be cancelled just because 1 or 2 players are missing, and that the DM should only cancel for very good reason. My Monday night game will have 2/6 players missing on Monday; but the DM will run with 4 and that should work ok.

With 4e, if you design for 5 players and have a 6 player group you can run with 4 or 6 players, maybe with slight modification (maybe add/delete some monsters here & there). If you use Companion NPCs and a flexible scenario you can even often run with 2 or 3. IME that's far, far better than frequent cancellations.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I agree. Cancelling with a couple people gone will just lead to more people cancelling in greater numbers

I am glad we just got a fourth person, so hopefully we will cancel less. But tomorrow is cancelled as two people cancelled out of a total of four.

I need more players.

 

[pming]

Hiya

Well, Paul, marriage involves putting the other person first, not yourself. Hence the vow to "love, honour & cherish". If you obsess over (un)fairness and (in)equality, you're unlikely to stay married for very long.

Luckily for us, we wrote our own vows...which we constantly try and rewrite (in good humor) on occasion. As in "I'm pretty sure that in our vows there was something about you always cleaning the cat's litter box. Yep, pretty sure on that..."

My wife and I have been together for 22 years and counting (we met in high-school and have been together ever since). As a matter of fact, I was her first boyfriend (she was 17). We have an *awesome* marrage! Perfect, as far as I'm concerned. We recently (yeah, took a while) added our first child (daughter, 1 1/2yrs, named Corbyn). Anyway...

...I can see what a lot of people are saying. But from where I stand, if your SO doesn't understand that you have a hobby that you really enjoy and it involves spending a few hours with friends every week or so (weekends or not), they should be happy for you...not annoyed. Just like if your SO decided to take up pottery and it was held every Sunday for 4 hours. I'd look at it as a time to spend alone with my daughter; watch her play, teach her to read/write/draw, play "hide-and-go-scare" (my daughter is gonna be a horror-flick chick I'm sure of it!), etc...and not look at it as "not spending time with my SO". Life is FAR to short to go around being a grumpypuss, and life is FAR too long to worry about not spending every waking weekend minute with your SO.

Of course, YMMV, but that's my experience.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[S'mon]

Luckily for us, we wrote our own vows... My wife and I have been together for 22 years and counting (we met in high-school and have been together ever since). . We recently (yeah, took a while) added our first child (daughter, 1 1/2yrs, named Corbyn). Anyway...

...I can see what a lot of people are saying. But from where I stand, if your SO doesn't understand that you have a hobby that you really enjoy and it involves spending a few hours with friends every week or so (weekends or not), they should be happy for you...not annoyed.

Whatever works for you, Paul - and congrats on the daughter. We thought we were taking a long time to produce Bill, a mere 10 years after we got married!

I don't disagree with what you say here, but there needs to be moderation. It wouldn't be fair for either of us to be out drinking or gaming every night leaving the other at home. Nor would it be fair to stop the other one having any social life at all. The question is where to draw the line between the two extremes.

Edit: And naturally my view is not identical to hers, eg before Bill I'd think 3 Sunday afternoons in 4 was ok, but she thought 2/month. So we went with 2/month.