Oryan77
Adventurer
With all the posts we get about problem players & bad gaming groups (I've started them myself even), I thought I'd just post to say that I finally have what seems to be the perfect group!
It took 5 years to get, but I think I finally have a group full of people that I didn't grow up with; yet every single person gets along with every single other player, and nobody has any annoying gaming habits that can't be dealt with.
I've even had 2 players tell me how much fun the group is and how cool the other players are...and none of them knew each other before joining the group.
I'm lucky that I live in an area that is full of gamers, so I'm able to be more picky than a lot of people. But after playing with so many differing gaming styles & annoying people, I learned that it was better for me to not DM people for the sake of playing and to not just give someone a chance.
I flat out stopped playing with the players I didn't enjoy DMing. Then I began looking for new players again (my group has changed 3 or 4 times due to differing gaming styles and player/DM conflicts). So if I met someone new and they had any quality that annoyed me as a gamer, I would think about it for a couple of days just to make sure I wouldn't enjoy playing with that person. Then I would just be honest and let them know that we probably wouldn't mix well and eventually we'd not enjoy playing together in a group. Then I'd wait until I found a new potential player & repeat the process.
It sucks telling someone that you wouldn't want to play with them & it would leave a knot in my stomach afterwards, but I figured it's more important that I enjoy playing D&D than it is worrying about a complete strangers feelings. My gut instincts about a person were always right & worrying about their feelings and letting them play in our group only gave me grief and made me feel like DMing was a job rather than a fun hobby. Plus I'm sure they'll find another group anyway which they might enjoy more than mine.
So I'm glad I did this and I now have a really cool bunch of guys to game with. The atmosphere feels like it did back in high school! DMing is such a sweet thing to do when you feel like everyone appreciates your effort & really likes hanging around together for 8 hours.
It took 5 years to get, but I think I finally have a group full of people that I didn't grow up with; yet every single person gets along with every single other player, and nobody has any annoying gaming habits that can't be dealt with.
I've even had 2 players tell me how much fun the group is and how cool the other players are...and none of them knew each other before joining the group.
I'm lucky that I live in an area that is full of gamers, so I'm able to be more picky than a lot of people. But after playing with so many differing gaming styles & annoying people, I learned that it was better for me to not DM people for the sake of playing and to not just give someone a chance.
I flat out stopped playing with the players I didn't enjoy DMing. Then I began looking for new players again (my group has changed 3 or 4 times due to differing gaming styles and player/DM conflicts). So if I met someone new and they had any quality that annoyed me as a gamer, I would think about it for a couple of days just to make sure I wouldn't enjoy playing with that person. Then I would just be honest and let them know that we probably wouldn't mix well and eventually we'd not enjoy playing together in a group. Then I'd wait until I found a new potential player & repeat the process.
It sucks telling someone that you wouldn't want to play with them & it would leave a knot in my stomach afterwards, but I figured it's more important that I enjoy playing D&D than it is worrying about a complete strangers feelings. My gut instincts about a person were always right & worrying about their feelings and letting them play in our group only gave me grief and made me feel like DMing was a job rather than a fun hobby. Plus I'm sure they'll find another group anyway which they might enjoy more than mine.
So I'm glad I did this and I now have a really cool bunch of guys to game with. The atmosphere feels like it did back in high school! DMing is such a sweet thing to do when you feel like everyone appreciates your effort & really likes hanging around together for 8 hours.
