How would your group handle this somewhat delicate situation with a player?

[catsclaw227]

This is one reason why I like gaming with a bunch of guys who are more or less in the same situation as me. We're all (with one exception) married, and we all (with two exceptions) have kids.

Do we have times where familial conflicts make it difficult to schedule gaming? Yes, absolutely.

Do we have times where professional conflicts make it difficult to schedule gaming? Yes, occasionally.

Do we have a regular gaming cadence and schedule? No... we tried but there were too many variables, so we decided the best we could do was approximate once every other week for 5-6 hours or so on a Friday or Saturday night, whichever ended up being most convenient to the most players.

Do we have occassions when most of the group can get together except one or two guys? Yes, frequently.

Do we do our best to work with the guy in that situation? Yes, of course. We're friends, after all.

Does everyone always get exactly what they want in terms of the gaming schedule? Of course not.

Sometimes we reschedule. Sometimes we game shorthanded. Sometimes a player has a bad run of it where his schedule doesn't align with the rest of the group for a couple months or so at a time.

However, we understand that that's the realities of playing with a bunch of people who have real lives and real life responsibilities, who can't reasonably be asked to make gaming their #1 priority, so we work around it as best we can.

This. It's a lot like my situation. I am the DM, I have five players. All are married or living with S.O. and three of six have kid(s).

We have to arrange our schedules to meet others' needs and the holidays are tough. We usually try to play every other week, and we have to ad-hoc schedule it in advance, usually over a stream of emails that take two days to figure out.

Does this process bother any of us? No.
Do we have some tough times with scheduling because of work/wives/kids/etc? Yes.

So we go with the flow. That's all we can do. There's no name calling, no unspoken resentment, no finger-pointing. We can either make the game schedule work, or we wait until we can. I sometimes host at my house and my wife is sometimes happy about it. We sometimes play at one of the player's apartment, my wife is sometimes happy about it.

Mostly, she's happy that I get out with my friends once every other week or so, but we respect each others' needs first.

As for the Thanksgiving holiday thing... you may have to give that up. It's just unrealistic in a married with family situation. I like the suggestion that you guys do it like an annual weekend getaway. Once a year, you all get together for a monster long D&D session all weekend long. It's the Annual D&D weekend marathon!

 

[joethelawyer]

That said, it does seem like a brilliant way to clear the calendar for "the next 50 years" — I mean, if you handle family holidays like that, chances are that not too many relatives will show up at your house in the future

well, if they show up at my house for the holidays, they'll be waiting outside in the cold. i'll be at someone else's house eating their food.

 

[joethelawyer]

just go home from work, and have to run out. scanned al the great responses. i have to shoot to my bro's house, will taklk it over with him, show him these posts, and update you all on the plans later on tinight. that you very much though for all the input.

more later...

 

[JoeGKushner]

Chill out, it's only a game. This happens, don't blame the wife, he's an adult. Plan when the other three of you can play and if he can make it, great, if not, oh well. Either way you should probably start looking for a new player.

That's what I was thinking.

If the game relies on a single player and that player has made other commitements that don't match the group, the tyrany of numbers tends to take over. If he can make it at some future date, great. If not just make sure to keep him as a friend. I've lost a lot of gaming buddies in situations like this but not many friends as I try to keep in touch with 'em and keep open the lines of communication.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Well, I have the advantage that I'm the GM, my wife is one of the players (and now my son is), and I've also been the "scheduler-in-chief" ever since my wife and I were the first married couple in the game. So, to be fair, all the other players had to deal with our schedules. Most of them are married now, only some of the spouses play, and flexible scheduling is thus a must.

For this situation I suggest a two-pronged approach. There is the backup plan: As others have suggested, you have a set day that works for the three other players all the time, and the married guy at least some of the time. If nothing else is set by 5 days (or 7 or 10 or whatever makes sense) out, then you go with that day. If married guy can't make it, too bad.

Then you have the flex plan. Married guy is the guy with the scheduling issue, and he is also the one best in place to do something about it. He will be first to know about his wife's schedule. He is mostly likely to know how to handle whatever issues (if any) she has with his gaming. So give him the job. If he can schedule another day, that everyone can make, sufficiently far out, use that day instead of the backup plan. Let him handle location too--his house or elsewhere.

Now, if the group can't be reasonable under that framework, it won't survive much longer anyway. "Dude, I know we meet on Thursday, but the wife has to work on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. Can we make it one of those days next week? Everyone can make Tuesday? Super. (or) Dang, doesn't work out this week. Guess I'll have to miss then."

And while I sense that "avoiding confrontation" is not a huge need here , there is no reason why this can't be generalized to the whole group. You have your set day. If any of the four want to move it, it is there responsibility to find another close day that works for everyone. Otherwise, they miss the session.

Besides solving the current issue, it should be good practice for the other three guys, as their schedules becomee less flexible.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Chill out, it's only a game. This happens, don't blame the wife, he's an adult. Plan when the other three of you can play and if he can make it, great, if not, oh well. Either way you should probably start looking for a new player.

This. Play your game. Let the other guy deal with his own problems.

 

[Mark]

that you very much though for all the input

you're webcam. donut mansion eat

 

[SteveC]

I think this is another case of not everyone respecting the fact that people's time is a precious commodity.

As Joe is a lawyer, he is in the actual position to know how much his time is worth, as he actually bills it out )), but as I get older and have more responsibilities I find that time is my most important resource.

I was in a gaming situation much like is described here, and I had to finally sit down with the married player and let him and his wife know that as much as I understood the issues of childcare and difficult job schedules, lack of respect for my time (scheduling something and then breaking it, putting out unrealistic expectations about availablity, and in my case calling to constantly ask for the SO to go home for one chore or another after he was at the game) just wasn't something I was going to stand for. It wasn't something I should have to stand for, and if the situation was reversed, they'd be right to be upset with me about it.

People on ENWorld don't always know the real person behind the poster, but I tend to be a very even keeled live-and-let-live sort of person, so by the time this happened, these issues had been going on for a long time, so it wasn't just a knee-jerk reaction.

The person who's at fault here (if it's anyone) is Joe's married friend, because it's his responsibility to work out the details of when he can and can't game out with Joe, and to work those out with his wife as a couple. In my case, the player eventually had to step away from the game, because he just couldn't play with any remotely reasonable schedule: we ended up gaming once a month, with constant interruptions.

Sometimes you have to make tough choices and compromises, and the new husband has to learn this in order to make a lot of things in his marriage work, not just gaming.

That's my $.02: I suggest Joe have a talk with his player and ask him to work out when and how he can play, which might include "whenever I can, just run without me."

--Steve

 

[mmu1]

Remember, other than the Thanksgiving matter, the OP didn't complain that this guy was skipping out on D&D nights, or that they couldn't game as often as they wanted. He complained that he couldn't schedule his gaming regularly instead of ad hoc. He then concluded that this guy was the "wussy" in his marriage.

Actually, one thing the OP said was:

because of this wife thing we went from playing once a week to once a month. that makes it so annoying its almost not worth playing. its not like we're in college anymore and can do an 18 hour session. we get in 4 hours if we're lucky, of which one hour is just BS'ing time.

Seems pretty clear to me that as a result of this guy's actions, they're not playing.

Which is why I say they should politely let him know they'll have to start playing without him.

 

[joethelawyer]

So, back from my brother's (the DM). And just fyi, by way of context, I am single, no kids. My brother, the DM, has a 3 1/2 yr old and he just had triplets one year ago. The other guy is married, no kids. The guy we have an issue with is married, no kids. All involved have been married/together at least 5-15 yrs. My bro and I have been playing together for 25 yrs. The other guy has been playing with us for like 15. The new guy, the guy with the issues, has been with us a couple of years now. As I stated in an earlier post, he was a friend of the other guy, who had an interest in playing and joined in.

We haven't played since the day after thanksgiving, and prior to that it had been about 3 weeks. We likely won't play until sometime in January at this point.

There is something that came out of our conversation tonight that we both realized. I really enjoy looking forward to playing. You could even say I look forward to looking forward to playing. I sit down and break out the character sheet, look at my spell lists, read spell descriptions and think about unorthodox ways to use the spells, think about what we did so far and what may be coming up, think long term future with the character, come on here and look for ideas, research stuff in non-gaming historical resources to add flavor, etc.

My brother really enjoys thinking about and designing the adventures. He brings stuff on the train with him on the way to work, reads through the books, hunts through .pdf resources we have for inspirational ideas, and he even talks with his wife about it at night in bed (I guess he figures after having triplets, talking at night might be less expensive than more diapers). And he does all that with triplet 1 yr olds, and a 3 1/2 year old. That's how much he loves playing and is committed to the game.

We even talk on the phone about ideas that would cool, a few days a week. We hash out houseruling ideas. We brainstorm Greyhawk world politics, and what may or may not happen depending on all sorts of variables. I go over the stuff I read (since I usually have more time than him) and we think how we might be able to apply that stuff to our game.

We enjoy the anticipation of game night. When you only get to play a few hours a week at the very most, that anticipation and prep time is really part of the fun of game night. Sometimes its better than game night.

If we just play a random pickup game here and there once a month, like the way it has been the last few months, it kills more than half the fun for us. Whe you dont know when you are going to play, or if you are going to play at all for the next month, you never get into eager anticipation mode.

We both also pretty much agree that without the 4th guy playing, the third guy won't have a desire to play. He has other things going on, and a 1 dm 2 player game doesn't have the same vibe to us. We've tried it, and it never felt right. Even though the 4th guy doesn't contribute all that much, we are slowly bringing him along in terms of getting him and his character to contribute more than just as a guy who swings an axe when its time to fight. So if he does continue to play it could get better and better with him. We tend to forget the difference in perspective from 25 yrs playing vs. 2 yrs. We really do have potential as a good group, if it could all work out.

We are not a group that goes hunting for other players. The addition of players always just developed out of the relationships and friendships we had. To bring a stranger into it, or to try to get one of our friends to play who has never played before, I doubt would work. We already went through a handful of likely candidates that tried it, and some liked it, but not enough to commit to a regular session. If we end up not playing with the group of 4, my brother and I will likely try to do something a bit different that i posted about in another thread. A one-on-one style adventure combining Kane from Kung Fu and Elric themes, which I will DM.

Thankfully for the future, we have a small gaming group in the making with my brother's small yet growing tribe. While xmas shopping the other day, I came across a gladiator outfit that I just had to buy for his 3 1/2 yr old son. That's why I went up there tonight, to give him an early xmas present. It was plastic and came with a shield, sword and sheath, helmet, and breastplate with a dragon crest on it. How cool is that? The kid is going know the breath weapons of all dragon types before he can add 2+2.

Back to the issues with this guy though. All the speculation of who's to blame, him or the wife, doesn't matter as much as a good resolution. There's no sense speculating on whether it is him being a wuss, or her coming from a place of wanting to spend time with her husband and us being selfish insensitive prickks. Whatever the real reason for this whole mess we have is, we can't really affect it. We can only deal with it, in the sense of having a "come to jesus meeting," wherein we ask the guy whether or not he is willing to commit to something semi-solid. If so, we play. If not, we dont.

We are not going to try and use D&D night obligations to try and affect some change in his marital relationship. That's unrealistic to think that we could, and selfish to think that we should. If he wants to get into the homelife reasons why the state of the union has changed as far as our gaming night is concerned, we will let him bring it up, and if he wants to talk about it, we will. (I'll just keep my mouth shut and listen mostly)

Like I said, I have no patience and a horrible diplomacy skill score specifically when it comes to relationship crap. I'm pretty good otherwise. Hell, I spent 7 successful years in sales prior to practicing law. I blame my crap score on spending almost 3 years practicing primarily divorce law. I never realized that you could simultaneously have sympathy and contempt for a person at the same time. Divorce work taught me that. It also taught me that if I ever get married I am damn sure going to have an iron-clad pre-nup, and think long and hard before I bring kids into the world. It also explains why I tend to approach other people's relationship stuff with a hostile and combative atitude. I used to get paid to do so. Old habits die hard.

Anyhow, my brother is going to handle it with the guy, and likely come from a married guy to married guy approach. I passed along all of your great ideas from this thread, and he is going to mull it over and decide the best way to broach the subject with him.

All of your feedback and input is greatly appreciated. If anyone had any more, please feel free to post.

Thanks again