Joy. It's the Buddy's Girlfriend.

[Wisdom Penalty]

If D&D Night is your "Night with the boys," anyone's girlfriend is going to stick a big ol' buzzkill on the night, just as a wife invited to poker night or a fiancee invited to the March Madness party with Paul's new bigscreen would be an unwelcome participant.

I never agree with K. Midget, but he's spot on here.

Don't let anyone make you feel badly about not wanting a female at your table (or not wanting other males, if you're a female). You can and should be entitled to a little down time with the guys. If you choose to do that via gaming (as opposed to golf, or fishing, or whatever), then more power to you.

There's nothing misogynistic in that whatsoever.

Beer & pretzels D&D with the guys is every bit as valid a gaming type as mixed-company high-intrigue campaigns.

Wis

 

[roguerouge]

That's right, a buddy wants his girlfriend to play. She's not exactly the most enthusiastic and is probably only playing to humor her guy. She doesnt really care about the character creation process and one of us will probably end up basically designing her character for her.

This is going to be a disaster.

I say that as someone who met his girlfriend as a fellow player in one campaign and who's DMing her in a one-PC campaign. I say that as someone who's in a third campaign with three married couples. The crucial difference is that my girlfriend actually wanted to play. Those married couples wanted to play. They actively participated in the character creation process. In short, they wanted to game because it would give them pleasure.

It has nothing to do with her gender or her relationship status. It has nothing to do with being new to the game: I've taught new people the game and I've seen others learn it successfully too. But if someone is not interested in the character creation process, they don't want to game. They are there for another reason.

I've had two players who weren't interested in designing their characters. We tried everything and nothing worked.

Both ended up being black holes at the gaming table. They didn't role play. They watched other people role play. Those other players then had to strive to forget that they were now gaming with an audience. Most of the time, that audience wasn't into it, and it is darn tough to immerse yourself in a character as an actor when you have a disinterested audience.

Then combats dragged to a crawl, as players were either teaching the Black Holes the combat system or striving to not to take over the Black Hole's PC through their advice. The Black Hole felt stupid, the other players were frustrated, and their tactics went down the drain as they literally couldn't count on one of their party.

Inevitably, they left the game after a few sessions, but never quite told us to retire the character.

The one thing that I didn't try or see tried was this technique:

Perhaps this situation won't be a disaster if you do a LONG one on one session with this player. Have her describe what kind of hero she'd like to become. Provide her with choices to achieve that goal. Just have her character start with a suite of starting equipment after she chooses her primary weapon and armor.

And then you roleplay a full session just between you and her. No boyfriend in the building. (Do a shorter intro solo adventure for the others later, so that she's not being singled out.) It's you running an introductory adventure just for her. She makes the choices. She runs the risks. She plays the character. You commit to making as fun an experience as you possibly can. Pull out all the stops.

One of two things will occur. First, she could fall in love with the game and her character, which is now as vibrant a starting character as it can be. She's got a sense of the personality, the society, and a basic understanding the mechanics. Or she'll realize that she doesn't want to devote this amount of energy to this pursuit. That's fine: no harm, no foul, and you two know each other a bit better at the end.

Just understand: the tone has to be supportive and fun, not *sigh* look what I have to put up with. Even one moment of that and you'll lose her.

 

[stripes]

Ouch dude. We came up with the golden rule long ago: no girlfriends playing. As time went by and some girlfriends became spouse we broke the golden rule... much to our dismay. No mater how we played it spouses/girlfriends (or even boyfriends if its a female player) simply do not work.

FYI on of my current players started out as the drag-along girlfriend of the previous games DM. She had never played before. Now she is the one with a three page backstory full of relitaves and friends "that the DM can betray me with" and has never missed a session (she has even moved dates around to make the game). Boyfriend? He has wondered off to other non D&D persuits (not that I think badly of him for it - if I could fence like that I would spend more time hitting peole with sticks & less time pretending to do so!)

 

[roguerouge]

She played in another campaign (for a few sessions) and largely fell into the background. She never really developed any enthusiasm/interest in her character and was largely relegated to a backseat in just about any encounter type. I attributed this as much to the DM as her own lack of interest and want to avoid making the same type of mistakes when I run things.

... when I approached her for character ideas, I got nothing from her. I tried approaching it from the "What are some of your favorate movie/book characters?" and got nothing, I tried approaching it from the "What do you like or not like about these archtypes?" and got a little feedback, but nothing major. ... she suggested that I make something for her.

...she was overwhelmed by the rules and tended to rely on others who knew the system.

...After all, being a GM is about communication and if I cant communicate my own enthusiasm, there's not much hope of being able to send all the other thousands of signals necessary to run a great story.

Dude, these are all bad signs.

It's not about your skill. It's about her lack of interest.

You ask an easy character-building question, she gives you nothing. You ask a different but related question and you get little more. She receded to the background in the last campaign. Now, even one-on-one, she's doing the same thing.

If she's alienated by the rules in combat and is not interested in the role playing, WHY IS SHE INTERESTED? DnD is about combat and role playing and she's interested in neither aspect!

If he's a friend, ask the boyfriend what's really going on.

 

[Elf Witch]

There has already been some excellent advice given here. I would like to add something from my own experience. I DM a husband and a wife. Both used to play back in college in the late 70s early 80s.

The wife dropped out of gaming years ago but want to come back. She is finding 3.5 very complicated but slowly learning it. In my game she started out playing a ranger but got frustrated with the rules so she switched to a sorcerer. She is finding that much easier to play.

One thing I learned is not to invloe her husband in any character creation for her. He was driving her crazy with advice she felt a lot of pressure. He took it badly anytime she didn't take his advice. He took it a little personally. The other thing was that he is interested in playing quirky characters she is not she wants her character to kick ass and take names.

He drove her crazy over her choice of magic missle as one of her two spells. He views that spell as overused and uncreative. Where as she views it as I point my finger don't miss do damage hey that is way cool.


I finally stepped in and told hubby to butt out. That I was the DM let me help her build her character.

Let her come to you as the DM that way right from the begining you are showing both of them that this is not a couple's thing hoefully that will ward of any joint playing of the character.

 

[SteveC]

There is a lot of good advice going on here, but let me put in my two cents.

The key, to my mind, is to determine whether gaming is something that these two should be doing together. I've discovered that in both relationships and marriage the time you spend apart from someone is just as important (if not moreso) than the time you spend together. There are some social/leisure activities that couples can do together and some they should completely avoid, because they cause stress and tension in the relationship. The problem is that there isn't just one list of these activities that apply to all couples (oh that there were ).

Of course they don't actually know whether or not it's a good idea for them to game together until they try it.

So my suggestion: create characters so as to make this as inclusive and low stress a game as possible, but also say upfront that if this roleplaying stuff doesn't work out, it may be something that might not be a good fit for them to do together.

--Steve

 

[Fifth Element]

...some people just don't have fun imagining to be an elf for four hours on a weekend.

Wait...what? Really?

What do they do with all their free time, then? Something productive, I suppose.

 

[deathdonut]

Thanks everyone for the feedback here. I love both the diversity of perspective and the great responses that have been generated.

As it happened, I was largely intending there to be a lot more "what type of 4e character class is a good fit for novice characters now that everyone has spells?" discussion, but since the thread was already moved and I'm enjoying the hell out of the content, I'm more than happy to keep discussing the more general aspects of the situation.

For a little background into our group, it's fairly small (Myself and 5 players counting her) and we're all in our 30's with jobs and families. We've all played off and on for a decade or two (almost 3 in my case) in campaigns from Basic D&D to Ars Magica. Two other spouses (my own included) know that this isn't for them and have never had a problem with being excluded. The girlfriend in question has been dating the buddy for about 4 years now, but only recently showed any interest beyond mere tolerance. I suspect it's an attempt by the buddy to head off some disapproval by encouraging her to be a part. He's a good friend who I see infrequently enough to be concerned about how his exclusion would have an effect our friendship. She knows everyone involved pretty well.

I don't mind working a bit harder to make her feel included. I don't mind humoring her until she gets bored and quits. I don't even mind creating a custom class that supports her desire to play a (who knows?) floating magical talking cat. What I want to avoid is losing a friend as part of a campaign over a (not so simple?) request or having my other friends feel self conscious to the point that they no longer enjoy role-playing in front of the "audience" as was insightfully mentioned earlier.

In general, if someone can't make it on game night, we cancel the game. This obviously makes running a campaign much like herding a bunch of cats that have jobs and kittens. I think I'm going to adjust things a little and try to add some precedent for running short a player if need be. I also intend to add another person from outside the group to bring some "new blood" into the mix. This should have the added effect of making her feel a little less like an "outsider" and provide for some flexibility in running if we're short a player.

 

[Fifth Element]

No mater how we played it spouses/girlfriends (or even boyfriends if its a female player) simply do not work.

I play in one campaign with my wife, and I DM another campaign in which she's a player. The best campaigns I've ever been a part of. She wasn't even interested in D&D up until a year ago, after she had gotten into LotR and other fantasy, and realized she was a gamer geek, who just never joined a game (to paraphrase Jim Levenstein).

In the end I'm sure you'll find, as we did, that the golden rule is sacred

Nope. I don't find that at all. It may work for you, but be careful in your assumption that it must work for everyone else.

 

[blargney the second]

You've got a golden opportunity to make your good friend really happy for a long time and get a new player in the process. Gamer girlfriends are awesome.

Approach her with enthusiasm and you're much more likely to get the same from her. Ask her what characters from movies and books she thinks are awesome and what it is she likes about them. Then help her make the coolest character ever that has whatever attributes she admires.
-blarg