My Wife Is Trying Gaming This Weekend

[Retreater]

My wife and I have been together for nearly 10 years now in some capacity and she has played exactly one game of D&D with me (and that was 8 years ago). After some begging, she's agreed to try one more game this weekend (as something of a Valentine's present to me).

Has anyone had a similar experience of trying to rope in an S.O. to the hobby? Did it work? What wisdom would others want to share?

Thanks in advance,
Retreater

 

[renau1g]

What is she like? Is she a gamer already, perhaps video games? Does she like deep novels with lots of character immersion, or maybe something more light, but love-storyesque like Twilight. Oh, also what's the group like? Will it be like "OMG girlgirlgirlgirl, ok I show off my ten foot...polearm...what? I've got an 20 Constitution!" situation?

I'd make sure she doesn't feel singled out either by favortism or because she is a lady, also make sure she understands the tone of the adventure/campaign. If she is expecting hack n slash and suddenly it's a detailed murder mystery with little/no combat that would suck.

My wife started gaming with me when we were dating, mostly because she wanted to be with me during Friday/Saturday night game nights. Sadly, we don't anymore, but that's a function of having small kids and busy schedules. She really liked playing and spent tons of time developing her character, Melinda "Corky" Corkwine, halfling rogue (in 3e). We played that campaign from 1-15. There was a bit of growing pains as the group adjusted to her, but it was fine.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

My wife gets mad* if we don't roll enough dice during a gaming session.

As a slightly longer anecdote:

The first character my wife ever created was for an ongoing swamp-exploration-and-evil-temple-cleansing adventure.

The DM introduced her character by way of having her captured by some lizardmen, and tied up in the bottom of their boat. The lizardmen were moving downriver to an outpost which we had recently captured, and we ambushed them as they pulled ashore. The combat lasted several hours (due to the large number of players and the larger number of enemies).

The DM didn't tell us that she was in one of the boats (which had stopped a little bit off-shore and was drifting slowly downriver), and he didn't tell her that she could attempt to escape on her own, so she basically sat there for a couple hours while the rest of us, confusedly, played through the combat and waited for her character to show up.

I am, frankly, surprised that after this introduction, she came back to play the next session. Eventually, the DM left our group.

* Not actually mad.

 

[amerigoV]

Has anyone had a similar experience of trying to rope in an S.O. to the hobby? Did it work? What wisdom would others want to share?

For the love of God - let her win!!

My wife stressed over decisions that had to be made - always worried about "making the wrong move." I could never quite get her over it. So, I tell her gaming stories and she seems to enjoy them (or put up with them anyway ).

 

[zonetrooper1]

I gamed heavily when I was younger and then got out of it when I had a family and job, etc.. but always kept my stuff and planned to return to it someday. When I married my second and current wife I wasn't gaming and hadn't for the first number of years, so it was quite a surprise to her when these boxes come in from the garage and there are AD&D 2e books laying everywhere. She was against the idea from the start and even after a bit of pleading and negotiation she still wouldn't do it.

She loved to read and read two, sometimes three, books a week. I explained that role-playing games are like reading a book except you are one of the characters in the book and you decide how that character acts, thinks, and proceeds through the story. I could tell by the look on her face I had achieved the first victory in this battle. We have a custom in our house that no matter when your birthday is, that weekend is your birthday weekend and almost no request can be denied. I had her! There was no way she was getting out of it this time.

Our first adventure was a first level module that I thought would adequately introduce her to the game and give her an opportunity to see what gaming had to offer. Our teenager, who had some limited exposure to gaming was playing as well. The first session went very well and she seemed genuinely interested in continuing to play, so we set up a game day for the following month. Now, my first mistake was making her an elven fighter/thief/magic-user. Way too much for her to have to deal with as a new player but I wanted to introduce her to a variety of things and then settle on a class of her choosing later on.

Next session comes along and the dice rolls are hideous. They couldn't hit the broad side of a barn no matter how easy I made it for them. About an hour into it her character is dead. She was pi$$ed. Wow, was she mad. That was over a year ago and she still refuses to play and becomes very bitter about it every time it is brought up. Very bad situation to be sure.

The morel of this story? Don't start her off with anything more than the minimal amount of information, and FOR THE LOVE OF GAWD, DO NOT UNDER ANY CONDITION KILL YOUR WIFES CHARACTER. PERIOD!!! I DON"T CARE HOW MANY RULES YOU HAVE TO BREAK, DON'T DO IT.

 

[Jared Rascher]

My (now) Ex-Wife insisted on joining my gaming group when we got engaged, and she made a cleric. She was so obsessed with being the center of attention that all of my friends ended up dying from serious injuries rather then tell her they were running low on hit points, for fear of giving her any more of the spot light in the campaign.

Oddly enough, my Ex has very few "geeky" leanings.

My current, lovely wife is a geek of several persuasions. She loves Star Trek, and the first thing we did when we met was discuss the Dune books. Excalibur was one of her favorite movies, and she used to do tech support for flight simulators. She doesn't play table top RPGs at all.

We played together one time, to help try out a friend's adventure that he was going run for a convention. He wanted people that had never played before, but I was along for the ride to help out. We had a really good time, and in a way, I felt better knowing that she had honest to goodness seen what my hobby was about from the inside, but she decided she had no interest in gaming.

She really didn't want to get obsessive about it, which she would have if she dove too much into the rules, and she didn't want to intrude on "my thing" with my friends.

It was really strange because I got this warm feeling of knowing that she understood without having to be a part of it. Or maybe it was just relief from my remembrances of my Ex.

 

[NewJeffCT]

For the love of God - let her win!!

to quote Chevy Chase "I won Dungeons & Dragons - and it was advanced!!!"

 

[Stumblewyk]

Yeah, I got my wife into the game about 5 years ago - a regular member of our group cancelled on us at the last minute, and she didn't have any other plans that evening. So, I just asked her to sit in with us and give it a try so that she could at least understand what I was doing with my friends every couple of weeks.

She's played ever since.

As far as any tips I could provide...I really don't have any. We just treated her like someone who needed to learn the game. We kept the banter light, and we encouraged the ideas she came up with.

 

[CuRoi]

My wife and I have been together for nearly 10 years now in some capacity and she has played exactly one game of D&D with me (and that was 8 years ago). After some begging, she's agreed to try one more game this weekend (as something of a Valentine's present to me).

Has anyone had a similar experience of trying to rope in an S.O. to the hobby? Did it work? What wisdom would others want to share?

Thanks in advance,
Retreater

In college, I would go off to weekly gaming sessions on Friday nights and be out until 1 or 2 in the morning. My wife (newlyweds at the time) HATED it. She hated it with a passion and was a bit jealous I suppose that I chose to spend so much time there and I think she may have been a little worried that I couldn't possibly have been playing that whole time and must have gone out partying, etc.

So I invited her to a game. It was a poorly managed game that just ground on and on with little progress. She watched, didn't want to play, and decided it was a waste of time. She also subsequently became completely unthreatened by my activities, heh.

Some time went by and I decided to drop the game I was in and start one of my own. Since we would be hosting at our apartment, I tried to talk her into playing. She resisted (remembering the terrible game she witnessed previously.) I finally talked her into playing a solo adventure with me just so she could get a feel for what it was like to play.

Aside from her constant attempts to hit on the DM , the session went well and was different enough from the nightmare game she witnessed earlier to convince her she might like playing. So, things have just sort of "worked" since then. From 2e to 3e / 3.5e she has stuck with it and at times corrects me on the rules.

So, my only advice, don't take her to a poorly run game. Either run something yourself to re-introduce her, or make sure the game you are taking her to is a decent game. Most women I have gamed with (not all) are interested in some kind of storytelling and less interested in rules mastery. (Even the ones that just want to smash stuff are less interested in rules mastery from my experience and, well, just want to smash stuff quick and efficiently.) I imagine you know her preferences, so just give it some thought and make sure the curent campaign or game you take her to has something that will interest her. If she walks in and is overwhelmed by rules arguments, highly complex characters and/or lots of side banter about things she has no interest in, you can bet she won't be back.

 

[Aramax]

for Sienfeld fans only

A George devided against himself must fall!