My Wife Is Trying Gaming This Weekend

[DrunkonDuty]

2 tales of my current group.

The girlfriend (now wife) of one of the players expressed curiousity about this game he spent so much time playing. So she sat in and watched a session. She loved it. Something in it spoke to her inner nerd. She has been with the group ever since. (About 18 months.) And she's a great addition to the group too. Laughs lots and enjoys the game and really gets into it. Her Inner Nerd is now an Outy.

Last night she was teasing my new girlfriend; basically along the lines of "Don't worry, Glen (me) will convert you." My girlfriend's horrorfied cries of "I am not a nerd!" then echoed across the neighbourhood. Funny. That being said she has no problem with me playing. And she's mildly curious about it. She may even sit in and watch a session some time. It was this last admision on my girly's part that prompted last night's teasing.

As for wisdom to share: treat your wife like any other player. Let her know the campaign guide lines and, as she's new to the whole thing, help her with the rules and encourage her to play a part in the game, espceially if she seems a bit overwhelmed or uncertain. Ask the other players to help, I'm sure they'll be obliging.

Also remember, she's your wife and is going out of her way to spend time with you and is giving one of your interests a try.

Have fun!

 

[OnlineDM]

Help her create a character that she will absolutely love, and make sure you let her make it as much of her own character as she wants it to be.

My wife and I play D&D together. With her first character, I interfered too much in the creation process ("suggesting" powers and feats and so on), and she ended up hating that about the character (even though she probably role-played that particular character the best of any she's played so far). She really wanted to do it on her own, and my interference didn't help.

In your case, it sounds like your wife will want you to pretty much put things together for her, so figure out what she will gravitate toward and give that to her. Is she an animal lover? Give her a character with an animal companion or familiar. Is she nurturing? Maybe a healer class. Is she strongly independent? Perhaps some kind of ranger or rogue. And so on.

Don't sweat the details of the rules too much, and focus on the idea of becoming a character that she can easily relate to. In combat, ask her in general what she wants to do - "I want to hit that guy" is plenty, unless she wants to get into the finer points of the various options available to her. Don't patronize her, but don't overwhelm her with too many rules and options, either, if she doesn't want them. It's a fine balance.

Good luck, and have fun!

 

[nedjer]

Much of this makes me want to weep. How many wives, kids, relatives and girlfriends have switched-off RPGs because of the dice rolls at low level.

Worse still, unlike a boardgame, RPGs invite you to nurture new players rather than forcing the rules down their throat. There are just so many better alternatives, including a passing rack of healing potions, sold into slavery, captured and held ransom . . .

Some of you guys have put so much into leading the (entirely figurative) horse to water, only to fill the trough with stagnant water crusted over with a layer of last year's pond life.

Please do not kill new players' PCs; for you kill the hobby when you do so.

 

[Retreater]

From what I gather, she's going to be more interested in the hack n slash aspect of the game. We've played through a couple of solo encounters just to get her familiar with the rules a little (or as she puts it "so I won't look stupid in front of everyone.")

Deciding what attack power to use sort of confounds her. She says something like "I just want to kill it." Therefore, I've made her a character with really good basic attacks.

I have a couple of short roleplaying encounters ready to entertain the rest of the group (and maybe she will get into it).

I hope the other players don't hate me too much for "taking it easy" on her. (For example, I may not enforce opportunity attacks against her character because she was really confused by them.)

I'm also fixing a nice dinner for everyone before we start to play so we can socialize a bit before the game - which will hopefully make everyone comfortable.

Retreater

 

[CuRoi]

I hope the other players don't hate me too much for "taking it easy" on her. (For example, I may not enforce opportunity attacks against her character because she was really confused by them.)

That sets a bad precedent IMO. I'm not at all suggesting you hunt her PC down and destroy it before she gets going, however I would not start by bending the rules for her.

1) She'll never come to fully understand them if she doesn't experience them
2) Your other players may be ok with it or say they are ok with it, but actually be ruffled by it
3) she may come to expect it for future games and it could create a sore point (which leads to her quitting or you sleeping on the couch when suddenly you do decide to start "picking on her" by applying the rules you kept skipping.)

If anything, just remind her of the rules during play (well this action will cause an opportunity attack are you sure you want to do it this way?) and either you or the experienced players can give her suggestions (without taking over and playing her character.)

 

[Diamond Cross]

Uh oh. Everybody run.

 

[Thunderfoot]

Wife and I have been together for 22 and 1/2 years. As far as I can remember she has always played in my games, but I don't remember her ever playing when we dated.

NEVER take it easy on her. Following the rules will keep the other players from flipping out, and will actually make things go easier when you introduce kids later. Both mine played and I never went easy on them either, my oldest (21) just started his own campaign in college and is running his girlfriend, by the rules, much to her chagrin.

 

[wingsandsword]

My wife and gaming. . .

She's a geek, even though she may dispute it. She loves to play chess, her favorite TV shows are Eureka, Stargate Universe, Big Bang Theory, and Battlestar Galactica. She plays in fantasy larps, and reads fantasy novels voraciously.

You'd think she's a natural candidate for tabletop gaming. Not quite so.

Apparently her ex-husband was also a gamer and catastrophically burned her out on it. She tried to game with them a few times, every time was a disaster.

You see, my wife enjoys roleplaying, not rolling dice and number crunching. Her ex-husband's game was a high-level D&D 3.5 campaign, she took one look at what it would take to create a character for this game, and balked. They created high level min-maxed PC and handed it to her (what would be a typical character for their campaign). For somebody who doesn't like lots of math and has never tabletopped before, jumping into a high-level 3.5e game of a bunch of veteran players (character optimizing rules lawyers at that) was daunting to say the least. She lasted one session before she bolted.

They wanted her to come back and try again, next time giving her an epic level character (as the campaign had gone higher level since then), with some kind of code of conduct (I could never figure out from what she remembers if it was a Paladin, or some other obscure class with a code, or some feats like Vows which have strictures like that), she didn't fully understand the restrictions (or really want to play a character with them) and broke them quickly, and left the game when she found out how permanently hosed her character was from doing that.

I've spent the almost 5 years I've known her trying to get her to tabletop game. She almost tried out a World of Darkness game once, since she likes vampire fiction and she was told the game was very low-math. She then had a falling out with the GM and didn't actually join.

The only time she's ever gamed and enjoyed it was a few weeks ago. We go to a gaming club in the area that meets at a FLGS a couple of counties over. She goes there to play Magic, I play whatever pickup game of some RPG or CMG they are playing. She gets cajoled into playing a game of the new 4e-derived Gamma World and apparently at least has an okay, neutral time. Not loving it, but certainly not hating it. The wacky setting was a negative, but she says the game didn't feel like it was nothing but sitting down and doing math homework for hours on end.

Now, one day, I hope to get her playing an RPG with me and my friends. 3.5 might be a stretch, I'm thinking maybe d6 Star Wars, as something I like to run that is relatively rules light.

 

[Retreater]

She gets cajoled into playing a game of the new 4e-derived Gamma World and apparently at least has an okay, neutral time.

Funny that my wife is willing to give Gamma World a try too. The complexity of 3.5 turned her off, but now she's looking at GW and 4E in general.

I do tend to tone down the wackiness of GW when I run it. Occassionally there's a goofy thing, but not all the time.

Retreater

 

[WisdomLikeSilence]

Retreater, it sounds like you've made a good start by giving her a simpler character and running a couple of solo encounters with her. Here are a few other bits of advice:

1) Let her play. By which I mean, don't constantly override and question her decisions, and let her make a few mistakes. Don't let anyone else in the group overwhelm her either.

2) If there is someone in your group who knows the rules well, and is really good and sensitive with people, have them sit next to her and act as a resource for any questions. Especially if she knows them already. That way she won't have to stop the game and ask you. It can also be a lot easier to take advice from a friend who is not your spouse.

3) Find some good ways to draw her out, either in roleplaying or combat. Just gentle things like having an NPC address her directly, or making one of her good skills really useful in an encounter.

4) Describe stuff. This will be particularly helpful in getting her to use her cool attack powers.

5) If you can, make up a combat rules cheat sheet. I found that I was able to get the essentials down to 2 pages for our newbies, and it helped a lot.

6) Remind your group to be cool. NO SEXIST COMMENTS.

7) Remind her that, as long as you have fun, you can't really play the game "wrong."

Have fun - my husband and I have introduced half a dozen new players to gaming, and they all still love to play.