The party disbands because...?

[Yort]

While building a new group, I’ve been feeling nostalgic about some of my old gaming groups, which are legion. Each has its own memories, but in the end they all have one thing in common: they broke up. Outside commitments, moves, and drifting apart generally play a role in most break ups, but I’m dwelling on more than the old campaign-just-petered-out excuse. So I’m wondering who else has interesting break up stories? The weird, the unexplained, the court ordered.

One example to get the ball rolling: A solid group of six friends who met online and from friends of friends playing for about 8 months. Solid campaign, good group dynamics, plenty of energy. Then within two months, the universe made moves against us.

First, our Finnish pre-med student has to drop out since he’s starting his lab classes on cranial surgery and wants to concentrate more on that. He’s from Finland, which is freaky enough, but he has to spend more time cutting open cadaver heads. OK.

Second, our young college student announces he’s moving to China with his girlfriend for two years to teach English. This from a man who spent a year in Cuba learning Spanish and what not. Just completing his communist world tour. Fine

Third, our GM finds out his army reserve unit has been called to active duty in Afghanistan and will be shipping out within two months. ‘Til now, he’s only been absent one weekend a month and was obviously the glue that held the campaign together. Plus he had a central location for all members, rather vital with mass transit in mind. A terrible loss in more ways than one.

Finally, I receive a deal in which my wife and I essentially house sit for her brother while he is away in England with business. This necessitates a one and a half hour move outside the city and nearly a two year commitment to live in the burbs. Evil, but the savings in rent have enabled us to eliminate all debt and start a nice savings.

We throw in the towel. The group is scattered to the winds, characters are retired, and we try to keep in touch when we can, international time zones not withstanding. Not the most dynamic break up, but a series of unique events if I say so myself.

How did you lose your group?

 

[Evilhalfling]

so I was playing in a Chez Geek Game in RL
I had my own apt with my wife, and there were four players
3 lived in the same apartment, two old friends (from HS)
jobs: waiter (x2) artist, temp, medical test subjects
they only had 2 beds and a couch, one had money problems, none were tidy. although they had different levels of tolerance for messes. Did I mention the Psycho-Ex girlfriend ?
She would fill up their answering machine and call the roommates cell phones. I cant remember when she became pregenent, because although she was an ex, she was an ex with benifits.
other factors.
1. evil characters
2. more than one rules lawyer

really there were no suprises that this group self destructed. I think that some of the players are still not speaking with each other.
I tried to keep two games running, but my old friends driffted out of gaming
and the other two expanded to a group of 5, which broke up when I moved out of town, and another player moved shortly afterward.

 

[pogre]

so I was playing in a Chez Geek Game in RL
I had my own apt with my wife, and there were four players
3 lived in the same apartment, two old friends (from HS)
jobs: waiter (x2) artist, temp, medical test subjects
they only had 2 beds and a couch, one had money problems, none were tidy. although they had different levels of tolerance for messes. Did I mention the Psycho-Ex girlfriend ?
She would fill up their answering machine and call the roommates cell phones. I cant remember when she became pregenent, because although she was an ex, she was an ex with benifits.
other factors.
1. evil characters
2. more than one rules lawyer

really there were no suprises that this group self destructed. I think that some of the players are still not speaking with each other.
I tried to keep two games running, but my old friends driffted out of gaming
and the other two expanded to a group of 5, which broke up when I moved out of town, and another player moved shortly afterward.

Wow! Are you saying you had an ex with benefits while you were married?

My group broke up a couple of years ago because most of my players moved due to career opportunities. Not nearly as interesting as your situation.

 

[possum]

How did the group I was in disband?

I joined the group in 1999 when I was a freshman in high school. The other members were mostly sophomores in the same high school.

The next two years went great, the DM went through many great adventures and we were all happy.

Then, it happened. Graduation for the majority of the group! All that was left were the junior players who had no experience DMing.

Then came this new DM, and he was not bad, but he got caught trying to rob a cigar store and threatened to commit suicide. With all the DMs gone in Ashland, the group disbanded.

If only, the senior players had taught the junior members how to properly DM...

 

[Hand of Evil]

Had a group that broke up because of love, two feel into it and where impossible to game with.

Another because of careers and the day to day little things of life and families.

 

[Craer]

My group is in the process of falling apart. It's interesting to watch, in a Kafkaesque sort of way.

Really, it's because of player bloat. At the session last night, we had ten people running around in my basement. That's a ridiculous amount of players. Well, minus one for being the DM, but still. Ten. Egad.

Our group used to consist of one DM and four players, with an additional player every now and then when he took a train from the city into town to hang out with us. It was good. And then, the DM suddenly brought in three new players.

The Beginning of the End.

New Player 1 is a silly powergamer. That's it. If the character isn't twinked to hell with at least four prestige classes, two templates, and based off of an anime hero, he's not interested.

New Player 2 is a rabid rules lawyer. Not only is he bad at being a Rules Lawyer, but he's quite stubborn about being right, even when shown the proper page in Book X that directly contradicts his eagerly shouted mandates.

New Player 3 is worst of the rotten lot. This girl is a seething pit of mental issues, on top of being a poor and distracting roleplayer. She frequently makes pointed attempts to steal the spotlight of the entire game for herself with her overly dramatic characters. Case in point, her last character was a human fighter that, after a whispered conversation with the DM mid-game, suddenly sprouted wings made of chains. When the rest of the party understandably uttered a collective "WTF?", her character started crying tears of blood and flew off over the city. This change in her character was never explained. Later, her character tried to commit suicide in front of us, and when none of our characters stopped her, the player became angry at us.

By the way, she's dating new player #1, in addition to being the subject of the DM's unspoken affections. I can't be the only one to see this DramaBomb-a-tickin'.

On top of all of this (!), one of our players is leaving to join the U.S. Navy in March.

Another player simply doesn’t play. When he shows up, he sits down for five minutes, grows bored, and wanders off to play GameCube, no matter if the party is in the middle of combat. Last session, he got up in the middle of a fight, wandered into the guest room, lay down on the bed, and fell asleep for two hours. Then his girlfriend, another player, went into the room with him, and closed the door.

Cue awkward silence.

At that point, our DM just gave up and packed his stuff up.

I figure that my group has about 3 months left before we shatter for good. Luckily, I'm in a second group that doesn't meet as frequently, but I believe that to be a good thing. When we do meet, we actually play a decent game for the alloted time. The group I described in this post meets every week.

 

[Krieg]

Wow! Are you saying you had an ex with benefits while you were married?

I believe it was the ex of one of the three roommates...not the poster.

Later, her character tried to commit suicide in front of us, and when none of our characters stopped her, the player became angry at us.

Sorry but I find that terribly amusing.

FWIW you might want to consider speaking privately with the "good" members of the group & set up a contingency plan that will allow you to continue gaming seperately when the rest of the group implodes.

 

[Treebore]

Just get together with the DM and other "good/acceptable" players and, as a group, tell the unwanted players not to come back, ever. Why go through the pain of waiting, cut off the diseased parts.

 

[Mordane76]

My group came apart because of moving issues. At the end of a semester, everyone moved to new apartments, had changes in schedules... it just because too hard to get everyone together anymore. It was a lot of fun while it lasted. It was fortunate, though, because I was very quickly developing GM burn-out.

I'm still trying to figure out if I can manage to get into a game as a player IRL. Not having that fix has been nagging at me for a long time now, but getting back into the saddle as a player would require me to go down the 'F'LGS and find a game, or prostrate myself before the local university gaming society... and I'm not sure I can do either...

 

[Romnipotent]

My friends 10 year group collapsed/ended on saturday a couple weeks ago, lack of players, girlfriends forbidding the playing. We know the wrap!
Well he started a wednesday game up, we're at 8 players, it doesn't seem too bad right now, we work as a group, and we're not playing d20. The oddity I guess is that we're playing 3rd ed Gurps, and because of the way the system works the GM is doing well, that and we're normally stuffing our faces with watermelon and thickshakes (we feed ourselves well)