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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 1340522" data-attributes="member: 99">I read this thread when it was relatively new and didn't feel I had much to add, but something I was posting in another thread gave me an insight that I thought I'd share:The guys I game with are all very close friends.  The most recent one of them to join our group of friends was around 7 years ago.  I've known one of them for over 25 years since we were little kids.  Does this enhance the quality of the game itself?  Probably not much.But what I think it does do is make us all more tolerant of each other's gaming styles and able to take some pleasure in each other's fun, even when we are not in the spotlight ourselves.  For example:One of the guys in our group is a "butt kicker" style of gamer.  He is happiest when the swords are swingin' and the monsters are dyin'.  I, as the GM, try to accomodate this and there is quite a bit of combat in my campaign.  But the last couple of sessions have required a lot of pretty intense roleplaying as the party tries to avert an unnecessary war and get some NPC's to focus on the real danger.  There has been almost no combat and the Butt-Kicker's character has only been mildly involved in the heavy roleplaying.But he's having a lot of fun watching the other guys have fun.Many of these other players are "in the zone", doing what their characters do best and what they as players really enjoy, exploring the plot and interacting with NPC's to delve deeper into the story.  And the Butt-Kicker is happy for them because he likes them and enjoys seeing them be happy (it probably helps that these other guys are a combination of good roleplayers and just very funny people so it is entertaining watching them do their thing).  If he only knew these other guys through gaming and did not consider them to be "friends", I suspect that he'd be more disgruntled that the game was not focusing more on his own character's preferred style of play.And this attitude is reciprocated by the other players.  Most of their characters are not as obtimized for combat as the Butt-Kicker's is and tend to be slightly outshined by his melee prowess.  But those players are happy to see him have such a good time laying down the smack.Finally I'll draw an extremely uncomfortable metaphor given what I've just described about our game group:  It's sort of like sex.  You can certainly enjoy it when you're just in it for yourself.  But if you genuinely care how much fun the other party(ies?  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":eek:" title="Eek!    :eek:"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":eek:" /> ) involved is having, it adds a whole new level of enjoyment.  And they're more likely to invite you back for another session.All things considered, I'd just as soon my gaming buddies not read that last part of the post.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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