Unusual Gaming Groups

[Garmorn]

If multiple females in a group is unusal then mine is. 4 Females and only two male. There is me, my wife, our daughter, a female friend of ours, her daughter, and a single guy. Our group has been to gether for over four years.

Which remindes me. Any games up near Decatur, Illionios?

 

[Ruined]

I'm just waiting for the Penitentiary gaming group to show up.

"Yeah, all of us met near the weight stack and realized that we all liked Dungeons and Dragons. So I had my grandma smuggle some dice in a bundt cake, and soon we were killing trolls while the guards weren't looking..."

 

[Skade]

My strangest group consisted of:

1 58 year old calculus teacher
1 22 year old male goth who only dressed in black leather, and actually called himself BANE in real life. The caps are a pronunciation key. BANE!
1 6'5'' foot tall man who looked like Ronald McDonald and only played gnomes.
1 hairy biker wannabe who carried a pistol to games. In his defense he carried it everywhere.
1 16 year old goth chick with a tendency to only wear things that could be bought at Fredricks.
1 Pagan, nature worshipping wiccan girl who was as close to evangelical as wiccans get.
3 stereotypical gamers ages 17-21. i.e, glasses, bad hygeine, no girlfriends, obsessed with anime.
1 DM, otherwise known as me, who has to be odd to hang with this assortment of people.

 

[Thresher]

Drunk photography major, they dont come in any other flavours- male 24
Pagan upper class first time away from home Teaching student- female 19
Mostly drunk visual arts major, goth cliche - Male 19 (me)
Rock band lead singer guitarist/Computer Science student who later dumped CS for Classics 'cause CS had no soul man!' -male 25
Straight laced economics student, later corrupted by above- female 19
Very drunk civil engineering student- male 20
Ph-major's older half-brother, generic layabout artist and dole bludger- male 26
His friend, Radiologist who told stories about what they found in people's rectums in hospital- male 27

 

[NeuroZombie]

For me it was a one -off scenario at a friend of a friend of a friends house:

• 3 DM's
• 22 Players
• A very Large Living Room
• 4 large Kitchen tables shoved together

It was chaos, but it was short for me as my 3rd level Thief (forgot his name) was swallowed by a giant frog about a third of the way thru the evening. By the time I got a new PC rolled (1st edition BTW), the group was nearing the end of the session.

 

[Desdichado]

How about this:

one DM (male -- that's me!)
one to three players at any given time (all female)

all of us were 11-13 years old.

Kinda brings a whole new meaning to the term roleplaying...

 

[bwgwl]

i've gamed with several groups where the women outnumbered the men. i think female gamers are becoming more and more common. (thank goodness!)

also, from my experience, the stereotype that female gamers hate combat and only like storytelling is not necessarily true. i've played with more female buttkickers than female storytellers.

 

[Emerald]

While I do not know if our current group is "unusual" it is definately not the sterotype.

Three couples and thier kids and one single female.

couple 1 - late 30's (computer programer and techincal editor) with a 2 1/2 year old

couple 2 - mid 20's (doula/childcare provider (me) and creative writing major/digital image tech.) with 15 month old.

couple 3 - early 40's (physist and homemaker) with 10 year old and 14 year old.

Female - mid 30's (mathematician)

So we often have to stop for diaper changes, naptimes, snack and the like for the younger two.

 

[Henry]

Does anyone have any good stories about some "unusual" gaming groups they played in?

In my experience, one cannot call something "unusual" before establishing a baseline, and I don't thing there IS such a thing - at least, not anymore. Back in the early days, the typical gamer was a part-time miniatures gamer, quoted everything from star trek to doctor who, and knew the difference between 1960's 11" GI Joe action figures and the tripe Hasbro introduced back in the early 1980's. (just overexaggertating to make a point.)

Now, I have noted gaming groups of all configurations: Everything from one group I've seen with enough white-collar power to start a corporation (or who HAVE started a corporation), to drama troupes, to entire groups of gay pagan libertarian train conductors, and back again.

My current group consists of:
1 Wiccan computer technician
1 Lapsed Catholic salesman
1 Christian Computer Admin
2 agnostic/atheist Web designers

and used to contain at one time one "Grip" Wiccan (it's a philosophy within a religion; and I know nothing else about it).

Most of us met through jobs and similar interests. But the fact is that there are almost as many unusual groups as there are groups.

Dave Arneson's famous story involves what he tells people whom he meets that D&D players are "weird": At one time about 15 to 20 years ago, every United States Nuclear Submarine had a Dungeons and Dragons gaming group on it, it was so popular in military academies. If D&D players worldwide wanted to dominate the world, it had a darned good start.

 

[Cedric]

At one time about 15 to 20 years ago, every United States Nuclear Submarine had a Dungeons and Dragons gaming group on it

I would imagine that most of them still do. I got my start in gaming in Naval Nuclear Power School in 1992 (class 9204).

Cedric