Walking away from a game...

[CuRoi]

Umm...wow. I wish I had time to read all of these.

The first I left was in college. It was a nightmare with 15 players, 2 characters each and 3 hours between combat turns.

The second was a game with a group of players that at first seemed fairly well organized and established. The group was esentially centered on a couple of close buddies that had been gaming together for years. They took care of hosting the games and finding new players etc.

I had been going to their group for maybe 6 months and slowly learned that one of the founding members of the group somehow managed to annoy everyone at the table both in character and out of character. (We also determined he was cheating on rolls, but that was after I had already decided to start looking for an exit.)

The other founding member seemed like a good guy overall, though he ocassionally got sidetracked with his more annoying friend. He usually hosted the games at his house. One night, the guy who's hosting tells me "We might have to end the game early because my father-in-law is in the hospital and he's given his final goodbyes."

My first thought was "I'm truly sorry to hear that. I'll see you later." He assured me it was ok and so we very awkwardly started a session.

A couple hours into the game, his wife comes in the room BAWLING. I feel like a complete douche at this point. I'm looking at the other players, they look completely uncomfortable - with the exception of the group founders. It's obvious they expect the game to continue.

The wife talks about her dad and how she's worried and her mother is at the hospital etc. I apologize profusely and ask her if we should leave (because no one else is speaking up). Several of the long term guys start saying how "sometimes it's time for someone to go" etc. etc. Apparently the father has been in bad health and the family has known this time maybe coming for years, but still... Myself and some of the newer players are just sitting there in stunned silence. The wife however, says its ok if we stay and she wants to have people around...this as she continues to sob.

I half-heartedly go through the motions; sort of in shock by the situation. We then find out that the mother-in-law is going to stay the night at the house and is headed here from the hospital. She shows up and looks like a walking zombie of pure exhaustion and sorrow.

I start packing my things simultaneously with at least two of the other players to a chorus of disappointment from the long term players. I apologized to the wife and send my best wishes to her hospitalized father and leave. Suffice it to say I left the group not too long after.

 

[Midknightsun]

Oh boy, unfortunately, more than a few times. A little after my divorce I started looking for players for a 3.5 game. I forget where I saw the advertisement, but there was a local guys looking to start a gaming group, so I showed up. Several of the guys were older gamers like myself who wanted to get back into the swing of things, so I thought it was all cool. Our DM turned out to be a bit of a nimrod, however. He was completely uncreative and clueless. He'd center his next big combat around whatever new minis he picked up but put nothing into the story. I was never so bored in my life. All the other players agreed so we left and chose another DM. This was after months of giving him chances and encouragement/suggestions.

That group played together for a while, with a few new members here and there, but one of the players was pretty hard core on tactics. He was also pretty good at them, but constantly tried to run other people's characters, which began to grate on most of them. One of the other players was much more elderly than the rest of us and was unfortunately heavily medicated after a surgery he had. I felt for the guy, but he just wasn't there mentally. I eventually became the DM and ran an Arcana Evolved Campaign that everybody really liked, but between the tactician, and the narcoleptic, tempers started to flare. We also had a power gamer who made it his goal to mess with me as a DM. He saw me as the enemy and tried everything he could to mess with my campaign, including acting evil (snapping necks of helpless innocent NPCs- because whenever he DMed, his NPCs always turned on the group) when I had asked characters not to be prior to the campaign- and asking constantly to use powers outside the core in order to powergame as much as possible. He was a big guy and would get upset and shoot me dirty looks whenever I didn't give him what he wanted or his character didn't rock every session. My other player was the peacemaker who put up with everyone's crap regardless, and another player who was as hyper as a Jack Russel (who annoyed the tactician to no end), along with a husband and wife couple. The wife was sweet but pretty clueless, the husband knew his stuff but began to get irritated by the tactician. Despite all this the group held together for some time (I kicked out the powergamer after his neck snapping fiasco) and had some pretty good games, but the tactician (who I still consider a good friend) just rubbed too many people the wrong way with his need to force them to conform to his tactics. SO the group eventually fell apart with the steady stress caused by the tactician, narcoleptic, jack russell, and the psycho powergamer.

After that I waited a while and began looking for a new group through a local gaming store. I came across a younger guy and his girlfriend who seemed pretty cool. A group of us began playing with the young dude Dming. We turned into HIS novel, and I saw this beginning to fall apart little by little. The first strike started when he had a half elf NPC (with hairy armpits) rape a player's female deva. That was awkward and uncool, to say the least. The story continued when we were transported into another realm (of the DM's own making), yet his powerful NPCs followed us and found us even though we got there through a supposed freak accident without anyone else but a couple gnomes and a flying ship around (probably their fault anyway). Later, we broke into a jail to release an important NPC, only to somehow end up trapped behind an impenetrable barrier of force when we stepped in (yet the prisoner somehow turned invisible and got free). Another powerful NPC saved us (of course), and all our ideas for escape failed (including digging through the walls of the prison itself). Again, we were tasked by this savior to break into a dwarven prison for some godawful reason I think my mind intentionally ejected. Sneaking in through an underwater passage, we made our way in. The guards were immediately on to us so we fought them off by bottlenecking the door to the chamber we were in and taking them down one at a time. We were actually kicking tuckus for once, which apparently didnt go over well with Mr. DM, who had a basilisk come through the tunnel we entered through (behind us). . . .we STILL did well. My Dwarven Warden was kicking butt hard and we were winning. . . . Then the DM told us we could hear the sound of footsteps from outside the room. Our gnome went invisible and scouted it out. . . .A hundred Dwarven guards, along with a contingent of mages who could conveniently sense invisibility! (how they all fit into the jail still baffles me) We gave up and got thrown into the now familiar prision of the impenetrable walls (apparently enough for all of us to be separated). Even his SO yelled "railroad!", which he denied. After that I talked with one of the other players, who I knew was getting tired of it too and we left. I sent the Dm an email saying I wouldn't be playing anymore.

 

[pemerton]

There are some amazing horror stories on this thread. Also some stuff that I can't believe people put up with for so long before walking!

When I just started uni I joined a 2nd ed AD&D game that was starting up. My brother also joined the game; the GM and the 3 other players were strangers.

After two or three sessions it was obvious that the GM was bad - weak scenarios, weak NPC characterisation, and railroading tendencies. When he cancelled a session, I arranged with the other players to turn up anyway and make PCs for a Rolemaster game that I was keen to run. We then informed the (ex-)GM that he was welcome to join as a player if he wanted to. He declined. 20 years later, that group is still my main gaming group, although its membership has fluctuated over the years with people coming and going.

The only other time I quit a game was when I started full-time work. The game was 2nd ed AD&D. The GM was a big-time railroader, but there were 6 (maybe 7?) players, so we were able largely to ignore the railroad with a lot of intra-party interaction and character development. But things went way downhill when the GM decided to teleport us all 100years or so into the campaign-world future, which cut us off from those parts of the gameworld which we had been using to support that character development. So when I started work a couple of weeks after this happened, I wasn't sad to be leaving the game.

I've had other bad GM experiences, but mostly at conventions, where (having payed for the session) I and my friends have persevered through it (I never walk out of movies either!). Thankfully I've never had any of the "evil PC hijinks" or major real-life powerplay issues that others have posted about here.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

The Amber GM I had back in sophomore year who couldn't even remember what rules that weren't GM Fiat was pretty bad. He was the reason I went and played M:tG instead. The same guy ran a Shadowrun game for us, and again, his rules mastery was such that we all died unnecessarily often.


Other than that...I haven't walked out of a game, and even that one I found Something Else To Do at the same time.

Brad