Who do you play with, and why?

[dave_o]

My gaming group mostly consists of a lot of punks (oi!). Which, is both good and bad -- good in that we're all good friends outside of gaming, and bad because sometimes games are spoiled by a drunk player or everyone decides not to game because of a show. When, then, in itself, can be construed as good or bad... In any case, here they are.

Whim
AGE: 25, EDUCATION: High School, OCCUPATION: Cutco Knife Saleman, HOBBIES: Frontman of Nick and the Dicks, writing for a local magazine, applying occultist mythos to figures such as Billy Joel and Tom Seleck (ex. Billy Joel rides a transparent player piano through space in time, has a machine gun, and assassinated JFK).

Whim runs a World of Darkness game I'm in, as well as plays the opposite half of the Kender twins I play in a Dragonlance d20 game, and is game for pretty much anything else. He <i>loves</i> White Wolf, and Planescape, posessing the most voluminous knowledge on both that I have ever seen in a human being. He's more than a little crazy, and is tiny, and probably my best friend. Currently, he is in posession of my skateboard, and will have it indefinately.

Gavin
AGE: 30, EDUCATION: College, OCCUPATION: Questionable, this guy seriously just comes up with money, HOBBIES: Reading Milton, drinking, walking everywhere, having visions of great Fascist power.

Gavin is 6'7. He is also blind in one eye, which is brown -- the other eye is blue. He plays an elitest German Mage in the aforementioned World of Darkness game, and a Gnome named Lugnut in the aforementioned Dragonlance game. Gavin is incredibly frightening upon first meeting him, but is a teddy bear otherwise.

Russ
AGE: 26, EDUCATION: High School, some College, OCCUPATION: Tech Support, HOBBIES: Comics, wanting girls he'll never have, dying his hair, Anime.

Russ is your typical slightly rolly-polly gamer geek. He fits the stereotype perfectly, which is both a good and bad thing. He runs the aforementioned Dragonlance game and plays Jeb, the Demon infesting a hobo's body in the WoD game.

And, of course, my girlfriend Becca.

That's the core group, which is usually (but not religiously) augmented by Simon the Mod, his girlfriend Katie, Rudy the Bootie, the black dude whose name no one knows, Brett the Old, John the Curly, and Mike the Beast.

Wow, I have a gigantic gaming group.

 

[Qualidar]

I've been gaming with the same four guys for the last 16 years. We're all in our early to mid 30s, three college educated, two not. I'm the only one not married in the group.

As with Crothian's group, we are all friends and we'd hang out even if we didn't play together. Unfortunately, with everyone in serious committed relationships (and now with kids popping up) most of the time we see each other only when gaming.

As far as having the same group for so long, the only real negative is that I'm the only one that GMs, the plus is that they really let me dictate what we're going to be playing in most cases. It would be great to have another DM/player, though, so I could get a chance to see the other side of the screen.

~Qualidar~

 

[D+1]

I game with friends. Almost always have, either getting into a group via a friend or gathering a group of new/old friends together, they bring in friends or aquaintences, etc.

My personal history with D&D goes like this:
Introduced to the game by an aquaintence in high school, Scott. He's a grade above me and I only knew him to say "Hi!" to at the time but I guess he figured I was a good candidate to try out this new game he'd found.

Brought in my younger brother and we both bring in a friend or two. We game for what seems like AGES. Scott is working at a pizza parlor and overhears a conversation about D&D. He joins THEIR group (DM'ed by Casey) on the side.

I try briefly to finagle my way into Casey's group.

Scott and Casey annouce that they will JOIN campaigns under Casey (and Scott will thereafter only occasionally DM, and that's usually something other than D&D like Traveller or Marvel SH). Characters all jump worlds in a single, big adventure and we have a REALLY BIG group. At peak I think we had as many as 12 players in the roster and well over twice that many player characters, but I was the only one who played EVERY WEEK.

Scott moves to the other end of the state.

Eventually that campaign winds down (about 10 years later) as players all go seperate ways. I can't stand NOT playing so I take up DM'ing full time with a small group assembled from my brother, our cousin, and a few of their friends. I run a few campaigns but they tend to fizzle out whenever summer comes around and they seem to have better/other things to do. I am stupefied at this.

Scott joins my group as a player. Through him I eventually meet Bill, who Scott had played with after he'd moved. I end up as a player in Bill's campaign with several new players. Bill and I trade off as Shield Monkey - as one campaign dies, the other will start up a new game.

Bill has a series of strokes and moves away so I take over and run a VERY successful campaign for a small group including Scott.

Finally I move out of state taking a job with Bob, one of my now long-time players. Bob and I find ourselves too old and set in our ways to want to risk/bother sorting through new players, and Bob's kids are just a bit too young and immature yet to bring into "OUR" game. We repeatedly whine for Scott to move down here near us so we can start up again with a quorum but Scott is largely incommunicado. Last I heard he was running a small game but haven't talked to him now in a few moons.

After almost a year we finally begin again with myself, Bob, and his wife Rhonda. I suspect we'll rapidly find it imperative to either let one or more of the kids in on "our" game, or else dig up an additional player from somewhere.

I'm early 40's, the others are late 30's. Bob and I do commercial satellite maintenance, Rhonda is now a secretary at an aircraft maintenance company. I have 2 years of college learning nothing much useful. Bob & Rhonda are both just HS grads but Bob has been running his own buisinesses since he got out of the military and Rhonda has been working or even running the office for said buisiness since they got married.

I'd really like to have Scott as a player again as we both tend to approach roleplaying the same way. I can run a game for just Bob and Rhonda but I think we'll really miss the great dynamics we had on that last campaign I ran.

 

[Aeric]

I started with friends in high school, and over the years I met new people through them, and new people through them, etc. Once in a while I post a "players wanted" notice at my FLGS or on a board such as this one, or I answer someone else's notice.

My current group consists of five people, aged 20-31. I'm friends with everyone in the group, these are people I hang out with outside of gaming. I've known them all for a couple of years now.

I guess I'm lucky in that I have a large group of friends, most of whom are gamers. The groups I play in are fluid, there are always people leaving and new people coming in. It keeps things interesting.

 

[DaveStebbins]

My current group is mostly people from work. Three of us are Engineers (two of us are PEs, one of whom just finished his PhD and the third is working on his masters), two of the guys work in the test labs, one is the wife of one of the test lab guys (she's the most hack-and-slash gamer in the bunch), and the last is a physician's assistant.

We're all between 32 and 42 (I'm the eldest). We all are (or have been) married and we all have one or more kids. We often hang out together outside of work and gaming and we also schedule events which include each other and our families. We game one night a month, which is the best we can do with everyone's schedules.

The one couple and their eight-year-old son and the Physician's Assistant (a widower) and I (divorced) have formed a splinter group which meets more often in a separate game. Our individual statuses allow us to meet more often, though the schedule is usually just whatever works out.
-Dave

 

[Mr. Kaze]

"Who do you play with? Ages, gender, education, etc."

I play with four guys and my wife. Most of them are up to 4 years older than I am, 'cept my wife who is 2 years younger. Most of them -- and myself -- work for the same tech company, with the other guy also working in tech and my wife being a sculptor. The guys are all well educated -- a couple of masters' degrees, an MIT graduate. The two guys who are married are going to be fathers soon with the other two guys reading a whole lot of books. My wife and I recently adopted a very noisy and randomly violent cat -- so there's some similarity to both sides there.

"Why do stay with that group?"

Because I'm the DM and they seem to enjoy playing with my "whatever you can make a reasonable claim for" interpretation of the rules. Half- to two-thirds of the table doesn't care to know the rules quite as abusively as the other half, so it works out for us. (I don't do tournament play, no. But at least one of the players does.)

"How does the group dynamic change game play in your case"

We've had 5 out of 6 for over a year now with the fifth being added off of one of these "players seeking players" things and the sixth recently joining from being the DM of a campaign I joined after seeing a "players seeking players" posting because I was tired of always DMing. (He joined our game because he too was always tired of DMing.) My wife and our neighbor have always been in the game and the other guy took a hiatus to go courting and get married, but was with us for the rest of the time -- he's my brother. Other players have come and gone, but nobody's left in the past year so I think my approval rating is going up.

Now answering the actual question... we tend to rely very much on gestures and random numbers and action descriptions when we're doing things which, while technically legal, can't be easily visualized. This saves us from the "Well that's a silly rule" syndrome because we're satisfied that we've got reasons for pretty much everything we do. Some of the major and recurring ones -- consequences of death, for example -- are nicely documented and posted to a web page. A lot of the other ones are merely brought into being on the fly, but may be used as an example of themselves if the situation later arises. I very much value the richness of the storytelling to the purity of the system and I've made it clear that I have the same expectation for the players -- and it seems to be working out great!

::Kaze (would have rather been a film director...)

 

[francisca]

Group 1:
--My Wife
--A co-worker, who I do other things with besides game (build siege engines)
--Another co-worker who I would hang with more, but we're both too busy. We'll be rooing together at GenCon
--My younger son's Godfather, whom I've known since 1989, and our families do things together outside of gaming

Group 2:
I joined this long-standing group (over 20 years in one form or another) through a guy I used to work with (the DM). I have not worked with him for over 6 years, and we are still good friends. i am also on good terms with the other guys. If I was closer than a 1.5 hour drive, I might very well socialize with them outside of gaming, if we had time (almost all have kids and demanding jobs).

I'm going to be joining a 3rd group soon, via yet another co-worker. I do not know anyone else in the game. Should be interesting, as I will be the oldest by 6 or 7 years, and they mostly have CRPG experience.

 

[francisca]

Double post

 

[francisca]

Triple

 

[diaglo]

when i first started gaming it was with friends i had known outside of gaming for years.

i also formed groups in my school.



since 2000, it has been with people i've met on the internet or who were friends of theirs, or who just gamed with them, or ...


anyone and everyone. i'll game with anyone once. twice or more if i like them...