Why Have You Left A Game or Campaign?

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I have never left an ongoing campaign. I have always gone down with the ship - even when I was not captain.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I've only left a game once though I should've a half dozen or more times. That one time I would put it down to a lack of compatibility with both the GM and the game, SLA Industries. I tried SLA again many years later and, yep, I still don't like it.

 

[TerraDave]

I see this becoming a good thread on bad, or I mean incompatible, players and dms...

Real life intruding has long been dominant for me, and most people I know. Maybe it is just luck. Maybe, after some youthful indiscretion, it is being more carefull in choosing one's "partners" and staying in commited "relationships".

 

[Tewligan]

I've bailed on a couple of campaigns. One was at the DM's tiny apartment, which was pretty filthy. Miniatures, books, loose papers, etc. covered pretty much every horizontal surface, including chairs and the floor, and the glass I used to get a drink of water the first time I arrived showed no sign of having ever been washed. At the next session when all the players were present and the game properly began, it wasn't any better. Totally unclean apartment, now made worse by multiple people vying for a clean place to sit. It was hot, and I believe I may have been the only person there who had showered before coming to the game. One of the other players wore a t-shirt with a picture of an anthropomorphic fox wearing boxer shorts with one thumb hooked seductively under the waistband. Also, the DM half-ass winged it the whole game, complete with day-saving super powerful DMNPC characters. Unclean environment + creepy, smelly players + no real adventure = Tewligan's work schedule suddenly becoming mysteriously too busy to stay in the campaign.

Another game I bailed on was a 1e/2e hybrid game with pages and pages of houserules. Among other things, each character got special abilities or perks from an old 3rd party book. My character was very persuasive at lying, which the DM abused on my behalf - I played a slick, smooth-talking character, and whenever I would tell a lie, the DM would roll and tell the other players they had to believe what I was saying. Also, we spent a good part of the first adventure in which monkeys threw poop at our characters while we tried to open a door. He kept rolling for the poop to hit, and saying "Oooh, a big hot handful hits you in the back of the neck!" There was no actual damage, so the rolls were entirely unnecessary and wasted a good 15 minutes of game time. Plus, rules tended to be thrown out and ignored so the DM could just wing it without the burden of using the books. That, combined with the fact that the place was inconveniently far away meant that I had to bail yet again.

 

[krissbeth]

Another player broke up with me (we were dating). And I graduated and moved away. I guess that counts as "incompatibility."

 

[DungeonMaester]

This is the only reason I ever left a campaign.

---Rusty

 

[Baron Opal]

I left because I had some personality conflicts with other players and / or the DM, and once I had to drop out of a RuneQuest game because of work / school timing. I really liked that game.

There was one game that I dropped out of that I was having a fairly good time with. It was an evil campaign, but the team had a strong reason to work together and there wasn't any backstabbing. I don't like playing evil characters, I much prefer being the hero. But, I made a neutral character that fit along with the party's goals and we were good to go.

Unfortunatly my character died. I started working on my next character because while the party priest could raise me he could only do it at the temple. The party made it pretty clear that they were not going back until the mission was finished. That was fine. The problem was it was three real weeks before the party could make it back and it wasn't plot-appropriate to bring in a new guy in the middle of the dungeon.

I can appreciate an adherance to verisimilitude, but if I have to cool my heels for a month before I can play next, I'm going to find another game. I certainly wasn't interested in coming to game and watch other people play and just chill. Which, the DM was a little surprised I wasn't interested in.

Funny, that.

 

[Mallus]

Time pressure is the only reason I've ever left a game, and even then, it's more of a temporary hiatus. I plan on going back, the people were swell. Odd, but swell. I suppose that's par for the course in this hobby...

 

[Bardsandsages]

Reasons I've left games:

Metaplotting. When the player is made to feel they are hurting the GMs precious story by thinking of something the GM himself didn't forsee. Particularly when the GM isn't a real imaginative sort...

Men that don't know how to act around women. i.e. the "OMG A woman! Now I must act manly to impress her with my manliness" syndrome. or the "OMG a woman! I wonder how vulgar I can be before she gets disgusted?" syndrome.

on the flip side, reasons I've stopped running games:

*Guys that won't play/can't play within their girlfriends, but the girlfriend is an idiot who after five years still doesn't know what to do with the d20 and gets made when her character takes ANY form of damage.

*Players that read all of a campaign setting's fiction, and then expect you to follow the fiction to the letter. Particularly a problem when running the old World of Darkness.

 

[Insight]

This is a great topic. By my count, the highest percentage of problems stem from incompatibility with DM or players. That seems about right to me; I have left many a game due to problems with a DM or one or more of the players, but never for a problem with the game system itself. I've been pretty lucky I guess in that the vast majority of games I've joined have turned out to be what I expected.