Why Have You Left A Game or Campaign?

[Evilhalfling]

Two campaigns I left out of irritation, with schedualling. The DM would flake, not enough players would show up, and games would get cancelled. One group ended when I left, the other I'm not sure of. (This happens a lot in PbP games)

More often our group has ejected irritating players, or reformed without them. Over six years, 5 core players, 5 players that were asked not to return. I still talk to 2 ex-players, and a third is the younger brother&brother-in-law of core members.

 

[Lanefan]

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

*Guys that won't play/can't play within their girlfriends, ...

I'm going to hazard a guess here that you meant without their girlfriends, now I've cleaned the coffee off my keyboard.

And Gilladian, I have to confess that "incompatibility with dog" just never crossed my mind when designing this poll...

Lanefan

 

[VirgilCaine]

I left a campaign because I expected the group to be able to beat an encounter without half the group being neutralized or almost killed, when this was standard practice.

Later, I learned there were other reasons for me to intensely dislike the campaign.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

You left out an option on the poll

I've left an ongoing campaign if I've found a group playing a game I'd rather play. Life is too short not to play the game you want to. If I'm currently playing D&D but I really want to play Vampire then I'll jump ship if I find a good Vampire game. Why should I stick it out playing a game when it isn't the game I want to play?

 

[Arnwyn]

My reasons have included:

- Lack of time - work-related: Lots of work during certain parts of university!

- Incompatibility: game system (e.g. wrong edition): I don't like a lot (read: most) games, actually. Just D&D (for the medieval/fantasy genre) and (now) Fuzion (for the futuristic/sci-fi genre). Everything else (admittedly, not too much) I've tried has been outright painful. From what I remember, I've dumped Gurps, L5R, Palladium, Twilight 2000, and the old WEG Star Wars.

- Incompatibility: game setting(e.g. space vs. medieval): Ravenloft sucks.

- Incompatibility: game style (e.g. too many/few rules): One DM (a very good friend) just mangled the system with his house rules during 2e just a little too much for my particular taste.


That's it. I choose my friends and peers very carefully, so it's never been due to personality conflicts or anything like that.

 

[megamania]

Work has killed two seperate campaigns for me. The drug use of players has also killed two campaigns for me. And I have left three games I can think of for poor DMing skills or game knowledge.




and one not listed- the loss of a place to play.

 

[Lanefan]

You left out an option on the poll

I've left an ongoing campaign if I've found a group playing a game I'd rather play. Life is too short not to play the game you want to. If I'm currently playing D&D but I really want to play Vampire then I'll jump ship if I find a good Vampire game. Why should I stick it out playing a game when it isn't the game I want to play?

I'd file that under "Lack of time - playing ... other RPGs".

Loss of a place to play is one that I missed, though in my experience the DM almost always hosts the game anyway...then again, loss of a play site would sink the whole campaign, wouldn't it? The poll is about why you left a continuing campaign...

Lanefan

 

[Bardsandsages]

I'm going to hazard a guess here that you meant without their girlfriends, now I've cleaned the coffee off my keyboard.

And Gilladian, I have to confess that "incompatibility with dog" just never crossed my mind when designing this poll...

Lanefan

WOW, THAT was a bit of a slip. But at least I gave you a good laugh.

My job is done here.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Mostly I tend to leave games when I find they are not to my liking. I generally play with my (extended) circle of friends. With only a few exceptions, the people who run games do so fairly well.

One DM was just a cheating RBDM, in that his NPCs always had a defense against our plans, no matter how odd. Tewligan was there for part of that CP2020 campaign, and it generally ended badly for players. The only time we succeeded at an adventure was by refusing to have a plan. The DM suddenly found he'd never came up with "stock" tactics to deal with unknowns and we pretty much ran rough shod over him. Admittedly, we had worked up a fine case of righteous fury, that led to many inspired moments causing that particular adventure to sound like a great action flick.

Of course he had his revenge by missle launching attack helicopters. Whee. Why would I stay for that again?

Most of the others break down to the DMs being counter-intuitive in some fashion way. I'm fine with the GMs who tend to use movie physics; the only WoD campaign I liked had a "movie physics" GM. It wasn't realistic but it was predictable. I can live with predictable but can't tolerate counter-intuitive.

One guy tried to run a political campaign, with some economic motivators. Unfortunately, he had no grasp on economics so none of the NPCs reacted in a rational way.

 

[Dragon Snack]

I find it interesting the number of people who have left a game because of incompatability with the DM or other players, considering the high level of social interaction necessary in RPGs, combined with the fact it is often hard to get any group together in some areas, especially a group that wants to play the same RPG, same genre, same ruleset etc. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Well, I've left 3 campaigns due to DM/player conflicts, so I guess I should have some insight.

I'm still friends* with the DM/players in the two F2F games I left (actually I ended up derailing the games - unintentionally, see below - and both GMs now play in my game), but I could not stand their games. Whether it was completely ignoring our backstories in favor of replicating a video game he liked (and also favoring one player over the others so much so that it even annoyed the favored player) or sending encounter after encounter of completely overpowered bad guys after us (including min/maxed NPCs) and justifying it by saying "nobody's died yet" (which actually wasn't true), it was just "badwrongfun". I basically suicided my character in both games and declined to bring in another.

*Well, one of them I'm not so sure about, but he still shows up to play.

In the PbP game I quit, the other players decided for some reason to haze the crap out of my character (nothing was said in the OoC thread about him being incompatable, they just decided to shun me in game). It came to a head when one of the players attacked my familiar and I grabbed her to tell her no, so she attacked me. Apparently this was fine with the GM and rest of the group, so I just had my character leave (out of respect for the GM and her BF - also a player in that game, but looking back I've lost my respect for them since they had allowed it to continue to that point).

Sadly, about the only insight that seems to give is that gamers are jerks who will put up with people treating others like crap just so they can game and that will use the perceived power of the DM mantle to further their god complex. But I'm not that cynical in real life, really...

I have had 2 players leave games I was DMing for reasons beyond moving out of town. One of them just didn't like the slow advancement (normally my players level every 3-4, usually 4 hour, sessions) coupled with the lethality in my game (no bones about that, it's usually one PC every 2-3 sessions). I'm not so sure about the other one, since he said he "emailed me" (and I never got it). I thought it was because I took away the Fighters Greatspear (in lieu of killing the character, he got it back the next session) and he didn't like that I would take away equipment from a PC (he was playing a Wizard, so I think he worried for his spellbook), however one of my players says that he got into a heated argument about something with another player - so I don't know, he hasn't told me why any of the times I've seen him since then.

I left one game not because of incompatibility but because I didn't like the dog. I couldn't handle a BIG dog climbing all over me every week. He was nice and gentle, but drooly and smelly and an attention monger...

I JUST WANT TO BE LOVED!!!!