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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Phat Lute" data-source="post: 5442825" data-attributes="member: 84524">My partner and I are about to embark on the journey to find a new group.  He is younger, and most of his friends are college age, and very soon they'll be scattering to the four winds with graduation.  Meanwhile, there's a lot of new stuff we want to try out.  This past Christmas, he got a ton of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and the Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space RPG, and I got the Mage Chronicler's Guide.  In the midst of this, we both would like to actually have a decent length D&D 4th Edition game, but we both really, really don't like the direction of Essentials and don't want to have to bother with the hassle of disallowing some or all of it, or explaining why we're not supporting it to a new group.The current group isn't ideal for gaming.  I like them all outside of gaming, and sometimes we work well together if everyone's making an effort to not be difficult, but they're not completely committed to it.  We've got:The Method Roleplayer / Ethicist:  "Can't we just have a serious session for once?  I want to explore some of the deeper aspects of my character and the morality of his motivations."His girlfriend, Chaos Incarnate:  Who alternately plays misogynist male detectives with names like "Dick Hammer" or little orphan girls dressed like a Lolita that blow things up with huge guns they hide in stuffed animals.  Her character is likely to try to find a brothel, or try to seduce an important NPC, or upload illegal porn to the computers or displays around important NPCs.  Her stated character goal for a Dragon Age RPG game was to find and... well, do naughty things to King Alistair.  We kept him out of it.  Eventually she gets bored, starts drawing, and eventually says, "Do you guys want to do something else?"The Cunning Introvert:  Who always likes to create characters who fade into the background, thinking that they'll emerge at a dramatic moment that never arrives, usually due to the downward spiral that is the dynamic between The Method and Chaos Incarnate.His girlfriend, the Care Bear:  A somewhat shy and smart girl who likes to make cute things, until she is drawn out by Chaos Incarnate and tries to top her antics.  The results are... disturbing... cute, cuddly characters that suddenly become pornographic.A short attention span pervades the group, so that if we try to go with subtler plots that gradually involve them all and get them thinking, as they should being such smart people, they instead get bored trying to figure things out and start shooting everything, while The Method looks on in disgust.  There has to be the promise of scandal, sex, violence, and somehow a hint of deep meaningful roleplaying for The Method.We inevitably go from one type of game to the next, trying to find one that will keep them all from causing things to implode, with board games in between that we only sometimes finish, if Chaos Incarnate doesn't get bored.So while I'm sad to see them go, they'll be getting on with their lives, and maybe, just maybe we'll find some true gamers.  I'm not as optimistic as my friend.  I've been out there in the post-college world for a while, trying to find people for gaming groups that aren't awful in some way, shape, or form.I think part of the problem is that the gaming crowd is really more diverse than even we, the gamers, acknowledge.  There are different types of people with different playstyles, covering every possible genre of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and fiction.  I also think that sometimes we give ourselves, collectively, too much credit for being smarter or more creative than the general populace.  I can't say that I think that's true any more, but at the very least there's definitely a range within our own subculture that goes from one extreme to the other.  The curve may slant a just a little more toward the higher end, but there's still a curve.</blockquote>

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