Why is Online Gaming considered Second Class?

[Dannyalcatraz]

Note how you said that though DannyA - 5 cities. Makes it much easier to find a group. Imagine trying to find a group now if you moved to a small town in (pulling a name out of my butt) Arkansas. I can't imagine it's all that easy. And, even if you do manage to find a group, there's no guarantee that it's people who share your tastes.

Heck, look at all the agony aunt style posts around complaining about how people would like to game but just can't find a group. It's hardly rare.

Well you couldn't know from how I said that, but one of those was Manhattan, KS. As of 2009, its population had exploded to 52,836. When I lived there, it was a little over half that size. Most of the players were in college, which meant most game groups dried up during the Summer. So all of the gamers my age went to 1 school. There were about 2 dozen of us.

As for what games were available...well, it was D&D and/or Traveller. Oh yeah- and SFB.

Next stop was Irving, TX. While that was many times Manhattan's size, and was located in the D/FW Metroplex, I was:

1) 14, so I could only go as far as my parents would drive me, and

2) a black kid* in the least integrated city in the entire D/FW Metroplex. I kid you not, there was a KKK rally on the corner of the intersection where my Dad's practice was located, and all together, that meant I had to find my group at school again...

3) and I was at a small private school- my freshman year class was (at the time) the largest in the school's history at 39. I founded the gaming club there and found 6 people in the entire school. The cool thing is, one of those guys had a couple other gamers as friends, and let me join his group.

So...I do know how hard it is to find a group...all in a time without the Internet or any networking aids beyond a corkboard at a game store.







* I'm still black.

 

[Hussar]

Not to be overly picky here, but, DannyA, you're still right in the middle of the demographic I was talking about - school age. That you could find six people to play at your school is the best you could possibly expect for that area.

Imagine moving back to that same city and trying to find a group. Do you think it would be easier or harder?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Not to be overly picky here, but, DannyA, you're still right in the middle of the demographic I was talking about - school age. That you could find six people to play at your school is the best you could possibly expect for that area.

Imagine moving back to that same city and trying to find a group. Do you think it would be easier or harder?

Well, like I said, as an Army Brat, you get used to finding all your favorite activities every few years.

Moving back to Manhattan and finding a group as an adult (even without the Internet) would be even easier than for a kid- most of the gamers were on campus or at Fort Riley. IOW, adults.

It would be easier for a (black) adult in Irving to find a game as well. I'd have the freedom to go to wherever I found on the corkboards or gamer files, including more ethnically tolerant areas. (Irving is plenty diverse these days, though.)

Finding 6 players out of 100 students wasn't easy- I dare say that:

1) at 6%, that is probably an overrepresentation of gamers versus the general population, and

2) if I hadn't actually started the club, I would not have found ANYONE to game with, and would have been effectively out of the hobby until my junior year of college. (It took me 3 years to find a group at school that was open to new players...without my HS group, that would have been a 7 year drought.)

 

[Hussar]

I hear that DannyA.

I think your experience is probably not all that atypical really. You happened to be in areas where gamers tend to be disproportionately high though. Army bases, school, that sort of thing. About the only other place you'd find that percentage of gamers would probably be prison.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Wellllll...yes & no. We stopped living on base about 2 years before I even found gaming.

Public schools aren't- well, weren't- exactly hotbeds of gaming. The school in Irving was a private school.

A private Catholic school...at the height of The Satanic Panic. The monks were cool with the game, but parents? I was surprised to get anyone to show up to the gaming club. Which only lasted 2 years, FWIW- lucky I found my buddy.

 

[thejc]

I don't think Play by Post or Play by Mail is much like WoW. If it were, more people would do it.
But I don't like WoW-like games, but like PbP. Apples and oranges.

But if I had the time, I would prefer to have a RL group, too.

I simply meant that gaming is a time investment. The best thing about RL gaming is you can usually tell within a few minutes what kind of group you have. Relationships built over time help party cohesion. Its hard over PbP or VTT because they are so many intangibles. I've done several online campaigns only to have them die out, so the time I set aside for this is now of naught.

My point was with DDO or WoW I was not dependant upon anyone else.

 

[Aeolius]

The best thing about RL gaming is you can usually tell within a few minutes what kind of group you have .

And the best thing about running a game in a chat room is that while I have players ranging in age from 17-49, from locales in the States, Australia, and the Netherlands, they really all could be the same 57-year old man living in his mother's basement in Fresno.

Oh....wait.... nm

 

[Hussar]

I simply meant that gaming is a time investment. The best thing about RL gaming is you can usually tell within a few minutes what kind of group you have. Relationships built over time help party cohesion. Its hard over PbP or VTT because they are so many intangibles. I've done several online campaigns only to have them die out, so the time I set aside for this is now of naught.

My point was with DDO or WoW I was not dependant upon anyone else.

Having had my own problems building a group, I've found that being an absolute dick when signing on new players weeds out the worst of them. I'm very, very direct when advertising for new players on what I expect from them and what they can expect from me. Time management, typing speed, playstyle, game types, and all sorts of other things get put into my game ad's.

New players get a three strike rule. Three absences without prior notice and they get the boot. We've got a wiki, a forum and email. There's absolutely no excuse for just not bothering to show up, so, I give three warnings and then the toss.

Since I started being really nasty about screening new players, I've only had to eject one player. And, we've had rather good luck for some years now. Other than our infamous 5th seat which we just cannot, for some reason, fill for any length of time.

 

[Merkuri]

Other than our infamous 5th seat which we just cannot, for some reason, fill for any length of time.

We actually had some really nice folks sit in that fifth seat for a few sessions but then they had to bow out due to scheduling conflicts, and were actually really nice about it (as opposed to most people who just disappear with no explanation). That was a nice change.

I've been gaming online (mostly in Hussar's group) for about 6-7 years now. Aside from a small handful of one-off games I played for a few months in high school it was the only way I experienced gaming.

My husband and I recently found a live group to play with, but we have not stopped going to the online game. I don't think the thought even crossed either of our minds until I came across this thread and started thinking about live versus online gaming. If somebody put a gun to my head and told me I had to limit myself to one gaming group I'd drop the live session and go back to playing solely online.

As someone who plays both an online game and a live game every week (or just about), here's how I'd compare them:

Online game gets a big plus for lack of a commute. I get home from work on Monday, eat dinner, take a shower, and sit down to game in my PJs. On the other side, we need to set aside half an hour to get to the live game, drive there and back in the dark, have to worry about snow some nights (last game we couldn't make it up the host's driveway because of the ice). And as someone with allergies I'm damn lucky that their dog doesn't give me many problems. We just as easily could have found out that they had cats and that I couldn't stay there for more than an hour before I become a sneezy, wheezy mess, unable to breathe.

Online game also gets a plus for gaming aids. My character sheet is built into the VTT we use. I click on links to automatically roll my attacks and add in all the bonuses. I don't have to remember to add my STR bonus to that special attack because the macro does it for me. I was so not used to having to work off of a paper character sheet from the live game, and having to pass around the PHB in order to look up rules seemed like such a waste of time when I was used to being able to search the Compendium or SRD in a few seconds. I have been seriously tempted to bring my laptop to the live gaming sessions for the SRD search alone - the only thing stopping me is the lack of space at the table we use.

Live game does get a plus for social interaction, but in my opinion it's not that far beyond the voice chat we do in the online game. I'm actually more comfortable socializing with the folks in the online group, but that could be because I've known them longer, though I haven't met a single member of the online group in person (well, aside from my husband, but I was the one who introduced him to the group).

Online game gets another plus for the variety of players to choose from. When your fellow gamers can be from all over the country (and even across the globe) you have a higher chance of finding a group that matches your play-style, though it may take some time. With a live group, unless you live in a massive city, you will eventually run out of people to game with if you happen to not find a group that suits your tastes. Heck, I'd go as far as to say that the high dropout rate for the fifth chair in our group has been a good thing. The incompatible players weed themselves out.

I said earlier that I'd drop the live game if I had to choose between the two of them. Luckily I don't. But having experienced both sides of this I think I can say that online play IS real D&D, and it is not second-class gaming. It's just as fun as the "real thing".

 

[catastrophic]

But when most people say they can't find a group, what they really mean is that it's more work than it's worth to them to try and organize a group for them, which is OK, but different from 'can't', IMHO.

That's a really dodgy type of logic. I can't go to disneyland every week. Sure, I could do it, but it would bankrupt me. Hence, I can't go.

People aren't making an excuse. They can't do it. You can speculate, but you're wrong. They can't form a group. Can't. They can't take time off work, they can't spend money they don't have on a sitter. Can't. They tried to form a group or a club and it didn't work. They can't.