Why punish a player if they can't come to the game?

[Belen]

Ah, I get it now.

I play with friends. We game together because we enjoy playing D&D together, now we're not a beer and pretzils type group, but we want to play with friends. I've met people through gaming and enjoy their company, but either way, I game with people whose company I enjoy outside of the game.

While I consider the people I game with as friends, I met them all through gaming. I enjoy hanging out with them, but I put the current group together because we all wanted to game.

My old group was made up of a mix of friend's and people I recruited to game. That group convinced me that I should not mix serious friendship and gaming. One half of the group had wildly different styles than the other and it resulted in chaos.

I much prefer to game with people that share a similar style and want the same things out of gaming that I do. That said, I see my current group starting to grow stronger bonds of friendship now, which is great, and they we all share a similar style when it comes to the game, which really adds to the experience.

 

[howandwhy99]

1st off, you're right. There is nothing inherently wrong with running a campaign backwards. It's kind of novel. But the challenge to players will be inverted too. While perhaps overwhelmingly difficult in the beginning (meaning they will likely fail almost always) it eventually leads to challenges which are the basic building blocks of everything they faced before (going backwards).

Because the campaign grows best when you start at low levels and move to higher levels. Think about these things. Isn't one of the fun parts of D&D the ability to take on bigger and badder challenges? If I want to run a game where the PCs slowly learn about a conspiracy of demons, then by growing in levels the PCs can 1) slowly take on more powerful demons, 2) as the story unfolds the campaign can become more and more epic 3) make the PCs work up to be able to fight enemies who they once were less powerful than.

This is one of the best things about D&D. Incremental achievements, increasingly intelligent enemies, more complex plots against the PCs, greater accountability to the world around them. All the cardinal signs of real-world success. It's a great aphrodesiac. But why offer it impartially to all players in a group when each is succeeding at their own rate? If a character dies, why are their no consequences for the player's failure? If one player has the fantastic idea, why aren't they rewarded for brainstorming beyond those who could not.

I'm not trying to encourage conflict or even competition between players. I am trying to encourage personal responsibility by players though. To succeed at all they will need to work as a team. That is one of the great things about D&D in general. The method I am suggesting is one to ensure no player sloughs off success onto others without consequence.

That makes no sense to me. You mean the player not understanding the PC's abilities as well if they start at a higher level? We've play enough that that is rarely a big problem. Lots of people play one shots at various levels and have no real problems. I see no problem whatsoever at starting a campaign at a level that will enhance the plot the best.

I'm not talking about knowing the rules or having one's character abilities memorized. I'm talking about In-Game accomplishments by the players. How the players succeed is the focus. This doesn't really have anything to do with the Character level started at.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I much prefer to game with people that share a similar style and want the same things out of gaming that I do. That said, I see my current group starting to grow stronger bonds of friendship now, which is great, and they we all share a similar style when it comes to the game, which really adds to the experience.

Right, that's what I was trying to say. To me, gaming with people I enjoy being around other than gaming is more important than gaming with people who share the same ideas about what a D&D campaign should be like. I acknowlege that I run into problems because of this, but I accept these problems with my games. This means that we'll have a wide variety of playtime availability, and this is another thing I have come to accept and don't consider too much of a problem.

 

[Belen]

As for commitment, just because someone has a busy life with many responsabilities doesn't mean that they can't have some fun with D&D when they are able to. I'm going to guess that a situation you haven't been in yet, and let me tell you it sucks. It's great to have a group of friends who like you enough to be a little flexible and bend a few rules to make sure everyone has a good time.

You would guess incorrectly. Everyone in my group has busy lives. We make allowances to be more flexible when possible, such as moving the game day around etc. I still do not give XP if you cannot make it, but I will work with them to get that XP or equal things out over time.

 

[ThirdWizard]

But why offer it impartially to all players in a group when each is succeeding at their own rate? If a character dies, why are their no consequences for the player's failure? If one player has the fantastic idea, why aren't they rewarded for brainstorming beyond those who could not.

None of those particulars has to do with making it to a game, though. They are in character activities, quite different for ascribing XP based on the meta-game. Basically, I don't see the connection, myself. I acknowlege that they might be similar to others, but to me, they are quite different.

I'm not talking about knowing the rules or having one's character abilities memorized. I'm talking about In-Game accomplishments by the players. How the players succeed is the focus. This doesn't really have anything to do with the Character level started at.

Players who are there already have a one up on players who miss because of this very fact. Say a present PC decides to seek an alliance with a local wizard guild. Now he has new friends in the wizard guild who the missing player hasn't had a chance to form. He gains a benefit that cannot be measured in XP or the like. But, this has nothing to do with not giving XP to missing players as far as I can see.

 

[Arravis]

*nods to el-remmen* Noted sir.

BelenUmeria, that may be part of it. I've always been careful to only play with people who's gaming style fits my own. There are no casual players in my group and everyone takes the game seriously. Since we all do that, the conflicts are few and very far between.

I have friends that game whom I don't game with because our gaming styles and expectations from gaming are very different. I hang out with them socially, etc, but I know if they came to my game with their usual gaming styles, it would end up being disruptive to my game. That's not to say that we haven't gamed of course, but when I go their games (much more hack & slash then mine) I know what to expect and if they come to mine, they know what to expect.

 

[el-remmen]

I love playing D&D and I have a crapload of fun, but I also take it "seriously" to some degree since as DM it takes a lot of time and effort to prepare, and it takes a lot more effort to run the game and be cognizant of a table full of players needs and abilities - as opposed to just one character in front of me.

I do game with friends - either people who were my friends before or become my friends through gaming - but as a friend if life become such that making the game on a consistant basis became a problem I would expect them as a friend to bow out (or at the very least to not get too upset when I ask them to bow out) as I really feel it does detract from the game and become an inconvenience to the DM and the other players and leads to a lot more contrivances in the "story" than I (or the people I tend to game with) would like.

There is also the matter of playing with "mature adults" - which to me means that they should be responsible to the other people who have made an effort to make it and share the gaming experience - or give them warning to make some arrangement.

Here is a specific example:

Some time in July we had a session and due to scheduling conflicts I announced that we would not get to play again until August 20th. Everyone agreed and said that if there was any problem they'd let us know.

A week before the session when I send out the reminder email one of the players tells me he can't make it b/c he is going to GEN CON. I was pissed. All the other players were pissed. How long did he know the dates of GEN CON? How far ahead did he have to put in the vacation days for work? And he could not have told us with more warning so we could have made an arrangement from the get-go when the date was announced?

At least it was a week's notice - he has a bad habit of "plans he forgot about" which always seem to pop up two days before the session in question.

Now we did not play at all that day because, as all the players know, we are near the end of a five year run of a campaign and every player's (and character's) presence is crucial - but if we had why should he get XP for that day?

Obviously, we could not expect him to cancel his trip to GEN CON, but he was inconsiderate. . .

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I game with my friends, not some group of strangers that I only meet to play D&D with. It's something we enjoy together, and if we weren't gaming we'd be doing something else together.

I have to agree with this one. I don't want to game with people I don't really want to hang out with outside the game...of course that leads to weeks with no games, sometimes a month or so even, but it's all good in the end.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

No, I have had crappy players. There is a difference.

I thought about editing my post to amend that last bit to "crappy players, or a history with the same." Just to make it more clear, you see.

But, since you've already done it for me, I'll save myself the effort.

But please feel to keep commenting directly on my person if that makes you feel better.

It doesn't make me feel better, but it explains the somewhat bizzarre opinions you seem to hold - when compared to those whose opinions I largely agree with (Mallus and Arravis, in particular).

I've never experienced a group in which everyone who was gaming weren't friends outside of the game and for whom the game day also represented a chance to get together and hang out.

Accordingly, no one misses game sessions "just because;" I've missed them because I was at work, out of town on business, or attending my grandfather's funeral (among other reasons). My wife (then fiancee) missed game sessions because she was getting her wedding dress fitted, or was attending her own bridal shower out of state.

One guy's dropped out of the gaming group because he's with FEMA and will have no appreciable free time for the next several months. When he comes back, he'll come back to a character in-line with the rest of the party, not several levels behind because, "Oh, well, you missed the games; suck it up."

 

[farscapesg1]

I game with my friends, not some group of strangers that I only meet to play D&D with. It's something we enjoy together, and if we weren't gaming we'd be doing something else together.

As for commitment, just because someone has a busy life with many responsabilities doesn't mean that they can't have some fun with D&D when they are able to. I'm going to guess that a situation you haven't been in yet, and let me tell you it sucks. It's great to have a group of friends who like you enough to be a little flexible and bend a few rules to make sure everyone has a good time.

Maybe this is where more of the problems occur. In high school and college, I gamed with friends (my best friend, my brother, several other people I had been friends with for years). If the game got cancelled, we all just sat around and BS'd the night away. Heck, many sessions ended up with us not accomplishing anything, it was more just for the enjoyment of hanging around each other. Of course, after I got married, my wife just couldn't understand this. Her usual response was "why bother pretending you are going to play a game and just sit around the house and BS where I can talk to you occasionally".

Then my wife and I graduated college and had to move to Texas for her job. Since then, my friends have scattered to the four winds (one in Seattle, my brother in California, a few still in Oklahoma, and other only God knows where).

Since then, I've tried a couple groups and never found one that I liked until the one I am currently in. I enjoy getting together with them to play DND. If we are not playing DND, I would rather spend my time with my wife, or with friends that I have made at work (who are not interested in DND at all). I can sit around and play DND with the group, but I don't have a desire to hang around them otherwise. One of them has even expressed wanting to hang around outside the game, but both my wife and I don't feel a "friendship" connection with them

Of course, it doesn't help that I am fairly anti-social to begin with. I would just as soon stay home with the wife then go out to a party, hang out with friends, etc.