The Role Playing Public Radio Forums
General Category => RPGs => : Tadanori Oyama February 09, 2010, 07:05:40 PM
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I had an idea for a new series of threads focusing on the flaws and merits that Gamers have. The first one popped into my head after reading some posts by other gamers and offering my own solutions.
So, to jump right into the topic, for those of us with girlfriends, boyfriends, fiances, wives, husbands, spouses, or whatever words one uses (I work reception, I've seen ALOT of descriptions people use for their significant others), how do they deal with you gaming?
The cliche woudl be the isolated nerd who's partner (normally wife since, as everyone knows, only boys play games) doesn't understand or have any interest in the hobby and who probably mocks him for playing.
When I met my fiance she wasn't a gamer. Over the course of a few years I've managed to convert her pretty well. She games regularly and is willing to try alot of different games but takes long term breaks from the hobby every few months.
So while I game with her, alot of my gaming is with other people. She seems to be cool with that but sometimes...
How do you balance gaming and your significant other?
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I don't know about this one Tad. Karee and I have usually gamed together without many problems.
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Good for you guys. Where you both gamers when you met?
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Good for you guys. Where you both gamers when you met?
Yes. Most online RPGs for me. Karee did more pen and paper gaming.
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Sweet. I had to slowly work my girlfriend into the genre. She still doesn't care for most console video games. After three years I've more or less given that struggle up.
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Mine is a bit diffrent. I dont get a lot of time to pnp role play. usuly ill get lucky with 1 game for 4-5 hrs every 2 weekes. but lately nothing. My wife dont mind me gaming as long as she gets to go out and do somthing on her own. she has tryed to game with me but the few times were failed attempts. she says now she wants to play wow with me when we get the net back on. We played city of heros for a bit and it worked out well, but I get too board playing that game. so im moving to more on-line rpging. hopefully with wow will be able to play more. if not i dont mind playing wow by my self, I have quite a few buddies who play that haha. Right now im playing mass effect 2 and its amazing! so thats the extent of my current rpg life. I destroyed dragon age orgians beat it 3 times all achivements done /flex!
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I was in the middle of a 5 year haitus from D&D when my wife met me. When I got the itch to play again, she was super supportive, to the point of learning how to play. She likes the tactical battle of 4e, but she's a little unsure of the whole "role playing" aspects. I'm currently gearing up to run a Trail of Cthulu scenario for her and my family, so she can get a better idea of what's going on.
She's not nearly as into the whole thing as I, but overall she rocks. And thank goodness man, if I had to listen to a bunch of shit it might drive me to divorce.
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I haven't had much of a problem striking a balance between my girlfriend and gaming. Then again, I usually only spend about 3-4 hours a week gaming and maybe one or two more than that planning, so it doesn't take up very much of my free time. We've been dating for five years and it hasn't come between us yet, so I'd say things are working out pretty well in that regard.
I did try to bring her into the fold when we first met, but roleplaying wasn't for her. I think one of the biggest problems was that she was intimidated by my friends, some of whom have been playing together since they were thirteen. Still, she'll sit in when we game. Usually, she hangs out with her friend, who's dating one of my players, and the two of them will play World of Warcraft while I GM. It's like a mass concentration of nerd energy sometimes.
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Alright, so I've been dating my current gf for three years now. She has always known I play DnD. Our sessions were on friday nights and after each one we would be on a date and I would just go on and on and on about what happened at DnD that day.
She came one time to do her crosswords while the rest of us (4 guys and a different girl) were making characters.
She has met all my other friends and helped me come up with ideas and such for my games. I FORCED her to DM a game of 4e, Keep on the Shadowfell and she was super brutal. She thought it was the DMs mission to kill the players. Once she discovered this is not really the point she gave up on games entirely.
She still helps me come up with hooks and character names and for my one shots she draws character portraits.
As to other gaming, she and I started with Capcom Classics 2, which has the best video game ever, Quiz and Dragons. Look it up, it rocks. Anyhow, when Dragon Age came out she wanted to play just because you could have sex with people in it. She is kind of horrible at it but she hasn't given up yet. So i'm just slowly trying to bring her back into the fold through my stockholm syndrome technique.
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She thought it was the DMs mission to kill the players. Once she discovered this is not really the point she gave up on games entirely.
She's a keeper. I've managed to get my fiance to run two games of DnD, one in 3.5 and one in 4E. Both where pretty average (she didn't seem to be trying to kill us).
Well I must say I'm pleasantly surprised by how many people have effective gaming relationships. Maybe this should be a Quirk and not a Flaw.
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My fiance is very understanding of my playing habits. Even when my 5 hour game ends up being 7 hours. That's a bit of luck on my part.
I still can't get her to play. She doesn't see the fun in a game with no "winner". Cooperative storytelling isn't a huge draw for her. Maybe one day i'll convince her to give it a try. Of course I have to prove I can run a 1-2 hour session. There's a better chance of me rolling all crits for an entire session.
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What about a one shot with one goal?
You could schedule it around something important.
Like "something bad happens at midnight" and you could start playing the game at 10pm?
you could probably complete the CoC starting adventure, The Haunting (the OG haunted house), in around two ours. Not to mention that there is a goal, Solve the mystery, and its super easy even a deep one can do it!
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My girlfriend has had more then a few bad expiriances rping because of the people around us. We both want to rp and I've gotten her to be a big fan of GURPS, but it wouldn't be much fun with only the two of us, not to mention us being alone isn't conductive to gaming... The only people we really have to play with are my ex and her friends, but they are all obsessed with Star Wars and neither of us really are interested in playing that mess anymore. Aside from that we play 360 together, beaten all the Halo games and are working on Borderlands, WoW for awhile, Guild wars, I want her to play STO, and I'm teaching her a space combat minitures game called Squadron Strike. Our current Valentines plans are, go out to dinner, see a movie, watch Star Trek for awhile, and play Xbox. There's other things in there I'm not allowed to talk about... and we get into some fairly interesting engineering decussions too. This thread is interesting.
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My wife is basically fine with it. Because I'm the man and I put my foot down. That's how I roll.
She is basically resigned to the fact that she has too much money and time (not to mention kids) invested in me to trade me in for something else, so she doesn't really have a choice. Besides, I can actually cook and we hired cleaning ladies (one is hot, the other is not... mother and daughter) and I don't bug her for other stuff too much. She knows there is a lot worse than me out there :P
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My wife is basically fine with it. Because I'm the man and I put my foot down. That's how I roll.
She is basically resigned to the fact that she has too much money and time (not to mention kids) invested in me to trade me in for something else, so she doesn't really have a choice. Besides, I can actually cook and we hired cleaning ladies (one is hot, the other is not... mother and daughter) and I don't bug her for other stuff too much. She knows there is a lot worse than me out there :P
Canadian cleaning ladies? Let me guess, they are Portuguese immigrants. Unless you don't live in Toronto.
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I am in TO, but they aren't Portuguese. And the daughter is cute - she also works as a waitress at a pub not too far away.
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I was just messing around. One of my former profs was a Canadian-Portuguese who used to talk about the large Canadian-Portuguese population in Toronto.
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It's Toronto, isn't there a large everything population? I seem to recall hearing Toronto is the most ethnically diverse city in the world.
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It basically is. We also have the best assortment of food anywhere. It is hard to be skinny here, so I don't even try.
And whatever kind of woman you are into is available.
TO is basically like most very large cities. I find it has a lot in common with New York, based on my visits, and Ottawa reminds me of Boston.
Mind you, the accents are all over the place here.
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TO is basically like most very large cities. I find it has a lot in common with New York, based on my visits, and Ottawa reminds me of Boston.
TO was immensely more walkable than NYC when I was there. Although I will never listen to my friend Brian again when he says "the bar is just around the block" because "around the block" means three miles away through five different residential neighborhoods...
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When it comes to gaming with the wife its a double edged sword in my experience.
On one hand you have someone who should ideally support you, respect you and help push the game along knowing when you are having difficulties (kinda how Ross describes his style of play). On the other you have someone who expects preferential treatment, is open to arguing points with you with intent to win and pouts to the point of disrupting the game when the previous isn't achieved.
I want to say that prior statement of this is true and on some occasions it is and they are good times.
I'm not saying that she's a bad player (of Jessica standard) but she can be. This wasn't a problem back before our relationship and marriage, she was a model player. What I'm saying is that gaming with my wife is tough, I regularly game with approx 7 players and try my best to give each one ample exposure time and its not easy when you're juggling events and all you can hear out of one ear is 'He's forgetting me again'.
In then end I try not to bite into an argument but do you guys see what i mean?
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I totally see what you mean. Sort of the same reason that my girl doesn't game.
She is a J.A.P. and can really pout.
She listens to me blather on about games and helps come up with ideas, i feel that is sort of like playing, but she is really too much of a stuck up bitch to want to have to deal with failures on rolls and being limited and such.
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Recently going to the local game store with my wife and picing up the new 40k rule book she said she wants to play 40k with me. So I bought some minis. She likes legos so I think she will dig putting them together but playing will have to see.
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Is she going to paint them pink?
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I totally see what you mean. Sort of the same reason that my girl doesn't game.
She is a J.A.P. and can really pout.
Damn Shallazar. I thought I was hard on my Jewish friends. Then you just go out and totally trash on your wife.
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She likes legos so I think she will dig putting them together but playing will have to see.
Legos don't normally involve super glue and hours of hunched work with a paint brush only a dozen horse hairs thick.
I've got some 40K figures that I normally use for other games because I just couldn't keep myself focused on painting all of them after I put on the base coat.
I call them the "Primer Army". All of them are solid black except for the one my fiance put together. That one is painted "aqua" and his jet pack is on upside down. My players love this one so he's normally the stand in for the enemy leader.
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When it comes to gaming with the wife its a double edged sword in my experience.
On one hand you have someone who should ideally support you, respect you and help push the game along knowing when you are having difficulties (kinda how Ross describes his style of play). On the other you have someone who expects preferential treatment, is open to arguing points with you with intent to win and pouts to the point of disrupting the game when the previous isn't achieved.
I want to say that prior statement of this is true and on some occasions it is and they are good times.
I can kinda see your point, Wooberman. As I said in my previous post, my girlfriend usually sits in on sessions and plays World of Warcraft while I run games, and there are times when she tends to demand attention from me at the worst possible moment. I, too, run a pretty large game--usually eight or nine players--and I'll be in the middle of a combat round or trying to get everyone's attention so that we can get started when she'll ask me to get her something from the fridge upstairs. I'm usually pretty easygoing about doing stuff like that for her, but it really bugs the crap out of me when I'm trying to GM. I've tried talking to her about it afterward, and it's clear that she's made an effort not to interrupt, but it still happens on occasion. Working with your significant other on these things can be a bit trying at times, but I still don't think of it as a gamer "flaw" per se.
I totally see what you mean. Sort of the same reason that my girl doesn't game.
She is a J.A.P. and can really pout.
Damn Shallazar. I thought I was hard on my Jewish friends. Then you just go out and totally trash on your wife.
It does seem like you're being a little hard on her, Shal. But I see what you mean. it doesn't sound like she has the disposition for gaming.
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Actually, I met my boyfriend at a gaming convention, so trying to get each other to try gaming is of course not an issue. He has a lot more gaming experience than I do, and wants to play games that just aren't my thing, or plots that aren't interesting to me (he's a huge history buff and I'm way more into fantasy).
We both love the con scene, because we can meet other people and get new groups together. This last weekend we were at Dundracon and met a married couple there, and a ton of non-married couples as well.
It get's hard for him to NOT give me preferential treatment sometimes, and I've had to sit him down and tell him "I'm a player like any other player. Sex does not buy nice shiny items". He does come up with the most amazing plots (when they are of my flavor and I'll play or watch) and I always feel when he asks for my advice "How can I possibly contribute to this?" I have not yet GM'd, but if he expects preferential treatment, I'll have to kill him instead.
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The thing is she would agree with my assessment of her and her attitude, she knows it.
I've gamed with plenty of females though, ones that were gamers before I've met them. they didn't seam to game that differently than boys. So there isn't a sex difference.
But there is probably something to be said when its a GM and player relationship as well as a romantic relationship. There are different roles and scripts to go along with gaming.
I am more of a frienemy GM.
When my little sister games with us she can pretty much get behind being treated the same as a normal player. She gets a kick out of it, i've been forcing her to make characters for almost every game system i learn in hopes that someday she makes a great gamer wife for some gamer dood. I want to leave the world a better place, full of gaming love.
But my girl is a different case entirely.
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She likes legos so I think she will dig putting them together but playing will have to see.
Legos don't normally involve super glue and hours of hunched work with a paint brush only a dozen horse hairs thick.
I've got some 40K figures that I normally use for other games because I just couldn't keep myself focused on painting all of them after I put on the base coat.
I call them the "Primer Army". All of them are solid black except for the one my fiance put together. That one is painted "aqua" and his jet pack is on upside down. My players love this one so he's normally the stand in for the enemy leader.
Yeah I know that but she says she still wants to do it. It will help her build patients or brake her compleatly haha. And yes she said she wants pink, but hey pink on orcs is ok there orcs they think red makes them go faster.
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And yes she said she wants pink, but hey pink on orcs is ok there orcs they think red makes them go faster.
Well of course it does!
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My girlfriend is not the biggest fan of PnP, she is not into any kind of geekdom.
She used to fall asleep on my shoulder watching me play City of Heroes, which she eventually got into and we played together.
She has tried to come with me to my DnD sessions, and her sister is dating one of the other players so the two of them show up and watch.
We used to let them roll for the monsters but apparently girlfriends who don't know why they are rolling dice roll between 18-20 and max damage constantly.
Her sister has killed my buddy(her own boyfriend) 3 times.
All in all that has died down and now I am left to game on saturday without much interruption...unless she feels like I haven't been spending enough time with her, then I catch hell...
Who would have known most gfs think 10 hours of dnd is too much.
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Who would have known most gfs think 10 hours of dnd is too much.
It really isn't enough.
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Who would have known most gfs think 10 hours of dnd is too much.
It really isn't enough.
I think it depends on the house. No one wants smelly cat/cheese/smoke/pot/ass house for 10 hours.
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Well here's our first paints.
Her first orc.
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j5/Scottec1425/SatFeb20190508CST2010.jpg
Her 2nd orc
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j5/Scottec1425/SatFeb20190527CST2010.jpg
My marine
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j5/Scottec1425/SatFeb20190544CST2010.jpg
My dreadnaught not done but close.
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j5/Scottec1425/SatFeb20190535CST2010.jpg
Menu to go but she is having fun. Says we need more colors. Haha and she realy wants to buy a trukk to paint.
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Well the pics are huge. haha ill take smaller ones when we get back from eating.
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I absolutely adore those pink orks. How can green ever look so cute?
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Well here's our first paints.
Her first orc.
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j5/Scottec1425/SatFeb20190508CST2010.jpg
Her 2nd orc
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j5/Scottec1425/SatFeb20190527CST2010.jpg
My marine
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j5/Scottec1425/SatFeb20190544CST2010.jpg
My dreadnaught not done but close.
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j5/Scottec1425/SatFeb20190535CST2010.jpg
Menu to go but she is having fun. Says we need more colors. Haha and she realy wants to buy a trukk to paint.
Seriously dude that's some pretty good painting, trust me i used to do 40k ALOT.
I was almost expecting Blob angels (so called becuase they looked like someone had just dropped them into a pot of blood angel red).
I mean it, thats some good painting there.
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it's better than what I could ever manage that's for sure
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Well thanks guys she says thanks too. It is our first time painting minis we are having fun. I done 10 marines and the dreadnaught all done. Once she gets a few more pegs done ill post pics again. She's going good and slow so 2 orcs fully painted and working on a def coppa.