When did you know it was time to go?


Gamer Life General Discussion


This thread is for gamers who, for whatever reason, decided it was time to leave a gaming session, group, etc. My question is, how did you know it was "time"? What were the mitigating factors that made you decide that this was no longer fun? I guess this is more of a ranting spot that anything else. Here, I'll start:

I just left a World's Largest Dungeon campaign. Still need to call the group today actually, and let them know. There were a lot of small factors that swayed my decision, but the few big ones I'll mention here.

For those who have never played "The Dungeon", it is exactly what the name implies; it is a non-stop, nearly infinite dungeon that takes players from level 1-20(at least). I love dungeon crawls as much as the next guy, but when it's ALL you do, 24/7, it gets old. No towns, no story, no plot, no exotic locations, just dungeon. New hallway, check for traps. Door. Check for traps. Room, check for traps. trap goes off, someone dies. Next hallway, check for traps. Rinse and repeat.

As to my personal reasons for leaving, I'm just burned out on the game. Backstories don't matter. Character's personal goals don't matter. Just the dungeon. And if you aren't the party trap-disarmer, get a comfy pillow, because you're gonna be spending a lot of time twiddling your thumbs and humming the theme from Jeopardy. My second big reason for leaving, is a more personal one. The DM is an absolute advocate for players competing for individual xp. This isn't so bad, but the problem for me arises from the party trap-disarmer getting full xp for every trap, and the rest of us get nothing. Considering that this is a 24/7 dungeon, and there's a trap every 5 feet, that xp adds up fast. The trap-disarmer is 3 levels higher than most of the party, and nobody else sees a problem with that. I've tried to get involved, and help with the traps so maybe I can get some xp too, and I got mocked and made fun of, as if I was just being desperate or whiny. I simply stated, "while she's disarming the trap, I'll go down the hallway and keep an eye out for wandering monsters; I'll make several Spot and Listen checks." I was met with "Oooh! Me too! I want some XP too! lulz."

The nail in the coffin for me was this past saturday. We played a marathon 8 hour session(we usually play 2 hours, once a week). Over the course of 8 hours, we did about 7 or so encounters, and my Sorcerer got a total of about 1200 xp. The Factotum(trap finder) disabled 1 trap, made 2 die rolls, and got 2700 xp. She got more than DOUBLE the amount of xp alone, that the rest of us spent 8 hours getting from multiple encounters. Again, the DM sees no problem with this.

So yeah, I saw the purdy glowing red EXIT sign in my mind at this point. Usually I have to leave a game over work schedules, family time, etc, but this is one of the few times I am just saying "F' it" and walking away. This sucks.

So, anyone else want to rant with me? Let's hear it!


Most of my experiences have been with good groups, and I've only had to leave due to RL cropping up. (Leaving college, moving, that sort of thing.)

Save once.

We were playing 1st Edition, but set in the WHFRP setting. I had a paladin, and we had about 5 other players.

We were defending a city and its ruler (also a paladin) against a horde of demons. The party's "leader" assigned myself, and the ruler's royal guard (also paladins, numbering about a half dozen at least) to stay back in the city and guard the ruler.

I had an alternate plan that I wanted to suggest (which I've now forgotten, this having been over 2 decades ago) and the "leader" flat out refused to even let me present the plan.

I turned my character sheet over to the DM (I don't remember if I did so immediately, or at the end of the night, but I suspect the latter) and never attended that game again.

The other players said the leader's player was out of line... after the game. Not one of them even hinted during play that I should be allowed to present the plan.

I would have had no problem with the plan being refused, but to not even be allowed to present it...


Geistlinger wrote:

Most of my experiences have been with good groups, and I've only had to leave due to RL cropping up. (Leaving college, moving, that sort of thing.)

Save once.

We were playing 1st Edition, but set in the WHFRP setting. I had a paladin, and we had about 5 other players.

We were defending a city and its ruler (also a paladin) against a horde of demons. The party's "leader" assigned myself, and the ruler's royal guard (also paladins, numbering about a half dozen at least) to stay back in the city and guard the ruler.

I had an alternate plan that I wanted to suggest (which I've now forgotten, this having been over 2 decades ago) and the "leader" flat out refused to even let me present the plan.

I turned my character sheet over to the DM (I don't remember if I did so immediately, or at the end of the night, but I suspect the latter) and never attended that game again.

The other players said the leader's player was out of line... after the game. Not one of them even hinted during play that I should be allowed to present the plan.

I would have had no problem with the plan being refused, but to not even be allowed to present it...

I feel close to that with how things went down in The Dungeon. I tried to present a case about helping balance out the XP, and in-game I tried to come up with other ways I could be useful, so I wasn't just standing around waiting to make a saving throw, and got shot down every time. There wasn't even any fair discussion, just "No. I don't like that. Moving on." It's one thing if the party isn't in favor of your idea, but getting flat out shut down, without even hearing it out, sucks.


I'd find a new DM, myself.

There's a story, and plenty of plot points all over WLD, that, while maybe not a great story, enough that a competent DM could weave things together into a fun story.

Our DM did.

And yes, while it's a dungeon, and there's a lot of crawling, there's a lot of other stuff in there. If I'm not mistaken, there's at least one city there somewhere, among other nifty things. Plenty of opportunity for roleplaying, not just combat encounters.

Bail on your DM, find someone who doesn't play favorites.


Brian E. Harris wrote:

I'd find a new DM, myself.

There's a story, and plenty of plot points all over WLD, that, while maybe not a great story, enough that a competent DM could weave things together into a fun story.

Our DM did.

And yes, while it's a dungeon, and there's a lot of crawling, there's a lot of other stuff in there. If I'm not mistaken, there's at least one city there somewhere, among other nifty things. Plenty of opportunity for roleplaying, not just combat encounters.

Bail on your DM, find someone who doesn't play favorites.

So there IS a story? Wow, just wow. I'm seriously not being sarcastic, our "story" revolved around a basic description of the region and that's it. Some of the players even started in-fighting just so there was some chance to role-play.

Scarab Sages

Pathfinder Maps Subscriber

I left a game similar to that. I only played once and it was with a great freind of mine. There was an inn and it had a gateway. A player roled percentage dice as the group jumped through the gate. The DM had a box full of 100 3x5 cards and you dealt with what was in the room.

Might have been okay for a brief thing in the middle of something else but this was basically it.

The basic reason you are leaving is you have a lousy DM. There are probably only two real reasons to leave a group. One is a lousy DM and the other is difficult player interactions.

Another group I left had a DM who set up no win situations and the PCs rarely had anything they could handle but were almost always facing sitations and NPCs that would easily overwhelm them.

I have also left groups because of another player was just someone I could not game with and it was not really something the DM could address or would address. And it may not be that it was necessary to address it but it was something as a player I did not want to continue to deal with.


If you're a relatively new DM, WLD is hard to run. The storyline is there, but there isn't much of one and it's not the best, and you have to be pretty experienced and/or good to pull it off. And the way the XP breaks down really isn't fair at all(or your DM wasn't good at it). WLC learned lessons from this and made an entire world that fits in VERY well with WLD- I wouldn't run one without the other.

There's also an outside chance you may not as into dungeon crawls as you once were- WLD is perhaps the purest one to come out in recent years. There really is no room for backstory or even roleplaying beyond a handful of ethical questions that come up in the adventure- and even those require a good amount of DM adjucation.

Scarab Sages

Once - and once only Me - and ALL other abandoned an adventure and a ravenloft game (the so called DM joined again as a player and all was well...) The DM wasn't inexperienced, nor incapable, he just...well...we played an adventure four sessions in a row, trying to mingle with the NPC's, trying to find out what was going on, trying to find out why NOTHING was happening despite the looming threat of vampires.
We even played a ravenloft version of Dr. Faust in the local tavern, inspired by our groups bard, because everything we did just turned out to go nowhere, and this nowhere was not even presented in any kind of colour but grey.
There were several hindrances to the "adventure" though:
- Our rogue was constantly fooled by minor illusions, yet she trusted in her senses because (AD&D 2nd ed.) she was immune to minor illusions, a fact the DM woefully ignored
- The main npc we should be sympathetic with (van Richten) was known only to my character and in the adventure I met him he tryed to lead us into blind vengeance against an innocent vistani tribe - this time he saw vampires where obviously none existed and seemed to be just a raving lunatic.
- the only other important npc appeared for about two seconds during the first session and the DM never again mentioned him, although he would have been the only clue worth following.
- after watching a building for tw sessions because we knew something was going on in there, even checking for secret doors because our leads just dissappeared in there, the DM asked us, puzzeled, why we never watched the back doors. He insisted, he mentioned those doors right until we showed him the map he had drawn for us...
We turned our backs on poor van Richten and left town for good, never again returning to this DMs Ravenloft "campaign".
He himself disbanded another Group in Ravenloft with him as a DM, as I told in another thread

[Ravenloft adventure (2nd ed.), terrible group, a friend of mine as gm, giving uns chance after chance to redeem.
Our mission (probably): unveil the hideousness of an evil church posing as your friendly neighbourhood clerics while abducting the younglings of a town.

We visit the unholy service, evil high priest somehow recognises me as his adversary. I cast hold person on said priest, crowd goes wild, I cast sanctuary and carry priest unmolested through the cellar, into the sewer to escape from view and replan.

My "buddies" follow me. At the sewers exit, near a river and a forest on the edge of town, we hear that the townguard is looking for us in the sewers. Before I can say "let's hide", the rangers shouts "we meet at the Blue Horse" smiling at me saying :"wasn't that smart, now they will look for us at the Blue Horse!" - Exept, as I was pointing out that they now knew exactly, where we were...

Well, turned out my character and the groups wizard were the only ones able to swimm across the river - so we decided that the fighter and the ranger took the now bound high priest and ran for the forest while the wizard an my crossed the river and hid near town, so we could perhaps get news about the doings of the rest of the evil clerics...

Guard lost our track, my compadres reached the woods where they ... FREED THE DAMN CLERIC BECAUSE HE TOLD THE HE WOULD THEN REVEAL WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CHILDREN... Ok. surprisingly he didn't, but instead turned on the two dumb nuts - I mean the fighter and the ranger. After a tough fight he dies - as the gm thinks it would be hard forr us to prove our innocence, he describes how the hand of the priest, charged with the unholy energy of his last spell withers the plants of the forest away as it hits the ground and continues to burn in unholy green flames, hoping the two would bring the priest back to town to show the good people there the true face of their trusted church leader.

Instead they gather dry wood to build a pyre to burn the priest.

Wizard, me, and of course the town guard see the smoke from the forest, bell is rung to warn of forest fire...invisible wizard reaches the two pyromaniacs before the townguard, overhears the recapitulating what they had done, decides to return to me remaining invisible, tell me what happened.

Looking for a Way to redeem ourselfs, we sneak back into town and find descriptions of the fighter and the ranger who were supposedly in league with fiends and wanted for crimes against the church. the descriptions mentioned one other man (somehow either the wizard or me weren't seen by the other priests) but no description.

We seriously thought about collecting that reward...

(After finishing this disaster of an adventure through luck and only me catching the "hidden" hint at the end that should have led to a future campaign, the gm decided to abandon this group...)]

But this time it wasn't his fault.

In another game some players came close to quitting (a campaign for a german roleplaying game called DSA. the campaign had exellent reviews, but we experienced it as...meh...especilly an LOOONG journey through elven history ...meet elves that are an echo of history, let the only ONE in the group speaking elven interact, drift to another island, repeat...) but we managed to get through that campaign only slightly maimed (one of the players still gets nervous when islands are mentioned in other adventures, but I'm sur the scars will heal...)


It sounds like you were deep in 'Region B'. That section is VERY trap heavy and using an individual xp system (lame) would certainly favor the trap monkey there. Outside of that section the others should eventually catch up to his xp level, as trap are less common in other Regions but that will take quite awhile.

As others have said, there is a story to WLD but it doesn't start becoming obvious to the PCs for some time.

As for me, it became obvious that it was time to leave a group when the selfish actions of one player and his lackey (Yes, I said Player, not PC) not only prevented the ascension of the PCs to deity hood which was the whole storyline of the campaign, but also allowed the destruction of the campaign world when Tharizdun was released from his prison and nobody was powerful enough to stop him.

It took a few months for me to actually leave, but the group really stopped being fun at that point.


Freehold DM wrote:

If you're a relatively new DM, WLD is hard to run. The storyline is there, but there isn't much of one and it's not the best, and you have to be pretty experienced and/or good to pull it off. And the way the XP breaks down really isn't fair at all(or your DM wasn't good at it). WLC learned lessons from this and made an entire world that fits in VERY well with WLD- I wouldn't run one without the other.

There's also an outside chance you may not as into dungeon crawls as you once were- WLD is perhaps the purest one to come out in recent years. There really is no room for backstory or even roleplaying beyond a handful of ethical questions that come up in the adventure- and even those require a good amount of DM adjucation.

I can understand giving the party rogue full xp for most traps in a regular DnD game, since there's a lot of other things going on and traps aren't the central point of most games. But the WLD in particular, with there being literally traps every couple of feet, just throws that balance straight out the window. In my opinion, the DM should've adjudicated for this ahead of time; knowing that one player is going to get 90% of the xp in the entire dungeon should be cause for at least slight alarm.

I even posed the argument, "if she gets full xp for "doing her job", then why don't I get full xp for defeating monsters individually, thus "doing my job?" The problem being, all combat encounter xp is divided equally. So, even if I do drop 3 gnolls by myself, the group gets the xp.

Grand Lodge

Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Oddly enough, the low-point of my gaming experiences in the last 10 years was, you guessed it, the World's Largest Dungeon. My complaints about it are basically the same as yours. My group, as a whole and without consulting one-another, forced a TPK situation. Fortunately the DM, was having free time issues (he had another hobby that was interfering with the group's ability to get together regularly) and the DM reigns fell back to me (we played WLD for about 6 months, previous to that I had ran a 4-year campaign). The following campaign we ran was the Savage Tide and was a stunning success.

I hope your gaming gets better.

-Skeld


If I'd rather be doing housework than play in a game, there's a serious problem and that's when I know I need to either refocus or question my involvement in the game. :P


You gave it a try, and you will find sometimes your personalities don't match, the story is lacking, but in the end, you just don't enjoy playing the game. At the point, it is best to be clear that you will no longer be playing and wish everyone the best of luck. You never know when you may join up with all or some of those players in the future, so best to leave on a positive note.


Wolfthulhu wrote:

It sounds like you were deep in 'Region B'. That section is VERY trap heavy and using an individual xp system (lame) would certainly favor the trap monkey there. Outside of that section the others should eventually catch up to his xp level, as trap are less common in other Regions but that will take quite awhile.

As others have said, there is a story to WLD but it doesn't start becoming obvious to the PCs for some time.

We made it to the end of 'Region E' I believe, and just found a route to 'Region I'. We're still encountering traps pretty heavily, and I feel bad because our trap-finder has offered to even give out some of her xp's; it's the DM giving them to her, not her trying to take the spotlight or anything. She's worried the other players are going to resent her for all the xp's she's getting, even though that's completely not the case.

Uchawi wrote:

You gave it a try, and you will find sometimes your personalities don't match, the story is lacking, but in the end, you just don't enjoy playing the game. At the point, it is best to be clear that you will no longer be playing and wish everyone the best of luck. You never know when you may join up with all or some of those players in the future, so best to leave on a positive note.

This is the part that bums me out the most. This is the game night I get to be a "player" in, the only other time I play, I'm always the DM. I get to see most of the players in my game I run, however, so that's good at least.

RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32

Brian E. Harris wrote:

There's a story, and plenty of plot points all over WLD, that, while maybe not a great story, enough that a competent DM could weave things together into a fun story.

Our DM did.

If the campaign is nothing but hallways and rooms filled with traps and monsters, and the PCs have no town to go back to, and no contacts on the outside, I'd go off book to DM it. I'd start the players with no recollection of how they got there, and try to RP them putting together what they know about where they are, and eventually figure out that they died, and they're in Hell. Then maybe drop clues as to whether finishing the dungeon is possible, and then if it's desirable. Possibly indicate it might redeem them and get them out, or it might place them fully into Hell with no chance of escape.

Sort of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead meets No Exit.

"What's the first thing you remember?"
"Hmmm.. No, it's no good. It was a long time ago."
"No, you don't take my meaning. What's the first thing you remember after all the things you've forgotten?"


Lilith wrote:
If I'd rather be doing housework than play in a game, there's a serious problem and that's when I know I need to either refocus or question my involvement in the game. :P

Hah, I've had a few days like that, but mostly because I was feeling bad anyway and not up to DMing.

I've only once been tempted to walk out of a game. I normally run with a pretty static group - my roommate, his ex-roommate, my ex-roommate, my brother and his wife, and occasionally another friend who lives across town. About a year or two back, said friend from across town brought her new boyfriend along - which we were all fine with, it was her birthday celebration and we'd agreed to have someone run a one-shot, and the mystery guy had volunteered.

I don't even remember what it was about the guy I didn't like. He wasn't a favoritist (I could have lived with that, given this was a birthday party for his girlfriend). I'm pretty sure part of it was that he didn't know 3E well, and was constantly harping on things and comparing them to 2E in a way that was rather insulting, and I know another part of it was that he seemed to forget this was intended to be a one-shot and ended the night with "so what time next week?"

No one actually left, but we all agreed afterward that it was easily the most awkward session we'd ever run.

For the curious, the guy was a douche anyway, and they ended up breaking up a few months later. He stole her dice afterwards.


Orthos wrote:
He stole her dice afterwards.

Unforgivable! :O


That's about what we all said *nodnod*


I played with a group for about 5 years. The players changed, but we had a core of about four people, including the DM.

Many times during the game, I could tell what was going to happen. Usually, it was something bad. Our characters never got good magical items, we never got to keep a decent amount of wealth, and our NPC allies were pretty much nonexistent. It was a good story, and with us few players against the world, it was a good time.

Still, the moment came when our characters had defeated a major bad guy, and won an audience with the Emperor. He tasked us with searching out searching for the remains of a long-disappeared wizard and his associated artifacts, for with these we could turn the tide against the Evil Kingdoms.

I said "Guys, it's a bad idea to agree to this. We know what power the bad guys have. Let's just take our reward and go do something else." At least one other player decided that his fighter was all in with the Emperor's plan, so our arguments basically set up two camps: Pro and Con.
At which point, a scene was described that left my character surrounded with light. "Make a saving throw versus spells."

Famous last words. My mage failed the save, and I was informed that my alignment was now Lawful Neutral (from Chaotic Good). It was an effort to use the alignment rules to force my character to bite on the Emperor's Adventure Hook.

Now, it's not like there weren't other adventures we could use. We knew the location of the BBEG's tower, we knew that there were plot hooks in the Southern Islands and in the Western Countries. But for some reason my character was the one who got hammered with a Change Alignment.

Calling BS, I departed the group the next session. This wasn't the first time the DM had done this. At one point, he quite literally led our characters around by the magical necklaces they wore. We balked at it then, and after five years of on-again off-again railroading, I was at a breaking point.


Jandrem wrote:
valid rant

Ouch!

Don't blame you one bit.

OTOH I hope your Ravenloft campaign is still going good, but you're the DM so I'm sure you have control over that. You're probably itching to participate in another campaign where you can be the PC and actually role-play.


I've been a good combination of lucky and laid-back, and never had to actually leave a game. I did, however, once play in a game where my character would have had to leave had the entire game not collapsed over the issue in question. We had an inexperienced GM and terrible party dynamics, which ultimately came to a head when one of the other characters killed a yuan-ti who had surrendered to my vow-of-peace character. One of us would have had to leave the party, and the other two characters were split between us, so we ended up just ending the game.
The ironic thing is that this same GM went on the next semester to run an all-evil campaign that was the best game I've ever played in, and it was also with the player of the guy who killed the yuan-ti. So the moral of the story is: so long as people learn from their mistakes, give them another chance.

And an addendum: I've played in a very short WLD game and it was quite enjoyable while it lasted. It has a lot of potential, don't let a bad GM spoil it for you forever.


I've had a great gaming group for years. Last time I found some new guys to play with, just for the change, it was really easy to tell when it was time to go.

When they had people coming over to buy pot from the house during the game, and folks decided to start wearing sidearms to the table, I knew it was time to bow out.

Sometimes you just end up running into the wrong people...


Shadowborn wrote:

I've had a great gaming group for years. Last time I found some new guys to play with, just for the change, it was really easy to tell when it was time to go.

When they had people coming over to buy pot from the house during the game, and folks decided to start wearing sidearms to the table, I knew it was time to bow out.

Sometimes you just end up running into the wrong people...

Well, I doubt if anyone is gonna top that...


Urizen wrote:
Jandrem wrote:
valid rant

Ouch!

Don't blame you one bit.

OTOH I hope your Ravenloft campaign is still going good, but you're the DM so I'm sure you have control over that. You're probably itching to participate in another campaign where you can be the PC and actually role-play.

I'll say. I'm a Player first, and DM second, but now the only time I'll get to play is when I DM. It just kinda sucks because half the players I really enjoying playing with, and I won't get to see them much after this. But, I'm firm in my decision. It's just not fun anymore, and I've seen too many campaigns degenerate into personal battles, and I still value everyone's friendship.

Ravenloft is actually getting good. The players are about to go through their first major crypt and the "training wheels" are coming off...


Wolfthulhu wrote:
Shadowborn wrote:

I've had a great gaming group for years. Last time I found some new guys to play with, just for the change, it was really easy to tell when it was time to go.

When they had people coming over to buy pot from the house during the game, and folks decided to start wearing sidearms to the table, I knew it was time to bow out.

Sometimes you just end up running into the wrong people...

Well, I doubt if anyone is gonna top that...

Agreed. Shadowborn wins. Flawless Victory...


Jandrem,

Read a post of mine in this thread. Not really meaning to product drop something, but given your recent situation and that I've recently picked up said item, I actually thought of this thread when typing away at the keyboard.

Sczarni

when is it time to go?

when your GM runs the bad guys like a well-oiled machine, communicating and reacting with teamwork and panache.

and you're lvl 1.

and the enemies have sniper rifles and machine gun nests.

and he calls you out as to why your PC entered the "fatal funnel" in front of an unknown's door.

yeah, not interested in SWAT training in place of my DnD/d20 modern game, i'll pass, thanks.

-t

Scarab Sages

Left a group when the DM started hitting on my wife. There were two married couples, including myself and my wife, and three single guys, DM included.

Everything was cool at first, a couple weeks into the campaign, he started making slight innuendos. By the sixth month, I had to be near her at all times because he was starting to get touchy feely. She bailed, he and I had quite a few words and we nearly came to blows and had to be separated. I spent the next week writing an email that explained why we left the group and demanding an apology from the douchebag. I had just sent the email out when I got a call from the other husband asking me to leave the group.

Six months after that I got an email begging me to rejoin because the DM went after the other wife and the girlfriend of one of the other players.

The Exchange

1995. I'm in Korea, stationed there for a year. I got invited to play with a group that was rather well established in a fairly high-level game. I believe there was the GM, and then five or six of us (it's been a while). I am playing a rapscallion of a Bard. Gave myself a false nobility and everything. We had a blast! I was even working on convincing the dwarf player that my horse could talk, and the horse was having a conversation with him. Lots of practical jokes.

One of the characters gets killed. It was an unfortunate incident, but it happened. The player touts off that was great because now he could play a chaotic neutral character (we were all versions of good-ish with maybe one true neutral character.) I winced at this because I had a feeling of where we were going with this.

In game I even confronted the character and told him that while I am usually happy-go-lucky, if he does anything to endanger the party and my friends I would take him out myself. Well, sure enough, Mr. psychotico goes off and does his own thing, killing one or two members and severely injuring the rest. One Dimension Door and a couple of fireballs later and I'd done what I told him I would do. Player sat there with a hurt look on his face, "I'm just playing my character!" Yeah. Me too.

I didn't come back after that. Nobody ever asked either.

2010. My son wants to run a game of 3.5 (yes, I love 4E, but I love ALL D&D and have every base rules set). I play a neutral good cleric, while my son's friends are playing a rogue and a mage. Looks like they're playing more on the other side of the neutral line. I'm attempting to do things like diplomacy, while the rogue just wants to kill things right out. Think I'm going to graciously bow out before that becomes a problem.


Sanakht Inaros wrote:

Left a group when the DM started hitting on my wife. There were two married couples, including myself and my wife, and three single guys, DM included.

Everything was cool at first, a couple weeks into the campaign, he started making slight innuendos. By the sixth month, I had to be near her at all times because he was starting to get touchy feely. She bailed, he and I had quite a few words and we nearly came to blows and had to be separated. I spent the next week writing an email that explained why we left the group and demanding an apology from the douchebag. I had just sent the email out when I got a call from the other husband asking me to leave the group.

Six months after that I got an email begging me to rejoin because the DM went after the other wife and the girlfriend of one of the other players.

Oh man, that's how it started with a friend of mine, and then his wife actually had an affair with the guy. The friends tried not to pick sides, until the guy tried it with another wife. WTF!


i leave when everybody has a full piece of paper that has all their magic loot listed on it and the DM has no problem with it all being available all the time, and when the party spends all their free time robbing from and killing each other.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I leave whenever I hear the words "it was all a dream" I HATE dream sequences in my games. also, when my characters randomly impregnate wenches (without the knowledge that such a thing is possible in the game world we're currently in)


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

My three friends and I had been playing for years together--D&D, Risk, computer games (back when you used a tape deck to load a game), football, basketball, you name it.

During the summer of the final year that we hung out as a group (sometime right after the release of UK6), we couldn't seem to get through a single day without it devolving into a fight. In pairs, we were good friends, but once a third joined, insults and worse starting flying. I had mentioned to them that I wouldn't hang out with them as a group anymore.

They talked me out of it at first, but what ultimately convinced me that I was right was the UK6 module: . . .All that Glitters. I read the module and thought that it would be a fun departure from what we had been doing. Part of my problem was my enthusiasm for the module and that I thought the introduction was a good read. I wanted them to understand it well before we started. As I began reading it to them, they started giggling and fooling around right off the bat. So I turned it over to them and asked them to each read it--I think we only got to the second person when it became apparent that we were never going to run that module.

And I never did. That was the last time I tried to run a module or even play in one--until 2008. I stayed friends with each of them, but never hung out with the whole group again.

Scarab Sages

Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Maps Subscriber

I joined a Champions game run by a friend who I play D&D 3.5 with but had never been DMed by. The campaign seemed to go nowhere fast. He obviously had a little story in his head, and the characters had no influence over it. However, the crunch time for me is when he took 2 hours to adjudicate a character falling off a building, even though the character's player had told him the page number in the rulebook and how many dice of damage in the first minute. I decided there and then that I didn't need to waste my limited roleplaying time with that. So I dropped out the next week.


Jandrem wrote:
Wolfthulhu wrote:
Shadowborn wrote:

I've had a great gaming group for years. Last time I found some new guys to play with, just for the change, it was really easy to tell when it was time to go.

When they had people coming over to buy pot from the house during the game, and folks decided to start wearing sidearms to the table, I knew it was time to bow out.

Sometimes you just end up running into the wrong people...

Well, I doubt if anyone is gonna top that...
Agreed. Shadowborn wins. Flawless Victory...

Yeah, you're right. No one could possibly...

Sanakht Inaros wrote:

Left a group when the DM started hitting on my wife. There were two married couples, including myself and my wife, and three single guys, DM included.

Everything was cool at first, a couple weeks into the campaign, he started making slight innuendos. By the sixth month, I had to be near her at all times because he was starting to get touchy feely. She bailed, he and I had quite a few words and we nearly came to blows and had to be separated. I spent the next week writing an email that explained why we left the group and demanding an apology from the douchebag. I had just sent the email out when I got a call from the other husband asking me to leave the group.

Six months after that I got an email begging me to rejoin because the DM went after the other wife and the girlfriend of one of the other players.

ghettowedge wrote:
Oh man, that's how it started with a friend of mine, and then his wife actually had an affair with the guy. The friends tried not to pick sides, until the guy tried it with another wife. WTF!

Hoookay.

I'm afraid to guess the story that will top that one. Someone FIRING a side arm at the table?


ghettowedge wrote:
Sanakht Inaros wrote:

Left a group when the DM started hitting on my wife. There were two married couples, including myself and my wife, and three single guys, DM included.

Everything was cool at first, a couple weeks into the campaign, he started making slight innuendos. By the sixth month, I had to be near her at all times because he was starting to get touchy feely. She bailed, he and I had quite a few words and we nearly came to blows and had to be separated. I spent the next week writing an email that explained why we left the group and demanding an apology from the douchebag. I had just sent the email out when I got a call from the other husband asking me to leave the group.

Six months after that I got an email begging me to rejoin because the DM went after the other wife and the girlfriend of one of the other players.

Oh man, that's how it started with a friend of mine, and then his wife actually had an affair with the guy. The friends tried not to pick sides, until the guy tried it with another wife. WTF!

I could have SWORN I've read this online somewhere before...


Wowsers, I gotta say, after reading some of these posts, I'm thinking I'm pretty spoiled and overreacted. Wives having affairs? People bringing sidearms to the table? Holy crap!

In other news, a friend still in the WLD I left tells me "Dude, you shouldn't have left! We got this quest now from these angels, we got like, all these objectives and stuff now!"

Me:"Sorry, but if it took the players reaching level 7-8ish before the first actual objective pops up, I didn't leave early enough."

Maybe I'm just a d*ck.


I used to be unable to leave a group, no matter how bad it got. I love rpgs so dang much, I just couldn't bare to have a character's story end if there was any way to continue it. I know that sounds dumb, but when I first stared playing the games were about the only freedom and happiness I had, and I put up with any bs I had to for that.

That turned out to invite further bs, which led to a few bad scenes. In some cases, lots of bad scenes over a few weeks.

So, now I have some simple rules.

1. If I don't feel safe, I bail. It doesnt matter how unsafe or why. I have some friends who live in parts of town I just wont go to, for example. It's sad, but I need a bright line in the sand on this one.

2. If there is favoritism or cheating that means I can't have fun, I bail. Not all cheating or playing favorites bothers me. But if it ruins the game, I'm gone.

3. If I find myself looking for excuses to why I cant make a game, I examine what's wrong. If I am just in a crappy mood, I tell the group that and apologie, and take time off. If instead I havent been having fun for a while, I sit down with the group to figure out why that is and see if it can be fixed. If not, I bail.

For the first two, I am unlikely to go back even if some effort is made to fix my issues. There have been exceptions, but they are rare and almost always based on things like the offending group member being disinvited and me told I was the start of a movement. In the third case, I'll always talk about what's up, and if a fix sounds good I'll give it another shot.


Freehold DM wrote:
I could have SWORN I've read this online somewhere before...

I can't imagine the event was singular to my friend, but I pray that it's rare.

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