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It's an adventure.Well it might be difficult to call it just but certainly fun for all involved.That sounds less like a game, and more like just sex.I love sex in game.Eh, I prefer it for one gm one player games.
They have to be rules-lite and diceless.
More like a LARP than anything I have to be honest.
It really is.
...
I mean... um... I don't...
So, it sounds like "games about sex" make the list for most people, while "sex" is acceptable. :P
Could be worse. I had to roll penis length for a character in a Harry Potter game this past Friday. And the GM's a woman.That sounds less like a game, and more like just sex.I love sex in game.Eh, I prefer it for one gm one player games.
They have to be rules-lite and diceless.
More like a LARP than anything I have to be honest.
...
Did you roll a d4, d6, d8 or d10?
Did you refuse, saying let's make this about young wizards not wand size.
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Could be worse. I had to roll penis length for a character in a Harry Potter game this past Friday. And the GM's a woman.That sounds less like a game, and more like just sex.I love sex in game.Eh, I prefer it for one gm one player games.
They have to be rules-lite and diceless.
More like a LARP than anything I have to be honest.
...
Did you roll a d4, d6, d8 or d10?
Did you refuse, saying let's make this about young wizards not wand size.
It's because the rest of us men use staves.
If the characters of the setting are child wizards, they probably shouldn't be using staves. Certainly not plural staves at the same time.
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So, it sounds like "games about sex" make the list for most people, while "sex" is acceptable. :P
One of my players wanted to change characters, how he did it was a bit weird. His paladin (clearly with a major fetish) ran off with the half squid-woman monstrosity the players had inadvertently released. Love at first sight, and he wanted to redeem her and stop her eating people with her lower half. He was prepared to weather the storm and give it his all. Still a better love story than Twilight.
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As a corollary to both the Teachable Campaign and Mary Suetopia:
IT'S OKAY! THE BOOK SAYS THEY'RE EVIL
Do you not like "Always Chaotic Evil" as a trope? Do you actually like some nuance or, you know, character motivation in your stories? Do you understand why the walkers stopped being the primary antagonists on Walking Dead by season 2? This is not the place for you. Always Chaotic Evil means every mission will be, "Go Here. Kill Bad Guys. Collect Reward." Are you being sent on two-days' travel to kill a group of orcs or goblins that haven't actually done anything in the story? Does that make you feel a little icky? Get that SJW crap outta here! As long as the book says it's an EVIL race you can do anything from genocide to torture to skull-redacteding its children to death in front of it and it's a-okay! They're always chaotic evil, anyway - even if that explanation LITERALLY MAKES NO FREAKING SENSE. Now roll for encounters on your way back to collect your reward from the 'kindly and benevolent' Duke that hired you to kill sentient beings as a form of pest control.
THE ANTI-SUEPOCALYPSE
You'd really better not want to play (insert race here, usually gnomes). The DM hates Gnomes and will it make clear how very much he hates gnomes and hates you for choosing a gnome. Prepare for every single NPC you encounter to revile you, refuse to sell to you, and generally treat you like crap. This doesn't really make sense storywise like it might with an Orc or Drow - but whatever. The populace is totally cool of a party traveling with a member of a race known for murder and deceit, but you dare include anything lighthearted in their grim fantasy world and they get really bent out of shape.
LOOK HOW MATURE MY GAME IS
or
"I Totally Misunderstood Why People Like Game of Thrones"
This DM's world is dark. How dark you ask? Don't worry, they're going to make sure you know how dark by including something absolutely vomit inducing nearly every session. Gory mutilation will be described in nasty detail. Disease will ravage every corner of the land. Defecation and urination won't happen 'off screen', but as a recurring event - often times on or in other people for good measure. The "R" word will come up early, it will come up often, it will be a major part of nearly every female NPC's backstory, and it will probably happen to a PC at some point in the campaign.
:''(
Considering my players in my darklight sisterhood game have just placed a substantial bet on one of the party members simultaneously seducing a pair of npcs they just met after liberating a town, this thread has me rolling around in laughter.
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As a corollary to both the Teachable Campaign and Mary Suetopia:
IT'S OKAY! THE BOOK SAYS THEY'RE EVIL
Do you not like "Always Chaotic Evil" as a trope? Do you actually like some nuance or, you know, character motivation in your stories? Do you understand why the walkers stopped being the primary antagonists on Walking Dead by season 2? This is not the place for you. Always Chaotic Evil means every mission will be, "Go Here. Kill Bad Guys. Collect Reward." Are you being sent on two-days' travel to kill a group of orcs or goblins that haven't actually done anything in the story? Does that make you feel a little icky? Get that SJW crap outta here! As long as the book says it's an EVIL race you can do anything from genocide to torture to skull-redacteding its children to death in front of it and it's a-okay! They're always chaotic evil, anyway - even if that explanation LITERALLY MAKES NO FREAKING SENSE. Now roll for encounters on your way back to collect your reward from the 'kindly and benevolent' Duke that hired you to kill sentient beings as a form of pest control.
THE ANTI-SUEPOCALYPSE
You'd really better not want to play (insert race here, usually gnomes). The DM hates Gnomes and will it make clear how very much he hates gnomes and hates you for choosing a gnome. Prepare for every single NPC you encounter to revile you, refuse to sell to you, and generally treat you like crap. This doesn't really make sense storywise like it might with an Orc or Drow - but whatever. The populace is totally cool of a party traveling with a member of a race known for murder and deceit, but you dare include anything lighthearted in their grim fantasy world and they get really bent out of shape.
LOOK HOW MATURE MY GAME IS
or
"I Totally Misunderstood Why People Like Game of Thrones"This DM's world is dark. How dark you ask? Don't worry, they're going to make sure you know how dark by including something absolutely vomit inducing nearly every...
Now these I've run into and have less than zero desire to ever do so again.
So, it sounds like "games about sex" make the list for most people, while "sex" is acceptable. :POne of my players wanted to change characters, how he did it was a bit weird. His paladin (clearly with a major fetish) ran off with the half squid-woman monstrosity the players had inadvertently released. Love at first sight, and he wanted to redeem her and stop her eating people with her lower half. He was prepared to weather the storm and give it his all. Still a better love story than Twilight.
I've had two romancing Cthulhu type events happen in games I ran. In one, the party freed an Elder being that was the engineer/designer of humanity. Like many egotistical creators, she had designed them with herself as the template/inspiration, and had a somewhat humanoid form. When liberated, she offered each person who aided in her escape one wish, and a player who was quite the horndog (literally, he was playing a werewolf) wished that she'd be his "companion".
The Elder being took on a bit of a Q role, enjoying the chance to observe and interact with people. She never did quit her lifeform engineering though, and eventually produced a "child" from modified genetic material gathered from the werewolf. Who knew the stork delivered human sized leathery eggs?
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Paladin/squid is beautiful. As you say, it is much better than the illithid/zombie romance they call Twilight.
LOOK HOW MATURE MY GAME IS
or
"I Totally Misunderstood Why People Like Game of Thrones"This DM's world is dark. How dark you ask? Don't worry, they're going to make sure you know how dark by including something absolutely vomit inducing nearly every session. Gory mutilation will be described in nasty detail. Disease will ravage every corner of the land. Defecation and urination won't happen 'off screen', but as a recurring event - often times on or in other people for good measure. The "R" word will come up early, it will come up often, it will be a major part of nearly every female NPC's backstory, and it will probably happen to a PC at some point in the campaign.
To be honest parts of this (small parts) seem to co-incide with the Game of Thrones I read years ago.
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The Teachable Campaign
or
The Campaign for Social JusticeThe DM has deemed their players to be hideous hate-filled neanderthal troglodytes who need the DM's glorious and inspired guidance to become better human beings. Instead of focusing on adventure, you learn how your character is intrinsically oppressing the orcs who have been forced into their position because of intrinsic unfairness. That one cannot judge the man-eating morlocks because that would be ethnocentric. That alignment represents objective morality which is intrinsically and objectively bad. Sometimes including the DM outright lecturing players in and out of character.
The irony (oh the irony) is that there are actually game publishers and not just singular GMs who promote this type of game.
THE GAME COMPANY THAT PROMOTES TEACHABLE GAMING VIA PRODUCT
or
"If you don't like this you must be X-ist"
Game companies with pet posters/contributors/fan club who think you are doing it wrong and will take any and every moment to tell you so. The original game may have been written by people long gone - has become a co-opted vehicle to espouse disguised/not-disguised political, socio-economic world views in a effort to change the gaming world.
Or it could be an "indie" game that no one would look at twice "but hey, it promotes/supports/social commentary on X" so we need to go Dianetics and buy this game - even it's terrible and has production values on par with a 3rd grade art assignment.
Criticize and you will be ostracized (as you should be since you are evil and ignorant).
Just fix your damn game or try to write adventures that are compelling and worth running.
Suggestion: Switch game systems or just ignore/delete the "message" promoted by their products if the system is worth playing.
...F.A.T.A.L.?
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The Balanced Game
EVERY encounter is "party appropriate encounter level" exactly. No deviation up or down.
EVERY treasure is carefully moderated to produce "expected level treasure".
EVERY character and NPC has EXACTLY the treasure described as "typical for their level" in the book.
aka the Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz game.
Could be worse. I had to roll penis length for a character in a Harry Potter game this past Friday. And the GM's a woman.That sounds less like a game, and more like just sex.I love sex in game.Eh, I prefer it for one gm one player games.
They have to be rules-lite and diceless.
More like a LARP than anything I have to be honest.
...
Did you roll a d4, d6, d8 or d10?
Did you refuse, saying let's make this about young wizards not wand size.
Clearly, the appropriate dice spread is 2d4+1. ... ... yeah.
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Why do I think you have something specific in mind? :)The Teachable Campaign
or
The Campaign for Social JusticeThe DM has deemed their players to be hideous hate-filled neanderthal troglodytes who need the DM's glorious and inspired guidance to become better human beings. Instead of focusing on adventure, you learn how your character is intrinsically oppressing the orcs who have been forced into their position because of intrinsic unfairness. That one cannot judge the man-eating morlocks because that would be ethnocentric. That alignment represents objective morality which is intrinsically and objectively bad. Sometimes including the DM outright lecturing players in and out of character.
The irony (oh the irony) is that there are actually game publishers and not just singular GMs who promote this type of game.
THE GAME COMPANY THAT PROMOTES TEACHABLE GAMING VIA PRODUCT
or
"If you don't like this you must X-ist"
Game companies with pet posters/contributors/fan club who think you are doing it wrong and will take any and every moment to tell you so. The original game may have been written by people long gone - has become a co-opted vehicle to espouse disguised/not-disguised political, socio-economic world views in a effort to change the gaming world.
Or it could be an "indie" game that no one would look at twice "but hey, it promotes/supports/social commentary on X" so we need to go Dianetics and buy this game - even it's terrible and has production values on par with a 3rd grade art assignment.
Criticize and you will be ostracized (as you should be since you are evil and ignorant).Just fix your damn game or try to write adventures that are compelling and worth running.
Suggestion: Switch game systems or just ignore/delete the "message" promoted by their products if the system is worth playing.
If it is some sort of veiled complaint about 5E's current direction (The first half sort of sounds like it's meant to be), I do have to point out the irony of complaining about a company dedicating itself to progressive social values on the message board of Paizo, whose philosophy and design since its inception made WotC (until their turn around late last year) seem about as enlightened as your typical frat bro.
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One of the things that put me off games like Monsters and Other Childish Things and World of Darkness: Innocents where you play as children is that I had a number of games I joined briefly go very, very bad pretty much right from the start.
The weird thing was that it was different GMs, all of whom I knew (not well, but I'd seen them around and played in the odd traditional fantasy game with them). I'd get invited to join a regular game they were starting, and since I didn't have a regular group at the time I'd jump at the chance. Then I'd find out that it was a dark fantasy/horror game (intended to be dark fantasy in the same way that Pan's Labyrinth is dark fantasy)... so far, so good. Then, without fail, no more than three sessions in, things would get... squicky. Like, people complain about CthulhuTech's more depraved content (and yes, I agree, because g*#!%+n it dark does not have to equal sexual abuse and rape), but this was far, far worse than anything that game ever had written into it. I'd bail as soon as that point hit and never come back.
The annoying thing is that some of my friends don't get my hesitation to play in games like WoD: Innocents with them these days, despite my explaining the situation. They just keep saying that I shouldn't let one bad experience sour it... I'm having trouble getting them to understand that while I trust them to run a reasonable game, I have an instinctive aversion to it these days after having three games with a similar concept in a row go into very wrong territory. I think I finally got one of them to get what I was saying when I explained it by asking if he'd keep shoving his hands onto a hotplate if he did it once and found out that it hurt.
This isn't to say that I won't play in a game like Innocents or Monsters and Other Childish Things at all. I will, as long as I'm absolutely assured that there are certain elements that are under no circumstances going to enter the game, and I trust the GM enough... but I have my reservations about it, and I think they're well justified.
Speaking of which, this is still awesome.
I can't believe it took four more years for that guy to feel the banhammer.
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Who Needs a Writers' Circle When I've Got a Gaming Group?
The campaign is set in the world of the GM's unpublished/incomplete novel, and the events are the plot of same. The GM reacts very badly to any player action that deviates from the preconceived storyline.
Similarly, a PC might be the protagonist of a player's novel, and refuses to bite on plot hooks that could besmirch the purity/nobility/ruthlessness/etc of the novel version of the character.
Solution: Have an out-of-game chat with the offenders to gently remind them of the difference between a story and a game.
I've run into this one way too many times.
Be Warned: Not every DM handles constructive criticism well.
One of the things that put me off games like Monsters and Other Childish Things and World of Darkness: Innocents where you play as children is that I had a number of games I joined briefly go very, very bad pretty much right from the start.
The weird thing was that it was different GMs, all of whom I knew (not well, but I'd seen them around and played in the odd traditional fantasy game with them). I'd get invited to join a regular game they were starting, and since I didn't have a regular group at the time I'd jump at the chance. Then I'd find out that it was a dark fantasy/horror game (intended to be dark fantasy in the same way that Pan's Labyrinth is dark fantasy)... so far, so good. Then, without fail, no more than three sessions in, things would get... squicky. Like, people complain about CthulhuTech's more depraved content (and yes, I agree, because g$~**!n it dark does not have to equal sexual abuse and rape), but this was far, far worse than anything that game ever had written into it. I'd bail as soon as that point hit and never come back.
Wait, what?
That is disturbing. I've run some out there and off the wall games, but I've never gotten anywhere near children in adult situations.
Also, there's a WoD: Innocents? I don't think anything I've heard about nWoD has given me reason to doubt my choice to stay with oWoD.
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Contributor
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Who Needs a Writers' Circle When I've Got a Gaming Group?
The campaign is set in the world of the GM's unpublished/incomplete novel, and the events are the plot of same. The GM reacts very badly to any player action that deviates from the preconceived storyline.
Similarly, a PC might be the protagonist of a player's novel, and refuses to bite on plot hooks that could besmirch the purity/nobility/ruthlessness/etc of the novel version of the character.
Solution: Have an out-of-game chat with the offenders to gently remind them of the difference between a story and a game.
I've run into this one way too many times.
Be Warned: Not every DM handles constructive criticism well.
Yeah. I can't speak to accusations of handling criticism poorly (without bedecking myself in my full Tyrant Princess regalia, anyway), but this is why I set my (woefully incomplete) novel in the past of the campaign. Backstory rather than unfolding plot.
Unfortunately, low self-confidence got the best of me, and both the novel and the campaign world are on indefinite hiatus. :(
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aka the Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz game.The Balanced Game
EVERY encounter is "party appropriate encounter level" exactly. No deviation up or down.
EVERY treasure is carefully moderated to produce "expected level treasure".
EVERY character and NPC has EXACTLY the treasure described as "typical for their level" in the book.
A little off topic, but it always seems a little weird to me when people quote Ultimate Campaign as limiting item creation feats, as though it's now a rule that a character with Craft Wondrous Item literally becomes incapable of creating any more items when he reaches some arbitrary level of wealth.
I've also seen GMs audit party treasure that way. Not to correct a major imbalance, but (for example) "Your gear is 1,200 go over the 8th-level WBL, so I'm reducing treasure by that amount." Or in some cases, actually having the player straight-up lose the appropriate amount of wealth. Seems a little odd to me. :/
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One of the things that put me off games like Monsters and Other Childish Things and World of Darkness: Innocents where you play as children is that I had a number of games I joined briefly go very, very bad pretty much right from the start.
The weird thing was that it was different GMs, all of whom I knew (not well, but I'd seen them around and played in the odd traditional fantasy game with them). I'd get invited to join a regular game they were starting, and since I didn't have a regular group at the time I'd jump at the chance. Then I'd find out that it was a dark fantasy/horror game (intended to be dark fantasy in the same way that Pan's Labyrinth is dark fantasy)... so far, so good. Then, without fail, no more than three sessions in, things would get... squicky. Like, people complain about CthulhuTech's more depraved content (and yes, I agree, because g$~**!n it dark does not have to equal sexual abuse and rape), but this was far, far worse than anything that game ever had written into it. I'd bail as soon as that point hit and never come back.
Wait, what?
That is disturbing. I've run some out there and off the wall games, but I've never gotten anywhere near children in adult situations.
Also, there's a WoD: Innocents? I don't think anything I've heard about nWoD has given me reason to doubt my choice to stay with oWoD.
WoD: Innocents is actually quite a good splat for the game. The point isn't to put the characters in adult situations, it's to play with the way that they react to the horror. After all, who's going to believe them when they tell people about the monsters under the bed? Mummy and Daddy just say monsters aren't real, and refuse to admit it when they see something they can't explain. But the kids haven't learnt to do that yet, and see the world for what it is, a terrifying place where the monsters really are out to get you.
I'd also like to point out that Innocents isn't what I was saying I was playing, I was just pointing it out as an example of a game I'm now a bit wary of joining groups for.
The issue with the games (two of which used d20 Modern, I can't remember what the third one was) was that the GM and other players (to a lesser extent, and I know some of them were as disgusted with it as I was as we walked out at the same time) were insisting on immediately throwing the characters (who ranged from 8 to 13 in age) into adult situations... I mean really, really adult situations that would probably be of highly questionable legality even with participants of legal age. Made me feel sick to my stomach the second I realised where it was going, and I bailed then and there.
So in summary, WoD Innocents and Monsters and Other Childish Things? Great games, absolutely fine... so long as you have someone who understands what is an isn't appropriate as content for the game... If you don't have that, it's possible you're going to end up with an experience like mine.
As an example for something I think would have been a fantastic Innocents game, the recent World of Darkness: Dark Eras kickstarter had a potential stretch goal chapter (which sadly didn't get voted in) called Innocents: Blitz. If you didn't see the project, it takes the various splats and sets them in differing historical time periods (the other one I wanted to see get in that didn't was the golden age of piracy Changelings setting). It was basically about children dealing with the horrors of the supernatural while also living through the Blitz. To me, that's an awesome setting for a game that doesn't have to deal with any inappropriate content.
EDIT: A review of Innocents if you're interested - RPG.net - World of Darkness: Innocents review
Another game that deals with children in a horror setting really well is Little Fears. I don't know if the Nightmare Edition is still in print or not. I preferred the original version, because the Nightmare version turned it more into Goosebumps style horror, and removed some of the creepier elements like the big bads (the Demagogue and the Seven Kings)
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The Strain did a flashback a bit like that. Young Jew at Auschwitz realises most of the inmates are being killed at night by some sort of vampire.
The Strain did a flashback a bit like that. Young Jew at Auschwitz realises most of the inmates are being killed at night by some sort of vampire.
See that's the kind of story that I'd like to play in or tell with a system like Innocents. Horrific setting, added supernatural horror, and made worse by the fact that it's a child experiencing it, but nothing squicky.
One of the things that put me off games like Monsters and Other Childish Things and World of Darkness: Innocents where you play as children is that I had a number of games I joined briefly go very, very bad pretty much right from the start.Yeesh.
Yeah, I'd be gunshy too.
Yeah, I can never figure out why they find it so hard to understand. The conversations always feel like this to me:
"You should eat this"
"The last three times I ate that, it made me ill"
"Well, you shouldn't let that spoil it for you. Go on. Eat it"
"But it makes me sick"
"You're just being silly. Eat it"
One of the things that put me off games like Monsters and Other Childish Things and World of Darkness: Innocents where you play as children is that I had a number of games I joined briefly go very, very bad pretty much right from the start.
The weird thing was that it was different GMs, all of whom I knew (not well, but I'd seen them around and played in the odd traditional fantasy game with them). I'd get invited to join a regular game they were starting, and since I didn't have a regular group at the time I'd jump at the chance. Then I'd find out that it was a dark fantasy/horror game (intended to be dark fantasy in the same way that Pan's Labyrinth is dark fantasy)... so far, so good. Then, without fail, no more than three sessions in, things would get... squicky. Like, people complain about CthulhuTech's more depraved content (and yes, I agree, because g$~**!n it dark does not have to equal sexual abuse and rape), but this was far, far worse than anything that game ever had written into it. I'd bail as soon as that point hit and never come back.
Wait, what?
That is disturbing. I've run some out there and off the wall games, but I've never gotten anywhere near children in adult situations.
Also, there's a WoD: Innocents? I don't think anything I've heard about nWoD has given me reason to doubt my choice to stay with oWoD.
I would say this is a bit overblown. Nwod is strange, but the products are being paired with someone's personal experience in a way that should not reflect upon the material.
Moreover demon: the decent is awesome, and changeling the lost is one of the best things I have ever read ever.
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The Strain did a flashback a bit like that. Young Jew at Auschwitz realises most of the inmates are being killed at night by some sort of vampire.
awesome show.
Who Needs a Writers' Circle When I've Got a Gaming Group?
The campaign is set in the world of the GM's unpublished/incomplete novel, and the events are the plot of same. The GM reacts very badly to any player action that deviates from the preconceived storyline.
Similarly, a PC might be the protagonist of a player's novel, and refuses to bite on plot hooks that could besmirch the purity/nobility/ruthlessness/etc of the novel version of the character.
Solution: Have an out-of-game chat with the offenders to gently remind them of the difference between a story and a game.
I've run into this one way too many times.
Be Warned: Not every DM handles constructive criticism well.
Yeah. I can't speak to accusations of handling criticism poorly (without bedecking myself in my full Tyrant Princess regalia, anyway), but this is why I set my (woefully incomplete) novel in the past of the campaign. Backstory rather than unfolding plot.
Unfortunately, low self-confidence got the best of me, and both the novel and the campaign world are on indefinite hiatus. :(
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You, as the DM, has been coordinating meeting dates, times, and places with your players for about three weeks. Finally, you've all agreed on something, you show up... and it's a ghost town.
Phone Calls:
DM: Hey, guys, where are you? I've been waiting here an hour...
Player 1: My dad's dragging me along to Lakeside! Sorry, I can't go.
Player 2: My car broke down. Sorry.
Player 3: *Sniffling, followed by a sneeze* Sowwy. Gwot lwaid wup wid a kwold. Can't kwome.
DM: Alright... next week?
Players: Sure!
Next week, nothing happens. Nothing happens for the next week either. And for a month after that. The players never actually show up for the game, and I spend seven hours waiting at the library...
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You, as the DM, has been coordinating meeting dates, times, and places with your players for about three weeks. Finally, you've all agreed on something, you show up... and it's a ghost town.
Phone Calls:
DM: Hey, guys, where are you? I've been waiting here an hour...
Player 1: My dad's dragging me along to Lakeside! Sorry, I can't go.
Player 2: My car broke down. Sorry.
Player 3: *Sniffling, followed by a sneeze* Sowwy. Gwot lwaid wup wid a kwold. Can't kwome.
DM: Alright... next week?
Players: Sure!
Next week, nothing happens. Nothing happens for the next week either. And for a month after that. The players never actually show up for the game, and I spend seven hours waiting at the library...
I've encountered this...
I once missed an entire month and a half of GMing because...
Horrible weather.
Horrible weather.
A parent got injured.
I got sick.
And more horrible weather.
You, as the DM, has been coordinating meeting dates, times, and places with your players for about three weeks. Finally, you've all agreed on something, you show up... and it's a ghost town.
Phone Calls:
DM: Hey, guys, where are you? I've been waiting here an hour...
Player 1: My dad's dragging me along to Lakeside! Sorry, I can't go.
Player 2: My car broke down. Sorry.
Player 3: *Sniffling, followed by a sneeze* Sowwy. Gwot lwaid wup wid a kwold. Can't kwome.
DM: Alright... next week?
Players: Sure!
Next week, nothing happens. Nothing happens for the next week either. And for a month after that. The players never actually show up for the game, and I spend seven hours waiting at the library...
I've encountered this...
I once missed an entire month and a half of GMing because...
Horrible weather.
Horrible weather.
A parent got injured.
I got sick.
And more horrible weather.
This actually just finished happening to my group. Our Monday Night Age of Worms game has been hiatus for about a month and a half due to a rotating series of illnesses, moving, work-related exhaustion, and other schedule hiccups.
And we play via Skype, so it's not like travel issues are a problem, so you think that'd reduce the amount of times that people can't make it. Nope, it's just one thing after another since early February.
We eventually just decided to move the game to Thursdays, as everyone agreed that Mondays just were too prone to things going wrong.
I've had that one. Probably twice because of legitimate reasons, several dozen times due to flakey people.
It should be legal to spit on someone in the facial region with a good mucousy goober one time with no repercussions if you discover and are able to prove that individual is a flake.
It wasn't my game, I was merely a player.
Eventually I left. Then it happened with the next group. So I eventually left.
Then I started my own group. Then it happened again...
I think one of the reasons PFS is so popular is many gamers are flaky bastards who couldn't commit to regular attendance if you offered them a salary for it. Oh, they talk a good game, but when push comes to shove I've seen people cancel for reasons as petty as:
To go drinking,
because they're tired,
because they have homework (that they've known about all week and they literally had the day before off also but just didn't do it then),
because they scheduled an event coinciding with it - again having other days around it off but not using them
and quite a few more. Stuff happens, yes, but I met SO MANY players who put regular attendance so low on their priorities that absolutely any random event could present itself and they will drop everything to run off and abandon their gaming.
I did eventually find a good group.
edit - also, it usually wasn't in a row. We'd play and every other session two players, almost never the same two, cancelled, and the GM had a strict one player cancel and we keep going, any more and we cancel rule. So we'd cancel. But when you only normally play every other week, like we did with that group, and they cancel every other game...once a month ah is just insufficient for continuity. I thought these were friends, too, so I gave them a little leeway. I have since found out leaving was the right choice, for more reasons. But yes, it kept happening...
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Yeah, the flaky that express interest but don't show are really annoying for a dm. I let one go over that. They were depressed and bipolar by their own admission, so they would throw everything into their work and research and then crash and bail from social arrangements again and again. I liked the guy, but it stuffed around others a lot, so they had to go.
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One of the things that put me off games like Monsters and Other Childish Things and World of Darkness: Innocents where you play as children is that I had a number of games I joined briefly go very, very bad pretty much right from the start.
The weird thing was that it was different GMs, all of whom I knew (not well, but I'd seen them around and played in the odd traditional fantasy game with them). I'd get invited to join a regular game they were starting, and since I didn't have a regular group at the time I'd jump at the chance. Then I'd find out that it was a dark fantasy/horror game (intended to be dark fantasy in the same way that Pan's Labyrinth is dark fantasy)... so far, so good. Then, without fail, no more than three sessions in, things would get... squicky. Like, people complain about CthulhuTech's more depraved content (and yes, I agree, because g$~**!n it dark does not have to equal sexual abuse and rape), but this was far, far worse than anything that game ever had written into it. I'd bail as soon as that point hit and never come back.
Wait, what?
That is disturbing. I've run some out there and off the wall games, but I've never gotten anywhere near children in adult situations.
Also, there's a WoD: Innocents? I don't think anything I've heard about nWoD has given me reason to doubt my choice to stay with oWoD.
I would say this is a bit overblown. Nwod is strange, but the products are being paired with someone's personal experience in a way that should not reflect upon the material.
Moreover demon: the decent is awesome, and changeling the lost is one of the best things I have ever read ever.
My two paragraphs express separate ideas. I'm not saying that the system is disturbing, just the content that the poster experienced. I am saying that I haven't liked any nWoD material I've looked at, and much prefer the oWoD systems. Which is entirely a matter of personal preference.
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Please read changeling.
Please.