I think I am falling out of love. Stop panicking Gill, not with you. No, I think I’m falling out of love with playing D&D. Yesterday was our first session in quite a while and I left feeling deflated and I enjoyed very little of the play. I think the reason for this is that the sessions are becoming unwieldy and very little of the time we spend together actually involves any game play. Rather we spend what seem to be hours plotting, planning and generally chatting and perhaps only an hour or so playing the damn game.
One of the big problems at the moment is that we are playing a mixed alignment party with a couple of Lawful Good characters at one end of the spectrum and Shaun and I playing Chaotic Neutral characters at the other. Now being a ‘role playing’ game Shaun and I have taken it upon us to cash in on some of the less savoury sidelines that our good colleagues would shun. This has led to some friction with other players as we have extra funds coming in that they are not party to. I don’t know how this situation can be resolved. Do Shaun and I stop role playing and toe the party line? In which case we may as well have rolled good characters in the first place, or do we soldier on and wait for the inevitable straining of friendships/relationships to become serious?
I think another problem is that we are nearly all playing World of Warcraft now and the spirit of cooperation within the guild there is very high and maybe people are expecting that to follow on in D&D. But we are talking about 2 very different game systems with very different rules; D&D is a much more complex beast. D&D is pure role playing while WoW is very much an arcade game with some aspects of role-play bolted on. Strong personalities can be much more dominant in the D&D setting because of its immediate, face to face nature unlike WoW where the barrier created by the computer interface deadens their impact.
I know it can be annoying when other characters appear to be ripping off the rest of the party but that’s the way it goes sometimes, I know, I’ve been on the receiving end many times in the past. Perhaps, in hindsight, we should have insisted that the party alignments were a maximum of one step away from each other so this sort of conflict wouldn’t occur. But, hey, we didn’t and we have to play with what we’ve got, the CN members of the party have also gone along with stuff they haven’t agreed with, so...
All in all I can’t be bothered. It’s only a bloody game and I’m not going to let it ruin my current feeling of well being. Should we ever play again I’ll give it one more go but if I leave feeling the same way as yesterday that’s it, I’m through with it.
One of the big problems at the moment is that we are playing a mixed alignment party with a couple of Lawful Good characters at one end of the spectrum and Shaun and I playing Chaotic Neutral characters at the other. Now being a ‘role playing’ game Shaun and I have taken it upon us to cash in on some of the less savoury sidelines that our good colleagues would shun. This has led to some friction with other players as we have extra funds coming in that they are not party to. I don’t know how this situation can be resolved. Do Shaun and I stop role playing and toe the party line? In which case we may as well have rolled good characters in the first place, or do we soldier on and wait for the inevitable straining of friendships/relationships to become serious?
I think another problem is that we are nearly all playing World of Warcraft now and the spirit of cooperation within the guild there is very high and maybe people are expecting that to follow on in D&D. But we are talking about 2 very different game systems with very different rules; D&D is a much more complex beast. D&D is pure role playing while WoW is very much an arcade game with some aspects of role-play bolted on. Strong personalities can be much more dominant in the D&D setting because of its immediate, face to face nature unlike WoW where the barrier created by the computer interface deadens their impact.
I know it can be annoying when other characters appear to be ripping off the rest of the party but that’s the way it goes sometimes, I know, I’ve been on the receiving end many times in the past. Perhaps, in hindsight, we should have insisted that the party alignments were a maximum of one step away from each other so this sort of conflict wouldn’t occur. But, hey, we didn’t and we have to play with what we’ve got, the CN members of the party have also gone along with stuff they haven’t agreed with, so...
All in all I can’t be bothered. It’s only a bloody game and I’m not going to let it ruin my current feeling of well being. Should we ever play again I’ll give it one more go but if I leave feeling the same way as yesterday that’s it, I’m through with it.
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