What Comes First: The Game or The Group?
This isn't a chicken or the egg question, just so you know ;)
I suspect the answer literally depends on the group. As has been stated before, our group is nearing 3 years in the making. Bonds of friendship have been made and game sessions often devolve / evolve into "chat sessions". We often talk as much about what is going on in the world of gaming as we do actually playing the game.
I suspect with groups that aren't as bonded between the players, such distractions would be considered a time waster or worse. For us, it just reinforces the fact that we are friends that play games together, and the friendships involved often push game play aside, and we are okay with that.
This is via G+ Hangouts / Roll20, but for us it may as well be face to face.
So, where do your sessions fall on the grand scheme of things?
Everlasting: Book of the Unliving (1997)
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From back of book:
*THE EVERLASTING. . .*
IT'S MORE THAN A ROLEPLAYING GAME
*The Secret World*, a daydream shadow of our reality, waits for you. Break
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33 minutes ago
Our game came first (because not enough of my "normal" friends wanted to play D&D), so I found a group mostly through friends of friends. A few of us hang out together outside of gaming, but some of the group are just "gamer friends" as opposed to "life friends".
ReplyDeleteMost of the time it is the group, I rarely play with people who at least don't have the potential to become some kind of friend. If they find me weird or I find them odd, chances are we won't be gaming much in the future. I think the dynamics of a good group often depends upon the bonds that exist outside of the game. The great thing about the hobby, is the potential to make new friends through it. The game encourages cooperation and working together more often than not. I have met so many good people along the way because of this hobby.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you Padre!
DeleteI play with a long standing group of great folks. When we get together there is almost as much BS-ing as there is gaming. It sounds counter productive I know , but it's what we enjoy. If we were playing with new people at the table the dynamic would be different.
ReplyDeleteMy group has been together for so long I can't remember what started it.
ReplyDeleteBut these days we don't meet nearly as often. Sometimes someone has a game they want to run and they start rallying the troops. Other times we pick a day we can meet and then hash out what we'll play and who will run.
Historically, the group. I've been experimenting with organizing the game first...but the jury's still out on whether or not I actually enjoy that.
ReplyDeleteBack when I still had a regular group, it was always the group first... we needed our regular game, the way some others need their regular poker night. Our key difference was that we would show up already broke because we had already spent our paychecks to purchase a needed source book, or an addition to our armies.
ReplyDeleteMost nights would be a fair balance between gaming and staying mostly in character, and we had our nights where we would go deep into the role play and work through several chapters of the adventure. But we also had our fair share of times when we were lucky to get past a single encounter because of outside issues. The game was an organic outgrowth of our friendship.
Our purpose for getting together was for mutual support both in the game as well as real life. As a wise man once said -- Pain shared is divided, Joy shared is multiplied
I GM/play at the Meetup; normally I decide what I'm running first, then recruit players second. But I do really like my long-running 4e group and will try to keep them together in future campaigns.
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