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Joxer t' Mighty
2011-09-30, 12:40 PM
Or is it just the majority of mankind in general?

I've DM'd for some 10 years, and I've yet to complete more than the first basic adventure in one of my campaigns.

Top 10 Reasons (in no particular order)
#1. No reason. They disappear from the game, the forum, and life.
#2. Going to school
#3. Moving
#4. Starting a new job
#5. Death in the family
#6. Birth in the family
#7. 'Claims' of Depression
#8. 'Claims' of 'other' mental illness.
#9. Forgot they played the game
#10. Lost internet service... for a month straight.

Now, to be fair, stuff happens. Life happens. However, why does it ALWAYS, on the dot, happen to 1/2 if not 3/4ths the player base? Usually within two weeks of play.

I specify in the beginning that if any of these things are likely to happen Do. Not. Apply.

Death and sudden madness can't be helped.

Most of the rest not only can be helped, but you know exactly the general time-frame about which they will be occurring.

So either they lied in the beginning, or they lied about it in the end.

To be perfectly honest, I think most of it is pure bull feathers. From what I can tell most are simply immature, irresponsible, or simply get bored once the initial 'yay!' of character creation wears off, regardless of the game content. A story is then given to cover this over.

I can't really see the majority of gamers being mentally unstable or pregnant. Is there some reason D&D, a game that actually requires thought and a modicum of persistence to pursue, are mainly played by loony tunes?

Let's say all this really does happen. Unfortunately this game is chiefly sought by those with issues and personality disorders. Is there some reason you can't warn me you will be leaving? Do you honestly believe that fleeing is somehow going to look better than you having the maturity and responsibility to simply say 'Things came up, I apologize, but have to go'? Most DM's would LOVE to hear this instead of never knowing if you're coming back or not. I can't speak for all, but for the majority of us we would respect it with no hard feelings and if you got well, we would except you back. Otherwise you're just digging an even deeper hole to jump in.

It's not just my games, I've heard this from plenty of other DM's. The only time I ever had a game that lasted any time at all? It was an invite only game of fellow DM's.

What is it? Really?

Autolykos
2011-09-30, 12:47 PM
I don't do PbP, but my real-life group is just as undependable - they don't read their E-Mails for weeks straight, I rarely know if and when they come until they stand on my doorstep, and most of them didn't even send me their character concepts for half a year.
By now I just gave up and play a campaign in which it doesn't matter if half of the players are somewhere else.

Joxer t' Mighty
2011-09-30, 12:49 PM
I don't necessarily give up, but I do work into the game periodic parts where new players can be brought in, and old ones can be killed off or equivalent without disrupting the plot as a whole. Luckily every game tends to have at least one dependable person who can babysit the newbies until they have been debriefed.

Thing is, these same guys who won't respond to email might still post a dozen times on facebook.

Tengu_temp
2011-09-30, 12:57 PM
It's easy to ditch a PbP game for most people, because you're playing with total strangers on the internet. It's much easier to drop a game where the other people are just a bunch of text on the computer screen than to tell them personally, to their faces.

My suggestions:
1. Give first priority to friends, people you know. They are less likely to ditch the game and when they're getting slow, you can just poke them. If there are any openings left after that, you can fill those with randoms.
2. There are many people who have Game ADD - they jump into a new game with extreme vigor that quickly disappears when it actually starts, stop posting after a week or two, and when a new game that interests them appears, they leap into it too. Avoid those people.
3. Play a game with a specific premise established from the beginning, so you will attract people who are fans of that specific premise and thus less likely to get bored with it. Avoid generic dungeon crawls.

the_fencer0
2011-09-30, 12:59 PM
Alas, I know how it is. I understand when the occasional player leaves, but sometimes they are a lynchpin in the plot, and that really messes things up. Other times, I am more than happy to see them go.

As a whole, no, gamers are not inherently undependable, people are. To run a campaign to the finish means to need to find players you know and trust -- for me, it is a bunch of my college pals who meet ever week online to play a few hours. When working with strangers, it can be tough to make sure they're all in, so to speak.

My suggestion, again, is if a campaign falls apart, keep in touch with the players that were there regularly and involved. Keep adding new people, and eventually you will find a small 3-5 people who you can depend on.

My sympathies are with you -- I know what is like to have people drop off the face of the earth and leave you high and dry. Hope your luck turns around.

Tyndmyr
2011-09-30, 01:14 PM
#10. Lost internet service... for a month straight.

Oh, it's pbp. No, that's entirely normal. There are a *lot* of undependable people for pbp.

I suggest some sort of open system like Aldhaven, where people can come and go at will, and need not participate with specific people. You'll lose some, but they won't bog the game down in doing so.

Emmerask
2011-09-30, 01:16 PM
Hmm I would speculate that especially pbp games are frequented more by "younger" people (ie 20 to 35 years old) which is the timeframe where the most changes happen in peoples lives job/marriage/children etc etc.

On the other hand my current campaign is in its 4th year now with more or less the same people (1 dropped 2 new ones since 2 years)

Choco
2011-09-30, 01:18 PM
As a whole, no, gamers are not inherently undependable, people are....My suggestion, again, is if a campaign falls apart, keep in touch with the players that were there regularly and involved. Keep adding new people, and eventually you will find a small 3-5 people who you can depend on.

+1 for truth.

That is the best advice I can give too, just keep track of the few good people you come across and hit em up when the time comes.

Me and one of my friends had to play in random groups for 6 hours straight sometimes to finally get a good 4-man Halo group going, and of course by then one or both of us were ready to log off. Point is that sometimes you just gotta dig through a lot of **** to find the diamonds, and it is a lot of work, but it is worth it in the end.

NikitaDarkstar
2011-09-30, 01:28 PM
I admit I was a problem player in my teens. I'd fail to show, I'd call at the last minute, I'd forgot to get a new bus-card (had a 1.5 hour trip with public transportation to the DM's place) and so on. And looking back I'm seriously ashamed, but I also see what the issue was. I was an immature teenager. (not saying all are, just saying I was.) More specifically an immature teenager with parents who controlled not only my internet access and said when I could and couldn't go somewhere, they also controlled by finances.
And ontop of that my immature ways made me not want to admit that my parents had that much influence over me so I made up excuses ALL THE TIME.

Well now my 26-year old self dearly wishes she had access to a time-machine so she could slap some sense into that annoying teen.

Adult players however? Yes, they should know better. Stuff comes up, be honest about it. The game didn't turn out to be what you expected? Be honest about it. You know you won't be able to play? Don't apply.

Vladislav
2011-09-30, 01:41 PM
I like going camping. In principle. In practice, I haven't found the time to go camping for over a year. If there was a "camping group" in my area, I just might have been tempted to join them ... and then disappoint them for times no end with my inability to free time and actually go camping. Because there is always something that's more important than camping.

I assume it's the same for some people and D&D. They like playing D&D. In principle. In the sense that "playing D&D" is more important than "doing nothing" to them. However, "playing D&D" is not necessarily more important than "watch hockey on TV", "rest after a hard day of work", or "go to my distant cousin's party".

valadil
2011-09-30, 01:49 PM
No. You just need to figure out who the dependable gamers are. I've been GMing for 8 years and I've never failed to complete a campaign because I only invite players who I trust to show up. Gamers are just as dependable as everyone else and you need to learn who you can count on or else people will keep disappointing you.

Shadowknight12
2011-09-30, 02:14 PM
This is precisely why I rarely play any longer. I know I'm not dependable in the slightest, so I save others the disappointment. I think it's better to resist the first "yay!" of character creation rather than disappointing someone two weeks later.

Calmar
2011-09-30, 02:14 PM
The people I play roleplaying games with are my friends, so we are generally reliable and respectful to each other.
The people I met solely for the purpose of playing RPGs were - with just a few exceptions - scumbags who were unreliable and unfriendly.

Anxe
2011-09-30, 05:45 PM
I don't play PbP games myself. Within my own RL group, the players are all dependable with one exception, but its really his loss if he never calls us back when we ask him to play.

As for why it happens to you so often, I think that has more to do with PbP games than anything else. The people who go for those are usually doing it BECAUSE they have too much going on in their lives for a real game. That's why they end up leaving. They realize they still have too much going on even for your little PbP. Or they realize that PbP is not what they wanted after all because it is a pale comparison to the RL game they were playing before their lives got complicated.

FatJose
2011-09-30, 06:06 PM
PBP is awful.
The one time it actually was going good for me, I was in three fast moving games AND DMing one myself that ran 50+ pages, stuff crashed on my end. I was able to notify everyone though...followed by a year with no internet. Before and after then, my experience with forum games has been a lot of prep and auditioning for a spot in a game followed by complete abandonment within a few weeks.

D&D for me works best like Monopoly. Just get together with friends, drink beer and kill an evening. On a whim with no schedule or real planning.

NecroRebel
2011-09-30, 06:08 PM
Part of the problem is likely that play-by-post games are very, very slow-paced. What takes mere minutes in a face-to-face game takes hours at least in PbP, and usually days or even weeks. In a game I'm DMing now, we've been in a single fight (admittedly a boss battle) for nearly 3 weeks now, and we're only on the 8th round of combat. What's worse, that's actually faster than many games I've been in. As a result of the slow pace, people can easily get bored and abandon games, especially since there's no major consequences to doing so (an incarnation of the G.I.F.T., most likely).

I suspect that it's not "gamers" that tend strongly towards undependability, but rather "people on the internet." Face-to-face games are less prone to rapid breakups in my experience, though that may be because you're more likely to have groups that know and interact with each other outside of the game.

Starbuck_II
2011-09-30, 06:12 PM
Or is it just the majority of mankind in general?

I've DM'd for some 10 years, and I've yet to complete more than the first basic adventure in one of my campaigns.

Top 10 Reasons (in no particular order)
#1. No reason. They disappear from the game, the forum, and life.
#2. Going to school
#3. Moving
#4. Starting a new job
#5. Death in the family
#6. Birth in the family
#7. 'Claims' of Depression
#8. 'Claims' of 'other' mental illness.
#9. Forgot they played the game
#10. Lost internet service... for a month straight.

Now, to be fair, stuff happens. Life happens. However, why does it ALWAYS, on the dot, happen to 1/2 if not 3/4ths the player base? Usually within two weeks of play.
Sadly some of us gamers are Murphy's law incarnate (I am). Anything that can go wrong will. Thus, I've lost internet, lost link to PbP (really not easy to refind link then, etc.

So I just think it is humankind in general. Life, it happens.

Tengu_temp
2011-09-30, 09:34 PM
PBP is awful.
The one time it actually was going good for me, I was in three fast moving games AND DMing one myself that ran 50+ pages, stuff crashed on my end. I was able to notify everyone though...followed by a year with no internet. Before and after then, my experience with forum games has been a lot of prep and auditioning for a spot in a game followed by complete abandonment within a few weeks.

Wrong. There are good PbP games, you've just only been in awful ones. I've been in and ran a lot of fun, enjoyable PbP games, and a few truly awesome ones. In fact, there are some ways in which PbP is superior to tabletop gaming.

I've given the three basic guidelines on PbP gaming in this thread already. Follow those and your chances of finding a good game increases greatly.

FatJose
2011-09-30, 10:17 PM
Wrong. There are good PbP games

Yes, I mentioned no less than four simultaneously running games that were good immediately after saying pbp was awful. Don't take the first sentence that seriously.

In the end PBP games still are a lot more work than they're worth. Sad, considering many people opt for pbp because they think it'll be easier to manage.

Valameer
2011-09-30, 10:19 PM
I've been in a stable pbp game for nearly a year. The game itself has persisted for over a year now. It's pretty awesome.

In real life playing, yes, most of my games last only a few months. But that is mostly due to DM burnout or finishing the story. Only twice have I been in a live campaign that lasted a few years. Once as a DM and once as a player. Both times were awesome, but being the DM was more difficult yet rewarding.

I wish I could do it again.

And I don't find a lot of crazy players. So... maybe you shouldn't have made luck a dump stat? :smalltongue:

shadow_archmagi
2011-10-01, 10:16 AM
Or is it just the majority of mankind in general?

Given that you list lost internet connection as a reason, I'm going to assume that you mostly play via the internet, in which case, yeah, it's very easy for people to get disconnected. There's very little emotional investment in an internet game, so it's a lot easier to forget.

My real-life campaigns often have little disruptions, but they usually continue until the DM gives out or the summer starts (Because a number of our friends circle goes to college far away, we have separate Summer and Winter campaigns).

I would say it's more likely that it's just inherently difficult to really make a commitment to an online game because of the aforementioned lack of emotional ties combined with the tendency to see it as a chore rather than a social interaction (Oh, man, I havn't checked the thread in a few days. I don't really feel like reading six pages of backlog.)

DarkEternal
2011-10-01, 10:54 AM
I actually managed to finish a campaign with my group. It's been a long two years, but we managed to wrap up a story, starting from level 3, all the way to level 22, and we had a lot of those things, from deaths in the family, lost of interest, life in general and such, but with all of those things, the core group managed to finish it. I feel kind of proud as the DM that led them.

Strawberries
2011-10-01, 12:59 PM
I guess it's people in general, not gamer.

Anyway, it's true that play by posts suffer almost endemically from this problem, but I think having a satysfying campaign it's just a matter of luck and finding the right people. I'm in several long-running pbps at the moment: two of them are still going on after more than one year, the third for more than six months and we don't seem to have any intention to quit soon. :smallwink:

I had put down some of my thoughts and advices on the matter here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10161017&postcount=32). I'll link to it, maybe someone will find them useful.

Claudius Maximus
2011-10-01, 02:59 PM
Sadly some of us gamers are Murphy's law incarnate (I am). Anything that can go wrong will. Thus, I've lost internet, lost link to PbP (really not easy to refind link then, etc.

So I just think it is humankind in general. Life, it happens.

Oh god all the setbacks I've had since I started my last game. I can't so much as sit down and get my hands halfway to the keyboard without some ridiculous thing popping up.

Nevertheless, I'm still culpable. Reading this thread has made my entire body feel ice cold. I feel so bad about how poorly I've handled my game. I think I'll go update it now...

Tael
2011-10-01, 04:13 PM
Try meeting with people. Play by posts are boring.

Cogidubnus
2011-10-01, 05:31 PM
I PbP not least because it means my girlfriend doesn't feel embarassed about me. And mostly so far it hasn't worked well. Sometimes that's been my fault, sometimes others'.

But I'm currently DMing one campaign and recruiting for another. And I'm really enjoying the one that's running so far. I'm moving into uni halls tomorrow, but PbP only requires 15 minutes a day to keep working, so I'm confident I can keep our little investigation in Sharn going. It's all about legwork, in my opinion. But that work can be very rewarding.

Meta
2011-10-01, 05:54 PM
Assuming you are at least somewhat liked by at least four people, face to face will prove more reliable than PbP 80%+ of the time

Cespenar
2011-10-01, 06:00 PM
I think my signature will convey my feelings on this matter. In no way it tells of an one-sided story, though.

Joxer t' Mighty
2011-10-01, 06:12 PM
I don't understand the downing everyone gives of PBP.

It lets you tell much more of a story than folks around the table might. This is also assuming you know of a soul who plays. I do not. Also, it is easy to make a map online, online sheets, the works.

I can't imagine getting the same RP and story out of tabletop as you can online.

Tengu_temp
2011-10-01, 06:37 PM
I don't understand the downing everyone gives of PBP.

It lets you tell much more of a story than folks around the table might. This is also assuming you know of a soul who plays. I do not. Also, it is easy to make a map online, online sheets, the works.

I can't imagine getting the same RP and story out of tabletop as you can online.

I agree with you - PbP games are much slower, but at the same time they offer deeper RP and storytelling opportunities than ordinary games, because everyone has the time to refine their posts and the DM has more time to prepare and almost never has to improvise. Even the slower part is questionable, because if everyone in the game is fast, you can get as much done in a week as you'd have done in a single session of tabletop gaming.

I think people bash PbP due to having experience only with bad, failed games - generic, uninteresting scenarios filled with random people with no dedication for the game. And, without beating around the bush, this phenomenon is especially bad on GitP's PbP subforum - go to a dedicated PbP site such as Plothook or Mythweavers and suddenly the odds of finding a good game are much higher. And if you play with your friends rather than random strangers (which is the best way to play any RPG if you ask me), the odds are even higher no matter where you play.

valadil
2011-10-01, 08:44 PM
I don't know about PbP games because I've never done one, but I have one piece of advice for running a real life game.

Run your game on a set schedule!

Scheduling sucks. If every session is a struggle to find out when each player is free, all involved will burn out on scheduling. And, because of the chaos in a varying schedule, people will screw up and double book over your games anyway.

When I start a new group, the first thing I do is figure out when I want to play. Then I invite players. I tell them that if they'd like to be in a game that meets every even Friday, sign up. If they don't think they can make that schedule, too bad.

At this point I don't think I'd even bother playing in a game that didn't have a regular schedule (aside from a one-shot). It's not worth the effort and I know the game would disintegrate anyway.

LCP
2011-10-03, 04:54 PM
I've only ever GMed PBP, and my experiences have mostly been positive, even though I think all your observations are true - people do flake at a remarkably high rate, and the proportion of PBP games that die in infancy is ridiculously high.

I don't think it helps (from a GM's perspective) to get angry at players who flake, though. It is sometimes intensely frustrating, but the truth of the matter is that from the other end of an internet connection, we usually have next to no idea of what's really going on in someone's personal life. I don't think a PBP game's success or failure can ever be worth harassing someone who could genuinely be suffering from serious illness or other dreadful personal circumstances, whether they've notified you about them or not.

I reckon the most useful skill for a PBP GM is the flexibility to work around player absence. Short silences are much, much more common than very long ones or complete disappearances, so nine times out of ten just a bit of PC autopiloting will fix it.

As a counterpoint to the previous poster, you can check my sig to back up what I'm saying. Six games run, one game died (my own fault), three games completed, two games currently running.

late for dinner
2011-10-03, 11:18 PM
My vote goes for human kind in general...in fact...the people I play games with are more dependable than the people I dont play games with...but In life in general, if I had a dollar for every time someone didnt call, or stopped responding, or didnt show, or canceled at the last minute...I could pay off the worlds debt problem.

Gamgee
2011-10-03, 11:50 PM
Bad people can be annoying.

PBP: I've had one super long running year and a half long campaign, we didn't get that far. But by god is it some of the best gaming I've done. Now I'm in two more dependable games and it won't be long until one of them goes into the year mark.

I'm fortunate in that I seem to join games with fairly dedicated players. Though the key is to always look for and apply to games. I must have joined like... 20+ before finding 2 that stuck around for a long time.

Real Life: Again I have okay dedicated players, as dedicated I can want really without wanting them to be bound under an oath to die if they don't make it or some other silly measure. My three friends are the players and we've gone from 1-20 in a Saga game over a year and a half. Completely epic. Other campaigns can range from a year to six months. Overall quite dedicated.

The problem occurs trying to get new people, again a high turn over rate. One player hated me and the players, some were too young, and others we're just douches in general. One person needed "Real Tactical Combat." and "Miniatures and Maps" to play with us. In between this he needed "Real Roleplaying." Yea.... he's become somewhat of a meme actually because of how he phrased some of it. He didn't like that fact that we play at a slow pace with tons of joking and laughing, it happens. I'm sure I'll go through 20+ more people until I find the one person who does mesh with our group.

Gamgee
2011-10-03, 11:54 PM
I don't know about PbP games because I've never done one, but I have one piece of advice for running a real life game.

Run your game on a set schedule!

Scheduling sucks. If every session is a struggle to find out when each player is free, all involved will burn out on scheduling. And, because of the chaos in a varying schedule, people will screw up and double book over your games anyway.

When I start a new group, the first thing I do is figure out when I want to play. Then I invite players. I tell them that if they'd like to be in a game that meets every even Friday, sign up. If they don't think they can make that schedule, too bad.

At this point I don't think I'd even bother playing in a game that didn't have a regular schedule (aside from a one-shot). It's not worth the effort and I know the game would disintegrate anyway.
I tend to juggle schedules, but it often works out that we play on Thursday's Fridays. Almost always at 6 oclock. I can recount only 4 sessions in the entirety of my 10 years of gaming where we didn't start at 6pm. Though as a matter of thumb if I get three player's we're playing and everyone else can go suck on a lemon.

Leon
2011-10-04, 06:45 AM
Or is it just the majority of mankind in general?


People are trouble.

Sipex
2011-10-04, 10:48 AM
Agreed on the comment about absentee flexibility. I've been in a few PbP games and have run my own. My most recent game is going strong and it's partially because I'm strict and flexible with absences. I've had to replace 2/3 of the party but we're still going strong.

Also, a tip for DMs who find they burn out too quickly on PbP games. Play a simple plot game. Something which you can plan out and follow easily enough. Start out small, if you feel up to expanding the adventure then go for it. This has worked wonders for me.

GungHo
2011-10-04, 02:41 PM
It's easy to ditch a PbP game for most people, because you're playing with total strangers on the internet. It's much easier to drop a game where the other people are just a bunch of text on the computer screen than to tell them personally, to their faces.
I'd have to agree with this. At the end of the day, over the internet, you're not "real", and you're not going to win over real people, real responsibilities, or real activities.

PbP/E can be harder than an MMO or IRC game on top of that, because you're essentially posting and waiting for someone to reply. There's no real-time feedback (or real-time disappointment), and the only people who are going to really feel bad about leaving you hanging are people who already are your friends. You can get over that hurdle by 1) playing with people you know and 2) establishing ground rules from the start (like, "I need you to post your next move by XX:XXpm or I'm going to assume you're in agreement to whatever we do/that you cast magic missile") and 3) having a tight focus/concept that's mutually agreed-to before you commence the game.

I don't have the patience for it, though, and start getting irritated when it comes to having to enforce #2 (no one likes to hear "we didn't hear from you for a week, so your guy died of gangrene"), so I stopped trying to PbP back when Usenet wasn't just two crazy people talking to themselves.

Moofaa
2011-10-04, 09:11 PM
Others have nailed it for the reason of failure among most PbP/internet games. Anonymity makes it easty to drop out without feeling peer pressure.

As for RL groups in my experience it's been because some people place "games" as lowest on their priority list. My last RL group broke up because the GM moved away and nobody else wanted to take up the mantle.

My brother-in-law got excited to start up a new game as a GM once, after 3 sessions or so it kind of died. Part of the problem was the inclusion of my sister (his wife) and one of her friends. Not to throw around stereotypes but they had never played any sort of tabletop RPG before and seemed to have no clue how to use their imaginations and weren't that into the game. The main problem however was my brother-in-law coming up with every excuse of being "too busy" to work on campaign material to keep the game going.

He was part of our last D&D group as well, before the GM moved away we always had to go around my B-I-L's schedule. "I'm doing something every weekend except this one guys! (names off a weekend everyone else is busy on) ... "I'm only staying 3 hours! I have to do XYZ thing tomorrow!"

He was often adamant about quitting the group whenever meeting twice in a month was mentioned if he fell too far behind or something.