gaming with wives/girlfriends/husbands/boyfriends/etc.

[big teej]

greetings playgrounders...


we've all heard the horror stories of what happens when a DM begins to show favoritism to someone they're romantically involved with.

however, I wish to hear stories that diverge from this slightly in one of two ways (or both if it applies)


1) couples playing together and it NOT going badly

or

2) DMs wrongfully accused of showing favoritism.

why? because I can't remember the last positive thread of this nature I saw

[Alefiend]

I've met two girlfriends at the gaming table; one relationship lasted 5 years, the other is still going strong at 7—and I plan for it to last a lifetime.

My current main GM gamed with his wife, and now continues to do so after their (extremely amicable and long-planned) divorce. And she brings her boyfriend.

[sonofzeal]

I've DMed for, under, and with several romantic partners. It's never been a problem for us. I'm compeditive by nature and I always make it clear that one of my prime requirements for romantic partners is the ability to go head-to-head with me and challenge me. We might play board games or card games, but we always go all-out. There was one particularly viscious game of Rummykub that terrified her parents when she absolutely slaughtered me, but stands as one of my favorite memories.

Thus, if anything, we're harder on each other than we are on other players we might be DMing for. It's a funny little dynamic. We know each other's boundaries, we know that neither of us expects or wants favouritism, so everything works out okay.

Oh, and we often have the strange tendency for both our characters to develop crushes, not on each other, but on some hapless third party. I really don't know where that came from, though.

[big teej]

I've met two girlfriends at the gaming table; one relationship lasted 5 years, the other is still going strong at 7—and I plan for it to last a lifetime.

My current main GM gamed with his wife, and now continues to do so after their (extremely amicable and long-planned) divorce. And she brings her boyfriend.

well I suppose when you put it that way I do have a slight story to contribute. :smalltongue:

I remember quite clearly the moment my girlfriend (future mrs. teej) got interested in gaming. I was working on a character using material from a new sourcebook, and she was playing with my dog when she looked up at me and said "I guess I really should give that a try, given how into it you are and how similar our tastes are"

we don't have an equivilant smiliey for my expression.


my girlfriend has been playing monstrous barbarians since. :smallbiggrin: (to date, 2 ogres, 1 ork, 1 Gulgar, and as of this coming summer, 1 minotaur)





Thus, if anything, we're harder on each other than we are on other players we might be DMing for. It's a funny little dynamic. We know each other's boundaries, we know that neither of us expects or wants favouritism, so everything works out okay.


funnily enough.... I keep getting accused of this... :smallsigh:

[Emmerlaus]

Oh, thats a hard one! But I have a story for you:

Turns out that it was a misunderstanding. We wanted to try the Gelstat rules (UA) and we were allowed the class variant in the book also.

So GM girfriend thought it would be cool combining the Cloistered Cleric and Bard (with the Bardic Knack version, instead of Bardic Knowledge)

All the Knowledge skills available with the Bardic Knack? She was definitly a know-it-all and the team cleric was crying because she had better Knowledge (religion) them him. We didnt know about the Bardic Knack version of the bard at that time.

===========

I played with a couple that was working fine also. If the group had a problem with them or wit him as GM for his gf, we simply had to say it and they were considering it. If you can be honest with your friends, it helps a lot.

[Shadowknight12]

I once invited someone I was dating to a game. The players were fine with it. I never heard any complaints. One of them got really attached to him and she went out of her way to make him feel included (she was the motherly type). Other players included him in their jokes and were generally good-natured towards him. It was a good campaign and everybody had fun. His character was dating an NPC, but I made sure to keep it PG to avoid squicking the other players out. You have to be mindful of that sort of thing.

I have to say I can't really ascertain if they were really okay with him or just trying to please me/avoid repercussions or whatever, but I want to believe they were genuine and that I am a decent enough DM that the thought of not being honest with me never crossed their minds.

[hydraa]

So far i have not had an issue with gaming( i am DM) with my group of wife, daughter 1, daughter 2, sister, niece (niece's friend that is female), brother (when in town) and two or three (males) from a previous group that broke up when the DM left town.

From what I understand this is a lot of estrogen for a gaming group but it has gone well

[Acanous]

heh. We've got 2 games where 2 seperate DMs have their S/O's as players.
in one game it gets kind of annoying, she takes it upon herself to audit all our sheets every session, and causes problems. The other session it goes a lot better.
Once, my barbarian even shagged the DM's S/O's character.*


*He's a drunkard with a penchant for spending his gold on ale and women, and she came on to him while he was getting smashed. I took the DM aside and told him "Look, there's no way he won't go for it without me doing something extremely meta, so if you don't want it to happen, give us a bar fight or something to break it up." He decided it was fine, so *Shrug*

[Psyren]

I'm sure there are FAR more examples of couples playing together successfully than not. You just don't hear about it as often because there's no need to report on something that goes well as a matter of course.

[DarkestKnight]

I've had a Girlfriend play in two games i was in at the same time with no serious hitches. I say serious because she may have been miffed that I helped kill her character one time. While the character was sleeping. On the GF's birthday. She later broke up with me (not related as far as i know to the previous act) which ended up splitting the party so to speak. all this being said there was no problem being in the same game as her.

[big teej]

So far i have not had an issue with gaming( i am DM) with my group of wife, daughter 1, daughter 2, sister, niece (niece's friend that is female), brother (when in town) and two or three (males) from a previous group that broke up when the DM left town.

From what I understand this is a lot of estrogen for a gaming group but it has gone well

care to share how you managed to snare your kids into gaming?

that's helpful information for someone who may or may not have kids they need to snare someday.



I'm sure there are FAR more examples of couples playing together successfully than not. You just don't hear about it as often because there's no need to report on something that goes well as a matter of course.

hence the thread :smallwink:

[Novawurmson]

I've been DMing for my wife for about 5 years now, and the only problem I've run into with her is that she reads me very well. She can often tell when I'm having an NPC be deceitful without even rolling a Sense Motive check, so I have to be sneakier about WHAT they're being untruthful about.

- - - -

On the other hand, I have DM'ed several games where two players who were dating broke up over the course of the campaign. The worst case degenerated into the two roleplaying their real-life aggression towards each other through their characters.

[Snowbluff]

I've had issues with this. See my infraction? Yeah... good news is the thread I got it from really did help my situation.

[Misery Esquire]

See my infraction?

Actually, your infraction meter/thing is invisible to everyone but you and the mods.

The more you know!

[Mystify]

The gaming group I've been in for the last year is mainly couples. There are 3 married couples and 3 single guys. In my other group there is a different husband/wife pait. Never had any issues whatsoever, apart from their tendency to show up or not as a unit.
In yet another group, the DM occasionally brings his wife to play, never had any issues.
In a more familial sense, I have played with a group for years with a pair of brothers, one of the two was always the GM, and it never had issues. That same group included my father and my brothers, also without issue. I have ran a few campaigns for my entire family, both parents and my brothers, without any issues.

[Snowbluff]

Actually, your infraction meter/thing is invisible to everyone but you and the mods.

The more you know!

You know, this thing isn't very handy sitting on every one of my posts under my avatar, but no one else can see it. :smallannoyed:

Where to buy being a more noticeable terrible person?

[Rodimal]

My wife is the one that got me into gaming. We DM for each other all the time either solo or in a group. She's better at running group games than me, mostly cause she's been playing and GM/DM for over 15 years. We both have our strength and weaknesses, and differing opinions on how things work sometimes.


out

[DrDeth]

Gaming with is fine.

DMing under or for is not. It sometimes works, but it can go bad both ways. And if it goes bad, it can end a lovely relationship.

[Telonius]

I had a very good experience with a couple where the DM was married to one of the players. It was one of the deadliest campaigns our group had ever been through: Age of Worms, with the enemies being played intelligently. There was absolutely no favoritism. In fact I'm pretty sure the wife's character had the highest body count of all of us. (She played a low-wisdom Warblade, who had a tendency to charge in first and ask questions later. Excellent play for the role; her previous character had been a fairly cautious Cleric). There was one hilarious occasion where she threatened to make him sleep on the couch if he kept sniping Black Blades of Disaster at us, but he absolutely deserved that one.

Another good experience: I was the DM, two of the players were married. It was the wife's first foray into gaming, so I did cut her a bit of slack (let her frog-themed Druid have a Dire Frog companion, Rule of Cool'd quite a few things that strictly by the book wouldn't have worked). It was a Shackled City campaign and lasted all the way from start to finish.

[WinWin]

Gaming with your wife or girlfriend is a great way to spend some quality time together.

Gaming with your wife and your girlfriend is a recipe for disaster.

[danzibr]

DMing under or for is not. It sometimes works, but it can go bad both ways. And if it goes bad, it can end a lovely relationship.
"How could you sunder my +5 Keen Falchion! I want a divorce."

Gaming with your wife or girlfriend is a great way to spend some quality time together.

Gaming with your wife and your girlfriend is a recipe for disaster.
Ftw.

[Rejusu]

Only been in a game where another player was the DM's girlfriend once but there wasn't any problems with it. No favouritism at all. Though he was very apologetic after a rust monster destroyed his girlfriends weapon.

[Krazzman]

Jeah atm I'm in a group together with my Girlfriend and another couple as players and I got to troll our DM a bit :D

My GF likes to play Barbarians because with this class (even if she plays reckless...) she has a far lower body count. Our current group is quite fun, Cavalier, Cleric of Clangeddin, Cave Domain Druid (not Cave Druid) and a Barbarian. All Dwarves.

I must say it works pretty well so far despite the fact that we didn't really knew the other couple beforehand.

But about break-ups....
they seem to not tend to go well.
I lost 2 Friends and a few buddies from the fact that I came together with my GF. Now I could only play with one our current DM, my GF and two others(which both have problems with appointments and so on) since the other guys wont even talk to me or it would be awkward...

[Phaederkiel]

I am at the moment in a three player group in which we rotate dming duties.
One of the players is my girlfriend.

I tend to be pretty hard on her and she does the same to me.

Far more problematic is giving out loot for my own character. I try not to favor him, the results are the players complaining that one of three chars never gets anything nice...

[Ryu_Bonkosi]

I have been the only single person in a group of couples...That gets very awkward very quickly when they all start to get lovey-dovey. :smallannoyed:

[dsmiles]

I've gamed with my two best friends (who happen to be married to each other) for the past eight years. Yeah, sure, he helps her out with her character building and remembering which bonuses go where (when he's a player and when he's a DM), but I really don't see any favoritism. We all help out the players who aren't great at the mechanical parts.

[DrDeth]

I am at the moment in a three player group in which we rotate dming duties.
One of the players is my girlfriend.

I tend to be pretty hard on her and she does the same to me.

Far more problematic is giving out loot for my own character. I try not to favor him, the results are the players complaining that one of three chars never gets anything nice...

Exactly. Bending over backwards is just as bad as favoritism.

Also, a couples fight can spill over into the game or the other way around.

[rollforeigninit]

Been gaming with my wife for around 15 years now. She actually started playing before me tho. Not sure why she does, her luck with dice is AWFUL. She can consistently roll 1's prettymuch any d20. Aside from that leading to her deaths in several of my campaigns it hasn't really been an issue. Occasionally she will complain that I've been overly hard on her but seeing as she's smiling I think she has gotten used to it and I make sure to throw her an extra (proverbial) bone occasionally. If my group doesn't like it they can choose one of their number to DM. I'd like to play a PC anyways.:smalltongue:

[Psyren]

You know, this thing isn't very handy sitting on every one of my posts under my avatar, but no one else can see it. :smallannoyed:

Where to buy being a more noticeable terrible person?

Note that discussing moderation can itself lead to moderation. :smalltongue:

Although me pointing that out could lead to moderation.
And pointing THAT out could lead to moderation.
And...



hence the thread :smallwink:

But isn't that like saying "post about times you played a cleric and it went well?" Most of them do, so the only other thing to say is "we've had no problems for {time}" or "here's a tangentially-related funny story..."

[Lonely Tylenol]

I'm DMing a group with my (ex-)girlfriend. (We ended amicably.) It's a large group, so when I need to split people up, I often fall back on one of my players in the group, who then has to DM for HIS girlfriend.

No problems yet.

[Azoth]

Unfortunately in my current real life game with my room mate and girlfriend I have been accused of this. It is my girlfriend's first time playing d&d and I am keeping the kid gloves on for the moment despite my room mate being a veteran of about a decade. My girlfriend built a face sorcerer and my roomate a rogue with a charisma of 6... She makes good use of her social skills and role plays her character well as an adorable half elf teenager and tries to avoid taboo things around people she is dealing with. He has as a few examples: called a dwarf tightfisted then offered human ale to him as an apology after the dwarf threatened to show him the business end of his hammer, openly called out the leader of the town's theif's guild in the middle of the afternoon in his own shop, asked a wood elf if he knew where to find drow poison for sale, and tried to rob the gnome's magically guarded bank with little planning and was caught before he did anything too horrible. He blames me for jerk NPCs and setting him up...while handing everything to my gf.

[DigoDragon]

My wife and I have been gaming together with a group for about a decade now, but as the DM I've never been seriously accused for favortism. On rare occasion perhaps as a joke, and usually by my wife.

On the rare occasions we're on the same side of the table, we've never made characters that develop relationships with each other. This is usually because we don't make characters that are too compatible. My wife likes playing the heroic paladin types while I like being the shady rogues.

[Alefiend]

Unfortunately in my current real life game with my room mate and girlfriend I have been accused of this. It is my girlfriend's first time playing d&d and I am keeping the kid gloves on for the moment despite my room mate being a veteran of about a decade. My girlfriend built a face sorcerer and my roomate a rogue with a charisma of 6... She makes good use of her social skills and role plays her character well as an adorable half elf teenager and tries to avoid taboo things around people she is dealing with. He has as a few examples: called a dwarf tightfisted then offered human ale to him as an apology after the dwarf threatened to show him the business end of his hammer, openly called out the leader of the town's theif's guild in the middle of the afternoon in his own shop, asked a wood elf if he knew where to find drow poison for sale, and tried to rob the gnome's magically guarded bank with little planning and was caught before he did anything too horrible. He blames me for jerk NPCs and setting him up...while handing everything to my gf.

If it weren't for the friend complaining about the situation, I'd say he was roleplaying his character excellently. This is what you expect from somebody with no charm or social skills (Charisma), especially if he's otnay ootay ongstray on the isdomway.

[DueceEsMachine]

Well, as far as couples gaming together, if it weren't for my wife, I woudn't have a gaming groupe 90% of the time, so I think it's pretty awesome.

It takes some getting used to, doing solo encounters and pacing all the time, but it can be a lot of fun.

[navar100]

My DM's wife plays. At first she didn't a long time ago, but the group then encouraged her to do so. It was partially politeness because we were there and she wasn't doing anything it felt rude even though it wasn't and also partially at the time we could have used another player. She's been playing for awhile now, and it's been fine.

There could be instances where you would say she gets wife of DM privileges, but in truth that's only outsider appearance. All players have received accommodations of fixes and changes to their character by meta-game DM/Player cooperation. As far as game play, bad stuff happens to her character in equal proportion to everyone else. In character she does not get away with stuff no one else could. Her character succeeds as much as the rest of us. She has been quite loyal to the party.

No spouse playing horror stories here.

[CTrees]

My group has had five couples playing at various times (currently at just one). My fiance quit before I started DMing - she gets more enjoyment over hosting a get together with the girls of our social circle while d&d is going on. Never really got much flirting involving the female players, interestingly. Mostly they played men (the only current woman in our group is playing an elderly halfling man).

[rgrekejin]

Many of the people that I've gamed with over the years have been couples. In fact, I started gaming because my girlfriend's campaign needed a cleric, and I got recruited. When we finally split up four years later, we'd played three campaigns together, and they all went well.

The group I game with currently also has a husband and wife pair. There's absolutely no problems at all. The only time I've ever run in to a problem was when we had a pair of players who were dysfunctional as a couple, and it carried over to the gaming table.

Our DM once convinced her husband to play in our campaign as the rogue our party was missing, and in addition to there being no problems, the DM conspired with him so that when it was finally revealed that his character was evil and had been a mole within our party pretty much the entire campaign, it was not only believable but a very interesting and memorable plot twist.

[MesiDoomstalker]

In the game I'm currently in, I dragged my bf to playing. It was semi-neccesary as he was the only person able to host but he was willing to try it before we (the group) realized he had to host. He told me after a few sessions he thought he wouldn't get into it, that it would be too slow. He was wrong. We are starting a new campaign and he's making a Drow Warlock (4e so no stupid LA) and is really excited. I wasn't the DM nor will I (I only have 2 years over him in and exprience and everybody else has at least 10 years over me). We've had no issues beside going easy on the new guy and all that entails. And thats just not from me, its from everybody.

[Bard for Kicks]

Well. I've been with my bf in 4 campaigns. They all worked out well. Sometimes, I Dm and my party rarely insists that I show favoritism..but when my party does, I have a very difficult time understanding because I try really hard to be an organized, fair Dm and sometimes, I'm a bit harder on my bf because he is clever enough to handle it.

However, I am a much different player. No matter what I play, I can't help being closer with my bf's character than the rest of the party. Usually, we share alignments and interests because we are both very cynical, number-crunching players with great synergy. He likes fighters and I like party face bards or sorcerers so in exchange for social protection, he protects me in battle. It works out perfectly, and I SWEAR it isn't a form of PDA seeping into gameplay.

[Azoth]

@alefiend: He has a 10wis and 14int. Even if not wise or charming he should be smart enough ICly to know that certain things are culturally offensive on a grand scale. I actually fear social based encounters with more than shopkeeps or random NPCs in towns. His character would open his mouth and get them hanged quickly. Sometimes his actions have screwed the group over and he sees no reason it should have. I swear his alignment needs to be chaotic dumb most days.

[bokodasu]

I DM for my husband often. He complains because I never let him be a time-traveling god from another dimension when we're playing a level-1 dungeon crawl, but other than that we've never had any problems. In the last game I ran, there were two other couples (and two kids) and it was all good - the one guy who has a slight leaning towards running his wife's character for her was even self-aware enough to have someone else help her roll up her charsheet. One woman who hadn't played before didn't really get that into it - but she was nice about it and seemed like she was at least enjoying spending time with my friend, even if it wasn't her first choice of things to do on a Saturday night, so that was cool.

Then again, I was in another game with some people I didn't know and one woman asked me whose wife I was. I said, oh, my husband's not here and she asked why I was there then! :smallfurious: But yeah, mostly I haven't seen any problems since I was like, 14 and we all did dumb stuff like giving our boyfriends super-powered magic swords while the rest of the party got rocks to throw if they were lucky - and not even sharp rocks, like irregularly-shaped smooth ones that flew off in crazy directions if you rolled an odd number.

[Tyndmyr]

I ended up DMing for a gf once, though the relationship started after the gaming together did, and thus, when knowledge became public, she proclaimed at the gaming table "he won't kill me, Im his girlfriend!" The players all glanced briefly, then laughed and laughed at her.

I'd like to think Im fairly well known for being fairly permissive to players, but being mostly a "let the dice fall where they will" sort of DM. I don't bother with DM screens, and numbers will exactly match the sourcebooks unless they've been advanced per the rules.

[SymPhoenix]

(Woo, first post!)

I have a player trying to convince her S/O to join our current game, and I'm endorsing it. In my whole social group, there are three DMs: there's me, the beginner's DM. I hold your hand, give you a chance to learn how to play a class, the basic mechanics, and how to roleplay. Then if you're ready to move on, there's two DMs that are all but willing to kill players willy-nilly (story for another time).

My question, however, is this: what if a game causes two people to come together? There's this girl that got into one of my tutorial games and she's still in my current campaign, and I get this feeling she has a thing for me. Should I be careful in this endeavor?

[AslanCross]

My GF's into video games, and I managed to get her into Magic (though I just lend her the cards), so eventually I might try to get her into D&D. Both of us are extremely busy with work now, though, but eventually I might eventually make it a family bonding activity.