manda_babylon
2007-08-03, 02:13 PM
I've been a part of a pretty close-knit group of friends for about six years now, and in the past three years or so, that group has taken to role playing a variety of games in our free time. We currently run three games, one that I GM [D20 Past], one run by my fiancee [D20 Modern], and one that rotates the GM on a per-game basis [Urban Arcana]. When setting up the group for my game, I invited Sam, a girl from one of my classes, since I liked hanging out with her and knew she was a gamer. I also extended the invitation to her wife, Kei, who I didn't know well, but liked and knew was also a gamer.
Now, our group consists of the five who've been friends since high school, and the 'new' couple, who we've been friends/gaming with for about a year. There are two problems with these two .
1) They ALWAYS want to play at their house.
Three of our players are in college and live with their parents, so we can't play there, because we play too late and are too noisy. We sometimes play at one player's house when her parents are out of town and she's housesitting their pets or our friend who has his own apartment [but he's the type to go home early, and that means when he's done, the whole game is]. The other times, we play over at Sam and Kei's apartment, or in one of the buildings at our university.
The university is right down the road from four of our players, and closer to the homes of the other three. There is a building that I have keys to [I work in it, and it's open until 11 p.m., anyway] that has:
-ample seating
-lots of tables
-plenty of trash cans
-air conditioning
-adjustable lighting
-huge bathrooms
-a fridge
-a microwave
-a sink
-plenty of parking outside
-no neighbors to deal with.
To me, this is the ideal place to play, and no one else has a problem with it, except Sam and Kei. They only want to play at their house. Every time we arrange to play on campus, Kei will offer, "Well, we can just play at our house..." because both of them are thin, and don't like the temperature the building is at [too cold, they say]. They will continue to insist that it's all right for us to play at their house until everyone half-heartedly agrees. If we do wind up going somewhere else, nine times out of ten, Kei will forget their character sheets at home, and have to go back and get them, somehow making what should be a ten minute trip last close to an hour. ("I decided to wash the dishes, or take the cat out, or take some laundry down to the laundry room, etc.") I'd say it's an accident, but she really does do it every time we're somewhere else, unless we're housesitting.
If we play at their house, we have:
-one coffee table that no one can reach because
-there is no other furniture, they sit on the floor on pillows.
-the carpet in the living room smells like mildew/mold because their cat threw up behind their TV months ago and they haven't "gotten around to cleaning it out yet."
-a tiny bathroom that's door has to be kept "cracked" because the littler box is in there.
-a kitchen that also smells, because they "recycle" and don't rinse the containers out before letting them collect for a month.
-no air conditioning, because even if it is working [which is an IF] they won't turn it up over "mild" because it's "too expensive."
-they have a kitten who disrupts everything we do.
Three of our players have back problems severe enough for them to be on medication, so the sitting on the floor thing is actually painful. There are two wooden kitchen chairs that we sometimes rotate out, but if you're sitting in a chair, you can't reach anything to roll on.
The temperature issue has caused people to overheat, and everyone gets hot, sweaty, and cranky.
The kitten really does disrupt everything. If you roll a dice, he will chase it around the room, losing it under the book case. If you aren't rolling the dice, he might attack them anyway. He jumps on character sheets, books, reference papers, maps, etc, clawing them and eating them. He will eat people's food, drink their drinks, spill both, etc. if not watched like a hawk. Last week, he actually jumped on one player's back [who is already afraid of cats due to some childhood trauma or something that I've never understood] and clawed him a great deal. They punished him by shutting him in the bathroom with the lights off, where he promptly attacked me when I went into the room. I still have some deep scratches on my legs.
Their neighbors all smoke and you can smell it through their house. One of our players is allergic to smoke, and another is actually allergic to cats. But they keep complaining if we want to play anywhere other than their house of fun.
2) Kei will not actually role play, unless it's with only Sam.
In the three games we play, in two of them, Kei and Sam's characters are lovers. In the game where their lovers/love interests are other characters (Sam's is another PC, Kei's is an NPC) they continue to flirt with and hang all over one another.
They will sit next to each other (or on top of each other), whisper into each other's ears, pet each other's hair, arms, etc.
The general reaction to this is that someone will half-jokingly do the dramatic "shenannigans!" arm gesture/point at and shout, "They're CANOODLING!" This will make them stop and get off of each other for about... ten minutes.
I've tried to get them to sit apart from each other, but if we arrange the seating that way, halfway through the game, one will get up for some reason and end up in the other's lap.
If she is not petting or being pet by Sam and Sam's characters, Kei will just sit there. She will not talk, she will only roll if the GM asks, "What did you get?" in which she will blink and say, "Oh, I didn't roll." and either not do it at all, or do it, and hold the rest of us up while she consults her sheet.
Sam, who seems genuinely interested in getting into character and seriously playing, is always hesitating because she feels like she has to be including Kei. If the party splits up, I think she feels she has to take Kei, because Kei won't play with or help anyone else.
I don't understand this behavior. They both claim to have been playing for years, and have a ton of RP stuff, including folders and folders of rolled character sheets (and all of their characters come out of these sheets - they never roll new ones - in the Modern game, they are both actually playing the characters from their old World of Darkness games, the actual characters themselves, with their back stories and experiences, when everyone else rolled new characters from scratch.) I don't understand why Kei won't play, but both of the regular GMs are getting sick of her holding the whole party (especially Sam) back.
I just don't know what to do at this point. We're playing my game tonight, and I'm going to insist that we play it at the university, citing the horrible cat as a reason if they push it (which they will).
In the meantime, does anyone have any advice about how to deal with all of the problems in this (regrettably) really long post? Any help on how to handle this without bumping them from the group (because without one, we will lose the other, and they are our friends) and without sounding like complete jerks?
Now, our group consists of the five who've been friends since high school, and the 'new' couple, who we've been friends/gaming with for about a year. There are two problems with these two .
1) They ALWAYS want to play at their house.
Three of our players are in college and live with their parents, so we can't play there, because we play too late and are too noisy. We sometimes play at one player's house when her parents are out of town and she's housesitting their pets or our friend who has his own apartment [but he's the type to go home early, and that means when he's done, the whole game is]. The other times, we play over at Sam and Kei's apartment, or in one of the buildings at our university.
The university is right down the road from four of our players, and closer to the homes of the other three. There is a building that I have keys to [I work in it, and it's open until 11 p.m., anyway] that has:
-ample seating
-lots of tables
-plenty of trash cans
-air conditioning
-adjustable lighting
-huge bathrooms
-a fridge
-a microwave
-a sink
-plenty of parking outside
-no neighbors to deal with.
To me, this is the ideal place to play, and no one else has a problem with it, except Sam and Kei. They only want to play at their house. Every time we arrange to play on campus, Kei will offer, "Well, we can just play at our house..." because both of them are thin, and don't like the temperature the building is at [too cold, they say]. They will continue to insist that it's all right for us to play at their house until everyone half-heartedly agrees. If we do wind up going somewhere else, nine times out of ten, Kei will forget their character sheets at home, and have to go back and get them, somehow making what should be a ten minute trip last close to an hour. ("I decided to wash the dishes, or take the cat out, or take some laundry down to the laundry room, etc.") I'd say it's an accident, but she really does do it every time we're somewhere else, unless we're housesitting.
If we play at their house, we have:
-one coffee table that no one can reach because
-there is no other furniture, they sit on the floor on pillows.
-the carpet in the living room smells like mildew/mold because their cat threw up behind their TV months ago and they haven't "gotten around to cleaning it out yet."
-a tiny bathroom that's door has to be kept "cracked" because the littler box is in there.
-a kitchen that also smells, because they "recycle" and don't rinse the containers out before letting them collect for a month.
-no air conditioning, because even if it is working [which is an IF] they won't turn it up over "mild" because it's "too expensive."
-they have a kitten who disrupts everything we do.
Three of our players have back problems severe enough for them to be on medication, so the sitting on the floor thing is actually painful. There are two wooden kitchen chairs that we sometimes rotate out, but if you're sitting in a chair, you can't reach anything to roll on.
The temperature issue has caused people to overheat, and everyone gets hot, sweaty, and cranky.
The kitten really does disrupt everything. If you roll a dice, he will chase it around the room, losing it under the book case. If you aren't rolling the dice, he might attack them anyway. He jumps on character sheets, books, reference papers, maps, etc, clawing them and eating them. He will eat people's food, drink their drinks, spill both, etc. if not watched like a hawk. Last week, he actually jumped on one player's back [who is already afraid of cats due to some childhood trauma or something that I've never understood] and clawed him a great deal. They punished him by shutting him in the bathroom with the lights off, where he promptly attacked me when I went into the room. I still have some deep scratches on my legs.
Their neighbors all smoke and you can smell it through their house. One of our players is allergic to smoke, and another is actually allergic to cats. But they keep complaining if we want to play anywhere other than their house of fun.
2) Kei will not actually role play, unless it's with only Sam.
In the three games we play, in two of them, Kei and Sam's characters are lovers. In the game where their lovers/love interests are other characters (Sam's is another PC, Kei's is an NPC) they continue to flirt with and hang all over one another.
They will sit next to each other (or on top of each other), whisper into each other's ears, pet each other's hair, arms, etc.
The general reaction to this is that someone will half-jokingly do the dramatic "shenannigans!" arm gesture/point at and shout, "They're CANOODLING!" This will make them stop and get off of each other for about... ten minutes.
I've tried to get them to sit apart from each other, but if we arrange the seating that way, halfway through the game, one will get up for some reason and end up in the other's lap.
If she is not petting or being pet by Sam and Sam's characters, Kei will just sit there. She will not talk, she will only roll if the GM asks, "What did you get?" in which she will blink and say, "Oh, I didn't roll." and either not do it at all, or do it, and hold the rest of us up while she consults her sheet.
Sam, who seems genuinely interested in getting into character and seriously playing, is always hesitating because she feels like she has to be including Kei. If the party splits up, I think she feels she has to take Kei, because Kei won't play with or help anyone else.
I don't understand this behavior. They both claim to have been playing for years, and have a ton of RP stuff, including folders and folders of rolled character sheets (and all of their characters come out of these sheets - they never roll new ones - in the Modern game, they are both actually playing the characters from their old World of Darkness games, the actual characters themselves, with their back stories and experiences, when everyone else rolled new characters from scratch.) I don't understand why Kei won't play, but both of the regular GMs are getting sick of her holding the whole party (especially Sam) back.
I just don't know what to do at this point. We're playing my game tonight, and I'm going to insist that we play it at the university, citing the horrible cat as a reason if they push it (which they will).
In the meantime, does anyone have any advice about how to deal with all of the problems in this (regrettably) really long post? Any help on how to handle this without bumping them from the group (because without one, we will lose the other, and they are our friends) and without sounding like complete jerks?