Brag about your Gaming Group

[Jay R]

We have lots of threads about gaming group problems. But no group is all bad.

Tell us something really good about the group you game with.

Here’s one:

My current gaming group includes one woman whose husband doesn’t want to play, but who loves to cook. He sends over full meals of really good food. Next time there will be shrimp dumplings, shu mai, gyoza, scallion pancakes, stir-fried vegetables, hot tea, steamed rice, and maybe something like fruit salad.

[Biggus]

Great idea, let's have some positive stories for a change :smallsmile:

My current group is made up of two old friends and one new. I'd met the new one before but we've since become close friends, largely through playing at first.

Also, this group has allowed me to realise a DMing ambition of around 20 years: to take a group all the way from 1st level to epic. They're currently 22nd level (23rd very soon) with no end in sight.

PS envious of that food, sounds awesome

[KorvinStarmast]

My Salt Marsh group involves two people I met on line at random (husband and wife) when he was running a campaign. Add two guys I met a RPGSE. Add one guy I met here. (Kurt Kurageous).
The group is mostly stable, each has their own strengths and weaknesses, one keeps good track of loot, one takes good notes, another offers lots of feedback, one is great at discussing rules oddities with.

I enjoy being their DM, and wish we could play once a week for 3-4 hours each session, but RL does not permit. It's every other week and lucky to get 2.5-3 hours out of a session before we turn into pumpkins.

Laughter is often present in our sessions.

[oxybe]

1) we've been together for the better part of the last 20 years of our adult lives. I moved into town in 2005ish and we got the group together the year after. We've been playing every Wednesdays pretty consistently, acknowledging that real life takes precedence as we're all working adults. we've had some "new" members join and old ones leave, but even then our "newest" member has still been with us for over 10 years.

2) we play a pretty wide variety of games. We did Adventures in Middle Earth (the one ring D&D 5e adaption) followed by the Aliens game, The Witcher, then Twilight 2000, we're currently playing Lancer and once we wrap up this week's session we'll probably be rolling up some Dragonbane (can you guess one of our GMs like Free League's stuff?). We've also done Call of Cthulhu, White Wolf, Mork Borg, Genesys... lord knows i've forgotten what other systems. Oddly enough we've only really played 3rd ed D&D and Pathfinder for extended periods, not the newer editions (I don't count AiME as 5e proper since it just uses the core d20 system). Not that we dislike those games, we just tend to fallback on the D&Ds as our 2nd or 3rd choice as other games tend to draw our attention away. Honestly every few months someone will eventually pick something up and we'll all get hyped to play it.

[Telwar]

My group has been going, in some way shape or form, since the mid 90s as an offshoot of our university's gaming club. I am aware that this is a very rare thing.

One of the DMs, way back in the day, posted on Usenet asking for advice dealing with us...specifically, how to get us into fights, because we made a bunch of combat monsters who then proceeded to try to talk our way out of fights or negotiate, rather than brutally murderhoboing our way through the setting. I mean, we weren't *good* at talking, but it still bothered him.

Related, we basically fight like accountants, using nice cheap words or regenerable hit points rather than expensive abilities. Like, we do NOT, say, meteor swarm the goblins.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Looking back, I've been very very blessed as to my gaming groups. I've only had one that was toxic, and that I noped out after 1 session.

But my current online group (the one KorvinStarmast is in) is particularly good. We've been going now about 3 years, 3 different campaigns. Done a 1-20, a 3-17 (stopped there because the story naturally ended there), and are now half-way through another 3-X game (currently level 11). Met them all online, scattered across 4 time zones and two countries. We rarely have issues with scheduling, although sometimes one person or another can't make it. But everyone's been really good about giving advance warning and letting other people run their characters, so we rarely miss a session. Everyone's gelled quite well--there have been occasional disagreements or mutual irksome moments, but meh. Well below my "this is bad" threshold, which is fairly low. Everyone's super involved in the setting and between sessions. In general, it's been a joy to play with them.

[KorvinStarmast]

Looking back, I've been very very blessed as to my gaming groups. I've only had one that was toxic, and that I noped out after 1 session.

But my current online group (the one KorvinStarmast is in) is particularly good. We've been going now about 3 years, 3 different campaigns. Done a 1-20, a 3-17 (stopped there because the story naturally ended there), and are now half-way through another 3-X game (currently level 11). Met them all online, scattered across 4 time zones and two countries. We rarely have issues with scheduling, although sometimes one person or another can't make it. But everyone's been really good about giving advance warning and letting other people run their characters, so we rarely miss a session. Everyone's gelled quite well--there have been occasional disagreements or mutual irksome moments, but meh. Well below my "this is bad" threshold, which is fairly low. Everyone's super involved in the setting and between sessions. In general, it's been a joy to play with them. You neglected to mention the psychic damage from the puns, though ... :smalleek:

[PhoenixPhyre]

You neglected to mention the psychic damage from the puns, though ... :smalleek:

The fact that y'all haven't just bailed means you like it, somewhere deep down in your hearts. :smallbiggrin:

[King of Nowhere]

My group has remained together for five years, completing two separate 1-20 campaigns. that's already pretty rare.

additionally, my group has always been very supportive of anyone in trouble. if a dm has dm block, the players offer to help him. if a player falls below the power curve, everyone looks for some plausible way to power him up. even more nice, if a player finds himself too much above the power curve, he himself tries to get depowered. we've always been very flexible to scheduling problems, because many people have real life issues; and while this leads us to skip about half weeks, it was never abused. in fact, you'll often see chats like "go ahead and play without me" "no, we don't want to leave you out of the loop".

finally, it's a group of learned people with whom I can make the most uholy combination of science and magic. My last campaign involved engineered bacteria to absorb divine power every time someone turned undead nearby, and bring it to a central source. And a spell to create a nuclear bomb.

Yes, I allowed my wizard to create a nuclear bomb! And it didn't break the campaign! And it was awesome!*
Really, how many people can claim to have let a player tinker with nuclear explosion and have the campaign enhanced for that?





* the reason it didn't break the campaign is that the spell had external limitations placed by the metaphysics of the campaign world. Magic can be used to do almost anything, barring a sort of energy conservation principle that prevents "infinite X" abuses and justifies some power capping. but the gods can decide that they don't like something, and ban a specific magic ritual. I introduced radiation damage on a whim in a high level dungeon as I was looking for ways to hurt the characters that they could not anticipate or know how to avoid. too late I realized this accidentally established, by my own dm canon, that nuclear physics works. So I concocted a secret agreement among the gods to keep nuclear stuff hidden from mortals. which worked, the party was in a very unusual place to make such a discovery.
so, with all that framework in place, I told the wizard that yes, he could summon a nuclear bomb (a supercritical plutonium mass, to be exact), but the moment he did the gods would take notice, and would "ban" his spell; it would only work once. And if you use it unwisely, you may find yourself with all the gods declaring a crusade on you, and without your nuclear spell.
At the same time, the party was looking for ways to kill a god. something I told them clearly, mortals could not achieve. This solved both problems. On one hand, the party wanted to do something no mortal could do. On the other, the party had a mean of untold destruction that no other mortal could possibly get. So the final mission of the campaign became "infiltrate the demiplane of a god and sneak close enough to nuke him". It was an awesome way to end a campaign.

[OldTrees1]

My group regularly surprises me. I run sandboxes and it feels good not knowing what the party will do. Sometimes foolhardy, sometimes careful. Last campaign I ran (Curse of Strahd) their choices unleashed something and created a whole new chapter. I am running a new campaign and I am still enjoying their surprises.

This is all on top of the standard good gaming group things we can brag about like fun, friends, respectful, etc. I am also lucky in that our group has multiple people willing to DM.

[Biggus]

the reason it didn't break the campaign is that the spell had external limitations placed by the metaphysics of the campaign world. Magic can be used to do almost anything, barring a sort of energy conservation principle that prevents "infinite X" abuses and justifies some power capping. but the gods can decide that they don't like something, and ban a specific magic ritual. [...]
so, with all that framework in place, I told the wizard that yes, he could summon a nuclear bomb (a supercritical plutonium mass, to be exact), but the moment he did the gods would take notice, and would "ban" his spell; it would only work once. And if you use it unwisely, you may find yourself with all the gods declaring a crusade on you, and without your nuclear spell.


That's a pretty cool way to deal with seriously OP stuff in general: you can use it exactly once, then the gods will change reality so it doesn't work any more. I might adopt that for my games.

[Easy e]

We meet consistently once a week for 3 hours in the same place for 5 years for a live, in-person game. People have come and gone, not everyone makes it every night; but we have a consistent game.

We have several people willing to GM, and we play a variety of games.

[gbaji]

My primary gaming group has actually been technically gaming since sometime in the 70s, back when my mom used to play, but there's only one person left from that original D&D group. The group switched over to playing RuneQuest back sometime around 81ish, and moved from a fully handmade campaign to one based on the QuestWord expansion pretty much when that came out (82?), and hasn't really looked back. I joined in the 82/83 time period. Lots of members have come and gone over time since then, and we do take breaks and play other games from time to time, but have more or less been playing in the same (heavily modded) campaign game and setting ever since. This group is really really good. We work together, understand each other, and are pretty much on the same page when it comes to a host of things. And we absolutely crush BBQs in the summer (like "help! I'm in a meat coma and can't move!" level goodness). Can't say enough good things about this group.

I also played a lot (like a heck of a lot) with my brother and cousins and other friends our age, through a couple decades when were were all in our teens and 20s. D&D (2.x and 3.x mostly), Champions (lots and lots of Champions), Paranoia, Shadowrun, etc. Also a great group, with some amazing memories. We don't get together to play very often these days. Families, moving, and other life events got in the way. But we do occasionally get together for a marathon game day just for fun (played 5e last time, which was surprisingly good).

Between these two there are a host of really great and fun memories of game sessions gone by. Crazy things happening. Strange/silly actions. Unexpected outcomes. Tons of stuff. And we have our share of "things you shall not do!" based solely on that "one time, when <whomever> did that one thing, and <some disaster happened>". I will say that the primary (and mostly older folks) group is/was probably the more serious and down to earth (well... mostly), while some of the more crazy/silly things happened with the latter group. But yeah, never had any really "bad" experiences with these groups. The occasional bad player did appear (I think like one), and was booted pretty quickly.


I've also played (and run) a lot of tourney games, and random pickup type groups here and there over the years. More mixed there. I will say that if you can find a good group, stick with them. That's like gold right there.

[Esprit15]

Group of folks that I met here for an AdEva game back in the pandemic did our first game through Discord. After a couple sessions the GM asked if folks wanted to hang out post-session and group watch Ghost Stories. Three years later, we're all best friends and we meet up for New Years, have been there to cheer on romances and care for heartbreaks both IC and IRL, and at least one person in the group credits it with saving their life.

Another group I met through here hasn't been that intense, but twelve years later and we're still all friends who talk regularly, have watched several members of the group graduate high school, college, and get married. It's so cool how the internet has managed to bring people together over a fun little story-telling-with-dice hobby.

[Kapow]

I have three groups at the moment.

And what I like about them all, is an openess to try new (and sometimes weird) things.
(Right now preparing a pf-campaign starting level 18 and going down)

And I am 10 years the senior of the next oldest person and I'm always impressed, how genuinely nice they act towards each other, that's how they became kind of family.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I met my friends S, B, and J at the beginning of my freshman year of college. In the thirteen years since then, there have only been a handful of months when we weren't doing some sort of campaign together. Multiple editions of D&D, Mutants and Masterminds, Exalted, STaRS, Deadlands, Pokemon Tabletop United...hell, next week we're about to try Lancer for the first time. Even scattered across the country, they remain some of my best friends.

[stoutstien]

The biggest argument at my table over the last year has been over what colour should the false nails be in regards to an awakened squirrel they befriended by accidentally feeding it psychedelic mushrooms a year prior.

[RustyArcana]

My current group is age-diverse, with two people in their 40s, one person in their thirties, one in their twenties and two teenagers.

[JNAProductions]

Imma give some big ol' props to my current Halcyon City Heroes (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?658235-Halcyon-City-Heroes-OOC) group, here in the playground!

We got NontheistCleric, Obscurejones, Lentrax, MCerberus, and truemane, all playing young heroes and I am having a BALL with it!
I felt like shouting them out because Nontheist, just last post in the OOC, was asking if an NPC contact for Occasion would be okay. And holy cramoly, the pitch was awesome!

The whole group is great.

[Beelzebub1111]

My current group is always willing to try new things and are willing to put up with me changing systems on them every few weeks. I'm really happy when they get involved in their characters and are both pro-active and re-active in their roleplaying skills. They are usually happy to go along with the adventure put before them but are also good at throwing me for a loop when going off the rails in a fun way.

They are creative and often come up with alternative solutions to things that I never thought of.

[Ogre Mage]

We have lots of threads about gaming group problems. But no group is all bad.

Tell us something really good about the group you game with.

Here’s one:

My current gaming group includes one woman whose husband doesn’t want to play, but who loves to cook. He sends over full meals of really good food. Next time there will be shrimp dumplings, shu mai, gyoza, scallion pancakes, stir-fried vegetables, hot tea, steamed rice, and maybe something like fruit salad.

*Mouth waters and face turns green with envy*

[Jay R]

He just posted the menu for our New Year's Eve game.

"The day will be finger foods like mini grilled lobster sandwiches, dumplings, potted beef, charcute, sweets, etc..

Dinner will be prime rib, pommes de terre mont d'or (with cauliflower), and other stuff to be determined.

I was going to make profiteroles au chocolat avec glace, but you guys are having cream puffs at 12th Night* so I'm figuring something else out. Maybe my Rustic Apple Tart."

*We're all in the SCA, and will attend a Twelfth Night feast one week later.

[Scarlet Knight]

Our group started in college more than 40 years ago. We almost broke apart as people married, had kids & moved around, but the core still played in New Jersey.

Thanks to us all having to learn Zoom in the last 4-5 years, we can now play every week even though we live in NJ, NY, VA, FL and NM.

Also, 40 years ago we got snowed in after finals in our dorm and I ran an impromptu Christmas dungeon where the gang had to break Santa out of the Burghermeister Meisterburgher's jail.

To this day we keep the holiday dungeon tradition, even though I am now - probably- the least skilled DM in the group...bless them.

[Ameraaaaaa]

I'm in a 1on1 vampire the requiem game and i love how we're both really committed to the story of the main character. We play off each other very well.