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I'm feeling cranky and low on inspiration tonight, so this month's column is going to be a bit of a rant about assorted gaming pet peeves. We all have them, whether we're GMs or players. I'm willing to bet that most game developers have a long list of peeves, too. Anyway, without further ado, here are a few of mine.
- People who come to gaming while they're sick. Or GM while they're sick. Or host the game while they and their entire family are sick. Yes, it sucks to miss gaming, but it sucks even more to miss everything else for a week because now I'm sick with the germs that you brought to the game.
- People who don't buy any game books and constantly want to borrow yours. They get a pass on this if they honestly can't afford it, or if the group is playing a new game every month. But honestly, if you like a game enough to play in it, you should like it enough to shell out the $20-40 to buy the core rulebook.
- People who remake their characters every month or two because they lost their character sheet. Once is an accident. Twice might mean they're a sloppy housekeeper. Anything more than that and it's pretty easy to suspect that they're using it as a convenient way to make subtle tweaks to improve the character now that they know the game better.
- People who want to play the game, but don't bother to read the rulebook, learn the setting, or familiarize themselves about their character's abilities, then complain when their character is constantly in trouble or less effective than the others. It's your own darned fault for not taking any time to learn the game. It's not the job of the other players to hold your hand the entire time and tell you how to play the game.
- People who are more than happy to eat all of the snacks and drinks that others bring to share, without ever bringing anything to share themselves.
- People who totally ignore the time that a game is supposed to start. It's annoying when they show up in the middle of the game and expect everyone to stop everything and let them know what they missed. It's even worse when you're the host of the game and they show up 2 hours early when you were hoping to have time to shower and clean the house before they got there.
- People who can't differentiate between in and out of character actions. Just because you're my best friend doesn't mean that my character is going to be your best friend and accept everything you do. Just because my character got mad at yours doesn't mean that I'm mad at you. Just because my character slept with yours doesn't mean that I secretly find you hot (ok, that last one never really happened to me, thankfully).
- People who play characters that are totally inappropriate for the game or setting. Legend of the Five Rings is the worst for that. People hear Japan and automatically think that they should play characters based on their favorite anime or manga. Characters that never quite fit into the prim and proper pseudo-Japanese society that the rest of us are trying so hard to accurately portray.
- People who use the lifeline that the GM gives them to hang themselves, then complain endlessly about how it's not fair, the GM had it in for them, and they're never going to game again.
- People who come to gaming and do things other than game. If you wanted to read a book, play a video game, or catch up on the latest gossip, you should have stayed home.
- People who had weeks to make their character or talk to the GM about something, but wait until gaming night to do it, thus delaying everything.
- People who assume that if you're married to the GM, you have some sort of magical GM wife powers that give you some say over what game he runs, what perks your character gets, what happens in the game, etc. Let me just say that if that were in fact the case, we'd be playing Earthdawn now, but L5R won the popular vote. For the record, this is the second time that the game I've wanted to play has been voted down in favor of L5R. People love their anime-inspired characters.
Well, I guess that's enough ranting for one night. I have to go nurse the cold that I caught at gaming, and plot how best to use my magical GM wife powers to smite the characters of the people who ate all my delicious dried pineapple while playing Warhammer On-line in my game room.
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