I thought transitioning that core group to a home game would be excellent.
I could really dig in on the story elements and with a regular dedicated set of players, we could avoid a lot of the weird continuity issues that crop up in an open game. Somewhere buried in the last story I mentioned that we had gained some problematic players. That wound up being a thing I inherited to my home group. It was a thing on several fronts. First, clashes of personality between players. Those are the sort of things I tried my best to mediate, but in the end, people have to be willing to compromise. But nobody was. And everyone felt entitled to be there in the game. This made a sort of catch 22 situation for me.
We finished Hoard of the Dragon Queen. My home group found itself a bit divided on things. Some were eager to jump into Rise of Tiamat. Others felt fatigued a bit with so much 5e and also missed the shake-up of the weekend games getting to try out different and more diverse systems. Being diplomatic felt like the best thing to do, so we put it to a vote and decided to take a break from 5e for a mini-campaign in something else then return refreshed to take down Tiamat. Not a bad idea, I thought at the time. But that route ended up bringing a pretty swift end to my home group.
We had a lot of trouble settling on what game to play. Some wanted superheroes. Some only felt confident with a Fantasy setting. Some wanted a more anime-styled sort of tone. Others couldn't get down with anything anime at all. It was a mess. At the time I did a lot of reading on how to properly do a Session 0 and do stuff like setting player expectations. We tried a game or two and usually didn't get past a first session. Somebody would have a major hang up or the game just didn't go well as people uninterested in the game sort of subtly sabotaged things. I'm not making a judgment call on that. I don't want to think anybody had any sinister intent. If you're not into something, you're not, and that can just naturally reflect in your actions. Sometimes, even I wasn't really into what we were doing and I tried to be upfront and honest about that. It both felt and seemed unwise for a GM to commit to running a game they were not invested in. I had been down that road before with Pathfinder.
Ultimately, someone suggested that I just run something I feel super hyped about and can really get into. The premise was that if I were excited about things, I would throw my all into running the game and everybody would likely enjoy things regardless of genre preferences. Everybody was on board with that idea except for one player. She was part of the couple that always seemed to kick up a storm back at the game shop. In not so many words I got called a flake, for canceling so many games after the first session. Her argument was that they had all worked so hard and invested in making up these characters and then I was just hopping games again and again because I didn't like it.
Maybe that was true?
From my perspective, it seemed very clear whenever a game wasn't going to take off well. Why then continue that? Was it not better to try and find something that everyone enjoyed and went well?
Someone took the fair stance of asking what they thought we could do then to appease the situation, but they offered no answer. This was really my major personal issue. This couple was always eager to raise the flag over a problem they saw, but they really seemed to just want to complain or be confrontational never actually work out a solution. The point also seemed to diminish my own place in the scheme of things. It's not like I expect any acknowledgment, but each time I had put in as much if not more work on the prep to run the game as the players had towards their characters.
So with a general consensus, we pushed ahead on things. I had been quite enamored with FATE and particularly FATE Accelerated. We had run a few successful demos back at the shop and I really appreciated the focus it placed towards constructing a narrative collaboratively. In that light, I decided to use it to adapt the original anime-themed forum roleplay I had been a part of for many years. It was a setting I had done a lot to help create and thus I knew it quite well. Accelerated would capture the anime-styled action of the setting without bogging us down in a lot of mechanics. It seemed like the perfect fit.
But we didn't get past the session zero. The confrontational player came out of the gate being rude and standoffish about things. Another player was sick of their attitude and just bowed out of the game in frustration. The confrontational player kept questioning every aspect of the setting just trying to find some flaw to drill down on. When that didn't really happen and everyone else happened to be getting along just fine they resorted to insulting the setting as being poorly conceived and not making sense and, as they tended to do, rallied another person to their complaints.
I tend to be a very laid back kind of person. I'll let a lot of stuff just roll over me and laugh it off if it means things carry on smoothly. I have always been that way. I do tend to be a worrier about things, but I keep that to myself. A consequence of that is that when stuff stresses me out I usually let that bottle up a bit too much. My stress with gaming had been building for some time by this point. So I tried to laugh things off. I took a stance of hey, this clearly isn't going to be the one that works out either so back to the drawing board. Or maybe we should just keep a good thing going, forget the hiatus and hop back onto 5e since everyone was fine with that.
Instead, this confrontational player kept badgering me now adding in that I was flaking out of another game. I kept trying to laugh things off and just let myself look bad. I had failed them as a GM, I guess. Whatever. But she wasn't going to let it go for whatever reason. Having roused another person, I was getting it on two fronts and it all just became a little too much. If it were the game shop I could have easily excused myself, but we were in my home. That only really served to stress me out more. I had opened up my home, despite not being the most ideal setting to host a game, and now I had players badgering and insulting me because ultimately we weren't doing what they wanted to do.
So I apologized, said we were done for the day and asked everyone to leave. This was met with resistance from everyone getting upset that the game was cut short. In the end, I just yelled for everyone to go and stormed off. It's one of the only times I have ever really felt like I lost my cool. Nobody really knew how to take it. A handful hung back wanting to make sure "we were cool" and all that. In the end, I just let things fall off there. For me, it was too much stress after so many sessions of drama and issues. I suppose I could have asked the core of the problem to just not come anymore. Maybe I should, but at the time I opted to just let things go.
This, sadly, is all a precursor to things.
Time marched on. I was back to reading game books and posting about them online rather than playing. Everyone else found home games here or there and just went on. There was still a lot of discussion about the public playgroup surviving in some way as a whole, but we were at a loss for a location. After a while, the idea got floated about forming a gaming club out of our local public library. That seemed like a wise idea to me. By then I had finished my Masters degree in Library Science, so I knew well the potential for a public library to act as a sort of gathering point for the community it served. I did a lot of research on my end about gaming clubs in libraries as far as how they operate and how to pitch the idea.
But the idea had been floated by the husband of the couple who tended to raise a lot of trouble, the guy whose wife had gotten hostile with me during the last session of the homegroup. They had already taken the initiative on a lot of the process. I was, naturally, concerned about my relationship in things. If it was to be a thing, I wanted it to be about building a community and a resource for gamers (or potential gamers). I did not want any hard feelings or grudges going on (either involving me or between player to player). I was sold on it with the idea of a fresh start for all to build things back up. So I christened the name Tabletop Adventurers Society, a more talented member of the group whipped up some fliers and we were a go to meet up every Saturday evening.
Out of the gate, there were a lot of problems. A lot of old players had grudges with no interest in healing those wounds. Person A would never play if Person C was present. Extrapolate that by several times to make a complex web. Nobody wanted to discuss any of this stuff out, however. To each person, their mind was made up. And the one who had badgered me in the home game, the grudge was still clearly there towards me. Our first new member came in with a very focused sort of perspective on things. To him, every game was about winning over the challenges presented. He had no interest in a story and once he saw that we had quite a few with a leaning in favor of story over just running dungeons, he started making characters to snap down on such behavior in the game on the notion that he was "just playing" his character.
We were trading off weekends, I would run one weekend and somebody else another so that everyone had a chance to play. But the numbers were swelling and soon we were back to that old show of cramming 12 players into a game. So there were a lot of factors at play. A lot of personality/interests clashing. The single table was getting crowded. But I saw the crowding as a good thing, it meant things were growing. To me, I thought we could fix all these issues by simply accommodating for the growth.
As the number of active players began to creep further towards 15 and on, I began to float the idea of running two tables at each meet-up. This would help split that player base into more balanced tables where things could flow faster and there could be more time for each character to shine in a game. Furthermore, we seemed to have a divide between people wanting to really focus on telling a story and people that wanted a more beer and pretzel style run through the dungeon game. Again, if your table all had fun then you achieved a victory in my book. Either style of game is fine if it's what everybody is on board with.
But since we had that divide in interests and we had the players to support two tables (and willing GM's), to me it made sense to offer one table of each style every meet-up. Everybody could get their time to shine in-game and during the type of game they really wanted to play. And as those tables grew, hopefully, we could split off further. The public rooms for clubs at our library were rather generous. I think we could have easily grown to accommodate 4-5 tables running at once with everybody having plenty of space and enough area to avoid any interference for those focusing on their own game.
All that makes sense to me and seemed like a very pragmatic way to solve every problem the group was having. I was surprised then, to find a lot of opposition to it.
The problem-causing couple, who were on paper as running the club with me, were vehemently against it. Their argument was that I was trying to alienate people by making two tables and making one an exclusive thing so we could avoid people we didn't like when the goal I had stated was for the games to be open and build a community. In their way, they rallied people to that line of thinking.
Maybe I'm crazy, but that's just wrong to me.
Did some people get on my nerves, yeah? More than anything it seemed like a few people took issue with me, but I didn't have any grudge over that. I just wanted everyone to play a game and have a good time. To me, this was a sign of success, a chance to grow the club in a way that would surpass these growing pains of a sort. Most people tended to not turn out for a game if its style didn't fit what they wanted. Other than a handful, like this couple, who begrudgingly came to every session and just complained or tried to derail a game if it was not to their taste.
The solution was really obvious I guess. There's no need to justify the logic I had. I said then and still say it was the right direction to try and grow the club. Hey, we have these two games going on tonight. Come out and hop into whichever one you want to play. We get some weird night with a super low turnout and we can just fold in and run one of the games.
But I was out-voted in a sense and unlike the game shop, I really had no authority to back me up on anything. I only learned this after the fact, but a big chunk of what was really going on seemed to be that couple thought of the group as their social club. It was their Saturday night to get together with people, hang out and chat. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, on paper, but the reality is they didn't want any kind of change because they wanted things as it was where they could be at the center of things.
I like to hang out and chat before and after a game, but to me, this is a hobby I care very much about and want to foster and see grow. My focus was on growing the group as a gaming club to cater to varying tastes and interests. Those two ideals were very diametrically opposed. But the club situation was deteriorating. We had not had any new members in awhile and then I was contacted, via e-mail, from a prospective member interested in coming to a game but was uncertain about playing with strangers or an unfamiliar system.
I did my best to address those concerns and offer my help in accommodating them to the game, at that time 5e, which they knew only via the popular Critical Role. The next meet-up this new player came and frankly, I became disgusted with a lot of the players in our group. This new player was a young woman, college-aged like most of us were at the time, generally attractive and naturally interested in RPG's and by relation a lot of related schools of interest in geekdom. Two or three of our long-term players just... I'm not even sure how to phrase it other than disgusting.
Day one, a player started pressuring her after a game to come back to his apartment and get drunk repeatedly after she declined the first time. Every awkward sad "OH MAN A GIRL" sort of line or behavior you can think of applied. She lived one town over and had been given a ride to the game by a friend. Some hung back after the game as she waited for her ride offering her to come with them and any number of other things. As the one locking up the meeting room I was sort of already obligated to make sure everyone left safely. It was just... you see that kind of crap, stories about it online. I guess I always thought we were better?
I was very embarrassed, but in the end, this player sort of laughed it off and kept coming back. That kind of behavior seemed at stark odds with the rules we had drafted up to the club, so I got in touch with people and did my best to make it clear they needed to handle things better. In the end, it gave us all as a group a bad image to my eyes. But their behavior continued and most embarrassing of all, the husband of the problematic couple was involved in all this and facilitating it. As one of the organizers of things that just made it all the more wrong.
Things came to a head around Halloween. I usually love to celebrate that holiday and on the gaming, side tend to do some horror one-shots in honor of the holiday. This was met with dissent from the wife of the couple who disliked horror. Naturally, I floated the idea of two tables again but it went ignored. To me, this was a tradition I had done every year since I got back into gaming so I went forward regardless. Call of Cthulhu was the name of the game and I planned a 2 session run of The Trail of Tsathogghua, which I find to be an excellent little slow burn adventure. This is just my kind of Cthulhu where it's very grounded in the literary style of Lovecraft rather the more pulpy kick the door down and blaze the tommy gun into the cultists a lot in our group seemed to prefer. I made sure to preface that in advance of the game so everybody knew what they were getting into.
The first session went generally well other than some complaints from the wife of that couple. The husband had been called into work and couldn't attend. It had been the smoothest session we had run in awhile and I felt pretty hopeful about the climax next session.
Next session went the opposite. I showed up to be greeted by another of our players that took me aside to lodge a complaint. The husband of that couple along with the few who acted all creepy about our newest member had been running their mouths before I arrived. Essentially, discussing how hot that girl was and this or that unmentionable thing including a discussion on the need to keep it all so I could never find out because I would kill all their fun about things. The whole "white knight" deal, I suppose, was the intent.
That notion is a whole wormhole of problematic stuff so I won't get into it. Safe to say, the member reporting it to me had felt pretty offended and disgusted with their behavior and they were also worried that our newest member would get run off by it all. I made it a point that I'd be discussing with them after the game in private about things. It was getting disruptive and things needed to change or people needed to leave. There's really no excuse for treating people that way, especially in a public setting like that. Incidentally, the girl who was garnering so much attention didn't attend that second session. She said something had come up. I later learned those guys being problematic had been badgering her a lot over Facebook, so... who knows really what was going on. I'd probably bow out if I were in that situation.
But the game went down in catastrophe.
The husband of the couple set about trolling the game at hand doing a lot of random stuff trying to derail things. As I always try to do as a GM, I feel very confident with improvising and rolling with what players decide to do. But he was also having a lot of side conversation at the table. This had been a problem many had discussed recently and it went back, I think, to this whole divide of gaming club and social club. This couple saw it as their social event so they were fine with chatting whenever they were not doing anything in the game. Which can be fine, I think. The problem was that they would get so loud that I would raise my voice near shouting over them and players interested in the game could still not hear me. This was in a private room with no other sources of sound to interfere. Compare that to something like a crowded convention hall.
It had been discussed before. Had been another point in my argument to run two tables. But of course, had been ignored. So in one of the pivotal moments as the group was in talks with an NPC and getting some key information, this couple had dragged 3-4 others into a side conversation unrelated to the game. It was about the Greek gods turning into animals and raping people if I recall. Probably also not on the level with the guidelines we drew up since the library wanted it to be a family-friendly club, but so it goes.
We had this one player who was a bit problematic in his own right. I've always liked him. He's present, always tries to get into the story and roleplay and we generally have no problems between us. Unfortunately, not many tended to get along with him and he usually played characters that were always rude in-game. I guess most had this impression that he played such characters to project his own frustrations. He asked them if they could be a little quieter or step outside if it was important cause he couldn't hear what I was saying. I had repeated myself unsuccessfully and their side conversation only grew louder. So this guy completely lost it.
He raised his voice loudly to grab everyone's attention and then asked if they would please shut up because he wanted to actually play the game and was interested in the story, that the GM (me) had put all this work into prepping and now running the game and it was very rude to talk over top so loudly nobody knows anything but their side conversation. He then added that it was ridiculous he was having to say all this and that we were better than that. They all looked like they might come across the table at any moment.
Before I could say anything, another player completely unrelated to any of those mentioned thus far jumped up and shouted at this guy and said that he was being toxic and they refused to play if he's involved then stormed outside. We broke away from the table to take a little break considering how heated things had become. In that time, the problem couple stated that we should kick that guy out and everyone just kind of agreed and asked me to continue. Frustrated I sighed and said that was enough for the day. To a degree, my feelings were a little hurt. A lot of what that guy had said rang true and honestly I was frustrated to have to nigh-yell over side conversations to run a game. Why be there distracting everyone on doing absolutely anything other than the game, if you weren't interested in what was going on?
I tried to bring this up after the fact to people and then once more hit that brick wall divide between gaming club and social club. My feeling on the matter got dismissed because what it would mean was "excluding them from the group when it was meant to be open to everyone and they were just enjoying the game the way they wanted to enjoy it" and so on. My point was that they weren't actually playing or engaged in the game, so they may as well not came or just went off to the side and had their conversation. But they argued that would be excluding them and just... it's frustrating to roll over it again.
Bottom line, they wanted it the way they wanted it and were using every avenue possible to keep it that way. I was embarrassed by our group and generally frustrated. Moreso, I was disgusted with the husband in this couple. For a time we had been pretty close and on good terms, but this couple was older than most in the group. They could've easily been parents to me by age. And here he was being creepy at some college-aged girl and generally acting like some 13-year old focused on their entitlement to have a good time over everything.
Not content with the situation, he pushed to ban that member who had spoken out. I'm not saying what that guy did was right. He should have not had an outburst and made his point in a more constructive way. But what the husband of that couple did was worse in my book. To try and make it a clean and closed case he started posting about the situation to the public Facebook group for the club lying that the guy had cursed everyone out and shouted obscenities. This alarmed the library staff naturally.
I mean, I was right there in the moment. I couldn't keep running my game so all I had to do was listen to what everyone said. The worst the guy said was "shut up" and called them rude. So I confronted this dude in private to ask why he was lying about the situation. He leaned in full tilt and told me that in the heat of the moment I must have misremembered the situation. Hitting the limit of my frustration, I told him I was disappointed in him and that I was out as far as the club went. I reached out by e-mail to our contact at the library and without much detail just politely stated I was bowing out of things and to take me off the contact list.
Sadly, our contact was very unprofessional about things. Maybe she didn't know I had a degree in Library Science, but I definitely know how a situation like this ought to be handled. She chose to gossip around wanting to know what had happened and after getting a bunch of half-truths from the married couple now left in charge called and confronted me wanting to know what was going on. I tried to just bow out, but she continued to pressure me so I laid it all out. Told everything. The outburst from the game. The lies about it. The creeping on the new girl. Basically concluded I didn't want to be involved in something that was so negative. I wanted the group to be a positive thing to build a community for gamers and I didn't really feel like I had any ability or backing to implement that.
She said she would have to consider what I had said, but if it was what I wanted she would take me off the registry. And I did so.
I can't say much of what happened after that. Presumably, she confronted the guy now left in sole charge of things with all the allegations I had brought up. I don't know what became of that. That library club carried on though. That husband made a formal announcement that my contributions were respected and I would always be welcome back if I chose, but that the group was about being public and open and things like trying to exclude people from games just could not happen. Score a victory for being welcoming and accepting, supposedly.
To this day it is still going on. I heard the day moved to Sunday afternoons instead of Saturday evenings. I heard it's always a smaller gathering, one table affair of course. Now and again I bump into someone asking if I know about it. I don't say much. I've heard more than a few bad impressions. What can be done? It's not my thing anymore.
The one time someone really pressured me a lot about it when they learned secondhand that I had helped start it and wanted to know why I wasn't involved anymore, I just said there was a difference in opinion on how things were being run and I bowed out. But if I'm honest, it's that couple's social club. It's their weekend thing to do. It's not a gaming club in the business to teach new people or grow the hobby. And that's fine, I suppose. I just think it's a waste of the potential for the public library to be a community hub to instead indulge someone's whims.
And so once more I was left without any gaming going on. Some time passed and I sort of made peace with the situation. Now and again I got invited to a home game, but they never seemed to last long as people's schedules caused a lot of conflicts.
Then, in 2016, a new FLGS opened up in our town. And that brings us into the final and current phase of things...
