The Right Pieces in the Right Box

“Do we want to continue the campaign?”

An awkward silence.

After a vote, the “nays” had it, the campaign was done.

It felt quite liberating; never before had a group I was in decided something just wasn’t working and abandoned it like the mysterious ancient temples we delved into. However, the reasons behind our abrupt departure weren’t mysterious, terrifying, and monstrous. They resulted from a healthy conversation built on our long-term friendships outside of the game, where everyone felt comfortable speaking their mind.

Our Group

Regular gaming groups are all different. Ours has quite a history: we began around 2010, before arriving at close to our current membership in 2012, then disbanding when I moved in 2018, before finally reforming as an online group in 2020. The friendships transcend gaming, being rooted in the local punk and metal scenes, where we have known each other for as long as 25 years. Talking to other gamers, that may make us a bit of an outlier, with others telling me that their group is pretty much solely focused on the task at hand, of playing games, and doesn’t have much social interaction outside of the tabletop.

Where that comes into the story was a recent departure from our group, which may have been the impetus for our reappraisal of the campaign’s direction. This player knew two of the party members from outside of the game, having gone to high school with them.

In our group, I admit it, we “waste” a lot of time each week. The first hour often consists of jabbing about movies, records, and what’s happening in our lives. While he stuck with it for over a year, this conversation time seemed to obviously not vibe with that last group member. He would typically walk away from his computer and work on other tasks in the background while we discussed horror movies and metal records he had little interest in.

On one occasion, he told us he had another group where he knew almost nothing about the members’ personal lives, and they simply got into playing games with no personal chatter whatsoever. Shortly before our Game Master asked us to evaluate the campaign, this player quit, which seemed to put a lot of concern on the part of our GM that things weren’t going well. While there was room for improvement, the whole episode seemed to illustrate that while our group wasn’t the right fit for that particular player, it was perfect for the rest of us.

Playing with Friends

When I first moved away from my group, I found a new one, entirely composed of strangers to myself and each other. It was absolutely not the right fit for me. The entire first session felt a bit like an awkward Tinder date, hoping these people would like me and want to continue. Which we did for a time, until a couple of schedules changed, and it was apparent that without any lasting connective tissue, I would never see these people again. At this point, I don’t even remember their names. They were pleasant people that I liked just fine, but it never felt entirely comfortable, and it always reminded me of a business relationship.

To me, gaming is best when I’m having wild adventures with my friends. I’m open to making new friends. We don’t even have to like all of the same things. When a couple of members get on about guitar pedals, I have absolutely nothing to add, but I’m also not about to leave the room either. If I’m going to practice some self-awareness though, maybe our kind of group isn’t for everyone either. Some people just want to get to rolling dice with no strings attached, and that’s fine as well.

Taking Stock of the Experience

Seeming a bit unsure over whether he was doing a good job in his role, our GM began the conversation, noting the recent departure. Being actual friends made this conversation a lot easier to have. No one was worried that this moment would lead to the dissolution of our group. It quickly became apparent that there had been a bit of a culture gap with our former member, as the person who brought him in explained, which is totally fine. However, there were some issues to address.

Previously, we had played a lot of horror games like Call of Cthulhu, Beyond the Supernatural, and Chill. After a few brief experiments with old school D&D, we began a 5E campaign with Tomb of Annihilation. The combination of the campaign’s immense scope and how slow our group is at getting through games had the campaign dragging on for some time. With a clear MacGuffin at the end, entering the tomb, that may have dwindled our interest in hex crawling the map for fun little encounters after we had been playing for over a year.

By the time we finally got there, it seemed like our hearts weren’t really in the game anymore. There was nothing wrong with the GM’s performance, and in the moment, it was difficult to put our fingers on why we were all phoning it in, but phoning it in we were. So we made the decision to cut the game short…

Moving Ahead Together

… and it was absolutely the right thing to do. The only player who had never expressed interest in being the Game Master took a turn at the helm. He is definitely into games on his own, but not someone who keeps up on the latest RPG news online. He ran MÖRK BORG and then Blood Borg on his own, two games he discovered for himself, and did a phenomenal job GMing. Blood Borg was absolutely perfect for our group. The ’80s punk setting brought out some of the most inspired role-playing and character creation our game has seen in a long while. Everyone had a blast.

Moving ahead, the Tomb of Annihilation GM has returned with a short run of Weird Heroes of Public Access, before I bring it back to the 90s with a longer Werewolf: The Apocalypse hex crawl. Again, the Weird Heroes game fits our interests and personalities so well that it is bringing out some of the best role playing laughs we’ve ever had.

Stopping to talk openly, not feeling shackled to sunk time, and being confident enough in our group to say things directly brought new life to what we were doing. If I can share any insight I’ve gleaned from these recent changes in my own, it’s that gaming groups can be a lot like games themselves; you need to make sure the right pieces are in the correct box.

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Ryan Whalen irregularly publishes the zine MDNTWVLF between his hodgepodge of research and writing gigs. He keeps an instagram open for MDNTWLF in hopes he’ll do another one after finishing the book he’s working on.