I GM (Rolemaster, if anyone knows what that is) for my wife and two other married couples, and we’ve never had anything like the OP describes in the last couple years - we’ve had arguments about geeky stuff, sure, some v. mild rules lawyering. It sounds to me like the lady just doesn’t want to be there, is only there because hubby wants her to, and is palying passive-aggressive games.
I am currently involved in two 3rd edition campaigns with my husband, a married couple (who happen to be hubby’s brother and his wife) and another guy. Hubby is the DM of one and his brother DMs the other.
My sister-in-law gets into squabbles like that with her husband. She is so sensitive whenever he says anything about her abilities or whatever. She is notorious for rolling low initiative and she will moan about it but woe unto anyone else who comments on it!
But in general, our biggest issue is OOC chatter. We all get caught up talking about work, kids, current events, etc. and don’t actually get in much adventuring. Plus, we have kids running around and it’s hard to concentrate on fighting Frost Giants when you have a two year old climbing all over you trying to grab your dice.
Ah.
Rule 5: Jungle Rules D&D. However the players behave is how the PC’s are behaving. You should see the looks on their faces when the bad guys hear them coming a mile off when the players say their characters are trying to be sneaky, then keep having full-voice conversations across the table, or when somebody who’s been reading comic books for the past hour loses an entire action because when it’s his turn, he says, “Okay, what’s going on? Who should I hit?” and the GM makes his character spend a round figuring out exactly that…
Heh-hem.
Our group is 3 females and two males. We get on just fine, thank you.
Of course, I’ve had two groups melt down because of one woman and her involvements with other players and her petty jelousies. I just blame her, though, not women in general. That would be a bit counter-intuitive, since I’m female, too.
My wife and I have a category for gamers called Girlfriend Of Gamers (GOGs). These act as SanguineSpider described. They don’t want to be there, when they are there, they don’t really play or they try to talk about outside things. Often, they have a preoccupation with in-game shopping. Mostly these have been girlfriends of group members, but in at least 2 cases, they were actually male. Doesn’t matter, still a GOG. Once you get a lock-on for the type, they’re easy to spot.
My wife plays D&D and many other games. I usually DM, and she hates it if I show her anything that might be interpreted as favoritism toward her. She’s had to survive in a hostile environment, however: There have been three couples through our game group, and none of them played very long- but just one of them broke up, over related issues. Their story:
Couple 1 played when we had the games at their house. The problems started when the husband’s best friend (who is in couple #2) and the wife began to argue over petty differences inside the game. This, combined with no moral support from the husband, caused the wife to stop playing- she would retire to another room, and the husband found his “gaming time” getting shorter and shorter. He can’t commit to a session these days without “checking in”- but he never admits it, citing vague plans every time.
Couple 2 was a once-confirmed redneck bachelor type who found a girl to settle down with. His playing style was that combat was the only reason to play, and if it wasn’t his turn yet his time was being wasted. When his wife joined us he never gave her a chance- he would dictate to her about what to do before they came over, and he would grill her about her character and get mad when she didn’t remember something or didn’t see that she could do something. She was reduced to speaking only to him, not interacting with any of the other players. This lasted a short time, and whan she stopped coming over the husband got more intensely cranky. He would get mad at everyone for, again, wasting his time because he no longer had all the time in the world- he had to be home at a certain hour. We put up with him for a short time before the group broke up over the stress.
Couple 3 had the husband, a rules-weasel and power gamer, using his wife as a minion. She wanted nothing to do with it, though, and played her character better than the other two wives. He would get very upset with her if she made any mistake, and you could see that he was trying to get her to cover his ass, and she would have none of it. This leads me to place the rest in a spoiler box, just in case you plan to play Return to the Tomb of Horrors:
[spoiler]At the conclusion of Return to the Tomb of Horrors, the party was fighting the final battle against Acererak at the Phylactery. The husband, a wizard, was judged to be enough of a threat that Acererak, in demi-lich form, used one of the soul-sucking attacks to capture the wizard’s soul in one of the gems replacing Acererak’s teeth. The husband pouted, and tried to get the wife to do anything to help. The rest of the party managed to take down the demi-lich and free the souls in the Phylactery; the wife, who was playing a thief, went after the gems on the skull. For those who don’t know, the chamber that this happened in has a hole that leads directly into the Negative Energy Plane; Acererak wanted to bind with the plane to possess any undead anywhere (the big spoiler.) The thief found the gem with the wizard’s soul, and cracked it open right next to the hole (without a suitable body for the soul to return to), freeing the soul- but the draw from the Negative plane sucked the soul right in and destroyed it, permanently killing the wizard.
The husband didn’t speak to the wife for the rest of the session, and they broke up a few weeks later. (She left him for a gay man; we don’t know what happened after that.)
[/spoiler]
My wife and I get along well as players together; we would like to find another game that would have us, and are willing to travel some to get there.
Steelerphan, that was hilarious! If it was a character one of my good players cared a lot about, I might try to set up some kind of adventure to get the soul back (bending at least a few of the rules, I’m sure), but for a power gaming rules weasel, I think I’d led his soul rot on the negative energy plane like you did.
Owned.
The problem’s been fixed. She thought we were permanently moving the game to Sunday, though I’d said it was impossible because of one of our players’ schedules.
As for the married couple, they’ve never once brought a personal problem into role-playing. Neither did the only other married couple I gamed with.
The closest I’ve ever seen to the phenomenon mentioned in the OP was when I was in high school, and players would carry grudges from campaign to campaign, trying to kill off the new characters of hated players.
A godawful married couple were instrumental in driving me out of D&D… that and a lack of quite that much spare time.
Last night it happened again… UGH! My gal pal got all pissy because she forgot some of the storyline and if she had remembered it correctly, swears she would have done everything differently! Basically, we had captured a mage and his buddies came looking for him. Well, she forgot we had him with us… and THIS would have made her do “everything differently” (she doesn’t like to fight, remember?). That wouldn’t have changed anything and the rest of us know it but she argued for awhile after we ended for the night.
Also, we didn’t really even get started until 9pm. It took an hour or so for the married couple to identify some magical items, it took more time to drop off their kids at a birthday party, then go get them and my angel, and drop all three off at grandma’s house. She also stopped to look at her mom’s garage sale stuff and then we went out to eat (which was fine because we had gyros - yum!). It just took so long to get into the swing Saturday night and then she gets irritated by having to adventure. I think she’d rather go through the party treasure and identify stuff than explore. I’m still hoping my enthusiasm will rub off.
The best part of the it all was being with my SO, 24 hours of my hunnybunny. He’s a great DM, likes us to enjoy ourselves and get into the game. I can’t say the whole time is wasted on arguing, we do have a good time more or less, and I end up laughing so much, my face hurts. I just would like our friends to lighten up about the right and wrong of everything. Individual perceptions shouldn’t make anyone angry, we all have a right to our ideas.
Bah! Amateurs. Trying playing Cosmic Encounter sometime - now THAT is rules lawyering at its finest! I’ve almost come to fisticuffs over some interpretations of the game that is intended to break its own rules.
Esprix
Playing with a spouse? Heck, once I was so hard up for people to play D&D with that I ran it for my sisters.
Me: “Ok, you’re entering the little town. There is a tavern…”
Sister #1: “Are there any people in this town?”
Me: “Er, yes. There is a peasant carrying fish.”
Sister #1: “I kill him!”
Me: “What! Why?”
Sister #1: “I can kill him, can’t I?”
Me: “I guess so. Sigh. Roll it.”
Sister #1 (rolls, peasant dies)
Me: “Okay, he’s dead, but he screamed really loud. People come outside and see the blood gushing out of the corpse and begin to scream.”
Sister #1: “Cool!”
Sister #2: “Can I have sex with the corpse?”
Me: blinks (this sister is about 8 years old)
Me: “Uh. I … guess… but you’re lawful good!”
Sister #2: “Ok, I want to do that!”
Me: “You’ll lose your alignment - oh, never mind. Ok, you start to undress the corpse, but the local militia is coming to kill you.”
Sister #1: “That’s ok. This is a stupid game anyway.”
Sister #2: “Did I have sex with the corpse yet?”
Me: (tears up carefully planned adventure and campaign notes)