She’s acting immature ? No surprise. After all, they play childish, make-believe games.
What I think you should do: stop treating the game as more important than spending time with your friends and girlfriend. You all want to hang out? Do something else. D&D is not the only way you can hang out with these people.
Why I think that: I spent YEARS trying and failing to fit into my ex’s gaming. Gaming bored me to tears, I like computer games, I even like computer games based on D&D, but sitting around at a table with people making funny voices for hours and hours (until 4 am sometimes!) was such a soul draining experience I cannot adequately describe it.
So I eventually accepted I’d never like it. Partially because it all seemed like a silly and useless waste of time, and partially because the group never tried to help me fit in as a gamer.
What did that leave me? My ex would sit around with his friends, two or three times a week sometimes, until the wee hours of the morning when I had work the next day. Sometimes we would all go out to a movie and then they would all talk about the stupid game the entire time!
Truly, I was second place, and that was a large reason why I’m remarried.
Rulebooks are boring, unless you’re specifically interested in game mechanics, or are a very experienced player who automatically begins envisioning possible game situations when reading rules.
My feeling is that no player should have to operate more of the game mechanics than they enjoy. Game mechanics are not the game. Let the GM track her numbers, if necessary. Some people play campaigns in which the GM does all the numbers work. If you want to get her into the role-playing aspect, bugging her with adding up numbers and making dice rolls doesn’t seem to be moving in the right direction.
I think letting her character survive, for reasons outside the scope of the game, wasn’t a nice thing to do, and counterproductive. How seriously can anyone take the game if there are no consequences to character actions? No wonder she’s bored. I would be.
Very true, and maybe a good idea. If I was running the campaign, I’d try to have some non-player characters involved in the plot line so that if her interest is ever really sparked, she can take over playing one of them.
Am I the only one that misread the thread title as “My girlfriend doesn’t enjoy B&D”? I was dreading reading about the “fix”…
I’m going to echo what a lot of other people have already said.
She wants to hang out with the group but doesn’t really seem interested, enough for you guys, in the game. So how about arranging another night of the week/month for you all to hang out but do something else. Then during the D&D nights she can just hang out and chit-chat with you guys or go and do something else.
I’ve never played D&D so I don’t know the rules. But maybe you and her could team up and play one character. You can do the stuff she finds boring like roleplaying or whatever and then she can do the combat stuf.
This is really mean, and wrong.
And who said D&D boys are bad with chicks, amirite? 
Sounds like she is more interested in the game part than the role playing part. So why don’t you try some board/card games, and she won’t have to worry about the make believe part.
Threadshit much?
I am still trying to wrap my head around a D&D campaign that is only 25% combat.
As for the OP, i am going to join the "killing off her character is a bad idea’ bandwagon. If she is that bored, talk to her about it and see if you can find a solution that works for both of you. If she still wants to play, work the trait into her character. Let her be a brusier who doesn’t talk much and just comes out for the fights. That way she is not expected to be heavily involved in the roleplaying parts that she is not interested in.
Khaki Campbell please do not enter a thread solely to post a nasty comment; we call that threadshitting. Don’t do it again.
Ellen Cherry
IMHO Moderator
This. alternate D&D nights with MUNCHKIN nights, or something like that.
Not sure what the problem is. I’ve DM’d quite a few campaigns across many different systems and it always seems to be a lot of intrigue and role play punctuated by short bursts of violence. Some gaming groups prefer that.
This is exactly how they’re doing it already. In the OP he said that she falls asleep whenever they’re not in combat.
Why would you force someone to play D&D who obviously isn’t that into it? That’s girlfriend abuse, man… just sayin’.
She “very much enjoys combat”, but can’t be bothered to even read the manual to the extent necessary to understand attack rolls? Maybe it isn’t the right game for her. It sounds like she tolerates it at best (with combat being the rare highlight that keeps her awake), not wanting to be left out of the group entirely. Wouldn’t she be happier if you all did something else for a change?
Truthful or not, that is the common perception of D&D. That perception can play a role in the casual person’s enjoyment (or lack thereof) of the game.
The best and longest-running D&D campaign I ever participated in was probably less than 25% combat. Some individual sessions of that campaign involved no combat at all.
Roleplaying–as opposed to dice-rolling–takes a lot longer to get into, and it isn’t for everyone (as I’m sure you know). However, I’ve experienced first-hand some of the problems that gaming + relationships can bring. My two cents are as follows:
[ul]
[li]She might not enjoy role-playing. . .or she might not enjoy D&D. I really enjoy role-playing, but if it’s a setting I don’t like, my interest tends to quickly wane, and all I end up caring about is stats. Is she typically into those sort of fantasy settings? Are there aspects you could add to the world to make it more interesting? Is there a genre of books that she likes? Could those themes be incorporated into the plot?[/li][li]The game is weekly. I haven’t been in a consistent weekly game since college. If you aren’t really into the game, going every week is a hell of a grind. That she’s been doing it at all is testament to the fact that she really likes you. That being said, since it’s weekly, try mixing it up a bit, either with board games or another role-playing game. If there’s one night a month where she can go and hang out, she might decide that the three nights aren’t really worth the hassle.[/li][li]Offer her the chance to roll a new character with her current XP. Slightly unfair? Yes. But if she didn’t really understand D&D going in, she might have made a character that she’s not interested in playing. My very first structured RP was a World of Darkness LARP. I made a Changeling character–an eshu with a long and detailed backstory who ended up being boring as hell to actually play. I think I would have ended up having more fun if I’d been allowed to make something new without having to start over from scratch.[/li][li]Sometimes, players can be subtly nudged in a direction. Other times, the GM needs to scream, “go here, dammit!” Try that second approach.[/li][li]Don’t kill her off. Seriously. First off, it’ll probably make her just hate the combat part of it, too. This means that you’re going to have a major hobby that she doesn’t share. And, I mean, that’s something that’s definitely workable, but don’t create the situation. Also, having the GM kill her off with your blessing is seriously passive-aggressive. If you want her to leave the group, talk with her. Hell; talk with her anyway. That’s how relationships work.[/li][/ul]
This is exactly what I was thinking.
There’s a difference between coming into the thread to say “She might not enjoy it because she sees it as a childish make-believe game” and coming into the thread to say “She’s acting immature ? No surprise. After all, they play childish, make-believe games.”
I was just going to quote bits, but reading the whole lot, I am lost for words. Fucking hell. Fucking hell. You know that real people shouldn’t be judged by the throw of a die?
Here’s a recap:
Yeah, she’s your girlfriend all right.
Meh. Being appalled at immaturity in a D&D game is like being shocked at burps and vomit and wooohooos at a frat party.
But anyway. My apologies to the geek/nerd sturmstaffel.