I’ll Just Take My Leave Now
So recently I dropped out of my biweekly Rifts game. For those who do not know what Rifts is, I did a review of it in an earlier blog post so go check that out. There are a couple reasons I dropped out of the game. Rifts wasn’t my type of game. I mentioned in my review the combat system and skill rules are very archaic. Those who play can say it very similar to older Dungeons and Dragons editions.
Also I just didn’t mesh well with the group and am the type of person who values action over planning. So when they would spend a long time planning and such I became quite frustrated. So I thought this would be a good time to write an entry about leaving a game. No one likes to drop out of games, but it happens. There are a few pointers I can give to those who are thinking of getting out of theirs.
People become annoyed when you drop out of a game and don’t say anything. You will of course have to tell your friend you’re dropping out of his/her game. However usually most people wouldn’t bat an eyelash to strangers. Please say something. You have no idea how many games I have participated in where someone just drops off the face of the planet.
As the person who leaves, unless the gamemaster specifically asks you why you are leaving, don’t give out that information. As players I expect most people to have enough common sense to address their gamemaster first before leaving if you have a problem with the way the game is run. Now I think a gamemaster should ask why the player is leaving (if it is not related to personal reasons). If you are hit with this scenario (as the person who is leaving) be honest, but not vindictive nothing good comes out of this. I always want to improve the way I run my games and I would like to know if I am doing a decent job. As the gamemaster in this situation (the cause of leaving) take the criticizing and use it to make you better.
That’s all I can give for advice with this subject. What it comes down to is be honest, don’t be a whiny disgruntle bitch, and be professional about it. When I say professional I mean don’t leave better and cut loose quickly especially if you are leaving because of conflicts within the party.
Had to do this myself a month back, both me and my girlfriend had just had enough of a coupe of the other players. It was damned hard because we were loving the game and the GM is my best mate of over a decade.
Nominated as spokesman for the two of us, I did my best to handle it well, but the fact that the GM knew me so bloody well meant he knew that there was something going on and I knew I had to be honest. After that the entire group disbanded and I felt like such a tool, but knew that I wouldn’t have enjoyed carrying on playing and that may have spoiled everyone else’s Sunday night game.
I was in a similar situation. The gm was a good friend of mine and my boyfriend and I decided it was time to leave. Since he knew the gm better he was the spokesperson. Later on however we gave some advice to the gm (he asked for opinions and etc). We did, I’ll never know if he took our advice though.
I think this may be the major problem more than anything. I only noticed that the game really does get horrendously bogged down due to the archaic rules mechanics after you pointed it out to me how badly I ended up rolling. It seems like if there was someway to mitigate the following than the game might move a bit more faster:
I have a plan.
*Fails skill check*
I have another plan.
*Fails skill check*
All right no more percentile dice. Lets use a d100. This has got to work.
*Rolls 100 on first roll*
It just tends to get frustrating and throws the whole pacing of the adventure off.
You tend to have bad luck too, but I noticed back at the Palladium Open House that a ton of rules were houseruled to lessen the clunckiness. This was especially true with the people who worked at Palladium. Maybe as the game develops there might be more house rules to make combat more smooth. It is not a bad idea to bring that up to the gm.
That was what I was trying to get at. Rifts is missing mechanics that are in other games to mitigate horrible luck like I tend to have. In some cases its just by changing the dice used which changes the statistical distribution. Other cases its by adding in mechanics meant to improve the chances of success (Ie. Aid another, Passive Perception, Passive Insight).
Combat for me isn’t such a big deal since I picked a class that is relatively useless at it. Ironically, my biggest strength is my skills.
Like the article. Honest and truthful. It can be difficult with any game group to deal with the frustration of a player, a gm, or a story line and finding the right political way to handle it will inevitably get someone upset, but it is still better to leave something than waste your time and others if the fun factor is gone. After all it is a game and it is a way to socialize, but if the socialization brings the game element out of the equation than it is time to move to the next game.