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Oct. 5th, 2021 08:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darchildreI have been playing a lot of the Arkham Horror card game lately, and my mom expressed some interest in the game, so I've also been playing with her. It is fun! But also, it is yet another example of something that frequently frustrates me but that seems shitty to complain about out loud to the people who do it, so I'm complaining here.
So, my mom appears to enjoy this game, but it is complicated and she finds some of the rules confusing. That's totally fine - I also found the rules confusing when I started playing solo. The difference between my mom and I is that I take steps to clear up my confusion: I reread the game rules, I google stuff I don't understand, I watched a how-to-play video. My mom, on the other hand, doesn't want to read the rules or look for learning resources. She just wants me to explain to her how everything works, every time we play.
And this isn't just my mom. If my sister and her spouse suggest playing a rpg together, I take the time to read at least a little bit about the game before we play so that I have some idea what I'm getting into. If the situation is reversed, they don't do any prep - not even just glancing through the rulebook and and reading the custom-written how-to-play document I probably wrote to streamline the process. They just show up and expect me to spoonfeed them everything. Hell, there have been times when I have done more prep than them and I haven't even been the person running the game*.
My Meetup D&D group was the same (before it fell apart due to All of the Everything). I have no problems talking through rules questions or whatever - D&D is full of weird tricky stuff and I'm in no way pretending to be an expert - but I don't want to have to coach you through how a check works every goddamn time you roll one.
I get that they're games and they're supposed to be fun, and I get that maybe most people don't find "let's learn the rules to a new game!" to be a fun time. But I get really sick of starting a complicated game with people who seem like they want to be there and coming away feeling like it's middle school and I'm the only person in the group project who did any of the work. I want to play the game! I don't want to have to be your teacher at the same time.
*I am maybe still bitter about the time that Sean wanted to GM a Beam Sabre game for the three of us and, come to find out, I was the only person who had read through any of the rules past character creation. If you are going to run a Forged in the Dark game, maybe I should not have to stop halfway through the session to point out that the GM didn't have us do an engagement roll, they haven't been giving us position or effect for our rolls, and they don't seem to know what a clock is. God, Beam Sabre isn't just D&D with mechs and new names for stats - it is a different kind of game!
So, my mom appears to enjoy this game, but it is complicated and she finds some of the rules confusing. That's totally fine - I also found the rules confusing when I started playing solo. The difference between my mom and I is that I take steps to clear up my confusion: I reread the game rules, I google stuff I don't understand, I watched a how-to-play video. My mom, on the other hand, doesn't want to read the rules or look for learning resources. She just wants me to explain to her how everything works, every time we play.
And this isn't just my mom. If my sister and her spouse suggest playing a rpg together, I take the time to read at least a little bit about the game before we play so that I have some idea what I'm getting into. If the situation is reversed, they don't do any prep - not even just glancing through the rulebook and and reading the custom-written how-to-play document I probably wrote to streamline the process. They just show up and expect me to spoonfeed them everything. Hell, there have been times when I have done more prep than them and I haven't even been the person running the game*.
My Meetup D&D group was the same (before it fell apart due to All of the Everything). I have no problems talking through rules questions or whatever - D&D is full of weird tricky stuff and I'm in no way pretending to be an expert - but I don't want to have to coach you through how a check works every goddamn time you roll one.
I get that they're games and they're supposed to be fun, and I get that maybe most people don't find "let's learn the rules to a new game!" to be a fun time. But I get really sick of starting a complicated game with people who seem like they want to be there and coming away feeling like it's middle school and I'm the only person in the group project who did any of the work. I want to play the game! I don't want to have to be your teacher at the same time.
*I am maybe still bitter about the time that Sean wanted to GM a Beam Sabre game for the three of us and, come to find out, I was the only person who had read through any of the rules past character creation. If you are going to run a Forged in the Dark game, maybe I should not have to stop halfway through the session to point out that the GM didn't have us do an engagement roll, they haven't been giving us position or effect for our rolls, and they don't seem to know what a clock is. God, Beam Sabre isn't just D&D with mechs and new names for stats - it is a different kind of game!
