Why being picky pays (and why people are the most important part of an RPG!)
Channel: Lord Left
Date: 2019-12-27

In this video I discuss why you need to be picky with the people you play games with. 

If you're like me, you enjoy RPG Horror Stories as a bit of a guilty pleasure. I'm an avid reader of /r/rpghorrorstories and have a few of my own. It's almost a rite of passage to have your sneak attack taken away by a neophyte GM who thinks they know more than the entire design team at Wizards, or to play with a player who conveniently forgot to tell the party that their pet dire wolf is somehow a multiclassed barbarian artificer. 

As much as I love these stories, there's something I see in a lot of these accounts that upsets me. The OP, after describing absolutely horrifying RPG sessions, then explains that they continued to play for another 5 or 10 sessions before quitting, or even worse, that they are *still playing* in the offending campaign. 

The above is a symptom of something I've noticed across our hobby: people playing with other people they don't especially like, or with people who actively disrespect them or their boundaries. For some reason, RPG fans are way too tolerant of jerks. Sometimes I'll hear a person describe the game they are playing in a tone dripping with either exasperation or derision, and I'll wonder: "If you're so miserable, why the hell are you still playing?"

Roleplaying games are not like basketball. Let me explain: roleplaying games are experiences where one's personality is central to the experience (unless you're playing a game that is almost more board-game than traditional RPG). If someone is mean-spirited, condescending, or interesting in explored messed up impulses without consulting the boundaries of others -- that stuff *comes out in game* in a way that wouldn't be possible in other games like basketball. If I play a pick-up game with a jerk, yes, they can be a jerk in the game, but for the most part the mechanics of basketball (or most sports) don't give that person conduits to express that without violating the rules of the game. You can play with hundreds of strangers and get away with having mostly good times.

This is why folks should be incredibly picky with who they play games with or run games for. I'm not saying you shouldn't play with new folks -- in fact you can use RPGs to make new friends, it's an awesome hobby for that. But the operative idea is that you should be playing with friends or folks you would like to be friends with. If you're in a game with people you wouldn't like associating with in any other context, **that's a massive red flag.** Get out of there!

What do you guys think?