column: Nerdery #43: Gamers Couple Therapy

[Nessa]

see it here: http://www.timewastersguide.com/view.php?id=1526

[JenaRey]

I think a lot of the favortism and such really depends on the maturity of your group and the couple involved as well as how long they've been gaming, either together or separately.  I play with a group that consists of three couple and two singles, all of us 30+ in age and most of the couples have been together at least 10 years.  The most experienced of us has been gaming for 20+ years and the least experienced 5+. 

I do notice the couples sitting together and they'll work on character concepts together sometimes, though often romantic interests are across the party, which leads to much amusement.  We have a very good grasp of IC vs OOC, thank you very much.  However when it comes to favortism it just doesn't exist.  Treasure is split between the party and the GMs, several of us take turns with various games, work hard to create appropriate encounters and rewards for everyone in the party.  As well the rules stay constant no matter who is doing something, stupid or not.  The current GM's wife, who was playing a high level wizard, put on a cloak without getting it identified first.  She expected a cloak of resistance and got a cloak of poison.  Instadeath.  The GM COULD have changed that for her, no one but him knew what the cloak was, but he'd already planned it and squashed her just as much as he would have done us.  Yeah, he took more jokes about sleeping on the couch for it, but the rules remained fair. 

[Eagle Prince]

Some of the together/tactics is just because they know each other really well, I think.  There is more tactical stuff going on between, lets say me and Prometheus, vs me and some random dude I've maybe played with once or twice.  Some of the favortism is probably the same thing too.  If the DM makes some custom items for the PCs, obviously the better the DM knows you, the better fit your custom item would be.  It goes the other way a bit too, I'd say.  If I am DMing someone new to the group, if I rolled up a lucky kill, I'd probably just have it take them to -8 or something.  But if it was 42, I'd probably just be 'uh, I think you just died.  Too bad'.  Granted, that's not where it all comes from, but some of it I think is simply from knowing the person so well, compared to whoever else you are playing with.

[42]

I'll concede that favoritism does exist between any group of players that know each other well.

Couples obviously know each other better than the rest of the players, hence they are more prone to favoritism.

If you get a whole group of people who all know each other really well, favoritism still exists only it isn't as noticeable. A newcomer entering the group would probably notice it.

[MisterM]

Yeah, there's probably favoritism between me and my wife, but I think we both try to minimize it. (For example, in my current campaign I've managed to come up with subplots for 2 out of 5 PCs, thanks to their backstories. My wife isn't one of them.) Only our players would be able to say for sure how well we succeed.

Of course, as soon as I mentioned this thread to my wife she brought up examples of anti-favoritism we've shown each other. Like how in my Orpheus campaign her PC went through the most grueling, painful, and downright tortuous subplot of them all. (Nothing like having your boyfriend kidnapped, tortured, and turned into an incarnation of pure evil by your own dark twin to ruin your afterlife.) Or the time in her D&D campaign where at one point she did her darnest to make my character pay for a studpid action, involving not only a 100+ foot fall onto solid rock, but also a red dragon falling on top of him one round later. (Still alive! Thank goodness for d12 hit dice.)

If anything, I've found I tend to play favorite to the people who talk the most, probably because I'm most aware of and familiar with their characters.

[caiticlu]

So I met my boyfriend gaming. We each have two characters. One of his characters is about to get killed, in part because one of my characters insisted upon it. My other character loves his character that is about to get killed because she makes fun of him all the time. His other character hates my other character and they scheme to get the better of each other frequently. I have more connections with my roommate's character than my boyfriend's, since we play the same character type in the same group. So really, there isn't any favoritism with my boyfriend and I. We help each other when it calls for it (and then out of character say "you owe me") and we back stab each other when it calls for it (and say out of character "I'm sorry hun!!") But I defiantly see favoritism happening, and see how it can, easily, happen. We try really hard not to do that, which I think is why people haven't gotten annoyed with us like they do most. In addition my boyfriend GM's a game I play in, and there isn't any favoritism... except that he let me make a new character at the last minute instead of the usual week time frame for submitting characters, but he does that for others as well.

I guess all that was just to say, I think I'm lucky to be part of an atypical gamer couple, and I love gaming with him. 

[MPlease]

I, unfortunately, do not get favoritism from my husband and GM of our Mage game. No matter how much I threaten him. You'd think that since we're married he'd pick on me as often as he does in game. Sometimes I have sneaking suspicions that he *enjoys* infuriating and tormenting me by binding my character to the bad guy's whims with a nasty geas that'll drop all my stats to 1 if I break it... 

Though there are benefits to being married to the GM! Living with him gives me lots of time to harass him with ideas for my character until he either caves and promises to let me do whatever I want or I get a Munchkinesque deal: "promise to stop telling the GM about your character, go up a level" Course with that I usually get completely screwed over somehow... maybe I really should just side with the bad guy and betray the party... then that geas won't be a problem anymore...