Reliability

As many people have seen me do before, I’m about to blow my top. Well maybe just a bit. You see not too long ago one of my co-GMs Dredd was relating a bit of info about a conversation he had with an ex-player of mine. The gist of it was the ex-player told him he was unreliable and probably shouldn’t be counted on for the new Star Wars campaign that’s starting up. Well needless to say that’s just been sticking in my craw for the last 3 or 4 weeks and it’s been a particularly rough stone that’s been especially irritating.

What is the deal with the majority of gamers today? They seem to go on and on about how tough their lives are and how time is very tough for them to come by. O.K. I can see that but everyone has difficulties with time and how it never seems to slow down when you really need it. For myself most of my days are at the very least sixteen hour days. Generally when I’m in class I have a full load of four or five classes and eight hours of work after that not including travel time, prep time and the like. But I can plan a game session and have it come off without a hitch. Most of my players are either in school or they work eight hour days and sometimes both. Most of us are involved with girlfriends or fiancés. We have car insurance, bills, etc. to pay off—why is it that we can get together? It sums up in one simple word: Commitment. When we joined together for this hobby—be it playing Star Wars, Dead Lands, ShadowRun, Battlelords or good old AD&D—we came together as a team and a team holds itself together by the commitments the players make to each other and the GM. It’s when people start to break these commitments that the team is let down. The players who make the effort and the GM get angry and rightly so. When these ex-players (my case) decided to let the team down they expected the team to always be there for them and you know what? We were. For the better part of a year for some and over a year for another. But when it came time to cash in the chips they expected kind treatment and soft words. Well you can forget that. When the team is let down by those they expected to be there, resentment builds by the loss of the players themselves and the difficulty they have caused the team. Now what can be done about this? As a GM myself I’ve had the undesired task of asking people to leave and it’s not one I enjoyed. If you’ve read my previous articles you’re also quite aware of the inner struggles with my old group and the falling out from that at least on the periphery. Losing people that way wasn’t something I enjoyed but, to preserve my sanity and dignity it had to be done. Letting people push my shiny red candy-like button for my temper isn’t something that I’d relish doing again. As a player who’s doing things like this you’ve got two directions: the honorable one or of course the dishonorable. If you honestly can’t make it anymore, explain this to your group and resign. If things change later and your schedule improves then make a simple phone call and see if there’s room for you in the campaign. If you choose the other, the team will have no choice but to ask you to leave and more than likely the group won’t let you back in even if things do change. So it boils down to this: Are you a human being with dignity or one of the masses of those without any backbone?