Gaming Partners and Spouses and Such

welcome to my world. My wife refuses to play with me because she doesn't want to feed into my dirty habits or something like that

I'm so glad I don't have a wife.

It's not just wives. My boyfriend tolerates and patronises my gaming, in general, but he doesn't really get it.

Well then I'm glad I don't have your boyfriend.

Actually the boyfriend that I do have likes gaming. Not as much as I do, but he's definitely a gamer.

ya she won't let me get any new games right now. It makes me sad. I am having to sell my body to science to get money to buy new ones.

My spouse has been converted into a gamer. And I'm very thankful for it!

I'll get my girlfriend to play a game with me. One of these days. I'm not holding my breath over it though.

any tips on how you did this

I got really lucky?

We tried a lot of different games over the years, focusing on games I thought she might enjoy based on her interests and personality. Because our relationship is cooperative and she's not a very competitive person, games like Sentinels were enjoyable. She enjoys being things (e.g., TV shows, movies, and books) that have interesting characters, so I looked for things (again, like Sentinels) that had interesting characters.

But yeah, luck is a big part - not everyone is going to be or should be a gamer.

My wife will play any game, unless I start strategizing with her.  I have to be okay with my wife playing heroes suboptimally, and occasionally wrong to keep our gaming going.

Fortunately her favorite characters are Expatriette and KNYFE, so she is reliable damage even if she sometimes takes out the third most important target first.  She is actually really good at Expat now, she just isn't interested in investing the energy it takes to play strategically.  I adjust to this by knowing that her main goal is to take out a target, so I try to set up the hp so she has a kill shot on an important target, and that works well.

She has not, and pprobably won't ever play Tactics, because she won't invest that much in games.

I don't think you can actually convert a non-gamer into a gamer. The best you can hope for is a person willing to play with you because they know you enjoy it and they want to spend time with you doing stuff you enjoy. They might even actually like some games, but they won't become a "real" gamer, and they'd almost always prefer that you guys did something else together. (And that's perfectly fine.)

On the other hand, some people are pre-gamers. These are only distinguishable from non-gamers when you actually show then how fun games are and get an enthusiastic oh-games-where-have-you-been-all-my-life response. You usually have to find the right game to hook them, but once you do there's no stopping them - they'll ask you to play, buy games of their own, play with other people. Gamer achievement unlocked.

In my experience there are far more non-gamers than pre-gamers out there.

And for all my joking about non-gaming partners, I would feel totally uncomfortable playing with someone who wasn't really into it. Not having fun with games? Fine, let's do something else. My need to play games is not stronger than my desire for my friends/family/significant other to have a good time, but I see a lot of people on BGG who seem to think that it's vitally important to convert their loved ones to their hobby, thinking that if only they find the right gateway game they can work their way up to Twilight Imperium from there. *head shake* Having seperate hobbies as well as shared ones is perfectly fine and healthy.

So yeah. Introduce people to games if they show an interest. Stop if they aren't having a good time. Don't keep asking them to play if they aren't keen on gaming. Don't coerce them. Understand that your loved one doesn't have to be involved in everything you do - they don't have any kind of duty to enable your hobby just because you want them to like it too. Find other people who like the same games as you and share your hobby with them rather than trying to "convert" someone. If your loved one does enjoy some games, don't assume you can "progress" to other (perhaps heavier) games - play the games they like until they express an interest in trying something new, and don't be surprised if they remain forever content with their original favourites. Respect that.

+1

Well stated, Silverleaf - I completely agree. 

Twilight Imperium *shudder* - "Oh yeah.  I hate my friends and want to backstab them.  Because that's what makes a game fun for me."

I think that points to one of the main reasons I like Sentinels.

Classical conditioning has shown some promise, but mostly I agree with Silverleaf.  I spend a lot of effort trying to find games that my wife will like without harassing her about it.

SotM is one of my greatest successes, and she hates comics.

I'm actually really lucky since my wife is absolutely a gamer. The only issue is her lust for wide ranging diversity versus my need to master something before I continue.

On the bright side her family is a bunch of comic nerds so it seems I've got them hooked on Sentinels. We introduced my brother in law to the game at our house and it appears to have climbed into his mind like an alien parasite. 

On Easter day I said I wish we had a game to play and he went to his car and produced Sentinels with ALL the expansions which he now apparently carries around with him. We played with their family and now my father in law is asking me about the roles of different characters...

Also I totally agree with the pre-gamer notion. It's like being genetically pre-disposed toward alcoholism. For some people they get a taste and you find them a month later waking up in their underwear on top of a pile of dice and empty mountain dew cans not sure what happened to them.

Others no matter how awesome the game you played was they just stare blankly and say "It was ok I guess"

The former is why I have my 5 year MMORPG anonymous chip. Every day is a struggle.

My ex loved Magic, Mage Knight: Dungeons, and a few other things.

Got her and my son interested in SotM over the holidays.

When Jules and I started dating, she used to hang out during our D&D games, doing her homework.

When I started a new campaign the following semester, she wanted in.  Since then, she's been as big a gamer as I, as both a GM and a player.  

Even better?  She's a comics nerd too.  She cosplays as Black Canary, Huntress, and several other heroines.  She's also into anime, but that's not my bag, personally.

I'm currently not in a relationship, but my previous two relationships liked Sentinels ok.  It's honestly hard to get your special someone into a game when you also playtest a lot, and my love of this game is a little intense!  Don't make me choose! XD

My partner and I got together through gaming. Well, it started off just talking about gaming, where we'd chat about Minecraft and the Yogscast at work. Well, we'd try to, but then we'd actually have to do work and stuff so would never be able to finish a conversation. So I got bored of that and just gave him my e-mail address as he'd mentioned having Skype, so he added me on there and we were able to chat properly. He's dyslexic and types really slowly so we started using voice chat, and I can remember messing around in a single-player game of Minecraft while we discussed various games that could be played online. I mentioned Titan Quest (an ARPG like the Diablo games but with an ancient mythlological setting) and was talking about how fun it was and stuff and he ended up getting it so we played that together, and went onto other games but I think we'd actually "got together" by that point. Sentinels is just one of many games we've played together, and these days tend to get in at least a couple of games when he's round my house most weekends. Outside of that we chat on Skype every evening (except the ones where we're at one of our houses, of course ;)) and play whatever online game it is we have on the go atm…which currently is Diablo III, replaying it together now the expansion is out and stuff. I would call this run-through fun but disappointing as we've only been going a couple of weeks but we're max level already, finished Campaign Mode the other day, and neither of us have died once :P.

My ex-boyfriend I met through gaming - during high school, a few of us had started getting together to play board games (this was my first foray into good board games, though I'd been interested for a long time), and my friend whose house we were meeting at had a brother who joined us once and quickly became a regular fixture. My current girlfriend I met through other (equally cool) ways, but her board game collection is almost as large as mine, so no trouble there :D

I find myself surpressing my love for tabletop around my girlfriend. She knows it's a hobby of mine, but she is just not into it unless it's Cards Against Humanity and there is a good beer near by. She told me once that one of her last Ex forced her to play this awful boardgame constantly and she hated every second of it (she didn't remember which game though). It really put her off on anything tabletop which makes it that much harder to even suggest we try a game together. You kinda have to play around the "you're just like my Ex" card, so to speak.

I have my tuesday night gaming group though and shes wonderful about never seeing me on those nights. 

My wife is not much of a fan of tabletop games.  She'll play Monopoly or Trouble with the kid.  She'll also play simpler cards games.   Most of my table top game playing comes with my friends and occasionally with my neighbor.   

I find it humourous that you have the Harmony badge while talking on this subject Foote!

I'm very fortunate that my wife embraced my passion for board games when I started getting into them a few years ago.  In fact, almost every game I own has to play at least solidly two player because I still do most of my plays with her.  In addittion to SotM (which we recently got my 8 yr old daughter hooked on), she really loves worker placement/euros - Keyflower, Viticulture and Castles of Burgundy are her favorites

Jealousy. I wish I could get Nick… or any friends, really… into the heavy, dry euros.

My boyfriend doesn't go for those either. He prefers lighter stuff and things where you race cars while shooting each other, whereas I'm happy if there are cubes or meeples or victory points (preferably all three). We do have a fair bit of common ground though, so I can't complain really.

Eww...Eurogames.  *gags*

Not to my taste at all.

Give me missiles, pirates, and zombies any day of the week over farming in 15th century France.

What exactly is a Euro game? I see them mentioned on occasion but have no idea what they are other than that they're presumably something to do with Europe…

Eurogames!

The other end of the spectrum is Ameritrash. I would place Sentinels closer to that end of the scale.

I would agree with you, but it's not very far from the middle.

In my house, all the gaming is done by me!  My wife isn't a gamer at all. She's one of those folks who just doesn't see the appeal and finds everything I play utterly confusing. The only thing she likes is Ticket To Ride, so if we play, we at that  

Altough, I did convince her and my parents to play the Munchkin I got at Xmas... That was a total train wreck! 

My gaming is done with friends, while my wife joins in with other interest we have. It wouldn't do for everyone to enjoy the same things!