"Walking Away" Topic

Yes, public transport does not wait till the game finishes.

x42

Twice at conventions, but there were extenuating circumstances. One was a Napoleon's Battles game--and a tiny command at that. The other was an excruciatingly long TSATF. I like the system, but the GM was maintaining an absolute code of silence. You not only couldn't talk over the game with your fellow players, you couldn't talk about anything else and the game was going nowhere. In both cases, my neighbor absorbed my command, which still left him with fewer troops than the rules called for.

I wouldn't leave a GM in the lurch, but when they come up on TMP complaining about people leaving their games for a flea market, I do wonder how they were running the game.

I've done this, but for reasons unrelated to the game itself— I needed to leave by a certain time, and the game was running much longer than I had expected. My fault for not planning ahead better; fortunately it was a very large game with lots of participants, so another player of "our side" was able to takeover my small command; the game was not interrupted. I made my apologies to the GM.

I will say that at the same time, I had also attempted a strategic maneuver to strike the enemy's base, only to be ruled that I couldn't do so well after my forces were well on the way and out of any other advantageous position. As a result, I doubt they made it back to assist in the battle. That error was both the GM's and mine— his for not making the invulnerability of the base clear, mine for assuming it was a legit target. (Why it was on the table, I can't fathom. To me, it it's on the table and you can reach it, you can hit it, unless this is announced differently from the start.)

By that point, I was nearing my deadline, and though I sent my forces back, there was no way I could reach any "scenario-approved targets," as it were. Don't know the outcome, but from there on my presence or lack of it would have had no further contributing factor.

I've just done it once at a convention. Explained to the GM (a friend, by the way). But there have been several other times at conventions when I wish I had walked away, but didn't.

Jim

I don't think that I've ever "walked away", but once an afternoon game was running late & my friends & I had dinner reservations at a restaurant that we all liked so we made our apologies & the Ref doled out our troops to the other players.

Off the top of my head, I walked away from a game in which no one had moved troops an hour after the start time because the GM was still doing a poor job of explaining things.

I have been in games in which other people have walked away such as an overly big TSATF game, and a game in which the GM didn't seem to have any idea what he was doing (at least 2 people walked away from that one).

Does it count when ones command is eliminated?

Once, in a comp. The guy was being an absloute pain in the … and not just to me. He was later expelled from the comp. There are some people out there that just shouldn't wargame – they just don't have the aptitude.

When I was much younger, I had to leave games several times to go to work.

Last week I had to leave a game to take care of my daughter.

Happily, another player had just been eliminated and I could simply hand over my forces to her.

We only have 3 hours to play when we get together for a game in my basement so we collectively have had to "walk away" from a game because of time on occasion.

When I first read the poll I thought it was about leaving a game for anger / dissatisfaction reasons. I've never done that, I will just sit quietly and wait for the sands in the hourglass to drift by. I don't think anyone has done that to a game I've run. But a couple of times over the years I've run stinkers and I wouldn't blame them if they had….

Point, PzGeneral. I've never had a player leave who showed up, but twice I've hauled games to conventions and had no takers. Maybe the attendees saw something about the games I didn't.

One time years ago, my wife called to say she thought she was going into labor. I made my excuses and left, that son was actually born two weeks later. Don't regret it at all