When gamers grow old ...

[Stephen McIlvenna]

I get the impression that most of the participants here are into their adult
years with commitments and interests beyond gaming. I'm interested to know
what form your gaming takes these days and where it fits in your time.

I first began gaming at high school where a group of us would meet for a
half-hour each lunch time. Most of us went on to local universities and we
continued to meet regularly for long Saturday nights. The numbers dropped
off over recent years, but three or four of us still got together a few
Saturdays each month to keep things going. This year things ground to a
halt. It had reached the point where the effort to prepare a game and
organise a time to run it greatly out-weighed the fun of actually playing. I
still meet with those friends, but our gaming has disappeared.

It still browse through old sourcebooks and occasionally scribble a few
adventure thoughts or generate a character. While I like the dice, rules and
gaming-aspects, my preference has always been for the story-telling side of
things. My GMing skills have warped into a weird hybrid of writing solo
adventure notes and fiction. It's no longer a social past time, but it does
serve as a creative output.

What about others? Do you still play or just take an interest in the hobby?
If you play is it face-to-face or using the internet? Large or small groups?
Frequent short sessions or irregular marathon games? Do published adventures
help or do they require almost as much preparation time?

Stephen
http://www.btinternet.com/~s.mci/

[gleichman]

Post by Stephen McIlvenna
I get the impression that most of the participants here are into their
adult years with commitments and interests beyond gaming. I'm interested to
know what form your gaming takes these days and where it fits in your time.

I've managed to maintain my gaming over the years although the freq. has
declined. It used to be twice a week in my high school and early college
days. Now it's typically once a week although there are times when that
can't be managed due to other scheduling needs.

The group is typically smaller as well, with only five of us. Back in the
day we'd have closer to ten.

Other than that, not all that much has changed. We do make use of published
adventures- but they tend to be older ones for systems now no longer
published, or rather one that have had their rule systems replaced.
Shadowrun and Deadlands for example. However they are more for a core idea
rather than a full adventure as all of them basically get re-written to one
degree or the other. This is a major point for Shadowrun as we replaced the
official rules with HERO System.

[Chuk Goodin]

Post by Stephen McIlvenna
What about others? Do you still play or just take an interest in the hobby?
If you play is it face-to-face or using the internet? Large or small groups?
Frequent short sessions or irregular marathon games? Do published adventures
help or do they require almost as much preparation time?

I am old with kids and have fallen into almost all those categories in
recent years. Most recently I've been playing some old Champions
adventures with my 13 year old son and his friend (converted loosely to
5th edition). I definitely do more reading than playing these days,
browsing forums and newsgroups as well as reading rules books. I've also
played in and run some PBEMs and play-by-post games, some for several
years, some which barely got off the ground. I would have to say
"irregular short sessions" rather than either of the two choices you give.
:-)

[Irina Rempt]

Post by Stephen McIlvenna
What about others? Do you still play or just take an interest in the
hobby? If you play is it face-to-face or using the internet? Large or
small groups? Frequent short sessions or irregular marathon games? Do
published adventures help or do they require almost as much preparation
time?

I'm running the umpteenth season of my Valdyas campaign, now with a third
set of characters played by the same players. There are only two players
left (and I'm married to one of them) but we all like it that way;
whenever a guest turns up who wants to join us for one evening (hi Mary!)
we find them a bit-part.

Yes, it's a soap opera, but it has its moments. I got to destroy a whole
city two sessions back (well, actually the Very Large Primeval Monster
under the city destroyed it; someone held up the city by pure mental
power until it had been evacuated, then dropped it on the VLPM and got
away just in time).

I tried IRC gaming but it's just not the same; I need in-person
interaction to, well, interact. We're keeping to a very strict
every-three-weeks schedule now to avoid the kind of gaps we had last
year, and play earlier rather than later if someone can't make it on the
scheduled day. This works; the campaign seemed to be flagging a bit
before the summer but we're all really interested again. One player even
asked to continue after the present arc of story, which was about to end
with "the king married the woman he'd loved all his life and they lived
happily ever after", so I'm studying court intrigue.

Published adventures would require *more* preparation time because I'd
have to translate them to local circumstances; the only thing I use
occasionally are bits of plot from fiction, kneaded into unrecognisable
submission.

Irina

[Stephen McIlvenna]

Post by Irina Rempt
We're keeping to a very strict
every-three-weeks schedule now to avoid the kind of gaps we had last
year, and play earlier rather than later if someone can't make it on the
scheduled day. This works; the campaign seemed to be flagging a bit
before the summer but we're all really interested again.

I think that's where we fell apart. It was usually a case of somebody
_might_ be free or _should_ be around, but often a date wasn't confirmed
until the day before or even the afternoon before an evening meeting.
Cancellations led to discouragement by those (myself included) who were due
to run the game and were valiantly trying to maintain campaign momentum. The
pity was the we all really enjoyed the games when we did manage to meet.

Post by Irina Rempt
Published adventures would require *more* preparation time because I'd
have to translate them to local circumstances; the only thing I use
occasionally are bits of plot from fiction, kneaded into unrecognisable
submission.

I've been tempted to buy published modules, hoping they would save time or
help a pick-up-and-play mentality. However I suspected that I would want to
rewrite or adjust lots of the content, as you describe, and have wisely
saved my pennies.

Stephen
http://www.btinternet.com/~s.mci/index.html

[Gary Johnson]

Post by Stephen McIlvenna
I get the impression that most of the participants here are into their
adult years with commitments and interests beyond gaming. I'm interested
to know what form your gaming takes these days and where it fits in your
time.

I play in a fortnightly D&D campaign that uses published scenarios
(Shackled City adventure path), and I play Living Greyhawk D&D at least
once a month (also published scenarios). I run a weekly supers game using
modified HERO 5th edition rules that's been going now for almost 16 years
- next Sunday is session 693. I'm involved in the administration of the
Perrenland region for Living Greyhawk - I'm the Perrenland webmaster, I
edit other author's scenarios, and I write on average 2 scenarios a year.

My wife is also a gamer: she plays in the same D&D games as me, and also
plays in my supers game. She isn't involved in Living Greyhawk
administration, but has written one scenario.

Our first child arrived in July this year, and has significantly reduced
our opportunities for extra gaming, such as attending the monthly
meetings of our local university games society. While it hasn't stopped us
continuing to game (yet), we have become more ruthless about managing
our free time. For example, it's possible that we won't start a new
game when our fortnightly game ends in a few months' time.

Cheers,

Gary Johnson

[Shana Rosenfeld]

Post by Stephen McIlvenna
I get the impression that most of the participants here are into their adult
years with commitments and interests beyond gaming. I'm interested to know
what form your gaming takes these days and where it fits in your time.

<snip>

Post by Stephen McIlvenna
What about others? Do you still play or just take an interest in the hobby?
If you play is it face-to-face or using the internet? Large or small groups?
Frequent short sessions or irregular marathon games? Do published adventures
help or do they require almost as much preparation time?

I still game, but not the way I used to. I have three face to face
games, which are once a month or less. Since I have to drive 50 miles
to get to the closest of the three, timing can be tricky. One is
basically a solo run, one has two players -- both of which are with
people who are close friends. The last one is with a group of peoplel
whe were stranger when we started, who seem to mostly be where I was
twenty years ago -- they game frequently with other groups of people.
This is the one that is merely 50 miles away, and we try to meet
once a month.

I am also in a PBEM game, that has been running for two years. It
looks like the real action will be starting soon. :) [Last time I
checked, I had three thousand messages from the game.]

[psychohist]

I currently have a run that is on a once a week schedule. With two
players plus a gamesmaster, we usually cancel when someone can't make
it; perhaps a third of the sessions end up cancelled. Everyone seems
okay with this schedule.

My wife runs her game on the same night that I do; she has a larger
group, so she doesn't cancel unless several players cancel, which means
her run is more regular than mine. Most of the people in her group
play in multiple runs. Then again, she's ten years younger than I am.

My wife and I also spend a lot of time playing online roleplaying games
together.

We don't have children yet; that might change the picture. If we
wanted to keep both runs going, we'd probably need to shift one to a
different night, at a minimum.

I don't think my gaming schedule has changed much since graduating
college. When I was actually in college, of course, I spent more time
gaming than working on school work. Probably one of the ways in which
I manage to maintain an active game now is by relying on a lot on
accumulated prep work, much of which was done as far back as college
(25-29 years back for me).

Warren J. Dew

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Over the last year I've been running, for my husband, various
AD&D and variant games. We did an _Arcanus Unearthed_ stiched together
out of modules plus some material of my own, a brief _Iron Heroes_,
and an even briefer straight v3.5. Toward the end it became
apparent that my work and family obligations were just too heavy to
let me GM well. So I've taken a sabbatical, and he is now running
_SCAP_ both for me and for his Saturday night gaming group (two or
three adults and, recently, two teenagers). Using modules reduces
the prep time, which is a really serious issue for me and a fairly
serious one for him.

We're trying to adopt an older child from foster care, which has
been an exhausting high-stress process even though it hasn't yet
gotten to the point of having an actual child around.

Lately my out-of-household gaming energy has all gone into Diplomacy,
which scratches some of the same itches. Because it's competitive,
I don't mind if my opponents sometimes play badly, whereas I've gotten
awfully picky about roleplaying.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Jeff Heikkinen]

Chances are suprisingly good that Mary K. Kuhner was not wearing pants

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
_Arcanus Unearthed_

Arcana. I wouldn't normally bother correcting something like that, but
you're doing it consistently, so I'm guessing it's not a typo.

On topic - I'm finally feeling a time pinch now that I've moved away to
do my Ph.D. It's much more work than an undergrad degree or even a
Master's, or at least that has been the case for me.

I probably managed just as much gaming during the seven years I was out
in what I shall laughingly call the "real world" as I did during my
undergrad years, and if anything going back and starting my MA *freed
up* time; my Ph.D has been another story entirely, with almost no time
for amusements of any sort at all, at least so far. I'm not married and
don't have kids and I can't imagine how some of my colleagues juggle
that *and* the program I'm in. There's talk of my starting a relatively
lightweight game just to keep me and others sane, but time commitments
(my own and those of others) might strangle that at birth. I haven't the
slightest desire to go for more than a few months without gaming, but it
looks like I might have to.

[David Meadows]

I started gaming in high school 25 years ago, and yes we played two or three
times a week (more during holidays. In college it was about the same though
we wargames more than RPGs.

When I left college most of the group stayed together, and it's still
essentially the same group, with a few mutations, 20 years later. Work and
families had some impact but the main impact was on our wargaming, which
generally takes more physical set-up time.

My week-night RPG moved to the "wargame slot" on a Saturday afternoon 15
years ago and it's been there ever since. Now it's the only game most of us
play (a couple are in other games with other groups). I try to keep it as
regular as possible, but I'm generally managing less than 40 sessions a year
(this year we'll hit 39, barring unforeseen circumstances). And maybe a
third of those will be a player short as people have other commitments.
Strangely, on the dozen weekends I'm away, the rest of the group never meet
to do something else.

I still spend a significant amount of non-game time in preparation work. I
don't use published modules, villains, or whatever. I do everything from
scratch. I wouldn't like to estimate how many hours a week I spend in
game-related activity. A lot...

[Richard Vickery]

Sounds like you guys are doing well on the whole - well done.

I used to game weekly, and with young children (<2) there wasn't much
disruption). Then as they got older and had school the next day it got
harder and we lost half of each couple that were playing. That was
followed by several of the core group moving to other towns, and a
gradual shift to board gaming which requires less prep and can go on
without requiring commitment from the majority of players. I am
optimistic that when the kids get older (>10?) that they can come along
and do their own thing, or maybe even game with us as they get older!

I have a feeling that we also became more demanding on ourselves.
Having had several sessions of sublime roleplay over our gaming
lifetimes, the bar was lifted fairly high. Recapturing past glory is
hard when you're tired, under-prepared, and distracted by kids popping
in and breaking the mood.

Cheers
RichardV

[Stephen McIlvenna]

I have a feeling that we also became more demanding on ourselves. Having
had several sessions of sublime roleplay over our gaming lifetimes, the
bar was lifted fairly high. Recapturing past glory is hard when you're
tired, under-prepared, and distracted by kids popping in and breaking the
mood.

That rings true. I can happily play anything as a player, but when GMing I
want to feel that I have done my best job and that means at least equalling
what has gone before. My mind wants to tell great epics with emotional
involvement from all players - in truth I no longer have the time to prepare
such epics and they no longer have the energy to invest so emotionally.

Stephen
http://www.btinternet.com/~s.mci/

[Richard Vickery]

Post by Stephen McIlvenna
That rings true. I can happily play anything as a player, but when GMing I
want to feel that I have done my best job and that means at least equalling
what has gone before. My mind wants to tell great epics with emotional
involvement from all players - in truth I no longer have the time to prepare
such epics and they no longer have the energy to invest so emotionally.

There's a kind of irony here. Our stuff has been character-driven,
rules-lite, usually using a home-brewed system and often searching for
those moments of emotional engagement. Falling energy levels did make
the sessions less satisfying, especially to the GM. However, a friend
who plays a hack-n-slash DnD game continues to play merrily, I think
because the routine is part of the pleasure and because the expectations
of the players and GM of themselves and each other are not as high. I
don't mean that as a negative, but that I think by not aiming at "art"
they reliably hit "enjoyment". Sadly my group's interests (including
me) really no longer lie in the dungeon ;)

Cheers
RichardV

[Stephen McIlvenna]

Post by Richard Vickery

Post by Stephen McIlvenna
That rings true. I can happily play anything as a player, but when GMing
I want to feel that I have done my best job and that means at least
equalling what has gone before. My mind wants to tell great epics with
emotional involvement from all players - in truth I no longer have the
time to prepare such epics and they no longer have the energy to invest
so emotionally.

There's a kind of irony here. Our stuff has been character-driven,
rules-lite, usually using a home-brewed system and often searching for
those moments of emotional engagement. Falling energy levels did make the
sessions less satisfying, especially to the GM. However, a friend who
plays a hack-n-slash DnD game continues to play merrily, I think because
the routine is part of the pleasure and because the expectations of the
players and GM of themselves and each other are not as high. I don't mean
that as a negative, but that I think by not aiming at "art" they reliably
hit "enjoyment". Sadly my group's interests (including me) really no
longer lie in the dungeon ;)
Cheers
RichardV

I know exactly what you mean. In fact, our role-playing has largely been
replaced by board-gaming. Both board-gaming and hack-n-slash RPGing are
probably activities that you can simply turn up and play. Possibly they
require quite complex tactical thinking on the night in question, but not so
much planning and preparing before hand (apart from the poor old DM).

Stephen
http://www.btinternet.com/~s.mci/

[Del Rio]

Post by Richard Vickery
There's a kind of irony here. Our stuff has been character-driven,
rules-lite, usually using a home-brewed system and often searching for
those moments of emotional engagement. Falling energy levels did make
the sessions less satisfying, especially to the GM. However, a friend
who plays a hack-n-slash DnD game continues to play merrily, I think
because the routine is part of the pleasure and because the expectations
of the players and GM of themselves and each other are not as high. I
don't mean that as a negative, but that I think by not aiming at "art"
they reliably hit "enjoyment".

Actually one of the advantages of playing a game that
runs heavily on roleplaying is that if the plot falters
because the GM had a bad work week or whatever, a lot
of the time the group can cruise on roleplaying,
without needing a lot of plot to push the game forward
in a manner that everyone can still enjoy.

On a related point: one of the nice things about
encouraging people to talk in character (not "act"
necessarily) at the gaming table is that if the GM
needs to take one person aside to discuss a plot point
that the rest of the group isn't privy to, the rest of
the group will often just carry on roleplaying - I
frequently come back to the table to find the game
proceeding merrily without me...

Post by Richard Vickery
Sadly my group's interests (including
me) really no longer lie in the dungeon ;)

I ran my one and only "dungeon" adventure some time in
1980 or so - I felt like I should at least do one
in my DMing career. ;-)

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Del Rio
Actually one of the advantages of playing a game that
runs heavily on roleplaying is that if the plot falters
because the GM had a bad work week or whatever, a lot
of the time the group can cruise on roleplaying,
without needing a lot of plot to push the game forward
in a manner that everyone can still enjoy.

I find that some nights this is true, and other nights
the roleplaying leads to endless demands on the GM to come
up with details about unexpected situations, people and
events, until complete mental exhaustion ensues. It really
depends on the group and its mood.

I do remember a few sessions, even in our plot-heavy game
in college, where I didn't have to do *anything* all session
long!

My main problem with pure player-driven roleplaying scenes, unless
they clearly take place in realtime, is that events tend to get
blurry in time--the players will tackle things that should be
said/bought/investigated today, tomorrow, next week, back to today,
and after a while I have the sense no one knows when "now" is
anymore. It can be hard to pull things back to realtime play
once that happens, and I think it reduces the intensity. We had
a bad case of this yesterday and had to stop and draw a timeline,
upon which we found that the events weren't actually possible.

Post by Del Rio
On a related point: one of the nice things about
encouraging people to talk in character (not "act"
necessarily) at the gaming table is that if the GM
needs to take one person aside to discuss a plot point
that the rest of the group isn't privy to, the rest of
the group will often just carry on roleplaying - I
frequently come back to the table to find the game
proceeding merrily without me...

Yes, this is fun.

I had one three-player group which liked to split the
party and then *play out* the report of the returning PCs
back to the main group: they found endless amusement in
the way that the narrated report was different from the
overheard action. I enjoyed this too, though it made the
plot very, very slow.

One of the PCs was prone to go off and do outrageous things
and get in trouble; his explanations after the fact were
especially entertaining. Usually we did everything openly--
the players were good at disregarding out of character
information--but once I just had to pass Linnick's player a
note, so that I could say to his sister Maglyn, "Of course
Linnick rapidly outruns you, and for several minutes you're
just following tracks. But then you come around the corner
and see Linnick's armor lying in a pile on the ground, with
a really dazed-looking lynx tangled in it."

I don't think I had to do a thing all the rest of that
session, except adjucate various attempts to turn Linnick
back into a human, and giggle at the character dialog and
player facial expressions....

They knew he had been trying to learn to turn into a lynx for
a long time, and it was just like Linnick to (a) have finally
succeeded in mid-stride of a hot pursuit, and (b) not to have
figured out in advance whether he could turn back.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[psychohist]

Del Rio writes, in part:

Actually one of the advantages of playing a game that
runs heavily on roleplaying is that if the plot falters
because the GM had a bad work week or whatever, a lot
of the time the group can cruise on roleplaying,
without needing a lot of plot to push the game forward
in a manner that everyone can still enjoy.

I'm confused by your usage of the term "roleplaying" here; the concept
of a roleplaying game that doesn't 'run heavily on roleplaying' seems
strange to me. Alternatively, perhaps it's the use of the term "plot"
that's confusing me - what do you mean by "plot", and how is it 'not
roleplaying'?

On a related point: one of the nice things about
encouraging people to talk in character (not "act"
necessarily) at the gaming table is that if the GM
needs to take one person aside to discuss a plot point
that the rest of the group isn't privy to, the rest of
the group will often just carry on roleplaying - I
frequently come back to the table to find the game
proceeding merrily without me...

I've found that they don't even have to be talking in character for
this to happen. The players can be describing their characters'
activities in third person, and as long as they can interact with each
other without requiring gamesmaster attention, everything seems to go
well.

I do agree with Mary's observation that it can be difficult to untangle
the temporal sequence of events in some cases; my players have learned
to be careful to specify when and where discussions between the
characters are taking place when it's not obvious and makes a
difference.

[Del Rio]

Post by Del Rio
Actually one of the advantages of playing a game that
runs heavily on roleplaying is that if the plot falters
because the GM had a bad work week or whatever, a lot
of the time the group can cruise on roleplaying,
without needing a lot of plot to push the game forward
in a manner that everyone can still enjoy.
I'm confused by your usage of the term "roleplaying" here; the concept
of a roleplaying game that doesn't 'run heavily on roleplaying' seems
strange to me. Alternatively, perhaps it's the use of the term "plot"
that's confusing me - what do you mean by "plot", and how is it 'not
roleplaying'?

Lots of people playing "roleplaying games" never
actually roleplay at all. I have seen any number of
people treat their character like a collection of
numerical stats with no personality, or with a
personality that amounts to "exactly the same as the
player, but with a huge sword", or like a counter in a
wargame, to be just tactically moved around and made to
attack things. So, when I talk about a game that's
heavy on roleplay, I mean one in which the people at
the table frequently interact in character with NPCs
and, even better, with each other.

By plot, I mean that most games tend to have a current
primary storyline, around which the action develops
somewhat like in a novel. People can sit at the gaming
table roleplaying their characters for hours and never
move this primary plot forward - it doesn't mean that
nothing happens, it just means that the principal
storyline doesn't advance.

Conversely, you can move the plot forward like crazy
without ever roleplaying. They're pretty much
orthogonal concepts. I have been in groups that never
roleplay, and are only interested in getting to the
"goal" or "reward" (completing the dungeon crawl,
assassinating the dictator, getting the rabbits to
their new warren, establishing a mining colony on
Mars... whatever).

Post by Del Rio
I've found that they don't even have to be talking in character for
this to happen. The players can be describing their characters'
activities in third person, and as long as they can interact with each
other without requiring gamesmaster attention, everything seems to go
well.

Doing "3rd person" roleplaying is still roleplaying as
far as I'm concerned. Not everyone is a natural actor.

Post by Del Rio
I do agree with Mary's observation that it can be difficult to untangle
the temporal sequence of events in some cases; my players have learned
to be careful to specify when and where discussions between the
characters are taking place when it's not obvious and makes a
difference.

Well, I don't let characters take more than very minor
actions without GM involvement, so they can't stack up
a lot of unresolved actions that would need to be
sorted out after the fact. They can talk and plan all
they want, but the events don't actually happen until
the GM is available to adjudicate. Also, I don't let
characters who aren't physically proximate have
discussions. I can't stop the players talking to each
other, but if they start talking about anything related
to game stategy, I interrupt them and remind them that
they're unable to interact.

[gleichman]

Post by Del Rio
or with a
personality that amounts to "exactly the same as the
player, but with a huge sword"

Having never owned, let alone serious used a huge sword myself, I would
count this as role-playing :)

More seriously, this is core wish-fulfillment fantasy gaming. I'm a big
fan of it.

[Del Rio]

Post by gleichman

Post by Del Rio
or with a
personality that amounts to "exactly the same as the
player, but with a huge sword"

Having never owned, let alone serious used a huge sword myself, I would
count this as role-playing :)
More seriously, this is core wish-fulfillment fantasy gaming. I'm a big
fan of it.

Actually it was somewhat wrong of me to lump that in
with non-roleplaying modes of behavior. It has its
place, it *is* a kind of roleplaying if done actively.

[Indiana Joe]

or with a personality that amounts to "exactly the same as the
player, but with a huge sword",

Or knows how to use that huge sword. :-) (Yes, I do own several swords
of various sizes.)

[psychohist]

Brian Gleichman:

Having never owned, let alone serious used a huge sword myself, I
would count this as role-playing :)

And the only player I know who owns huge swords - my wife - tends in
gaming not to play such characters, but instead to prefer more
traditional fantasy female roles....

Del Rio:

Conversely, you can move the plot forward like crazy
without ever roleplaying. They're pretty much
orthogonal concepts. I have been in groups that never
roleplay, and are only interested in getting to the
"goal" or "reward" (completing the dungeon crawl,
assassinating the dictator, getting the rabbits to
their new warren, establishing a mining colony on
Mars... whatever).

Okay. Presumably, since you say "orthogonal" rather than "opposite",
you consider it possible to engage in any of these activities with or
without roleplaying? Personally, I think I'd have a hard time playing
in an assassination arc without roleplaying a character with the
appropriate motivations, or playing rabbits doing anything without
trying to imagine being a rabbit, but maybe that's just me.

The reason I ask is because in the game I play (as opposed to the game
I gamesmaster), many of the players use "roleplaying" to refer
exclusively to "chatting with other characters". I find this attitude
inexplicable, since I'm at least as engaged with my character when the
character is hunting, fighting, or doing other nonverbal activities, so
I'm hoping to find someone who can explain it to me.

Warren J. Dew

[gleichman]

psychohist wrote:
I find this attitude

Post by psychohist
inexplicable, since I'm at least as engaged with my character when the
character is hunting, fighting, or doing other nonverbal activities, so
I'm hoping to find someone who can explain it to me.

I think the idea is that they wish to define 'role-playing' as
something which is both visible and engaging to themselves.

Thus our silently sitting there and thinking on our options from the
PoV our character is neither visible, nor is it engaging them. Thus its
not role-playing to their eyes.

[Del Rio]

Post by gleichman
I think the idea is that they wish to define 'role-playing' as
something which is both visible and engaging to themselves.
Thus our silently sitting there and thinking on our options from the
PoV our character is neither visible, nor is it engaging them. Thus its
not role-playing to their eyes.

What can I say, I need loud noise and movement to
entertain my primitive brain.

[gleichman]

Post by gleichman
Having never owned, let alone serious used a huge sword myself, I
would count this as role-playing :)
And the only player I know who owns huge swords - my wife - tends in
gaming not to play such characters, but instead to prefer more
traditional fantasy female roles....

I do own firearms, a few would be counted as large and even huge by
some.

Unlike your wife I love to play characters with same. Of course in real
life I don't get to put them to the same use as those characters. I
least, I hope not.

[Del Rio]

Post by Stephen McIlvenna
That rings true. I can happily play anything as a
player, but when GMing I want to feel that I have done
my best job and that means at least equalling what has
gone before. My mind wants to tell great epics with
emotional involvement from all players - in truth I no
longer have the time to prepare such epics and they no
longer have the energy to invest so emotionally.

I keep trying, though...! Dammit.

[Del Rio]

Post by Stephen McIlvenna
I get the impression that most of the participants here are into their adult
years with commitments and interests beyond gaming. I'm interested to know
what form your gaming takes these days and where it fits in your time.

[...]

Post by Stephen McIlvenna
What about others? Do you still play or just take an interest in the hobby?
If you play is it face-to-face or using the internet? Large or small groups?
Frequent short sessions or irregular marathon games? Do published adventures
help or do they require almost as much preparation time?

I started playing AD&D in 1978. My group played that
all through high school and college, while also making
forays into Top Secret, Dragonquest, Gamma World,
Rolemaster, Ars Magica, Call of Cthulhu, Tapestry,
Palladium and a variety of homebrew systems.

In the 90's my old playing group scattered, and I was
on near hiatus, playing only my oldest campaign a
couple of times a year. Since 2002, I've been playing
a weekly D&D 3.X game and I've run monthly Call of
Cthulhu game.

Preparation is tough, with so many demands on my time.
I fall back on a lot of modules for CoC, because
investigative campaigns are complex and require
detailed background stories that you really can't do on
your own with just "light" preparation. My D&D
campaign I can take on the roll a lot better, as it
thrives mainly on roleplaying and immediacy.

As for scheduling, I'd say 1 in 4 D&D sessions gets
canceled outright, and we often have one or two people
missing. We play CoC on weekend afternoons, and with
those being such precious commodities for working
adults, we always have at least a couple of missing
players. In fact we often have so many missing players
that we cancel the session outright, such that the
"monthly" game is more realistically bi-monthly.

[n***@wimp.freeuk.com]

Post by Stephen McIlvenna
What about others? Do you still play or just take an interest in the hobby?
If you play is it face-to-face or using the internet? Large or small groups?
Frequent short sessions or irregular marathon games? Do published adventures
help or do they require almost as much preparation time?

I was a lurker when rgfa was in full flow. Since then, I've settled
down with a family &c, but now I get _more_ gaming in than ever before.


I've managed this by getting involved in setting up a RPG club
<http://www.mk-rpg.org.uk> that meets once a week. We've got ~20
members (from a city of ~250,000), enough to run three or four
different games simultaneously. There's also several games going on
with club members outside the club, so there's plenty of gaming to go
around. <http://wiki.mk-rpg.org.uk/index.php/ReadMe> has more details,
and I can say more on our experience if people have questions.

If people are struggling to find time to play games, I'd recommend some
of the shorter indie games that have appeared recently, such as Dogs in
the Vineyard, Primtime Adventures, and Polaris. They're focussed on
one particular style of game, but that means that they can concentrate
on that style and you get a very intense and distilled game: a big
gaming hit in a short space of time.

For instance, character generation in DitV takes <30 mins and you can
play through a town in a single 3-hour session (complex towns may take
two sessions, but never more). PTA has fixed campaign lengths of 5 or
9 sessions (we find each session fits nicely into the 3 hours of an
evening's play), plus a couple of hours'-worth of collaborative
campaign setup.

Neil.

[R. G. 'Stumpy' Marsh]

Post by Stephen McIlvenna
I get the impression that most of the participants here are into their adult
years with commitments and interests beyond gaming. I'm interested to know
what form your gaming takes these days and where it fits in your time.

Oh boy, did I pick the right time to check in on rgfa! It's good to
see so many of the old "faces" coming out of the woodwork.

Let's see, then and now...

In high school I had a regular all-day Sunday session with rotating
GMs and systems. That group survived into university, but sort of
fell apart about the second or third year.

From then until 1998, about 7-8 years, I had a more and more irregular
group which I GMed almost exclusively. There were about 8 players
(not counting me), but we usually had 4-6 at any given session,
including 3 (later 2) reliable core players. After a few abortive
attempts at weekly, we originally settled on fortnightly but by the
end were lucky to be bi-monthly, usually all-day Sundays, but
basically whenever we could scrape three players together.

The "campaign" was like a TV series, with 1-3 session "episodes,"
rather than the more traditional extended serial campaign. Each
player had two or three characters, and I usually had about half a
dozen scenarios up my sleeve, so I could run something to suit whoever
was able to commit to a couple of sessions. We also had a lower
powered "spin-off series" in the same world, with a similar structure,
for when we wanted a change of pace.

At the end of 1998 I moved about 1000km (including a 3hr ferry
crossing) from what was left of my group. I haven't really played
since. I've played with systems, settings, characters and scenarios,
and toyed with online gaming, but had a couple of disappointing
experiences. I have lots of notes that I wishfully think of as being
for "the reunion game"... that, or a blockbuster movie script. ;-P

Now, I'm married with children and working an unstable 7-day roster,
with very little notice of scheduling sometimes, which means that even
if I stumbled upon my gaming soulmates, I probably couldn't keep any
sort of gaming schedule. For a long time, this place was really my
only contact with real gamers... until it fell apart. It's good to be
back - if only to live vicariously through the games of others.