I really miss gaming.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not completely gameless. There's No Rest for the Wicked, which is great, and my online Fate game 'Operatives of CROSSBOW' is a lot of fun, but there's something about hanging out, sharing snacks, cooking giant pans of pasta and making endless pots of tea that I really, really miss (and it's not really the tea.)
Obviously, the golden age of tabletop roleplaying is at University. Your time is largely your own, you all live close together and you have somewhere to game where you generally won't disturb anyone else (especially not if, like me, you end up spending two out of three years living next to the noisiest room on campus and directly above the bar.) After that, work is a bit of a shock to the system, but in the end it was my increasing involvement in IoD LARP that did for my tabletopping. I just didn't have any more time for writing games or in many cases for playing them.
Since then, I've had some success with skype games, but they always seem to fade out more easily. Something about the disconnect means that people see them as less of a commitment, and it's harder for the rest of the group to have a separate conversation - whether planning your next moves or just shooting the breeze - if one or two PCs are monopolising the action for a time. As a result, although I love 'CROSSBOW', I do find myself hankering to add an in-person tabletop game to my roster.
Sadly, I live in the middle of nowhere and I don't drive, and I and all my friends are now - as much as we might wish to deny it - middle aged professionals*. At my last attempt to pull together a tabletop game, I couldn't find one night a month to assemble more than two people at once. I'm also very bad at meeting new people, so finding a group in Littleport would be a massive source of stress for me.
I wish I had some grand conclusion, but I don't. I just really miss gaming.
* Okay; some of them are young professionals, but for the most part we have jobs and the other things that keep a body from hauling an hour and a half across the country to play an evening of Pathfinder.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not completely gameless. There's No Rest for the Wicked, which is great, and my online Fate game 'Operatives of CROSSBOW' is a lot of fun, but there's something about hanging out, sharing snacks, cooking giant pans of pasta and making endless pots of tea that I really, really miss (and it's not really the tea.)
Obviously, the golden age of tabletop roleplaying is at University. Your time is largely your own, you all live close together and you have somewhere to game where you generally won't disturb anyone else (especially not if, like me, you end up spending two out of three years living next to the noisiest room on campus and directly above the bar.) After that, work is a bit of a shock to the system, but in the end it was my increasing involvement in IoD LARP that did for my tabletopping. I just didn't have any more time for writing games or in many cases for playing them.
Since then, I've had some success with skype games, but they always seem to fade out more easily. Something about the disconnect means that people see them as less of a commitment, and it's harder for the rest of the group to have a separate conversation - whether planning your next moves or just shooting the breeze - if one or two PCs are monopolising the action for a time. As a result, although I love 'CROSSBOW', I do find myself hankering to add an in-person tabletop game to my roster.
Sadly, I live in the middle of nowhere and I don't drive, and I and all my friends are now - as much as we might wish to deny it - middle aged professionals*. At my last attempt to pull together a tabletop game, I couldn't find one night a month to assemble more than two people at once. I'm also very bad at meeting new people, so finding a group in Littleport would be a massive source of stress for me.
I wish I had some grand conclusion, but I don't. I just really miss gaming.
* Okay; some of them are young professionals, but for the most part we have jobs and the other things that keep a body from hauling an hour and a half across the country to play an evening of Pathfinder.
No comments:
Post a Comment