Deciding on a title for this blog post wasn't easy. Don't be fooled. This is both ramble and rant, with varied and disjointed thoughts on gaming groups and culture, and my recent experiences with them. Take the following words with that in mind. Or skip this one entirely.
My gaming has come to a sudden halt. Personal circumstances have seen my days filled to the last minute. Average sleep these past weeks hovers around the 5 hour mark. I can function professionally, but that's about it. Hobby time has been squashed like a bug, and I get the odd half hour break here or there, when the moons align.
How do people cope and find the time and energy to game? I'm not interested, at all, in the streamer superstar scene. All hell to the Manganiellos, Ann Wolls, Critical Roles and other actor fanfare. I want to know how the single mum with two kids gets a game going. How the guy with two jobs making minimum wage runs a game every week. And the person with insomnia and a gazillion responsibilities.
This frustration conflates with several recent observations.
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| I'am Pramudya |
Scheduling
Remains the beast of the game. Postponed games. Cancelled games. Shall we shift to next week or wait for Mike? Summer holidays, anyone? And so the innuendo continues. This is the main reason I (and I reckon many others) started running games, instead of playing. To dictate scheduling. Open tables, west-marches, and megadungeons help mitigate this, but are only a patch.
Online Gaming (for the most part) Sucks
The bulk of my gaming has been online. So I've encountered a fair deal of bizarre situations when dealing with both anons and friends in this medium. I get that remaining focused† is much harder when dealing with so many distractions at your fingertips. But still...
I've seen people drop from a planned game 10 minutes in.
I've had my fair deal of Irish goodbyes. I get that there's anonymity, but a short message signing off?
I've had a player straight out tell me at the end of a session that during that same game they were in the background working AND getting high (what? how? seriously?!).
Players throwing insults at each other & me? Check.
Players clearly not paying attention to what is going on in the game? No bloody clue? Check.
Mitigations for online play could entail shorter sessions, everyone using cameras, rolling physical dice, avoid looking up rules, sharing visuals (maps, NPC portraits, etc). But it's tough to implement these without plenty of resistance from the gaming group.
Face to Face?
Yes please and thank you. But what if you can't host? Also, securing space in neutral ground (a café, bar, hobby shop) in my location is both expensive and impractical.
There's a local meetup group! Hurray! Rejoice! But... the interest is almost exclusively dominated by 5e. Oh, I could still launch my game and bait some players? But the group shoves a ton of donation links and buttons to any announced games, even if you, the person running and hosting, objects. Makes my stomach irk. Oh, and taking whatever players sign up fastest on the platform (and not the ones you gel with) is mandatory. Yikes to byzantine bureaucracy.
How do folks in my age group meet new people? In the age of the nerd one would think this is trivial, but the plague has exacerbated this problem. When approaching friends and colleagues I'm met with either courteous interest or a completely puzzled face. Got the feeling I slept through my younger years, and the deep pool that it can bring in from school and university.
Getting 3-6 adults in the same room at the same time for 2-4 hours? Worthy of the highest of praises.
Wat Do?
I don't know.
I will try to launch a game with The Calaveras (online), since we finished Magical Murder Mansion. With some adjustments, mind you. Have to prepare a pitch doc (all'Colville) of games I'd want to run. And try to play a couple times per month.
But other than that, I'm drained.
Perhaps a deeper delve into solo games? Yet many fall into the journal proposition, and there the blank page is a block. I'd rather take on something more passive (reading, watching), or take on a proper boardgame.
I found the time and energy to write this post, so that's a win, right?
EDIT: it appears, once again, that xkcd is reading my mind:
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† This, alone, is worth another rant on its own. Attention spans in the smartphone age with constant distractions flocking, is TINY. Multi-tasking kills absorption. But this has little to do with a gaming blog, alas...
I'm sorry to hear about your troubles. I don't know the answers either.
ReplyDeleteI'm fresh out of college, which was the optimal time to start a group. Used campus resources to recruit interested players, met a bunch of nerds who'd never played, eased them into it, and made sure we carved out a friday night slot every semester when scheduling our classes. Doing that for 4 years in a row solidified gaming night enough into our lives that we've found it pretty easy to just keep that going (hopefully) in perpetuity. "Friday night is for D&D" has kind of become a rule of our lives that everything else needs to work around, rather than making D&D work around other stuff.
If I hadn't already done that, I'd have no idea where to even begin now.
I heard once an OSR game designer describe their ideal gaming group and I told them, "that just sounds like a party of entirely dungeon masters." And honestly, it really does seem ideal. Looking for group online is hard, but if the applicants were narrowed down just to DMs of a similar gaming philosophy, you automatically have a player type who probably 1) cares more about the game than most, 2) has stronger and more informed opinions about playstyle, and 3) can take turns running the game with you since they have the skill set.
That's just the first idea that came to my head, but obviously it's not a perfect solution.
You are absolutely right, there is no right one solution. These problems are always very specific and not transferrable.
DeleteThanks for sharing how your group got together! Having a routine is brilliant. It is also important for me to acknowledge that there are varied levels of interest and commitment. Most are just not interested enough to justify a fixed time slot every week ad infinitum for elf games. Playing catch vs signing up with a team and all that.
More than anything, I had to get things off my chest before getting my life in order, regrouping, and reassessing.
"Don't run the game that you want, but the game that you can."
ReplyDeleteWhen there are certain things that get in the way and that you can't change, you have to adjust your wishes to something that works with your circumstances.
When it's not reliable to always get the same full group of players together on a regular schedule, then work with a game structure that allows for characters to drop in and out at any time. It may not be the ideal game that you want to run the most, but it would be a game that can actually be played without constant disruptions.
Wise words!
DeleteAfter I get things in order I need to re-evaluate different gaming arrangements and how to proceed, as you mention. Hence why I think a local open table, west-marches, or megadungeon could be the solution.
I'm having the same issue trying to find a group that wants to play OSR style games. I also hate the work involved in the VTT prep and the flakiness of many anonymous players of online play. I've failed to drum up enough interest in discord servers though. I think my next strategy will be to run a few new player D&D 5e adventures. Then, when I find players that could be a decent fit and trust my gaming choices, then move onto Macchioto Monsters or the like.
ReplyDeleteYeah, as I tried to highlight in the post, it's a combination of different topics. Every person/situation is it's own beast, and advice is not easily transferable.
DeleteMy biggest success rate online so far has been with some specialized Discords. But I'm just more and more deflated with the overall online experience, and engagement without visual cues.
Your strategy of fishing in the 5e pool is probably very valid, and worth a try. Just restricting some player options (races, classes, etc) and doing an O5R approach could weed out potential players that are interested in the same style of play.
I just lack the time (and energy) at this moment for this time-consuming exercise of screening players and general herding.
Another way I've had very good success is create a group with complete neophyte players. No baggage, no expectations. This is my only (semi-regular) gaming at the moment, The Calaveras I mention above.