RPGing Interest
Feb. 5th, 2007 11:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aInterests are funny things, how they rise and fall. For a long time I was increasingly burned out on roleplaying. I think it started way back when I worked at Chaosium in the late 1990s. It's really hard to do something professionally and maintain it as a hobby. And, that was the same time that GDW and ICE crashed and burned, costing me two of my then-favorite games (MERP and Traveller) and that Pendragon and RuneQuest stopped production (costing me two games that I liked even more).
I kept playing, but it was more drudgery than fun, particularly after Bill left for the midwest and our Ars Magica game closed down and after Eric left for New Zealand and our RuneQuest game closed down. I played mainly to stay in touch with my college friends that I now have known for almost twenty years.
Then last year I finished up initial work on the RPGnet Gaming Index, and with the help of a cast of hundreds started assembling a massive database of roleplaying books. That really got my interest going again. Ironically, work took it away, and work brought back. And it got me writing the Brief History articles that I'm still writing now, and which are just reminding me once more of all the coolness of the medium.
On Saturday I got home from gaming, and Kimberly asked me how it gone, and I said that I'd really had fun. And I had. I wasn't running anything particularly amazing. The players are running through The Temple of Elemental Evil and managed to kill one quasi-arch-villain, run from 42 bandits and crows, and clear out one room in the dungeon. But it still was a neat experience.
And I have an ever-increasing list of things I want to run in the future. The Slave Lords series, of course, but also The Shackled City, the new Dragonlance trilogy, and the 21-part Traveller Grand Tour. Sadly, the most Brief Histories I write, the more really cool stuff I come across that I'd like to try out.
The irony is going to of course come when Donald decides to move south, the same direction that every other member of our gaming group has gone, and we no longer have anywhere to play in this area, and thus my carlessness becomes a major factor.
A year ago I would have just let the group go, but now I'll leave it as a problem for another day.
I kept playing, but it was more drudgery than fun, particularly after Bill left for the midwest and our Ars Magica game closed down and after Eric left for New Zealand and our RuneQuest game closed down. I played mainly to stay in touch with my college friends that I now have known for almost twenty years.
Then last year I finished up initial work on the RPGnet Gaming Index, and with the help of a cast of hundreds started assembling a massive database of roleplaying books. That really got my interest going again. Ironically, work took it away, and work brought back. And it got me writing the Brief History articles that I'm still writing now, and which are just reminding me once more of all the coolness of the medium.
On Saturday I got home from gaming, and Kimberly asked me how it gone, and I said that I'd really had fun. And I had. I wasn't running anything particularly amazing. The players are running through The Temple of Elemental Evil and managed to kill one quasi-arch-villain, run from 42 bandits and crows, and clear out one room in the dungeon. But it still was a neat experience.
And I have an ever-increasing list of things I want to run in the future. The Slave Lords series, of course, but also The Shackled City, the new Dragonlance trilogy, and the 21-part Traveller Grand Tour. Sadly, the most Brief Histories I write, the more really cool stuff I come across that I'd like to try out.
The irony is going to of course come when Donald decides to move south, the same direction that every other member of our gaming group has gone, and we no longer have anywhere to play in this area, and thus my carlessness becomes a major factor.
A year ago I would have just let the group go, but now I'll leave it as a problem for another day.
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-06 10:04 am (UTC)The knack seems to be both to keep your old buddies in the loop, often with little meets at someone's house 1-2 weekends a year (little cons), and recruiting fresh blood. Running games for 20 year olds can be fun, and you can run all the old stuff they've never heard of!
It's hard, but a social life in any arena (except being a barfly) does take some work.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-06 03:33 pm (UTC)Do tell? Can you elucidate a bit on this one? What exactly are you referring to? (Running all the adventures/double adventures, or something?)
no subject
Date: 2007-02-06 06:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-07 02:57 pm (UTC)Also: have you looked at Gateway To Destiny? I've thought that, should I ever run a Traveller campaign again, I might very well use this book and it's area of space as the campaign environment.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-07 05:23 pm (UTC)If you ever try and hunt it down, there was a reprint collection called _The Early Adventures_, which had the adventures from issues #1-4, but you'd still have to find #5-21 in the original.
And Gateway to Destiny indeed looks neat, but I have no idea how good it is. I haven't bought a Traveller book in 8 years or so.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-07 11:12 pm (UTC)