Nowadays its more of a reason to get togethor wth our large ‘extended family’ of friends out there than it is for the event itself.

think i’m gonna head out there this weekend, solo, leaving the fiance and family behind, so i can be drunk, obnoxious, and get into lots of trouble. That should be loads of fun!

BTW — have you been able to make it up to the renfair this year?

While you can have great fun in a short term gaming gratification session - (like our 1-3 hour barely interrelated sessions that most people were spectators for - altho we did our part to make them feel like participators)

The depth of fun and payoff you get in the PnP environment was soooo much better -

but yes…our events were leaps and bounds over the non immersive day to day mmog experience.

So the question is how do we harness all these wizbang gagdets and technology to take the entertainment form embodied in tabletop RPGing into the next generation.

Up untill the mid 90s, we were USED to immersive interaction. Zork, and the text based games made you read, imagine, and think your way thru the games. Very similar in practice to the PnP rpgs, with the exception that they were single player, with the computer being the GM.

As time went on, video games grew, and the generations who grew up with them learned a new style of gaming. The reading and thinking was replaced with watching and reacting.

Why play Zork –

You are in an open field west of a big white house with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.

> _

When you could play Zelda? Or Madden?

So what we’ve got is a generation of gamers who grew up from Candyland, to Pokemon and Mario, to Madden and Ghost Recon. Challenging, entertaining, yes. Engaging and immersive? Not a chance.

At the same time, we’ve got the now aging generation of the PnP RPG. We’ve got Jobs, Families, and responsibilities that tend to prevent us from sitting in John’s living room for 8 hours every saturday for 6 months on a single campaign. Every other week, or once a month can sometimes be possible, but the less intensive play means that it drifts farther from our minds between sessions, and loses its own immersive factor over time.

I STILL buy the new rulebooks, and spend hours pouring over character sheets, building characters and NPCS, and setting up a campaign idea… I buy an expansion/module or two, to see some possibilities, and gain some ideas to butcher, mishmash and create my own personalized campaign. But when the chips are down, the regular sessions just don’t seem to materialize. So I stop sinking money into it. It doesn’t feed itself.

The rules, the games, the concepts out today are great! The writers and artists are top notch. But the crowd just isn’t making the time and putting in the effort. So a game has a much shorter lifespan on my table and the top of my mind than it did 10-15 years ago. I’ve got more money to spend on games… just less desire to sink money into them if the sessions don’t materialize.

2 Other possible contributing factors -

1 When we were teens, we played at school. We played at a buddy’s house, in a living room with plenty of room for 6-7 people. We played in college in a study hall that could sit 10-12 easily…with a large table. Dorm rooms were popular…since we had NO furniture… 2 bunkbeds, a coupla pillows and bean bags on the floor to recline against while we sprawled accross the floor with our Trix, Dr Pepper, Pillsbury Cookiee dough rolls, and pizza…

Today, we live in small apartments, condos, townhomes… We have room for 6 at the dinner table, or 4 at a coffee table.
Those with a bigger house don’t generally want 5-8 people sprawling accross their living room…(as if the children would even allow that to be a possibility…)

Location location location! we simply don’t have the refuges we used to as teens/college students.

2 We lack the ability to LOSE ourselves totally into a game for hours at a time. Can you go 6-8 hours without getting a text message, cell call, IM, checking your email, or reprogramming your DVR from your cell? It’s not easy. Now try getting 8 people to isolate for the time it takes to run a solid game session.

Hell, I have problems trying to schedule dinner for 6 for someone’s birthday these days…2-3 hour committment– trying to get everyone to agree on a time and date that works for everyone’s hard. Now tell them to turn off all contact for 4, 8 or 12 hours…

Just some points to ponder….

How do we bring back immersive, creative, engaging role play, when we’ve been battered into gamers who want to absorb rather than contribute. We react, rather than create. We batter thru, rather than think and puzzle thru…

Can we reverse the trend in ourselves?

because unless we can, the trend in the PnP gaming industry will continue to spiral down… while the action rpg, MMO action/adventure game (i refuse to call ANYTHING an mmorpg these days…) genres will continue to climb steadily…