Gamers have less time away from the table?

[Morrus]

One thing which gets said a lot these days is that gamers have less time to learn complex rules, design material, prep games, and so on. That activity that I - and I suspect many others - spent lots of our free time doing is falling by the wayside.

I'm not sure it's that clear though. Sure, many have gotten older, gotten families, gotten careers. That's a given. And there is tons of competition from thousands of other immediately available forms of entertainment. But I think the nature of the "not at the actual game table" stuff has changed.

These days, people write blogs, sell PDFs, put things on DMsG, talk about their games on the Internet. They're still spending time doing the "not at the game table" stuff - it's just that that stuff has evolved a bit with technology.

So, to the point. Other than the actual at-the-table stuff, what are your tabletop RPG activities? Do you write house rules? World build? Design your own game? Write a blog? Sell PDFs? Run a message board? Start Kickstarters? Review adventures? What are the things you do which aren't actually playing the game?

 

[delericho]

I'm not sure it's that clear though. Sure, many have gotten older, gotten families, gotten careers. That's a given. And there is tons of competition from thousands of other immediately available forms of entertainment. But I think the nature of the "not at the actual game table" stuff has changed.

I think both are true - I unquestionably have less time available away from the table, but the nature of what I'm doing away from the table has also changed.

So, to the point. Other than the actual at-the-table stuff, what are your tabletop RPG activities? Do you write house rules? World build? Design your own game? Write a blog? Sell PDFs? Run a message board? Start Kickstarters? Review adventures? What are the things you do which aren't actually playing the game?

These days I write a blog, am fairly active here, and review RPG books as I finish them.

Plus I also prep for my ongoing games, where I try to put in an hour's work for every two hours of play time - any less and I feel I'm shortchanging my players; much more and I feel I'm not being efficient enough.

(The thing that bugs me most about prep-time is that so much of it is involved in generating, or just gathering together, statistics for various beasties. But that's material that will see a few rounds of use at the table at best, and most of which will never be known to anyone but me. A 5e version of the compendium and a really good monster builder would be a godsend.)

 

[Reflected_Shadows]

Do you write house rules? World build? Design your own game? These are what I do.

I find myself with less time and I would rather "play with" the game than "play the game". I need my mental energy for other tasks. These days, I would rather publish a few online worlds of content to start the process of monetizing my ideas. That is much more important to me than "playing a game" at this stage in my life. I respect people who say "Just do it for love don't worry about money" but don't force it on me, you aren't the one who has "me" to feed, after all. Once I get everything designed, prepared and ready, I will be ready to play much more. Most of the playing I do engage in is just for testing and balancing purposes. All of this comes back to the table though, because when I do have the time, energy and desire to run a game, I am always prepared and ready to roll with about anything the players do in game. Creating "my world" (which I am not using at the moment) has liberated my emotions and "care" for the current "non-world" (if you will), and since I don't care, I let the players do about anything. This led to some abuse at first but players quickly took up a greater responsibility of self-monitoring.

 

[Umbran]

These days, people write blogs, sell PDFs, put things on DMsG, talk about their games on the Internet.

Those things do happen. But, consider, for a moment - if the big games are selling in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of copies of their rulebooks... how large a percentage of the gaming community is engaging in what you're suggesting here?

Assume there's a million players, and on broad average, one in five is a GM - so 200,000 of them? How many people are posting things to DMsG? A few hundred? The "empty search" there for all DMsG products returns 1070 items at the moment - so we are talking about less than 1000 contributors, no? So, these activities are not really mainstream to the GM or gaming community.

Sorry, Morrus, but I think the aging of the gaming community does mean that, overall, folks aren't spending the same time, but spending it differently. They're actually spending less time on the game away-from-table.

 

[Morrus]

Those things do happen. But, consider, for a moment - if the big games are selling in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of copies of their rulebooks... how large a percentage of the gaming community is engaging in what you're suggesting here?

Assume there's a million players, and on broad average, one in five is a GM - so 200,000 of them? How many people are posting things to DMsG? A few hundred? The "empty search" there for all DMsG products returns 1070 items at the moment - so we are talking about less than 1000 contributors, no? So, these activities are not really mainstream to the GM or gaming community.

I'm not really arguing a point, I'm just asking folks what they get up to. I certainly wasn't trying to imply that DMsG proves anything.

But if there were only 200K GMs, then I think we could easily find them posting and writing and doing assorted things on the web. That's not really a lot of people - we track more than that number in our Hot Games Chart, and that's just a sampling.

I digress though. I'm not trying to stake a position, as I don't really have one. I'm just interested in what stuff folks do!

Sorry, Morrus, but....

And I'm sorry that you're sorry.

 

[Umbran]

I digress though. I'm not trying to stake a position, as I don't really have one.

Okay, well, then I think your OP then doesn't represent your position. Specifically:

"...I think the nature of the "not at the actual game table" stuff has changed.

These days, people write blogs, sell PDFs, put things on DMsG, talk about their games on the Internet. They're still spending time doing the "not at the game table" stuff - it's just that that stuff has evolved a bit with technology."

If you didn't want to stake a position, you probably shouldn't have said you think a particular thing is happening

Moreover, you posit that people are doing things online, and then ask a small number of people who are doing things online what they do? Holy self-selected sample, Batman! To get evidence one way or another, we must look *beyond* the community, no within it. Don't ask what the posters here do - ask what *their gaming groups* do, if nothing else.

For example, out of the dozen or more folks I've done tabletop gaming with multiple times in the past year, I know that I am the only one who spends significant time online about RPGs, in general.

I certainly wasn't trying to imply that DMsG proves anything.

No, you didn't. But, having it mentioned, I took a quick look, and found that it really doesn't look like a lot of individuals are involved, and I felt that did speak to the point.

As for the hot games sample - I don't think you can claim there's not a lot of overlap between the users represented there. We have somewhat short of 200,000 registered users, and a lot of those are spam accounts. How many *really active* users do we have? How many of those people *also* have a blog, and also go to other forums? You may be looking at a small, but very active, group of people, not a general gamer behavior. I believe the term is "vocal minority".

 

[Morrus]

Moreover, you posit that people are doing things online, and then ask a small number of people who are doing things online what they do? Holy self-selected sample, Batman! To get evidence one way or another, we must look *beyond* the community, no within it. Don't ask what the posters here do - ask what *their gaming groups* do, if nothing else.

I'm just having a conversation with some friends, Umbran. It's not a survey! I'm not after evidence of anything, I'm after a conversation about the awesome stuff fellow posters get up to away from the gaming table!

Really, I'm not interested in defending any positions, especially given that I don't really have one. Sorry!

 

[innerdude]

Other than my time spent on EnWorld, when I'm actively GM-ing, I typically spend four or so hours a week working on world-building activities, reading the occasional splatbook, looking at maps, building a map in Photoshop, etc.

When I'm not GM-ing? I literally don't think twice about it. My next thought about our current game (in which I'm a player and not the GM) will be the moment I pull my character sheet out of my binder at our next session and say, "Okay, so, what were we doing?"

Which reminds me --- I have to level up my character before tomorrow. But maybe I'll just be lazy and do it when I get there.

 

[Mallus]

As my group got older, had more children, and generally got-on in their careers/adult lives, we've definitely spent less time on the game, both at and away-from the table. For example, my friend used to write a terrific Story Hour based on our old 3.5e campaign. The last update was in 2009. That was a few campaign ago. We still play regularly, but less frequently. So it goes.

I still world-build and custom-write (more-or-less) all our adventures. But that's me -- it's some of what I like best about DM'ing. I also, it should be said, am married without children.

Maybe one day we'll collaborate on some sort of product based on our current setting, now that WotC is doing their marketplace thing. Maybe the old setting, too. Bit of a pipe-dream, but a nice one.

 

[TwoSix]

I make posts here. One time I watched the Community episode where they played D&D. I read a few PDFs here and there. That's pretty much the extent of my non-table time on RPGs.

That being said, I'm probably an outlier...I mean, I barely do prep work when I'm DMing.