Stormonu
NeoGrognard
It's finally happened, I think.
I've been playing some form of D&D or roleplaying going on well over 33 of my 42 years (coming up on my 43
). I find myself looking back at all those years and wondering what I'm getting out of them.
I definitely was super-enthusiastic about the world of D&D from the very start. Ever since I was greeted with the red dragon on the blue covered Holmes edition, I imagining battles with dragons, skeletons, orcs and other creatures of the underworld. I spent my school breaks and lunch hours running my friends though maps I'd made on graph paper taken from math class and I spent my evening imagining the adventures of my Star Wars and GI Joe figures as they fought to escape the cruel grip of the Empire or worked to take down the next plot to take over the world by Cobra.
Back in those first few years, I didn't give a damn about the rules. It was all about the imagined fun. Most of the time, I didn't even use dice. I was the DM - the game master of our fantasy fiction, and we just went with what felt right. If there was a dispute, my job was decide what happened. We didn't dwell on it and just kept moving on with the story.
A few years later, when I got into high school, I also picked up the AD&D rulebooks and started reading them over. I was flabbergasted by rules - there seemed so many of them, I'd been doing things sooooo wrong. There was also so many options I'd previously known nothing about - such as Paladins! I wanted to be one!
As I started to sit down with the rules and actually read and use them, my game changed. I thought it got better, and my later groups seemed to appreciate my improved understanding of the rule. While other groups around me were devolving into what Gygax would term 'Monty Haul' campaigns, I was shaping up to provide a challenging - if not gritty game that was garnering me acclaim several groups who began to migrate to playing in only my game.
Things simply continued to refine through my college years and AD&D gave way to 2E. It was in these years I had the longest-running and highest level "official" campaign. My adventures were no longer an attempt to duplicate Dirk the Daring's adventures from Dragon's Lair. Characters weren't simply going from town to dungeon and back - there was a living, breathing world developing around them and they found themselves knee-deep in the plots of kingdoms - and gods.
I finally got the point where I actually started submitting my stuff to TSR; I wanted to become a game designer, a story writer - anything other than being stuck in the mundane world fiddling with stupid computers that hated me as much as I seemed to hate them.
I did, finally get something published and I was on the top of the world. The hope of getting into the wonderful world of adventure or game design seemed within my grasp. And then, the unthinkable happened. TSR went bankrupt.
It was definitely a crushing moment, but not entirely unexpected. I'd been noticing TSR slipping, both against White Wolf's game (which honestly, I found myself preferring) and Magic. Both the release of Spellfire, Dragonlance 5th Age and Dragon Dice were facepalm moments for me. I can't say I saw the bankruptcy coming, but I could see TSR floundering to do anything to stop its own hemorrhaging as people seemed to be walking away from the game left and right.
Those few months of uncertainty made me take a long, hard look at this hobby and what I was investing my time in. Though 3rd edition came roaring in to breath life back into my own gaming, things were never quite the same with D&D again. Sure, I'd still have loved getting something for D&D published, but I could no longer bring myself to contemplating being a game designer as something I'd solely do for a living.
And as I watched the years continue to pass by as 3E turned into 3.5E I thought I'd gotten my mojo back. The game was fun again and I found myself easily slipping into designing my own stuff. I even set up my own little company to try and publish what I was making. Though it didn't pan out like I hoped, I felt like I learned a good bit about what it did take to put a product together and how much work it really was.
Unfortunately, as I felt I was hitting my stride, 4E hit me like a slap in the face. I wasn't expecting it as I was still rambling along with 3.5. I wasn't ready to give it up. I didn't want to give it up. I did give 4E a couple of (half-hearted) shots, but it never grabbed me.
In that time between the slow death of 3.5E and 4E, my group and I tried out several other game systems. I figured if we were going to switch editions, I might as well take the time to check out what was available and go with the game that both I and my group liked the best.
We tried out over a dozen systems, and in the end two systems seemed to resonate with the group. One was nWoD - primarily Vampire: The Requiem and the other was Savage Worlds. What struck me was that, compared to the complexity of the 3.5E D&D rules, these systems seemed to do more, with less rules. "Rules lite", but definitely not story or game lite.
And then it really hit me. D&D had become a beast. What had started out for me as a way to stretch my imagination with my friends I'd allow to tie me down in social contracts and rules lawyering that had stole more fun away from me than I'd ever realized. I'd spent hours of time away from the game table throwing together adventures that in my older days I'd have done in a hour or so and spent the rest of the time reading through the entries of the Monster Manual imagining encountering them or contemplating some way to introduce them to my players. I'd wasted hours of time at the table looking up rules or arguing with players why I wasn't going to allow this to stack with that.
I think I've finally burnt myself out. I don't want to reach for a set of rules any more to share my fantasies. I'd rather sit down in the front room with my youngest son and his Gormiti and tell the story of how the Blue Lords of Water and the Green Lords of the Forest worked together to drive back the evil Magma Men. Or perhaps listen to my eldest son's tales about the new Pokemon creature he's made and what it can do.
I'm tired of rules. And editions. And dice. And 2 hour combats. I just want to sit back with my friends and make a story or two that we all can involved with and enjoy without arguing over rules that don't even matter. And I don't really think that roleplaying games are giving me that any more.
I'm burned out, and I want the joy of interactive stories back.
I've been playing some form of D&D or roleplaying going on well over 33 of my 42 years (coming up on my 43
). I find myself looking back at all those years and wondering what I'm getting out of them.I definitely was super-enthusiastic about the world of D&D from the very start. Ever since I was greeted with the red dragon on the blue covered Holmes edition, I imagining battles with dragons, skeletons, orcs and other creatures of the underworld. I spent my school breaks and lunch hours running my friends though maps I'd made on graph paper taken from math class and I spent my evening imagining the adventures of my Star Wars and GI Joe figures as they fought to escape the cruel grip of the Empire or worked to take down the next plot to take over the world by Cobra.
Back in those first few years, I didn't give a damn about the rules. It was all about the imagined fun. Most of the time, I didn't even use dice. I was the DM - the game master of our fantasy fiction, and we just went with what felt right. If there was a dispute, my job was decide what happened. We didn't dwell on it and just kept moving on with the story.
A few years later, when I got into high school, I also picked up the AD&D rulebooks and started reading them over. I was flabbergasted by rules - there seemed so many of them, I'd been doing things sooooo wrong. There was also so many options I'd previously known nothing about - such as Paladins! I wanted to be one!
As I started to sit down with the rules and actually read and use them, my game changed. I thought it got better, and my later groups seemed to appreciate my improved understanding of the rule. While other groups around me were devolving into what Gygax would term 'Monty Haul' campaigns, I was shaping up to provide a challenging - if not gritty game that was garnering me acclaim several groups who began to migrate to playing in only my game.
Things simply continued to refine through my college years and AD&D gave way to 2E. It was in these years I had the longest-running and highest level "official" campaign. My adventures were no longer an attempt to duplicate Dirk the Daring's adventures from Dragon's Lair. Characters weren't simply going from town to dungeon and back - there was a living, breathing world developing around them and they found themselves knee-deep in the plots of kingdoms - and gods.
I finally got the point where I actually started submitting my stuff to TSR; I wanted to become a game designer, a story writer - anything other than being stuck in the mundane world fiddling with stupid computers that hated me as much as I seemed to hate them.
I did, finally get something published and I was on the top of the world. The hope of getting into the wonderful world of adventure or game design seemed within my grasp. And then, the unthinkable happened. TSR went bankrupt.
It was definitely a crushing moment, but not entirely unexpected. I'd been noticing TSR slipping, both against White Wolf's game (which honestly, I found myself preferring) and Magic. Both the release of Spellfire, Dragonlance 5th Age and Dragon Dice were facepalm moments for me. I can't say I saw the bankruptcy coming, but I could see TSR floundering to do anything to stop its own hemorrhaging as people seemed to be walking away from the game left and right.
Those few months of uncertainty made me take a long, hard look at this hobby and what I was investing my time in. Though 3rd edition came roaring in to breath life back into my own gaming, things were never quite the same with D&D again. Sure, I'd still have loved getting something for D&D published, but I could no longer bring myself to contemplating being a game designer as something I'd solely do for a living.
And as I watched the years continue to pass by as 3E turned into 3.5E I thought I'd gotten my mojo back. The game was fun again and I found myself easily slipping into designing my own stuff. I even set up my own little company to try and publish what I was making. Though it didn't pan out like I hoped, I felt like I learned a good bit about what it did take to put a product together and how much work it really was.
Unfortunately, as I felt I was hitting my stride, 4E hit me like a slap in the face. I wasn't expecting it as I was still rambling along with 3.5. I wasn't ready to give it up. I didn't want to give it up. I did give 4E a couple of (half-hearted) shots, but it never grabbed me.
In that time between the slow death of 3.5E and 4E, my group and I tried out several other game systems. I figured if we were going to switch editions, I might as well take the time to check out what was available and go with the game that both I and my group liked the best.
We tried out over a dozen systems, and in the end two systems seemed to resonate with the group. One was nWoD - primarily Vampire: The Requiem and the other was Savage Worlds. What struck me was that, compared to the complexity of the 3.5E D&D rules, these systems seemed to do more, with less rules. "Rules lite", but definitely not story or game lite.
And then it really hit me. D&D had become a beast. What had started out for me as a way to stretch my imagination with my friends I'd allow to tie me down in social contracts and rules lawyering that had stole more fun away from me than I'd ever realized. I'd spent hours of time away from the game table throwing together adventures that in my older days I'd have done in a hour or so and spent the rest of the time reading through the entries of the Monster Manual imagining encountering them or contemplating some way to introduce them to my players. I'd wasted hours of time at the table looking up rules or arguing with players why I wasn't going to allow this to stack with that.
I think I've finally burnt myself out. I don't want to reach for a set of rules any more to share my fantasies. I'd rather sit down in the front room with my youngest son and his Gormiti and tell the story of how the Blue Lords of Water and the Green Lords of the Forest worked together to drive back the evil Magma Men. Or perhaps listen to my eldest son's tales about the new Pokemon creature he's made and what it can do.
I'm tired of rules. And editions. And dice. And 2 hour combats. I just want to sit back with my friends and make a story or two that we all can involved with and enjoy without arguing over rules that don't even matter. And I don't really think that roleplaying games are giving me that any more.
I'm burned out, and I want the joy of interactive stories back.
