The "I Didn't Comment in Another Thread" Thread

Ryujin · Dec 20, 2023

Scribe said:
Second only to "Well we have tried nothing, and nothing has changed, what can we do?!"

Feels more like...

Whizbang Dustyboots · Dec 20, 2023

Scribe said:
Thats the part that is most frustrating. Everyone is seeing it, everyone experiences it, yet nobody pumps the brakes and actually tries to make sense of the timing.

My manager is actually pretty good about it. Last week, I told her I wanted to revise my schedule of projects for the rest of the year and bump stuff to 2024 and she was thrilled to go with that. More managers need to be not-crazy.

Thomas Shey · Dec 21, 2023

Autumnal said:
I am sometimes really impressed at some people’s willingness to keep returning for years on end to a game that is never satisfying to them. I give up much more quickly. I have some very good friends whose preferences in gaming are simply not compatible with mine, and we just don’t play RPGs together. We talk about other stuff and remain friends happy to be in touch.

Well, as I've noted before there's a lot of "only game in town" factor for a lot of people for a lot of reasons. And while the phrase "No gaming is better than bad gaming" it turns very heavily on how you define "bad"; I'm willing to state there's a lot of people for whom "mediocre gaming is better than no gaming."

Thomas Shey · Dec 21, 2023

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
My manager is actually pretty good about it. Last week, I told her I wanted to revise my schedule of projects for the rest of the year and bump stuff to 2024 and she was thrilled to go with that. More managers need to be not-crazy.

In some cases there's a lot of pressure from uphill where people understand the realities of the situation even less, and are focused on issues that, in the end, have nothing to do with what's practical and function and everything to do with what will look good on certain pieces of paper.

Whizbang Dustyboots · Dec 21, 2023

Thomas Shey said:
In some cases there's a lot of pressure from uphill where people understand the realities of the situation even less, and are focused on issues that, in the end, have nothing to do with what's practical and function and everything to do with what will look good on certain pieces of paper.

Absolutely. I was using "managers" in a global sense.

Whizbang Dustyboots · Dec 21, 2023

Thomas Shey said:
Well, as I've noted before there's a lot of "only game in town" factor for a lot of people for a lot of reasons. And while the phrase "No gaming is better than bad gaming" it turns very heavily on how you define "bad"; I'm willing to state there's a lot of people for whom "mediocre gaming is better than no gaming."

I'm not saying this is you, but there are folks on this board who then decide to vent to ENWorld about it. Constantly.

And I get it, you want to play an RPG, you feel stuck with what you've got and you're not happy about it. But none of that is the fault of this community.

And while there are definitely some folks who are genuinely stuck in that situation, I submit that a not-small portion of the group that's unhappy about being stuck in bad games do have options, whether it's teaching new people to play, playing online or putting out feelers to see who else might have been playing in their community all along. (I had multiple coworkers whose games had lapsed and am now playing 5E on a semi-regular basis with them, playing wildly different games than I'd play with my regular crew.)

I know that people who are genuinely stuck don't enjoy hearing about those other options, and feel scolded when they do, but those other people still need to be encouraged to look.

I have seen specific people on this board in the last few years go from always-5E to showing up in other communities, also playing other games, because they finally figured out a way to play other games at least some of the time.

overgeeked · Dec 21, 2023

Thomas Shey said:
Well, as I've noted before there's a lot of "only game in town" factor for a lot of people for a lot of reasons. And while the phrase "No gaming is better than bad gaming" it turns very heavily on how you define "bad"; I'm willing to state there's a lot of people for whom "mediocre gaming is better than no gaming."

Add to that the fact that a lot of people have gaming friends. They only play RPGs with those people so to see those friends, they have to play RPGs. If those friends insist on only playing a game that person doesn’t enjoy…they’re stuck with a crappy choice.

Autumnal · Dec 21, 2023

In my case, I had a bunch of years where my gaming contracted from regular play to only when playtesting to none at all - not for want of interest but thanks to increasing physical and mental health constraints. Then after some years of no play, I got curious about solo play, investigated, and after several false starts have been very happy with Shawn Tomkin’s games Ironsworn and Starforged and some work by others.

Now I do recognize that the situation is very different with someone who can play, but isn’t finding others who are playing something the someone wants to play. And it’s different again with someone who would be able to play but because of constraints outside their body but at their end - family life in its myriad varieties, work life, prior commitments of other kinds. And because I know I don’t know firsthand what those lives are like, I try not to be the kind of Dunning-Kruger-high critic that annoys the tar out of me.

But I do wish that more unhappy people would come back to questions like “but if not this, then what…not doing the thing that always makes me unhappy in practice?” and looking at the alternatives seriously.

Whizbang Dustyboots · Dec 21, 2023

Starforged is one of those games I regret not putting together the funds to get when it was on Kickstarter. My regular groups are strangely indifferent to sci-fi (although at least one is open to trying Orbital Blues, because he loves heroes going out in a blaze of glory), and Starforged might scratch that itch for me.