Aging and Gaming

[PrunellaUK]

In the board wargames hobby there was a noticable shift in the noughties away from heavier, more complex games, towards lighter games. And it was largely led by the oldsters, who were either constrained on time or on the energy they required to handle complex rules.

 

[ReginaHart]

If you end up not selling but still wish to prune, consider donating unneeded volumes to your closest public library. Nearly all public libraries have a section devoted to role playing games these days, and librarians are more aware of their existence. Just the other day I found a copy of Andrew Kolb's Oz RPG setting book, that was featured on a shelf!

Not to be a total killjoy, but libraries don't always (or even often) add donated books to their collection. Collection management dictates what will be added to/removed from the stacks. Managing the collection scope and size means looking at what will be used by the library's patrons, and sadly the hella cool old RPG books might not be viewed as worth the catalog and shelf space that they occupy. Your way-cool donations are likely to end up in the library's book sale. That's not necessarily bad as fellow geeks can then scoop them up at a great price!

 

[ReginaHart]

Not done, just look at them all and think I should prone

I realize this is a typo, but as 50-something contributing to a thread about aging in gaming, I will say that I need to "prone" more often than I used to.

 

[payn]

In the board wargames hobby there was a noticable shift in the noughties away from heavier, more complex games, towards lighter games. And it was largely led by the oldsters, who were either constrained on time or on the energy they required to handle complex rules.

I think there was another element and thats tournament play. Being able to do 3-5 games in a day instead of 1-2 tops, is a bonus for tourney play.

 

[timbannock]

The thing I know is age-related is my gravitation to lighter games, mostly due to time. Time to read, truly learn, and prep stuff is very low, so I have to be able to do it quickly. Complex interconnectivity of rules has become a no-no. But almost as important as that is that my experience has shown me that I can run great games while needing less stuff to do it with. You'd think that might give me some allowance to stick with medium complexity stuff, but truth is I only need to go in with the barest framework of a system, and I know how to give (most of) my players a good time.

The thing I don't know if it's age-related or just totality of life experience (with regards to TTRPG-ing): I'm just kinda tired of doing ANY of the work-work: scheduling, communicating tastes and such during a "session zero" message exchange, providing details for chargen or providing fun choices for pregens, etc. The convergence of "I want people who are at least passingly familiar with the game" and "I want to try this new game!" is a difficult needle to thread, and I'm...worried that I'm just over it. At least for now. When I look at my life-long hobbies/time-sinks of video games, board games, and TTRPGS, really only video games (solo or in-person multiplayer) and board games that I'm already familiar with capture my interest at the moment. And that's a tectonic shift from the past 30-odd years for me.

 

[PrunellaUK]

The thing I know is age-related is my gravitation to lighter games, mostly due to time.

I'm in a very similar place. I ditched a Marvel Multiverse RPG campaign earlier this year because the prep for a game that's heavily combat-oriented was overwhelming. I've long gravitated towards lighter storytelling systems where I can elide all those maps and tokens. For a long time FATE filled that gap, but over the last two decades Hero Wars/HeroQuest (soon to appear in its latest genre-agnostic guise as QuestWorlds) has been my weapon of choice. It's light, low prep, and fast, with conflicts resolved quickly so that the story can move on. Basically, the ideal vehicle for a 61 year-old gamer worn to a nub by work and health issues.

(Full Disclosure: I have worked on the latest edition of QuestWorlds, so take anything I say with a pinch of salt. However, I have been a fan of the system for more than two decades; from before I got involved.)

 

[Joshua Randall]

Definitely feel the pain about scheduling, although….

One good thing IME about adulthood is people’s schedules are more stable and they are more likely to commit to game night. (It’s no different than poker night, golf night, watch-football-night, etc.) Sure, people miss here and there for whatever reason, but it’s not a constant stream of flake-outs like when we were in our 20s.

That said I basically have zero patience for anyone’s scheduling problems and no desire to reschedule myself nor others. Even though on some nights I’m not doing anything anyway, it’s not “game night”. If that makes any sense? I’m set in my ways gorrammit!

 

[timbannock]

Definitely feel the pain about scheduling, although….

One good thing IME about adulthood is people’s schedules are more stable and they are more likely to commit to game night. (It’s no different than poker night, golf night, watch-football-night, etc.) Sure, people miss here and there for whatever reason, but it’s not a constant stream of flake-outs like when we were in our 20s.

That said I basically have zero patience for anyone’s scheduling problems and no desire to reschedule myself nor others. Even though on some nights I’m not doing anything anyway, it’s not “game night”. If that makes any sense? I’m set in my ways gorrammit!

My experience is that it was a thousand times easier to schedule games in my teens and twenties. Only as an adult have I had regular flaking, to the point that in a group of 6 players there was more than once that only a single player showed, and of the 5 that didn't show, only 1 or 2 gave me notice more than an hour in advance.

But that said, I'm in SoCal, where I feel like it's a cultural norm that everyone decides on what they are doing at the last possible second. And whether or not they'll tell you is anyone's guess.

Absolutely bonkers, if you ask me.

 

[PrunellaUK]

Strangely enough scheduling might be a generational thing, too. I find groups of oldies to be quite reliable. It's dealing with youngsters in online games that's far more like herding cats.

I had the strangest experience recently of a GM who arranged online sessions and then never turned up. Not once, not twice, but three times! Suffice to say that game rapidly ran out of trust and collapsed. (Sorry, but if you're having a panic attack about running a session, which causes you to ghost it, then I'd gently suggest GMing is NOT FOR YOU!)

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I dunno…

For us as 40s and 50s if we say we will be there we will be there.

The problem is we have to have things align. Kids sports, overtime work, have to do something g with family or in laws…we have one big group and once it hits 5 people someone is not making it..