Aging and Gaming

[Thomas Shey]

I wouldn't have recognized it either, but then I'm old an my tolerance for comedy is limited.

 

[payn]

I wouldn't have recognized it either, but then I'm old an my tolerance for comedy is limited.

Tolerance for comedy?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Tolerance for comedy?

Hey now, Payn, why you call me out like that?

 

[schneeland]

Rather randomly I was reminded of this topic today when I came across a Middle Earth-related song, because I realized that maybe I forgot a few things that have changed with age when I wrote my last post:

• As a general tendency, I have noticed that my ability/willingness for suspension of disbelief went down over time, and I tend to prefer more down-to-earth settings over those with higher degrees of magic and fantastical elements, and I also place more importance on verisimilitude and consistency of theme. That's not to say I don't like magic or fantastical elements in my settings (I very much do), but something like Ars Magica's Mythic Europe or the dark fairy tale-inspired Vaesen now have greater appeal to me than, say, the current Forgotten Realms or Golarion; and while I used to struggle with the concept of playing "just" a bunch of knights in Pendragon, with the new edition slowly rolling out, I have now started to comtemplate running the game.
• Probably more of an anecdote, but maybe related: when I started playing about 30 years ago, I strongly favoured magic users over mundane characters, and elf over dwarfs (and really anything else ), but the older I got, the more I started to like the idea of hitting people with sharp and/or heavy sticks of metal, and also developed a great fondness of dwarfs and plain humans - things bounced a bit back in the past few years and I'm probably playing a roughly equal amount of magic and mundane characters, but to this day, the barbarian archetype holds great appeal for me.
• Maybe more of a "me thing", but through various OSR- and OSR-adjacent games and blog articles, I have become enamoured with the idea of rules and procedures for travel in RPGs. While no finished product has materialized, this has reached a degree where, when I think about building a homebrew game, travel procedures come close to conflict resolution systems when brainstorming and sketching ideas.

 

[aramis erak]

With the necessary "IME" caveat, I have found this to be a regional difference. Again, IME, I've found...

I've found that Alaska has it's own regionalities...
Anchorage: many will make plans, and are reticent to cancel... but up to an hour late won't get a call despite cell phones.
Wasilla: reticent to make plans for anything irregular, will call if they realize they're going to be more than 20 minutes late, but they may not realize that until they're 30 minutes late...
Juneau: Politicians get upset if you're even 5 minutes late, but won't hesitate to be 15 late themselves. Then they blame it on constituents. Some exceptions (Sen. Al Kookesh, Rep Eric Croft. Both strive to be early. Sen Lisa Murkowski - she's been late with no excuses offered nor questions answered every one of the 10 times I've been in things she was supposed to show up for... but she also never blamed constituents nor staffers.) Locals tend to be surprisingly prompt.
Fairbanks: the local Catholic Cathedral started 10 min after schedule every time I was there in the 80's, 90's and 00's. The parking lot was a lot more full after servive than at the time it started - same with the pews. Note that when I was there, it was always for church activities, so I can't be certain on other matters... but folks from there tend to give you a window based upon the range of minimum drive time to twice the normal drive time...

One friend of mine, Lona, when she moved to Anchorage, would call to see if I was going to be home - her apartment was a 20 minute drive (15 miles across town) from mine... and she'd call and ask about us being home 30 to 60 minutes from the call... while I, being anchorage-raised, simply assumed 30 minutes for that 20 minute drive, and sat in the car until 5 min before I said I'd be there. Other friends from Fairbanks were likewise cautious about travel times...

 

[billd91]

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!)

It's a mix, I think, and partly based on where people are in their lives at the moment. Scheduling as kids was hard before we could drive - then it was easy for a brief while - then it got hard as people picked up after-school jobs and got into dating. Then it was easier again in college because schedules were more set on campus, particularly if you had a campus-based gaming group. Then it got harder again as we moved off to jobs and other cities. Then it got a LOT harder as people got married and started having kids. Then, once kids were OK with baby sitters or didn't need a babysitter, it got easier again. That's my GenX perspective on when scheduling was easy/hard.
And depending on what generational cohort you're in, other gens are maybe a stage or two ahead or behind, which affects how you view that generation's ability to commit to a schedule.

I also think your general environment makes an impact as well. Do you live in an area where league nights are common and considered normal (could be bowling, curling, softball, soccer, etc)? Then scheduling a regular game probably isn't that hard - everyone's doing it, your parents did it, maybe even your grandparents did too. But if you're in an area where those things are more alien - like a densely urban or really sparse rural rather than suburban/rural town atmosphere - then people may not be as likely to follow that as a regular cultural practice.

 

[AnsaArlasta]

I’ll be fifty-five next month. I started with Holmes’ Basic in 1980, switched to AD&D a year later, and migrated to 2e slowly.( I was in college during the transition and had scant scratch for D&D books; I agree that a huge advantage to gaming as an old dude is being able to buy the books I want when I want them.) I didn’t get into 2e until ‘95, and I only played that for a few years before I moved across the country and left my gaming group behind. I did not find another until I moved back home, and I didn’t play D&D for the twenty years in between.

Learning 5e at fifty was strange—especially without the bridges of 3.x and 4e to ease the transition. I should have approached learning 5e from the ground up, as if I were learning an entirely new game. Instead, I kept falling back on the inaccurate replica of the AD&D rule books in my head and patching it piecemeal with new rules as I learned them. Knowing AD&D hampered my learning because of all of the assumptions I had about the game that had changed—and my opinions on how things ought to be. (Get off my lawn, attunement!)

My attention span has decreased when it comes to studying rule books, but I spend a lot more time reading lore than I once did (because I can now afford all the splatbooks I couldn’t in the long ago times). The less said about my eyesight and my evil bifocals, the better. I misremember rules more often than I once did, but I still remember them better than the average person I game with, so it’s not as frustrating as it could be. I’m also convinced that gaming keeps the mind sharper than it would be otherwise, so there’s that.

Gaming sessions don’t last as long as they once did. The guys I grew up playing with would go from evening till dawn. The games that I play now run for four hours, tops, but I now play in five campaigns per week, so I’m coming out ahead.

All told, I am in my personal Golden Age of D&D. I play with cool people from all over the world; I have shelves and cabinets and a cloud drive filled with D&D books; and I have regained an outlet for creativity that was missing from my life for far too long. I also have a kid who’s just the right age to learn D&D and who is actually interested in doing so. So, yeah, my fifties have so far been great for gaming and it only looks to get better.

I am glad to hear such answers from people. I hope I will think the same way at a similar age.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Just a general comment about @Omak Darkleaf's post: I've been gaming for rapidly approaching a half century now, and I've often found new versions of systems I already know, but contain significant important changes significantly harder to learn than entirely new systems (at least if the new systems aren't too off the beaten path of approaches) because my brain insists on remembering the old way of doing it when it shouldn't.

 

[innerdude]

I was rolling some Battletech tonight at the FLGS. Something reminded me of a Jim Carey movie reference. I said, “kick his ask sea bass… remember that?” I just got blank stares and they asked me what it was from. I couldn’t remember the movie name but it didn’t matter the kids had no idea.

That made me think of this thread.

I've quoted Tommy Boy in multiple work meetings over the last 2 or 3 years, and invariably anyone under the age of 40 has just sat there with a polite smile and a blank stare. And if they were younger than 25, the name "Chris Farley" was meaningless, they'd never even heard of the guy.

Richard Hayden (to Tommy Callahan): "Was there a 'niner' in there? Were you calling from a walkie talkie?"

 

[johndesmarais]

Just a general comment about @Omak Darkleaf's post: I've been gaming for rapidly approaching a half century now, and I've often found new versions of systems I already know, but contain significant important changes significantly harder to learn than entirely new systems (at least if the new systems aren't too off the beaten path of approaches) because my brain insists on remembering the old way of doing it when it shouldn't.

I have this problem with Hero System (Champions). I’ve played it from 3rd edition through to 6th, and find that they have started to merge together in my mind of late.