Aging and Gaming

[Thomas Shey]

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!

I wouldn't be interested in hit or miss rescheduling. I can understand occasional needs to miss, but if someone can't manage at least three out of four sessions, held every other week, I think I need a new player or GM.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

I live just east of Los Angeles, and I can't say I've seen much of that. Though perhaps I've simply counterselected for it over the years.

 

[Clint_L]

All of us experience cognitive decline to some degree as we age, particularly in processing speed and recall. Every brain is different, and there are outliers, so hopefully that includes all of us (outliers in a positive direction, of course).

An interesting phenomenon of aging and learning is that we get more of a dopamine reward from learning new things for ourselves (as opposed to social learning, or learning for others) when we are younger as compared to when we age. The reasons for this are not well understood, but the practical effect is that it inhibits our desire to learn stuff for our personal use as we age, with the effect that we don't learn as well. Learning new games definitely falls into this category, and I have observed this phenomenon in myself.

When I was in my teens and twenties, I loved learning new game systems just for the sake of learning them, even if I was unlikely to play them. I loved trying out new video games, board games, RPGs, whatever.

Now that I am in my 50s, I can hardly be arsed to pick up a new video game unless it is immediately familiar. Learning a new board game or RPG feels like a bit of a chore. I am much more biased towards games that I already know, or that are similar to games I already know, as compared to my younger years when novelty was in itself an attraction. As I am aware of this phenomenon and know it is good for aging brains to learn new stuff, I have to make it a point to seek out and persevere with new learning experiences when it comes to gaming. But now, it can feel like a chore.

Incidentally, this is probably connected to the well-established bias that older folks have against new values and technologies: novelty tends to go from being a feature to a flaw as we age, and this is partially due to biological mechanisms. It's worth reminding ourselves of that.

TLDR: as we age, learning becomes both harder and less biologically rewarding.

 

[GrimCo]

When it comes to scheduling, yes, it's bit harder now, cause we all have less free time. But on the other hand, once we set date, it's on. Unless it's real emergency, no one quits session without warning or sends text 20 minutes before we meet that he can't make it. Back in HS/Uni, we all had more free time, it was easier to arrange session, even on short notice ( Hey guys what you up to tonight? Nothing? D&D tonight? Cool, see you all at 8. ), but there was more last minute cancellations or simple no shows ( specially for games on Thursday and weekends in the morning, cause partying and stuff). We all had more laissez faire attitude when it came to free time. Now, we cherish our free time more, so we take it more serious.

Just to chime in about games in general. Between 5 of us, we have at least 40-50 different board games. But when we get together for game night, it's always same 4-5 games, and those tend to be on rules light side of things with lower game times. Games that can be explained and picked up quickly by people that never played them.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Board games are an interesting case because it often takes a significant amount of concentrated learning for a game that might last 60 minutes. And, sure, you can infinitely replay that board game… but you probably won’t.

Whereas RPGs may require just as significant amount of concentrated learning and then some, but the game lasts 3-4 hours per session (on average, YMMV, etc.) and is more likely to be infinitely played, or at least played for a very long time if the group enjoys it.

For example, our group has been playing 4e D&D off and on for 16 years.
Vs.
To pick a board game with mentally hard rules, let’s say Tigris & Eufrates, we’ve probably only played it a total of 20 hours.

 

[haakon1]

my brain increasingly rebels at me trying to cram more TTRPG rules and lore into it. "Dag nab it, you still expect me to keep up with constantly changing law add technology and then come home and try to understand and compare the 4 or 5 different rule variants

Yup. I’ve resisted most new editions. If you wait long enough, the “new” edition goes into the “Older Editions” section and ENworld et al. will move on to the next shiny thing.

Play what you like, ignore the marketing that says what was good enough no longer is.

Also, give yourself credit that you know, at this point, many variants of the same rules. I’ve played AD&D, OA, 2e, 3e, 3.5e, 4e, PF1, 5e 2014, and 5e BG3. It’s enough - I’ve paid my dues, and have played up to 9 versions of the same rules.

But hey, somebody gave me the 5e 2024 DMG!

 

[schneeland]

An interesting phenomenon of aging and learning is that we get more of a dopamine reward from learning new things for ourselves (as opposed to social learning, or learning for others) when we are younger as compared to when we age. The reasons for this are not well understood, but the practical effect is that it inhibits our desire to learn stuff for our personal use as we age, with the effect that we don't learn as well. Learning new games definitely falls into this category, and I have observed this phenomenon in myself.
...
Incidentally, this is probably connected to the well-established bias that older folks have against new values and technologies: novelty tends to go from being a feature to a flaw as we age, and this is partially due to biological mechanisms. It's worth reminding ourselves of that.

TLDR: as we age, learning becomes both harder and less biologically rewarding.

Using this as a starting point from the post I wanted to write for a long time:
I found that you can trick yourself a bit into learning things if you have a hobby or other driver to spend the necessary time. If I look back at the past decade, then RPGs provided the initial momentum to get into a lot of things I might otherwise have delayed for a longer time or even never picked up - e.g. RPG streams brought me to Twitch, and subsequently also motivated me to re-activate my dormant Twitter and Reddit accounts; and though Discord feels a bit like IRC + Teamspeak for people with mobiles, I'm not sure if I would have started actively using it without RPG communities and online play; even for digital reading, the main motivation was to get an iPad was RPG PDFs and sketching maps.
And there's similar examples for other areas (e.g. doing a deep dive on Machine Learning in the preparation for a new job role, or finally getting a Smartwatch for health reasons). So I feel sometime it just needs a little nudge to get you started and after a bit of adjustment time, new things often actually don't look too bad.
I do agree, though, that this requires deliberate effort now while it came pretty much naturally in my 20s. And maybe it helped a bit that I spent most of my 30s doing a PhD, so cramming obscure stuff into my brain was pretty much required.

More generally, I am mid 40s now, so a bit younger than OP, but I have noticed some of the things other people have mentioned before. The obvious thing is readability of text, but here I can say that I held the opinion that RPG books would better be digest size and have at least somewhat larger fonts for a few years already. I have also noticed especially in the past few years that my body has settled for a generally lower energy level, so even ignoring scheduling issues, very long sessions are looking less attractive (maybe I will be able to bump it up a bit again with more exercise, but that remains to be seen). And finally, in what is probably a bit of a bleak outlook, I have estimated that at the current playing speed (one sessions per week, which is what I can confortably fit into my week), statistically speaking I have roughly 40 campaigns left until I take my final rest. This doesn't completely stop me from liking and reading new systems, but it made me realize that some big projects and campaigns will probably never happen.

Beyond that, the past few years have solidified my preference for medium-crunch systems and I ended up finding that (neo-/modern) trad and OSR systems probably work best for me, but I tend to say that's more a function of gaming age than biological age.

 

[PrunellaUK]

An issue here is: who learns new RPG systems? Well, in most groups I've played with not everyone learns the game system.

• The GM learns it. (Though surprisingly, I have experience of one that didn't.)
• One or two players might invest in the rules-set and read or part-read them.
• The rest? They have no time for homework and have to be handheld and guided through play until they've picked it up by osmosis. If you're lucky they will buy and read the rules after a few sessions and be more clued in - but in my experience a bunch do not.

I think this creates a problem for the GM.

The crunchier the system, the harder it is to inculcate the rules in players, and the more likely players will experience frustration with the rules and drop out or want to do something else, and the harder it is to get to a campaign length where players reach a critical mass of rules knowledge. Of course you can argue that campaign failure is actually the GM's failure to engage players, and you might be right. But still, I feel that complexity = friction = lower probability of campaign survival. These things interrelate and age is a contributer.

 

[aramis erak]

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!

The public libraries in Corvallis (OR) and Anchorage (AK) both have several RPGs in the collections... but they're wait list items.

 

[haakon1]

The crunchier the system, the harder it is to inculcate the rules in players, and the more likely players will experience frustration with the rules and drop out or want to do something else, and the harder it is to get to a campaign length where players reach a critical mass of rules knowledge.

Makes sense to me.

An alternative to going rules light is to play a system your players know - as in get off the “new edition” bandwagon.