Warpiglet-7
Lord of the depths
Damn so right.No, I don't think so, at least speaking for myself. As you say, you aren't the same person now as you were then, and neither am I. I know for myself there are things I enjoyed doing in the past that do not appeal to me as much as they used to, whether that's playing RPGs, going to concerts, having a BBQ and drinks with friends, going out to bars and shooting pool, etc. Not that I don't still do those things but it's just more infrequent. As I get older, I found other interests and realized that there is no sense living in the past, and the only way to truly grow is to move forward.
I played mainly D&D in the 80s through 2005 that's when I consider the time that I had my best games and look back on them more fondly than any others. I ran various other RPGs In the 2010's after a period of not playing for a while. These campaigns didn't last too long, weren't very memorable and were more just a way to kill time rather than being as fun as in years prior. I didn't run a 5E game until June of 2015 when I could find a couple players and this didn't last but a few games. Then I got a regular 5E group together with players coming and going from 2016 until late Feb/early march of this year, which recently broke up. During this time, we also played Modern AGE, & Shadow Dark briefly as well. Don't get me wrong they were fun at times but not as good as they could have been at others. A few months back we did a few sessions of AD&D 2E, and I can definitely say the experience was a pale comparison to our glory days, and I'd suspect you may have the same the outcome. A lot of why I lost a lot of interest in playing stemmed from that I found prepping and scheduling games more of a chore than fun as people have families, jobs, & other commitments. So, it was a lot different than when we played marathon sessions in the 90s multiple times per week, which is what I found so fun, and impossible to recapture now. Within the last year or two it was pretty difficult to get our group to figure out a time and day to play which ended up being once every few weeks.
I'm not trying to sound like a downer, but I think that change is just a natural part of getting older.
The days of whole weekends and late nights are mostly gone. But…
Back to playing 1-2 times a month with pals and…since things change with time…the kids. It’s not all the same but there are fun moments for sure and hearty laughs.
My friends take turns DMing and I do for the kids and occasionally—-the group.
Less frequent. Less obsessive. Less booze. But a new normal…
Reading your post reminded me of playing outlaws and marauding across my friends homebrew campaign map…posterboard with construction paper features! It was a wide open world and we won’t probably have that level of fun chaos again…