Last week I got to vacation for a full week at the NC coast with my family. Not just my wife and daughter, but the entirety of my dad’s side of the family. All my sisters, brothers-in-law, nieces, and nephews were there. It was a good-sized crowd and we had tons of fun together.
Now, when I go to the beach, I’m mostly there to relax. I don’t like having a big agenda planned. However, there is a short list of activities that are mandatory, including a long walk on the beach, digging a big hole, building a sandcastle, and copious body surfing. It is this last activity that caused a sudden insight about gaming. I’ll get to the gaming part in just a moment.
When I talk about “body surfing,” I’m a real minimalist. It’s just me and my body (and a swimsuit) out in the waves, surfing. I don’t use a board, boogie or otherwise. I don’t use a raft or float. I simply wait for the right moment in the wave, launch myself forward, head down, arms extended, fingertips up, and ride the wave as far as it takes me. Most of the time it’s right up into the sand.
I noticed I was the only one doing it this way. My brothers-in-law were all out there among the waves with boogie boards or rafts, having a grand old time. I wondered which one of us was “doing it right” and made some observations. I was catching at least twice as many waves as they were and typically riding them in further on the beach. Fighting their way back out into the surf with a big floating object was slowing them down considerably. And the need to get their floating platform positioned properly was limiting which waves they were catching.
Does this mean they were having badwrongfun? Of course not. We were all having a pretty good time enjoying the waves as well as the periodic war stories about how good that one was or how badly crushed we got under that big wave. I’m not suggesting I was riding these waves in the “one true way.” I just couldn’t escape the idea that their gear was slowing them down.
Flashback to my first GenCon in 2005. I had never met or gamed with most of the ENWorld posse and I wanted to make a good impression. I brought with me two games I thought were pretty good: Sky Galleons of Mars and Orcs! They both used the d20 system in one form or another, but that’s where the similarities ended. Each used very different characters and scenarios. And for each I brought minis and terrain appropriate to the adventure.
I had loaded all this stuff into a pair of rather large plastic bins and proceeded to lug these things all over GenCon. Did I mention I was staying at the Best Western three blocks on the opposite side of the convention center from where I was running most of my games? I was a ridiculous and pitiful sight schlepping these huge crates around wherever I went. One night, after running a game late and stopping by the Embassy Suites, Piratecat took pity on me and let me leave the crates in his room to pick up the next day.
Now I will say, these props made an impression. Most folks commented on how well-crafted and elaborate they were. They definitely seemed big and bold on the gaming table. Quite a few passersby stopped to ask what we were playing and took pictures. But were these props worth the hassle? I have huge doubts.
It may be difficult at this late date to separate the favorable impression I made with some ENWorlders whom I’ve come to call great friends from all this elaborate gear I was hauling. I still cherish the moment after I ran Orcs! when Piratecat said, “You’re a really good GM!” And Teflon Billy pronounced it “The Year of Rel” since he was prone to making such proclamations back in the day (that dude SERIOUSLY needs to get his butt back to GenCon). Would they have accepted me and liked me if I hadn’t had scale models of Elvish Treehouses for my Orcs! game? I think they probably would have.
As proof of this theory, I submit that I have consistently brought less and less gear with me for my GenCon games in subsequent years. Most of the response to my games has been pretty good. Also, I’ve participated in lots of games which featured no battlemat and even ones without so much as a character sheet (I’m looking at you, Fiasco), which have provided some of my favorite gaming experiences.
Amusingly, I still tend to run games with figures and terrain in my home games. I got in on the Reaper Mini Kickstarter (which I’m hoping will finally arrive any day now) as well as Dwarven Forge. I’ve got some truly amazing dungeon dressing incoming, and I plan to merrily run a dungeon crawl of epic proportions this fall. I clearly have a great fondness for “gear.”
But I also like to think I’ve absorbed an important lesson along the way: Gear is great, right up until the point that it is getting in the way of having more fun. If you are catching fewer waves and not riding them as far, is that raft really your friend? Are you spending too much time counting squares or moving dungeon tiles around and not enough time laughing and saying, “Wow!”?
Don’t let that gear slow you down.
Now, when I go to the beach, I’m mostly there to relax. I don’t like having a big agenda planned. However, there is a short list of activities that are mandatory, including a long walk on the beach, digging a big hole, building a sandcastle, and copious body surfing. It is this last activity that caused a sudden insight about gaming. I’ll get to the gaming part in just a moment.
When I talk about “body surfing,” I’m a real minimalist. It’s just me and my body (and a swimsuit) out in the waves, surfing. I don’t use a board, boogie or otherwise. I don’t use a raft or float. I simply wait for the right moment in the wave, launch myself forward, head down, arms extended, fingertips up, and ride the wave as far as it takes me. Most of the time it’s right up into the sand.
I noticed I was the only one doing it this way. My brothers-in-law were all out there among the waves with boogie boards or rafts, having a grand old time. I wondered which one of us was “doing it right” and made some observations. I was catching at least twice as many waves as they were and typically riding them in further on the beach. Fighting their way back out into the surf with a big floating object was slowing them down considerably. And the need to get their floating platform positioned properly was limiting which waves they were catching.
Does this mean they were having badwrongfun? Of course not. We were all having a pretty good time enjoying the waves as well as the periodic war stories about how good that one was or how badly crushed we got under that big wave. I’m not suggesting I was riding these waves in the “one true way.” I just couldn’t escape the idea that their gear was slowing them down.
Flashback to my first GenCon in 2005. I had never met or gamed with most of the ENWorld posse and I wanted to make a good impression. I brought with me two games I thought were pretty good: Sky Galleons of Mars and Orcs! They both used the d20 system in one form or another, but that’s where the similarities ended. Each used very different characters and scenarios. And for each I brought minis and terrain appropriate to the adventure.
I had loaded all this stuff into a pair of rather large plastic bins and proceeded to lug these things all over GenCon. Did I mention I was staying at the Best Western three blocks on the opposite side of the convention center from where I was running most of my games? I was a ridiculous and pitiful sight schlepping these huge crates around wherever I went. One night, after running a game late and stopping by the Embassy Suites, Piratecat took pity on me and let me leave the crates in his room to pick up the next day.
Now I will say, these props made an impression. Most folks commented on how well-crafted and elaborate they were. They definitely seemed big and bold on the gaming table. Quite a few passersby stopped to ask what we were playing and took pictures. But were these props worth the hassle? I have huge doubts.
It may be difficult at this late date to separate the favorable impression I made with some ENWorlders whom I’ve come to call great friends from all this elaborate gear I was hauling. I still cherish the moment after I ran Orcs! when Piratecat said, “You’re a really good GM!” And Teflon Billy pronounced it “The Year of Rel” since he was prone to making such proclamations back in the day (that dude SERIOUSLY needs to get his butt back to GenCon). Would they have accepted me and liked me if I hadn’t had scale models of Elvish Treehouses for my Orcs! game? I think they probably would have.
As proof of this theory, I submit that I have consistently brought less and less gear with me for my GenCon games in subsequent years. Most of the response to my games has been pretty good. Also, I’ve participated in lots of games which featured no battlemat and even ones without so much as a character sheet (I’m looking at you, Fiasco), which have provided some of my favorite gaming experiences.
Amusingly, I still tend to run games with figures and terrain in my home games. I got in on the Reaper Mini Kickstarter (which I’m hoping will finally arrive any day now) as well as Dwarven Forge. I’ve got some truly amazing dungeon dressing incoming, and I plan to merrily run a dungeon crawl of epic proportions this fall. I clearly have a great fondness for “gear.”
But I also like to think I’ve absorbed an important lesson along the way: Gear is great, right up until the point that it is getting in the way of having more fun. If you are catching fewer waves and not riding them as far, is that raft really your friend? Are you spending too much time counting squares or moving dungeon tiles around and not enough time laughing and saying, “Wow!”?
Don’t let that gear slow you down.
