Hobby games and the lack of time.

[WizarDru]

I and all of my players are now in our early forties. Throughout middle school, high school and college, gaming was a constant. In middle and high school, long after-school sessions were the norm, maybe several times a week. In college, all day Saturday affairs or 8-hour sessions starting at midnight were not unheard of. After school, weekend full-day games were still the norm for several years.

But.

The years have gotten busier for everyone. I'm married (16 years in two months). Luckily, my wife games with me...but although our group is a mix of singles, married and married with kids, we all lead very busy lives. Until 3e, gaming had faded from our lives. 3E brought it roaring back with a consistent weekly game on either Fridays or Saturdays. But my kids are older now (one becomes a teenager in two weeks) and that means lots of things going on. Sleepovers, vacations, family functions and on and on. Games have decreased from 6 hours to 4 hour sessions, generally. Most of my players travel a significant distance to get to the game, from 10 minutes to 40 minutes...and it's important to me that they enjoy what they came for.

Our games have become less frequent (about twice monthly) and my emphasis on prep has decreased. 4e has become a god-send in that respect. And as Mallus notes, our dedication to iron-clad verisimilitude or unnecessary fluff has been partially cast aside. We have it when it's enjoyable, but we're not married to it. Our games have a strong emphasis on FUN. As one of my players says: "them orcs ain't gonna kill themselves!"

Of course, the game is also just about getting together and seeing friends. It's our major social outlet. As such, some games we have a hard time staying on target; other games we may be laser-focused. It all about having fun, more than anything else. Our goal is to maximize fun time for minimal prep and travel time.

 

[jmucchiello]

For example, I bought Arkham Horror. It looks great. It's a board game that I would love to sit down and play with my wife and a friend or two. I can even (occasionally) block off a 3-4 hour chunk of time to play it. But I have yet to find the time to sit down and learn how to play the darn thing.

Try one or two of these video tutorials before you try to read the rules:
Arkham Horror | Video Gallery | BoardGameGeek

I've found I still have time 8+ hours on Saturday available for gaming. I just don't have a group that can make it at that time. So I've been playing board games instead. I belong to a group of over 30+ board gamers who meet weekly to play. It would never work as a D&D group since nobody shows up every week. But for board games it works out perfectly.

I get my RPG fix here when I have the time to read the forum.

 

[Desdichado]

See if you can find a campaign structure that supports a player pool instead of a rigid player group. That way if one or two players are missing, the rest of you can still play.

This can also take the form of a "pick up" campaign that's played at any session where someone is missing.

The traditional megadungeon or hexcrawl system (in which each session is a stand-alone expedition) works well for this. I also ran a Freeport campaign in which the players formed an adventurers' guild that was sort of like a D&D detective agency: The PC leaders of the organization could dispatch members to whatever the adventure seed for the session was (which were either those primary PCs or a number of ancillary PCs that got developed over the course of the campaign).

Of course, this assumes that the GM isn't among those with scheduling conflicts. But that can also be worked around with alternative GMs.

Everybody's got scheduling conflicts, with the exception of one semi-unemployed nearly 50 year old bachelor. We routinely play one, two or even three players short.

The idea of pick-up games, no continuity, and megadungeons just doesn't appeal to us, though. We'd rather just get together and hang around making jokes at each other's expense than play that kind of game. We do a lot of different kinds of games, but some of our most successful seem to have been adventure paths by Paizo. Why this is so isn't clear, because you'd think with the challenges we face that would be a difficult kind of game for us, but as it turns out, we tend to like them a lot, so... :shrug: We make do.

 

[brainstorm]

Everybody's got scheduling conflicts, with the exception of one semi-unemployed nearly 50 year old bachelor. We routinely play one, two or even three players short.

The idea of pick-up games, no continuity, and megadungeons just doesn't appeal to us, though. We'd rather just get together and hang around making jokes at each other's expense than play that kind of game. We do a lot of different kinds of games, but some of our most successful seem to have been adventure paths by Paizo. Why this is so isn't clear, because you'd think with the challenges we face that would be a difficult kind of game for us, but as it turns out, we tend to like them a lot, so... :shrug: We make do.

My group is lucky to get together once a month. We used to game weekly, but those days are long gone after we hit our 40s. However, I have high hopes of going to daily gaming when we all get put into nursing homes in 40 years or so.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

See if you can find a campaign structure that supports a player pool instead of a rigid player group. That way if one or two players are missing, the rest of you can still play.

I tried that for a while. It actually worked worse than trying to work with a stable group.

For one thing, the player-pool mode has less continuity for all concerned. And, on top of that, there's the knowledge that your absence supposedly won't hurt the game. So, if you miss a game you don't personally miss much, and nobody else will suffer. That knocks any particular session down a couple of notches on the priority ladder.

If nobody cares if you show up... you often won't show up. Enough people do that, and the game suffers.

Our usual solution for no-shows in our D&D games is that the PC in question "has food poisoning" and will catch up when he gets better. If its multiples, someone is "watching over them."

And if we have a lot of people can't/won't make it, its either poker night, movie night or "see you all in 2 weeks."

 

[IronWolf]

Everybody's got scheduling conflicts, with the exception of one semi-unemployed nearly 50 year old bachelor. We routinely play one, two or even three players short.

We are currently a 1 DM, 4 player group and will play one player short. When we were a 1 DM, 5 player group we'd play two down as well. Right now we are on our longest streak of not having our full group together, going on four or five weeks in a row with someone missing. I know the feeling!