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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 6207892" data-attributes="member: 59082">Just to clarify, I am not necessarily talking about "work" or prep time specifically, but just the hobby as a whole and the relationship between "secondary" and "primary" activity, in terms of time spent. I suppose if we wanted to be more specific, I would consider three tiers of gaming activity:Primary gaming - the actual game sessionSecondary gaming - session prep, character creation, campaign design, etcTertiary gaming - forum discussions and all forms of talking about the hobby; also, reading, shopping, etcThis also gives us a different way to quantify where one is on the "casual-to-serious-to-diehard" spectrum. The more time spent outside of "primary" activites, the further towards diehard one is. Here are some possible definitions:Casual gamer - someone who spends no time in tertiary gaming, minimal time in secondary (e.g. character creation), and almost only dedicates time to primary gaming. Almost always players and not GMs. Actually, I'd say that one of the frustrations for serious-to-diehard GMs is trying to get casual gamers to dedicate time to secondary activities outside of the game session (e.g. leveling up, character background, etc). Serious gamer - someone who spends more time in secondary gaming than primary, and will also spend a significant amount of time in tertiary activities. By definition, anyone regularly visiting ENWorld and other gaming sites is at least a serious gamer. Diehard gamer - as with serious gamer, but "turned up to 11." Perhaps the main difference is that for the diehard gamer, RPGing is almost certainly their primary leisure activity, or at least equal to anything else and central to one's life, whereas for the serious gamer it might be one of a few leisure activities, and probably not central. Two other things come to mind: serious gamers can go years without playing, while for a diehard that would be agonizing. Also, a diehard gamer might have a dedicated game room.There are other factors and characteristics - for instance, casual gamers usually only own one or two game books, serious gamers dozens to hundreds, and diehards hundreds to thousands, but there are no clear thresholds and you might even find serious gamers who own more game books than a diehard gamer if the serious gamer has the collector bug and the diehard gamer is more utilitarian. That's a bit of a tangent, but, well, I enjoy tertiary gaming!</blockquote>

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