The shift in gaming as we get older

[Peni Griffin]

The highest level I ever got a character under 1E was 6th, under 2E was 10th, under 3E has been 12th. I think I DMed people to higher levels under 1E, but I'm not sure.

When I started playing in college, we played dungeoncrawls every week - almost always homebrews - zapping in and out in the middles of dungeons as people had time to play. Nobody started with high level characters. If you died, you brought in an existing character or you started over from scratch. I've played games that featured characters ranging from first through 12th level in the same party, and we never worried about balance - we just did the best we could. If we didn't want to quit when the student union closed we'd adjourn to the apartment of somebody who lived off-campus and pulled an all-nighter. We called it D&D, but people had characters from all over the roleplaying map who got shoehorned in. Arduin Grimoire was the big munchkin system and some DMs wouldn't let in an Arduin-influenced character. I remember one guy complaining that so-and-so had deliberately set out to kill his 23rd level character. Those of us receiving his complaints didn't think 23rd was a reasonable level. "Hey, I played him all summer," he said defensively, and we laughed.

I still like 6th level. You level too fast in 3E. Don't have time to get used to it. We used to assume our characters aged at the rate of 1 year per level. I'm running a monk now who's 10th level after four months of game time! It's ridiculous.

Anyway, we played a lot more regularly during the early years after college - once a week with a core group of myself, my husband, our roommate, and his little brother. Our roommate worked on base at Lackland and would pick up gamers as they came through, so we had lots of short-term players. We had two or three rotating campaigns at a time, one week in each - in proper campaign worlds, homebrewed - with interim games in different systems. Campaigns tended to die because after a certain level it became hard to DM them, to find challenges that were hard, but not absurd, week after week after week.

The trouble started when people stopped having time to DM. Nobody wanted to run modules and fewer and fewer people had the time to homebrew. I had to stop DMing because it uses the same mental muscles as writing stories and I couldn't afford to dissipate the time and energy into unpaid media. We even stopped for awhile.

When we started wanting to play again we had trouble finding people we were compatible with. People would play a game or two and drop out. But we have a core again, and we've built on it. Yeah, we can't game every week anymore. But we play big, consistent campaigns with compatible people now. I like mature gaming.

 

[Rothe]

Juries still out on this one for me. Now we are all 40+ our lives have settled into more of a routine and work wise we are all now the boss, or effectively so, so we have much better control over over our schedules. So far we've been very consitent and predictable, we schedule these things and stick to it. The flaky ones are the 30 somethings we've tried to incorporate, but that was pretty much my expereince at that age as well. Just too much carrer and family stuff going on to be consistent. Now that we are old men the games are a chance to recapture our youth, the geek mid-life crisis? Let's hope we can keep at it.


Before college, man we used to play basically from end of school on Friday until Sunday afternoon with as little sleep as possible. Probably 24+ hours all told. (About 6 sessions now spread over 3 months). And we still had time to party, do our home work, etc. Just goes to show how little real responsibilities we had.

 

[Korgoth]

I've had both long and short campaigns in both the old days and more recently. I guess it varies... but getting a steady group seems more problematic now, especially because I'm one of the people who has to move around a fair bit (although that's changing soon, thank the Lord).

One thing that might be a useful campaign structure for today's fluctuating gaming group is the grand old "megadungeon", or "campaign dungeon". The point of playing is making incursions into the place, and the place is deep. Perhaps with the contrivance that the group, or maybe each individual, has an "Amulet of Recall" that returns them/him to the sanctuary in the surface world. That way, it really doesn't matter which player or even which adventuring party shows up to "challenge the dungeon" this week: the DM knows what has changed since last session, and there's no need for continuity beyond that.

 

[WayneLigon]

We've been lucky to not have this problem a great deal. We plan in terms of years, as in 'this years campaign', which may spill over into the next year.

 

[scourger]

Age has affected my gaming, particularly becoming a parent. I just don't have the time, energy or desire to devote to the work of playing, especially DMing. I also don't devour gaming books like I used to do.

Our group meets regularly, but campaigns really don't progress any further. We still seem to fade out at about 7th level. Not coincidentally, that is when the game's complexity really goes up. We seem to have a series of low to mid level games rather than one or a few epic games--in any system. I think we just get bored of one thing after a term of 3-6 months.

Intermittent players are another issue. My solution is to run a more episodic game with a different game system that better allows that style of play. That method is much, much easier to prepare and takes the player characters from novice to legendary levels much more quickly. I am more free to focus on story, too, which is more satisfying for me.

I would like to return to running D&D, but I just don't know if I want to devote the time & effort anymore. I may reprise my 3.0 game for a couple of months this year, but then I've got to move on to something else.

 

[DragonLancer]

Up until the release of 3.X my campaigns generally stopped around 12th-13th level because the game got silly with wishies and the the like. Under the current edition, I'm happy to go to 20th because it feels right for some reason.

As I have gotten older the only real change for me has been that I want a more serious game, with less "blowing off steam" and more dedication to the game.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I'm curious as to whether anyone else sees a shift in gaming as we get older.

By that, it seems that most campaigns (IME) tend to sort of fall apart before ever even getting to the high levels. Maybe it's because I've moved around a lot, but I know a fair number of others that have as well.

It's almost like the "standard" model of "start at 1st, advance to 20th, and then retire" doesn't really work for most people. People either get bored with the campaign, or RL issues prevent the story from coming to a successful completion.


How do you handle this? Ignore it, and continue on, or do you try to shoot for a more "episodic" kind of game where people can come and go as they please?

My own experience is that very few games die away because of player ennui or apathy. My campaigns faded and died quite predictably with the changing seasons of the real-world calendar. When summer rolled into the Pacific Northwest my players bailed and went... OUTSIDE and stuff. When the weather turned colder, say around October, the players couldn't even remember their old PC's or story lines, and the roster would have changed by one or two players anyway, so I'd start another game.

I've only ever had ONE campaign (as a DM) run to "high level" (meaning upper teens). That was my first full 3rd Edition campaign based on the Adventure Path modules and I began it with the specific intent that no matter what else happened it would close down by the time the PC's reached 20th level rather than going into epic levels. It ended several levels before that but I managed to keep it running for over a year in order to get there. The only reason it made it to those levels is due to the design of 3E making for rapid advancement. Previous editions wound up being MUCH slower (at least as WE played them) and maybe that WAS a problem. At the end of that first game though I had already come to feel that 3E advanced PC's much too fast. But I also have come to feel that I should have PLANNED my older campaigns much more, especially in anticipating they would likely END with the onset of summer weather and try to wrap story arcs to fit that schedule. I always assumed instead that EVERY campaign I started would and should age like a fine wine over a decade or more and never die.

If you find that your games DO tend to fade and die on a regular basis then PLAN for it. Leave yourself open to the possibility that it will run forever, but otherwise organize your campaign to progress in a more episodic fashion. Think of it like a book or movie series where after one ends the next picks up with the same plot where it ended, or with the same characters and all new plots, or some new stuff, some old stuff to keep up some continuity...

 

[EricNoah]

As I grow older, my games have changed. Nowadays...

My game sessions are shorter (4 hours is normal for me)

My game sessions are a little less frequent (once a month is typical for my own game, and I'm in one game that meets maybe 4 times a year. Another game I'm in does meet more like twice a month.)

My story arcs are shorter (might link 2-3 adventures as one plot at maximum, and am more likely to run individual adventures without much linkage; am burned out on long story arcs)

I rely more on computers (character generation software, laptop at the table, fewer books, more PDFs, notes often on computer though I do prefer to have hard copy of monster stats so I can write all over them during play)

I rely more on published adventures and pre-made maps

I require players to be able to submit electronic character info if they can't be present -- when your players are busy adults, they can't always be there but I do need their character info!

I don't worry as much about "realism" as I once did. The weird and unexplainable and silly stuff just doesn't bother me like it used to.

 

[Hussar]

My experience is similar to many here. One year campaigns, maybe a year and a half. My current campaign of almost two years is one of the longest I've ever run.

 

[Stalker0]

The main difference for me is party interaction. When I was younger I had no problems playing the rogue who would steal an extra share of the party loot, or play characters that were the loner guys who never wanted to do what the party said.

Now in general my group tries to always work well together. Charcters who "do their own thing" are frowned upon in the face of getting on with the adventure.