Your worst dry spell

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I've been blessed with a very good group over the years that has a consistant core that attracts other players with ease when someone moves on to school, family, etc. And I've been doubly blessed with an amazing wife who only dabbles in RPGs after my influence, but who has always understood my need for a hobby.

So, my longest dry spell was self-imposed. I stopped gaming altogether for about 4-5 months while I studied for the CPA exam (the older, more difficult version where you took the entire test over a 2-day period). It paid off. I passed the entire test on my first attempt.

I haven't had any greater gap in my favorite hobby before or since in the 28 years I've been gaming.

 

[Rhun]

There have probably been a few times in my life where I've went without actively gaming with other folks for a year or two. I've never stopped gaming completely, though. Even during those times when I wasn't playing, I would be actively working on my own campaign settings and such.

 

[BriarMonkey]

Hmmm... I've had a couple of spells.

I'd gamed pretty regularly during junior high- and high-school (the late seventies and early eighties) and then went off to the military. With various schools and high turnover rates of peeps, gaming never really happened until you got out to your real jobs (duty stations). Once there, a lot of people gamed, so it was pretty easy to find a group. But, upon leaving the military, my first dry spell started, so that would have been around 1996.

Part of the lack of gaming was the lack in finding interested people - and moving a lot. It wasn't until I found my way back to my brother's neck of the woods that I started gaming with him and his group - which was around 2001. So yeah, about 5 years for that one.

The second started when I again was moving around a lot (due to the dotCom bubble burst) and trying to go back to school to up my job prospects, around 2004. This spell has lasted the longest and is still going on.

However, I have since had several stabilizing events in my life, and if all goes well I'll be starting up a Pathfinder campaign here soon (which even includes one of my best friends with whom I gamed while in the military). [crosses fingers]

 

[Viking Bastard]

Yup, just got back into gaming after a 8 year (IIRC) dry spell.

I started gaming at age 9. I stopped gaming at 18, or thereabouts.

It wasn't a conscious decision; my gaming was always centered around a core group of friends and over time we grew apart—went to different schools, made new non-gamer friends and developed new interests (read: girls, booze, pretentious poetry). It just fizzled out. I made some attempts at gaming with different groups, but didn't find a fit. It wasn't that important to me, anyway—I had plenty of hobbies to occupy the space.

Over the years, I sometimes got the itch to roll some dice—mostly centered around nostalgic daydreaming of the good ole' days—but I didn't really expect to return to gaming.

But I did. And happy for it.

 

[DM Howard]

My biggest dry spell is right now. When I'm at college there is no gaming going on. My best friend and I bring our books in hopes of finding interested people, but it hasn't worked out. We found out about a gaming group on campus but there is no way to contact them at all.

Suffice it to say we are starting a group up next semester and we get to play during the Summer when we find the time so it's not too bad.

 

[Dice4Hire]

My biggest dry spell is right now. When I'm at college there is no gaming going on. My best friend and I bring our books in hopes of finding interested people, but it hasn't worked out. We found out about a gaming group on campus but there is no way to contact them at all.

Suffice it to say we are starting a group up next semester and we get to play during the Summer when we find the time so it's not too bad.

That is too bad. I had some of my best gaming ever at Uni.

 

[Thunderfoot]

I stopped playing D&D from 1993 to 1997 due to involvement in religious activities. Not because it was "evil" but because it was a time suck from more "important" work. Thank nobody I came to my senses.

 

[Haltherrion]

My worst dry spell was a few years ago and was cause entirely by World of Warcraft. My gamers started playing it, soon D&D sessions turned into more WOW talk than D&D team. I was game to try it to so we agreed to stop D&D and we ended up focusing on WOW for abour 2.5 years. The theory was we would play together online but our schedules didn't really line up well enough for that to work (D&D just needs an evening a couple times a month, WOW requires common time at least several times a week; hard to do with different home life situations.)

 

[Nifft]

I've had a lot of "too darn busy" spells. The effect is similar.

Cheers, -- N

 

[JediSoth]

I'm currently experiencing a dry spell. It started in early 2009, after the death of my first wife in Nov. 2008. One of my players left immediately and the game kind of fizzled after that (I think it lasted 2-3 more sessions). I met someone else, moved (a whopping 3 miles) and found myself without a dedicated game room. The amount of work required to prepare the basement to have a game room was overwhelming, so very little got done towards that goal in the last year-and-a-half.

We experienced some minor flooding in the basement just before Easter due to a sump pump failure and now the basement is finally all cleaned up. I just have to put some waterproofing paint on the walls and figure out exactly how I want the gaming area set-up before I can get up and running again.

Since my first wife's death and the fizzle of that D&D 4E campaign, I've only gamed at Gary Con and Gen Con (and two Pathfinder Society sessions). Until the basement flooded, I was starting to think that I might have to satisfy my desire for fantasy roleplaying-ish entertainment with World of Warcraft. Now it looks like I might actually be able to put a gaming group back together again.

I had another dry spell as I was finishing up High School. When I moved to VA in 1990, I left everyone I knew who gamed back in Germany. I gamed sporadically (mostly Star Wars D6) with someone I knew in Germany who also moved to the same area in Virginia (unbeknownst to either of us; we happened to encounter each other by chance at the Burger King on Ft. Lee), but didn't really find another group to game with until 1994 ... a little more than a year before I would move yet again (until I was 21, we relocated every five years due to various factors). That time, however, I never considered thinking my gaming was over for an extended time; I was always trying to find a group. It was harder in the days before Internet when you didn't have an FLGS nearby.