Nothing lasts. At least that’s what Matthew Sweet told me. While this is technically true, I can stand to be a bit selfish and say that as long as it lasts for my lifetime that’s good enough.

This is a hobby that can last a lifetime. I first started playing in 1981 when I was 13. Although I didn’t play consecutively all those years it was like riding a bike every time I started up again. It was automatic. When I wasn’t playing I thought about the hobby quite a bit. These days there is so much to explore and not enough time. At this point I can’t imagine running out of games to play that interest me.

The memories we create can also last a lifetime. The human mind is a funny thing, It can’t really tell the difference between reality and a vividly imagined event. Many of the moments I have experienced in RPGs have stayed with me. Some of them were funny, some of them were poignant or moving, some of them were awesome, some were tragic. Many of the characters have stayed with me as well. I remember them as if they were real people. Not just my characters, but the characters of the other players and some of the more memorable NPCs.

It has been my experience that the hobby has had a lasting impact on me in many ways. It has definitely changed me. I have developed friendships that otherwise would not have been possible. I have gained a different perspective on the human condition. I have experienced making choices that I would not normally get to make, and I have experienced the consequences. In a very real sense I have lived more than one life. I have been able to gain a greater understanding on what makes us the same, and what makes us different. I have learned to listen more. I have been given a window into my own psyche, and the psyches of others.

This may be the last day of RPGaDAY 2019, but it’s not the end of my ongoing love affair with the hobby. In many ways, it’s just the beginning.

Changes aren’t permanent, but change is. The more that things change, the more they stay the same. I’m sure there are more Rush quotes but I think that’s good enough.

The RPG hobby has undergone an incredible evolution over the course of its lifetime. Not only have various games evolved with multiple editions being released, The way that games are published and brought to the consumer has changed dramatically. Things like PDFs, Drive-through RPG, print on demand, kickstarter, etc. have drastically changed the way that creators bring their ideas to the marketplace.

Online forums, YouTube, social media groups, and other modern methods of communication have drastically changed how we communicate about the hobby. Information that was amassed only slowly is now available in an instant.

The diversity of games has exploded. There is literally a game about just about anything you can think of. Role-playing game theory has slowly given us a language to talk about and understand the phenomenon, and this is only in its infancy. We have a lot of evolving to do.

How we play at the table has mostly stayed the same, but at the same time technology has given us the ability to play with people from around the world. If it suits your fancy, there are various online tools to replicate maps and miniatures. If you’re like me and don’t really care about that, there are many platforms with which to have a more face-to-face experience.

Gaming groups evolve all the time. We choose to play different games or to change members. The longer we play together the more we learn each other’s quirks and hopefully figure out how to meet everybody’s needs.

At the end of the day my personal experience is my own evolution as a gamer. This has been quite a journey.

From 1981 to roughly 1990 I played essentially one game. After a long hiatus where I attended to the demands of adult life I returned to the hobby somewhere around 2010. I found that my game had evolved, and I didn’t like how it had. I discovered other people who felt the same way who had created their own community. In that community I found many creative individuals who had made their own homunculi of the original game, each one emphasizing a certain part of it.

Leaving the hobby again for a few years I concentrated on something that was very important in real life. Something that changed me dramatically. I evolved.

Returning to the hobby a second time I began to explore various other games. After initial resistance, I became interested in RPG theory. The YouTube channel that I had started around 2011 changed to reflect my new interests and temperament. My interaction with other members of the hobby who shared my interest in exploration and thoughtful discourse continued to direct this evolution. Not only did I play with a new group of people online, but we discussed the games afterwards. We started to develop a culture of play strongly focused on experience and analysis. This is something I enjoy a great deal. But it certainly wasn’t how I entered the hobby.

I’ve also discovered an interesting relationship between events in the fiction, the reaction of my characters and myself to the situations that we encounter, and my own relationship with real life. I have been able to explore concepts that I would not have thought of many years ago.

My evolution continues, and it is a remarkable journey.

Love is an overused word. I suppose it has to be. The English language just doesn’t have the nuances in this area that many others do. We don’t have the differentiations that something like Greek would allow. I love my daughters, I love chocolate, I love role-playing games, I love the autumn, I love my favorite pair of old shoes, I love playing live music, I love some of my friends unconditionally. Same word, but it conveys very different meanings depending upon context.

However there is great fortune in this ambiguity today because I can essentially talk about whatever the hell I want. And that’s something I love to do.

I love it when the other players at the table are really into the game. This really has nothing to do with me being the game master or a player of a single character. Regardless of my function at the table and regardless of the roles played by the other people, it brings me great joy and satisfaction when they are fully engaged with what we are doing.

Even if I’m already jazzed about what we are doing I can’t help but find their enthusiasm and excitement infectious. Likewise, when shared by everybody at the table that zeal and avidity has a habit of growing exponentially. I love it when this happens. It is a phenomenon that is to be cherished and cultivated.

Quite recently the group I was running lamentations of the flame princess for decided to switch gears at my request and we started up a game of Leagues of Cthulhu by Triple Ace Games. Despite YouTube no longer offering easy streaming via Hangouts we were able to record the session and add it to the playlist.

All the players have been quite enthusiastic about playing in the 1890s and the intrepid spirit of Leagues of Adventure. It remains to be seen how excited they are when they start to encounter the truly horrible, but we’ve already talked about the degree we want that to be present in the game.

All of them have been great so far but it only feels right to single one out today.

Jose has been fun to play with ever since I met him. But it has been really nice to see just how enthusiastic and invested he has become in this particular game, genre, and in the ubiquity system. He an admitted old West fanatic, so of course he created a cowboy type scout who has joined up with a league who recognizes his talents. He knows the tropes very well so how he plays Cord McNally it spot on, and the pulp heroics abound.

I love how he is doing all that, but what I really love most of all is how much effort he has undertaken to learn the system. It seems that he may know how ubiquity works better than I do! I swear he has a mind like a steel trap, and when a question about the rules comes up he is very often the first one to have the answer. Although this is a little embarrassing, it is awesome to see the enthusiasm and investment in the game. It definitely makes my job much easier.

Although I have singled out Jose, it’s only fair to say that Del, Todd, and Eloy along with Jose make running this new game very easy. Everybody is engaged and active. Everybody has showed up to play, and play they do.

I love that.

Everything starts with an idea. Except for those things that we tend to do automatically due to reflex or rote memorization, most of our actions are preceded by an idea. Some are good ideas, and some are bad ideas. The distinction between the two often rests with experiment and experience. Often we have to throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall to find out what sticks. But I don’t think there’s any greater tragedy than the idea that never sees the light of day. Think of all the wasted potential.

Every game on our shelves or in our tablets began with an idea. A premise, a concept, a new mechanic, a “hey what if we did it this way?”. These ideas were written down, hopefully play tested, revised, published and now sit on our shelves where hopefully we play them and they see the light of day. Think of that next time you play a game or read a supplement. This used to be just somebody’s idea. There is a lot of power there.

Every scenario or game world or NPC or creature or the countless other things devised by game masters begin as ideas. Every player character was originally just a concept, an idea. And somehow, through the magic of actual play these ideas become reality. Kept to ourselves they are flat and two dimensional, but shared with one another and allowed to interact, they come to life and often surprise us with what they do. But without that initial idea, that vibrant experience would never have happened.

All of these examples are powerful and profound, but to me perhaps some of the most important ideas occur in the moment during actual play. For some of us that could be improvisation and making things up on the spot. That’s not my preferred play style, but it is a valid and exciting one. For others it could be realizing that as players we don’t need to wait to be shown what to do. We don’t have to wait for our chance to insert a little dialogue. We don’t have to try to figure out what the game master wants us to do. We have an idea, and we act on it. Very often those ideas not only surprise the game master and the other players at the table, they also surprise us.

The phenomenon of play take shape in an unpredictable manner as the various people at the table bring these ideas together and the various elements in the fiction interact with one another. The game becomes dynamic and alive. No one can be sure what’s going to happen, but it’s going to be interesting. When we all have ideas and share them, act on them, and talk about them, we realize that we have truly shown up to the game.

Finally, after the dice have been put away, many times we find that we still have ideas. We have observations, questions reflections, things that we have discovered or are trying to piece together. When we share those with each other and talk about our experiences,our questions, and our theories we find that we are still engaged with the RPG phenomenon. We transcend just talking about other people or events, we talk about ideas. There is a magic there that is hard to put into words. Ideas have real impact.

I have an idea, and it’s so crazy it just might work…

Did you know that a calamity is worse than a disaster? I didn’t, but apparently in the grand scheme of unfortunate events, a calamity is about as bad as it gets. I think it’s even worse than a catastrophe. That’s pretty bad.

I’m not sure if What I am about to talk about rates as a true calamity, but it can be very unfortunate. But even then, it doesn’t have to be all bad.

We all have people that we tend to gravitate towards. Something about them suggests a connection. We find them likable. Perhaps it’s their passion or their relatability. We find it we like talking about the same things, maybe thinking about the same sort of enigmas. Perhaps it’s their willingness to have tact an act maturely even when we disagree. We find conversation with them stimulating. We realize that they are one of “our people”. Whatever it is, we become friends. This happens in all areas of life and it is no different in the role playing game hobby.

And then, the unthinkable happens, calamity strikes.

Maybe this disaster becomes apparent as we talk about gaming, but maybe we actually game together before we realize the terrible truth. And then we find out how cruel and uncaring fate can be.

What is this catastrophe you ask? Simple. We find out that we have radically different expectations, biases, and preferences for the role playing game experience. In some deeply fundamental way we find that we are radically incompatible once we sit down to play. On some deep and inherent level we each naturally interface with the RPG experience in profoundly different ways. We are like oil and water.

If we are fortunate, we are able to realize that we are using different definitions for the same terms and w come to an understanding that each of us has very different things that make the RPG hobby enjoyable for us. We realize that the other person isn’t crazy, they just want something different. We are able to talk about our differences in a civil and friendly matter.

By being willing to seek to understand rather than just seeking to be understood, We each come away richer for the discussions. We are able to see just how diverse and big our hobby actually is. We start to comprehend why very often we as gamers can talk at cross purposes and not understand each other even when we are speaking the same language. We start to see the bigger picture.

Hopefully we become willing to compromise and meet in the middle so that we can play sometimes. Perhaps each of us takes turns playing in the other persons preferred manner so we can experience it and understand it better. We may still find that it is not and may never be our first choice, but we give it a shot. Sure, it probably won’t be an optimal experience, but we will be able to experience the same things and talk about it afterwards. We can understand each other and the hobby even more.

Even when after some open minded pursuit, we find that we aren’t able to play together in a satisfying manner, this does not signal the end of the friendship. Nor is it heralding the end of the ongoing discussion about RPGs and everything that surrounds them. Far from it. We can continue to have this friendship and those discussions and continuously appreciate the RPG phenomenon from a wider vantage point.

From apparent calamity comes wisdom and a richer experience.

At first glance our ordinary lives do not appear to be full of triumph. At least not in the grand and dramatic type. We don’t blow up the death star, or save the princess, or jump the Grand Canyon. Real life can be kind of drab and boring. Not very thrilling.

Role playing games can offer us a different experience where impossible victories and dramatic derring-do are par for the course. Very often those mischievous plastic devils that we call dice are responsible for those moments of triumph. Other times those victories can come as a result of our own skill, or of immersive role-play where the characters can engage in moments of triumphant nobility.

But this blog post isn’t about that…

Back to real life. At the end of the day, in spite of all of the wonderful fiction we create, we are real human beings engaging in a hobby that takes place in the real world.

There are many obstacles to be overcome. Life gets busy. The demands on our time and on our attention are Legion. Learning a new game can seem daunting. Finding a group of fellow gamers that we really connect with can often be a challenge. Coordinating logistical matters with a group Of gamers can be like herding cats.

Sometimes we need to have uncomfortable conversations when we bump up against differences in expectations. Maybe there is a particular genre that we really just have a hard time running or playing and we keep running into the same frustrations despite our desire to do it justice. Maybe the prospect of being a new game master seems overwhelming, or perhaps it’s just being a game master of that new game where we still have trouble internalizing & mastering the system.

It could be that the prospect of learning a new setting or perhaps a time period in our actual history appears to be a Herculean task. Perhaps it’s the challenge of learning new streaming software now that YouTube has discontinued using Hangouts as a streaming option for your online game. Sometimes the list of challenges seems endless.

Every time that we persevere and overcome one of these obstacles, be they real or imagined, is a moment of triumph. We run our first game. That new game that we were nervous about turned out to be received much better than we thought. We start to find the right people. We meet that online kindred spirit in person. We become more comfortable with the new system or new genre. What once seemed impossibly hard or confusing now becomes second nature.

We need to remember to take time to celebrate these victories. After all, real life is full of triumphs. We just have to open our eyes to see them.

Life is full of surprises.

I like predictability just as much as the next person. Probably even more than most. However, there’s nothing like the unexpected or unanticipated to liven things up and make them more interesting.

One of the things that keeps me coming back to RPGs is not knowing just what is going to happen. This is far more than not knowing what the game master has planned for us. It’s so much more than that, and very often it has nothing to do with that at all.

Every person at the table has the ability to do the unexpected. One of my great joys as a game master is having players blindside me with things I never would’ve thought of. In fact it is just as enjoyable when I am a fellow player not in the game master’s chair. But even then I’m still only scratching the surface of what I’m talking about.

Very often I play to find out what is going to happen. This is very different than playing to create what happens. Both can yield surprising results and are equally valid ways to play. Both can involve improvisation on some level. However, there is a certain magic that happens when we play to find out.

Put a bunch of us together in a group and the whole quickly becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Just by looking at the ingredients that are going into the game session you can’t predict what will come out. You have to… play to find out.

There is a certain dynamic magic in the moment as we react to each other and to the emerging events of the fiction. No one can predict just what is going to happen and surprises can come at any moment. Very often they cascade off one another in a wonderful display.

I play for those magical moments. They are so much better than anything I could dream up as a game master or as another player.