RPGaDay Challenge - Day 25 - Anniversary Edition!

Day 25 - Favorite RPG No One Else Wants to Play

Thirty-seven years ago today, I played my first RPG. August 25th is my annual RPG Anniversary.

Thirty-seven years, 37 mind you, is a lot of years to be doing anything. 

To be honest, as hard a question as this one is to answer, there couldn't be a more appropriate question for the day, don't you think?

Looking over nearly four decades of gaming (wow...I just made myself feel old), I seem to have had phases, or perhaps eras, which cause the answer to this question to vary widely.

The GOLDEN AGE, 1977-87

Maybe not the Golden Age, but my Golden Age.

In this period, gaming was new. If a game came out, and we found it, we played it. I could get anyone to play anything, and I'd play or run anything someone suggested.

The SILVER AGE, 1987-1995

By this period, we all had our favorites. I had more than one group, and what one group might not want to try and/or play, the other would totally be up for.

The New York crowd didn't much care for Mecha Anime/Manga.
The New Jersey crowd were all old school giant robot fanatics. Mekton is go!

The New Jersey crowd wasn't so into American style Superhero comics.
The New York group were all rabid comic book fans. Champions? When can we start?

It was like that.

As time marched forward, I played with the NJ crew more often, with the New York group breaking up to deal with work, family, and other personal things.

A NEW GOLDEN AGE and The DARK AGE that followed, 1995-2007

I met my future ex-wife in 1995, and some time later introduced her to my New Jersey friends, and to gaming. She loved it, and in 2000 insisted our first vacation together should be Gen Con.

While her favorite game remained D&D (3 and 3.5 specifically), her favorite genre Fantasy (I know, right?), she also played Mutants & Masterminds, Changeling: The Dreaming, and Traveller (Traveller was another favorite of hers. Go figure).

Life was good, until it wasn't. That part of my story is too personal for this blog, but suffice to say, the honeymoon didn't last forever. When we parted and separated our massive collection of gaming stuff, I laid off heavy gaming for a while. I played once in a while, ran some one-shots, and attended one or two 1-day gaming conventions but didn't really get a campaign going for a couple of years.

The MODERN AGE, 2010-Present

The New Jersey group has split up, in contact with each other for the most part, but living too far apart to really assemble much has basically removed that particular assemblage from my list of go-to gaming contacts.

My old New York pals have kids, work, and elements such as distance and tight budgets that make for an environment not very conducive to gaming.

I found a new New York group a few years ago, and thanks to time, effort, my FLGS, and the very much missed RECESS game days, I now have a great bunch of players. There are some elements of the group that differ greatly from any I have previously gamed with since my earliest days however.

For the first time in 37 years, I kicked a person out of one of my groups. Marcus is no longer gaming with us.

I have no women in the group. No regular players of the female persuasion. It's weird.

This group is very inexperienced compared to my older groups. There are only one or two veteran players that has been playing more than 20-25 years. No one even close to my era.

The group is much more particular in their familiarities and preferences. Superheroes is tough to run in this group, as is non-D&D fantasy (although Bushido is looking promising, but more on that another time). I like more easy going, simple, rules-lite systems, while most of the group likes crunchier mechanics. At the same time, the gang contains several consummate role-players. Like, method actor level. It's cool, and really odd (in a positive way), to have that. I like it. I put up with the crunchy rules because the characterizations are so good. ;)

In the end, I don't think there is any game I would want to run that no one would want to play. It simply requires finding the right audience, and having a great sales pitch.


Good Gaming All! Here's to another 37 years!

AD
Barking Alien