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10. How has gaming changed you?
Honestly? I’ve been doing it for so long that I have no sense of what I might have been like without gaming.
My first roleplaying experience was in 1980, I was 11 years old, and some middle-schoolers ran a game for sixth graders. I think it was someone’s older sibling. I’d seen ads for D&D in, oh I don’t know, Omni probably, but my parents hadn’t yet helped me get my first game. I didn’t own any D&D; I learned it cargo-cult style as one did back in the day. The first game I actually owned wasn’t until I was in seventh grade, when I got Traveller.
That said, roleplaying has absolutely taught me a lot, and I have certainly changed a lot within gaming over the years. But I’ve never really considered the possibility of just quitting. Some days the image of me running a game in my 70s makes me smile; other times it makes me cringe.
The one thing about having had roleplaying in my life my entire life is I sometimes wonder what life might have been like without it. What could I have achieved with the time and love I’ve put into this thing? How many languages might I have spoken by now? How many degrees? What if I’d put my time and talents toward, I don’t know, the stock market or entrepreneurship?
No idea. I yam what I yam.
#rpgaday2018
I’m totally going to be running Seniors’ Games Night at my FLGS some day. It’s pretty much the only skill I have that’s even a little valuable in the post-apocalypse, soooo…
The next big phase I’m looking forward to is the gaming-positive parent. I’m moderately squicked out by the whole “raise your kids as nerds!” thing — I’d rather my daughter find her own interests — but I suspect she’ll already want to like at least some of the stuff I like.
She’s also got friends who have shown early interest in the big game room collection. Probably I’ll have some kind of kids gaming club up and running somehow, somewhere.
That will be great! My friend Thomas runs a D&D game for his stepson which sounds like it works alright. They started with Old School Hack and have adjusted to 5e as the young guy grows more comfortable with complex rules. The greatest achievement will be to get your kid to run a game for you, I think.
I think we want our kids to take interest in the things we do. But I don’t want my daughter to be a mirror copy. I don’t want to raise her as a nerd, why the fuck would I want that? I’d much rather she finds her own identity and if she is popular and well liked all the better.
“I’m moderately squicked out by the whole ‘raise your kids as nerds!’ thing — I’d rather my daughter find her own interests — but I suspect she’ll already want to like at least some of the stuff I like.”
I’m actually trying super hard not to raise a nerd son. You see me post photos of us playing board games, but it’s not me indoctrinating him. It’s because board games are currently my most successful way of getting him doing something social and interactive away from video games, which he’s addicted to across all platforms, and to YouTube videos of streamers playing video games. We had him in swim classes until he broke his leg sledding with me in February. We had him in piano lessons after that. We had him in t-ball. He liked all those things, but never yearned for them the way he does video games. I’m also constantly inventing crafts and projects to do together, and creating codes for him to solve and stuff, but right now he’s just hooked hard on video games.