Gaming and getting older.

So, for a little background about myself. I am thirty years old. I started playing table-top roleplaying games around the age of nineteen. I started off with D&D 3.0. Then I progressed on to Old World of Darkness, GURPS, Mutants and Masterminds 1st edition, D&D 3.5, New World of Darkness, Mutants and Masterminds second edition, D&D 4.0, etc. I've played alot of game systems, I was one of the playtesters for the Eclipse Phase game system, basically I've spent the last ten years gaming.

And as I've gotten older I've found myself less and less interested in tabletop gaming for one simple reason.
The more skilled you become at the game, the less fun it is.

All of these games have mechanical problems, certain things just don't make sense, certain things are horribly over powered or under powered. That's pretty much the status quo. But as you become more knowledgeable in the game system, the difficulty fades away. You reach the point where all of your characters are optimized to be as effective as humanly possible, and you develop a laundry list of things you just can't play anymore because the game becomes entirely too easy.

And because of how well you know the rules, you can steamroller over any game master who doesn't know them as well as you.

This leads to the game no longer being fun.

Then there is the massive split between Character driven players and Strategy driven players.

Fully optimized characters tend to be unbeatable in the rules, but they are insanely boring to play because to optimize means to be really good at one thing. Usually combat.
Character-driven means to be focused on developing the character at the expense of it's functionality.

The problem is that both kinds of players are common and if you have both kinds of players in one gaming group then the party will never be happy. The strategy players will want the game to be focused entirely on combat (D&D 4.0 was built specifically for these kinds of players), and the Character-driven players will want to mostly or entirely ignore combat and focus on the story.

When I first started off, I really wanted to be a strategy gamer, but I wasn't very good yet. Then eventually I became a Strategy gamer, and found it entirely boring. Yes it's fun to create a ridiculous character who can do insane amounts of damage or can destroy the moon with one magic spell, but it sucks to actually play those characters. They have one gimmick. And as the old saying goes "If all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail."
The Duke mocked you?
Fireball to the head.

Children are fleeing a burning orphanage?
Fireball to the orphanage.

Interrogating a prisoner to find the location of the kidnapped princess?
Fireball to the head.

It's silly at first, but in a character-driven campaign it becomes insanely frustrating to only have one response to any situation. Even if it's a really good response.

No, the most fun I've had gaming have been with characters who weren't particularly good at anything. I played a Blind Barbarian once, who I specifically designed to be kinda shitty, but somehow the dice loved him and he was successful at things that he had no business being successful at. And it was fun playing a character who was naturally that weak. Hell, there wasn't even any rules in D&D for how to deal with a permanently blind character. Usually blindness is temporary in that game. But wacky adventures were had, even though I on paper I was playing a character who should have died at the first sign of combat.

I find myself gaming less and less these days, part of being an adult is we don't have as much free time as we did when we were younger.
But just a few things I've learned over the course of my gaming experience:
1. Find a group of players who want to play in the same style that you do, if you want strategy, don't join a character driven group. It'll just make everyone upset.

2. Always carry as much random stuff as the game master will let you get away with. It always comes in handy, and even if it's not specifically useful to your situation, it might be hilarious in your situation. Especially items that could be used for slapstick comedy. No game master is immune to slapstick comedy.

3. Always be willing to try something new. Some people play one type of character for years before they try something new and realize that they like it better.

4. Beware of girlfriend armor. If a game master has their significant other in the game, odds are, that character will never die. Exceptions: That player is me, or if the couple has been gaming together for years and don't hold deaths against eachother. But especially when introducing a girlfriend to gaming, her character is damn near immune to damage.

5.Never trust a Royal/Grand/Whatever Vizer. Vizer's are always evil, without exception. Even if they seem like a really cool and trustworthy guy, they are playing you.

6.Hilarious off-the-cuff remarks are worth more damage than 100 critical hits. If you can say something hilarious as you are swinging at a guy, the game master is going to die laughing and declare that dude horrifically dead.

7. Try to avoid playing any character that can kill the rest of the party in a single action. If it is unavoidable, Don't TELL them that you can kill them in a single action. This will always lead to party civil-war and campaign death.

8. Always keep a spare character within a couple levels of your current character in case of sudden character death. My character deaths used to be so frequent that I would write new characters on notecards and just pull out a new notecard when the old character died.

9. Remember to take breaks during gaming sessions. It may feel epic being in combat for six hours straight, but your legs and back will be killing you.

10.Don't sacrifice real life happiness for make-believe happiness. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for D&D. Seriously... Don't do it... Do not ditch a girlfriend for gaming, it is incredibly sad and really pisses them off. It's ok if you already talked to your SO about your gaming habits and they are fully aware and supportive, just don't cancel plans with your SO for gaming.


All that being said, I see myself slowly fading into the distance as far as my gaming career is concerned. It was fun, but I'm just not getting the same enjoyment out of it that I used to. That might change, but if it goes away completely I won't be too sad. Gaming characters I've played have been the influence for much of the fiction I've written, It was a good launching point for the character to come from, but now I don't need that anymore to create a character.