16.1.16

Do You Choose Games or Do They Choose You?

It may seem obvious, but as life changes, your games probably should change as well. Income fluctuates, children come, grow up, and leave (then come back!). For me, all those things happened and my disability intersects in various ways with the changing circumstances. However, we can't escape some games; they have a hold on us, they have become part of who we are, so we are left with some choices.

Choose your games to fit your life and limitations. When I stopped being able to drive 15 years ago, I tended to play big games with big models, from tanks to Carnifexes, and I kept playing those games for a number of years. As time went on, I noticed I was spending more time, and money, on ways to get all that stuff into bags that were possible to manhandle onto the bus, as I had stopped being able to drive. I slowly shifted to skirmish games or variants, and now 15mm; I can head down to the store with a couple tactical options, dice, tape, rules, and templates in a backpack or shoulder bag. I still have several of the big armies, but they are reserved for when I can get a rides, larger events, etc.

The other route, definitely not mutually exclusive(!), is to let that mindworm of a game sit inside, ferment, for years, until another opportunity comes along. For example, I hardly have the time to sustain GM-ing a Role Playing Campaign, but every summer I run a week long camp for middle school students where my homebrew RuneQuest based world and system can see the light of day. While I started it over 35 years ago, and it lay dormant at times, every year I make progress on one small corner of the world, deliberately choosing areas of the landscape that I have not attended to previously, and the world grows and deepens just a little bit more.