If I Feel Like It

Today one of the many trends in the 90’s is for people to feel like the commitments they make are as flexible as they want them to be and as forgettable as yesterday’s news. Most people who started off gaming earlier on had people who, when commitments were given, made the required amount of effort to make the adjustments they need to keep the schedules they’ve made intact. Now it’s common practice to break the commitments they make like they had no meaning. In fact, to most Gen X gamers, commitments break like cheap watches. Feeling that because they’ve had a bad day at work or it’s not worth the effort to get their rear ends off of the sofa. I’ll give an example from a few years ago. Amongst the college crowd I’ve gamed with, when for a brief time I was part of the Citadel gaming club, there were only three crowds. The Champions crowd, who occupied three rooms and had games that were like the X-Men on steroids. The Vampire crowd of the professionally depressed and where one guy asked me what I thought of the taste of blood. (And I told him the last time I had my lip split open in a fight I didn’t like it much.) And if I wanted to be a real vampire, (Look, I’m a second shift kind of guy, but I don’t like it that much.) And the D&D crowd who I think discovered Monty Haul (“I’m running an AD&D game where everybody starts off at 12th level”. Yikes!) not for me thanks. I finally lined up a group of people, got a hold of my regulars and set the time for 10:00 in the morning which everybody agreed to. All right, the day for the game rolls around and I get my rear in gear and get there 15 minutes early to set up. I’ve got my rules lawyer in tow and at 5 till my people show up and we get ready. Well 10:15 rolls around. O.K. no problem, everybody’s entitled to a 10 to 20 minute grace period. 10:30, I’m working on getting miffed at this point. My people are wanting to know what’s going on. O.K. I round the corner to the lab phone and I start to call around. I get things like “Huh? That was today?” to “Sorry I don’t know where Jimmy is.” To “Wha? I’m in bed man I can’t make it I was out drinking last night.” Fine ya loser stay in bed, oh and by the way. Don’t bother to come to this group again! Needless to say I shot past miffed at this point and went straight to peeved (That’s a joke son.) Now I go back to my people and go into the regular campaign which worked out a lot better. Now, why did these people all decide to just not show? I mean come on, I managed to get up, shower, shave, dress and I managed to get there. What is the difference? Anybody else can do the same. In fact if memory serves I didn’t want to get out of bed myself, let alone drive 25 miles to get there. I think it’s got a lot to do with the fact that most 18-30 year olds (And yes, I fall into this age group, I’m 24.) for the reason that a lot of older people call this the lost generation, people just don’t have a sense of commitment they used to and have basically just become selfish and cynical. Somewhere people lost the desire to be more than a French fry cook and do something important with their lives. Now I could go on and on about how there’s two kinds of people, those who make the mess and those who have to clean it up. Most people are content to make a mess and leave it to people like me to clean it up. This lack of commitment makes it difficult for anybody to put together a reliable group of individuals for a good framework of friends let alone something as voluntary as a gaming group.

What kind of advice can I give to a person with a group of people like this? Unfortunately not much. As a player you have the freedom to move from one group to another until you find one that you’re comfortable with. I had to move around myself quite a bit in the last couple of years having only found two stable groups. One which I formed myself through a lot of trial and error and the other I joined is a Gurps group, which is run by the very capable Kevin Dugan. As a GM it’s all trial and error. You make the mistakes and hopefully learn from them. I’d like to think I did. I’ve got a core of four people who are very good and loyal and with a bit of luck I hope to add to their ranks soon. There’s only this couple of bits of advice I can give. One, when you’ve got a good core you’ve really got it made, I know I do. Two, when you’ve got problems with someone from the array of people that gaming attracts, remember, there’s no law that says you have to like everybody and deal with all their problems. If they are a problem all you have to do is remind them that this is your group and your game. If they don’t like it and won’t try to get along there’s the door and not to let it hit them on their way out.

BTW the demo for September was a smash. I’ll have to do it again in the future. Maybe a tournament or something like that. But to the pair of guys who when they found out it was I who was running it. Unless you’re a munchkin you’ve got nothing to fear from my style of gamemastering. So to you two, you missed out on a bash.