The Game Ranch: In which I descibe a gaming mid-life crisis

March 1, 2009

In which I descibe a gaming mid-life crisis

by Susan Rozmiarek

Yep, it's me. I'm back!

I've been suffering a bit of burnout for the past few months. Not just with blogging and writing reviews, but with the Eurogames that I've been obsessed with for the past eight or so years. What happened? I'm not entirely sure but the never ending procession of new games started feeling the same to me. I've always enjoyed games that had a puzzle-like feel to them but I started to often feel like I was solving variations of the same puzzle. When I blogged about the games, I felt like I was saying the same thing over and over again.

My core gaming group also started gravitating toward only playing all the heavier games coming out and game nights were starting to feel like too much work. I missed having a mix of different types of games. I missed playing a silly, fun game once in a while. Even games that I would call "medium weight" were being derided as "fluff." Unfortunately, it doesn't really matter because our current family responsibilities keep us from being able to attend anything during the week anyway. To add insult to injury, a large monthly group that we could usually attend and play a variety of games has died due to reasons I'm not really clear on (I think the host has lost interest).

What we ARE playing on a regular basis are a monthly D&D 4e campaign and a Descent: Road to Legends campaign. This type of gaming has completely pulled me right out of my Eurogaming doldrums. While I still enjoy a good Eurogame, even a heavy one, I'm now more about dice, theme, drama, theme, socializing, story and theme. :-) A huge board, neat art, and lots and lots of plastic are a plus. Fantasy Flight has been my savior. I guess that currently makes me an Ameritrasher but I'm not completely sure what that means. I'm also branching out to other types of games which I'll leave for future blog entries.

At any rate, if you haven't run away screaming by this point, I'm impressed!

(An aside: should "Eurogames" be capitalized? It looks wrong both ways and they aren't necessarily from Europe anymore. It seems more like a new noun to me. The same goes for "Ameritrasher," a term that I resisted but now accept)

I leave you with a picture of our awesome D&D group in full swing:

Clockwise from me are Joey Belanger, Mike Chapel (our evil DM), Mark Hamzy, Jon Grimm, and Jeff Jones. Ed is taking the picture as always.

Posted by Susan Rozmiarek at March 1, 2009 8:30 PM

Comments

Gaming is about having fun, not meeting some arbitrary standard of coolness, so play what you are enjoying and don't feel any need to apologize for it!

Posted by: Anye on March 1, 2009 10:20 PM

Interesting that you are running a D&D 4E campaign in parallel with Descent - the two seem to overlap a bit! A good future post would be a compare/contrast on the dynamic and feel of the two.

Posted by: Chris Brooks on March 1, 2009 11:03 PM

Good to have you back.

Sadly, you seem to have been possessed!

I never, ever want to hear that Ameritrasher word again.

Seriously, I don't know why you would play Descent when you have D&D as an option. Isn't the latter streets ahead?

Posted by: Mike Siggins on March 2, 2009 1:58 AM

Anye: I agree completely!

Chris and Mike: You guys reminded me that I have a partially written post comparing Descent and D&D 4e that I started a few months ago. I will dust it off, finish it and post it next.

Ed an I are playing with two different groups, although some of the other D&D players are playing their own Descent campaign. Right now, I'm actually enjoying Descent a little better. I'll elaborate more in my post.

As to "Ameritrasher," help! Give me a better term. Although, I think that it's a lost cause as it seems to be in widespread use now. Actually, I'd just as soon lump all the games under the term "hobby games."

Posted by: Susan on March 4, 2009 12:28 PM

You've been seduced by the Barnesites and taken our glorious leader Chapel with you!? I knew Joey was wavering in his devotion, but CHAPEL? Who will DW have to bitch about now?

Posted by: Friendless on March 6, 2009 12:06 AM

DW doesn't seem to ever have a problem finding things/people to bitch about! :)

Posted by: Susan on March 18, 2009 12:23 AM