(Heheh, back in your day.)

I can game on no sleep, I just can't drive safely without sleep.

Back in my day, when we had a game, sleep or no sleep, we suffered through it, dammit, and we loved it. We also used a lot of commas and clauses in our sentences, you know, and that's just the way it was. Uphill. Both ways. In eight feet of snow.

I was just talking about this the other day w/ a friend of mine. Back in the day, man, we'd stay up for hours on end, damn going to work the next morning! Or, hell, gaming during the day when you're SUPPOSED to be at work (I remember clearly passing the phone around the gaming table as each one of us forced fake coughs into the phone while calling in sickto our respective jobs!).

I once ran a game of three people that ran for nearly 24 hours. I once ran a game that involved 20 players. Before moving to Portland, I had to wrap up a many-years-long campaign with the gaming group I was leaving behind . . . in three days. Yep, all three days, outside of a bit of packing and such, I ran the games.

I've gamed at student union buildings, in dorm rooms, in crowded bedrooms, while working the closing shift at a video store I was the assistant manager at, in the car (DMing from the backseat, playing from the driver's seat), and over various forms of internet communication (IMs, email, etc.).

I passed out in the middle of a game from exhaustion from staying up all night the night before prepping the session.

But nowadays, it's just so damned hard to make a regular gaming schedule work. I'm lucky now to have a regular group (and a semi-regular group on top of that), but, damn, making that happen in the first place was a bitch.

Yeah, man, I know the feeling. Gaming 6 nights a week, each a different game. Full weekend marathon gaming, involving little sleep and much pizza, Dr. Pepper, and Otter Pops. Late-late-late night games of Talisman while away at debate tournaments. Years-long game campaigns with players that woudl show up and sit in the corner to avoid amnyone else catching the cold they should have stayed home with. Braving ice storms/electrical storms/hurricanes to make it to the game. Driving hours to another state to run/play a game for three days and back again...after telling work some excuse to get the time off. Running a game, by phone, from the print shop at Graceland...for four hours, long distance.

Just hard to find the kind of people with that kind of commitment, for various reasons. Damn, I miss that.

Running a game, by phone, from the print shop at Graceland...for four hours, long distance.

Damn . . . that's AWESOME.

I grew up in Cheyenne, WY (shhh, don't tell anyone), and when I left to go to film school at MSU in Bozeman, MT, I left my first real gaming group behind . . .

. . . but I still drove the 10-hour trip from Bozeman-to-Cheyenne to either run a game of Star Wars for the old group, or to play in a Star Trek campaign I was still part of (as a sort of recurring guest star).

I do often wonder what it is these days that makes things so difficult to get as much gaming in as I'd like. Is it other interests pulling at me? I used to think so, but I've always been a creative-type, working on a thousand different projects at once (working on a submission for the HPL Film Fest' as we speak!). Hell, I used to be even MORE involved in video production than I am now, but we still gamed liked fiends . . .

Always good to reminisce . . .

(I'm building a homebrew D&D game campaign world now . . . Problem is, once I'm ready to "launch it," I don't know when I'll find the time to run it!)

In my case, I left behind the group in Memphis when I moved to the West Coast. That group was dedicated, and was the best I've ever run for. Plus, we'd been gaming for so long together, it was just the "way things were." Once I moved, I had to find all new people, and in a new city, a new area, and the pressures of finding new work, etc., it was hard to find those people. Either they are gamers but nowhere near or they have no free time/space, or they just aren't gamers. I shoudl be thankful I've even managed to have the group I have, and I don't mean it to sound like I'm bitching about them. I just miss those days when it was important enough to be important to more than just me.

That's kind of what happened to my old group when it feel apart. The gaming just didn't seem to be as important to them anymore (and they didn't really have the balls to say it). I'm soooo grateful for my current group now; everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, and even though we're playing in Forgotten Realms (a setting I'm learning to loathe), I'm having a blast.

Well, that's something, at least. I don't mind FR so much, it's Krynn that never sat well with me. Though, honestly, the last few years, all D&D I've run has either been "Ravenloft" or "Red Steel" anyway.

Ravenloft! Ahhh, memories.

I'm a bit soured on Ravenloft since that's the last setting in which we were playing before the old group imploded-or-whatever . . .

I prefer a lower-magic game to a higher-magic game, and the Realms is just too damned magical for my tastes. Acquiring magic items should not be the equivalent of going to McDonald's for a Big Mac. There needs to be some . . . oh, I don't know . . . MAGIC involved . . .

Dragonlance - I've always enjoyed the books (the current trilogy - Dark Disciple is actually pretty good), but as a campaign setting, I can't imagine it'd be much fun. It's one of those settings that the PCs would just be kind of "along for the ride" while the big NPC heroes go and save the day. (Kind of like that old pre-West End Indiana Jones RPG in which the PCs were all Indy's sidekicks while the NPC/GM Indiana Jones went adventurin'!)

I always wanted to give Red Steel a shot . . .

Red Steel is a pretty interesting setting. I've enjoyed it for a while now.

We miss you to darling! I am sure that if you wanted to travel 3,000 mile to run a game for us we would let you.

I'm assuming the power tools were in the off position because that would have made the game a little too crazy! =) I'm glad you guys had some good time together if anyone deserves and needs it it's you two!

Just tell me that Di did not mention work at all today.

Well, she did, because they called and were curious if it was her lunchbag they found left behind (which it was). Other than that, no, her only mention of work was that she wasn't there. And yes, the power tools were off...she gets enough power from MY tool.

Leave it to you to. Your last comment made me choke on my drink. I guess I asked for it though.