Tuesday, October 23, 2012

How Many Times This Year?

In writing a post last week I found myself wondering just how often people do play the game.  As such, I've put up a small poll you can find in the sidebar.  Mostly, I want to determine (DM or Player) how often you actually participate.

For myself, not counting the online game, which can hardly be called anything but a single running, I would have participated in (by my count) about 25 runnings ... or something like one a week, with time off I took in the summer.

I encourage you to do the poll.  I also encourage you to 'own up,' if you're willing, and post in the comments section how often you've participated this year, or even how many different campaigns you participate in.  Be honest; there's nothing wrong with playing only once, for all that says is that you're A) busy with things in your life; B) unlucky enough not to know other players; or C) that you probably have a girlfriend/lover.

I haven't made any secret of the fact that I play in two off line campaigns.  One, three times as often as the other.

17 comments:

  1. Three campaigns plus a long running online one.

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  2. My pace is significantly off this year, due to work issues.

    I have run 3 sessions and played in fifteen this year, mostly clumped together in conventions.

    To expand, in the prior two years, I ran a long campaign roughly weekly that lasted for 56 full sessions, in addition to significant convention play, adding up to probably another 5-6 run sessions and about 10-15 play sessions.

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  3. I barely manage about 10 this year. Last year was an easy treble of this number, but I recently moved, and the resulting fatigue left me not wanting to do anything, much less something as intensive as gaming.

    I've spent some time recharging the batteries, though, and I'm looking towards getting a weekly running going again soon. My players seem excited about it, and I gotta say I am as well.

    This game is too complicated to play "on the fly", but if it were any less so, I highly doubt anyone would care to. I certainly wouldn't, anyway.

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  4. I have a Hackmaster game in which I'm a player every two weeks, a roughly-once-a-month game in which I alternate between playing and GMming, and occasional (maybe twice a month) Google Plus guys. So on average that comes to a bit less than once a week, I guess, and three times as much as a player as a DM (which is actually new for me).

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  5. I've played about 20 games up until the end of May, and maybe 6 since then. I've run 13 game sessions since January.

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  6. If I include all rpg titles played/run it's around 15, just D&D it's 5. I left out solitaire gaming, just because.

    The D&D "campaign" (Can 4 sessions be called a campaign?) began in August and appears to be on a 1x per month schedule, although we often plan more which then end up cancelled for one reason or another.

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  7. None, unfortunately.

    I do not really know of anyone(outside of the last group I participated in) who is running anything, much less plays the game in any of its forms, official or clone.

    Life has been slightly busy and I have been my usual lazy self, indulging more in watching tv, playing with my dog, spending time with my fiance, and grabbing moments on computer games between that.

    I guess I could have participated in online games, either by blog or webcam, but again, the previous commitments fulfill that time.

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  8. I'm a lucky guy... My daughters play, and if a game gets cancelled, I fill in w/ LL and the girls.

    Otherwise, I'm in two different groups that play roughly once every other week.

    And then I've got a group of guys (the core I've played w/ since Jr. High in the 70's) that I get together w/ roughly once a month (if we can manage it...time and distance being the main factors)

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  9. In the last year I have: Played in one campaign lasting January-late February - roughly 10 sessions. Played in a shortlived campaign in March - 7 sessions i think. Then I began to GM, and GM'ed roughly 30 times, the campaig has been ongoing since March. Lately I played three times in a secondary campaign. Add in a few one-shots and I pass 40.

    My gaming group have a set weekly game, with the occational additional session if needed.

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  10. I played one session with a nice enough group of guys, who would probably get more enjoyment out of an MMO than the Pathfinder they were playing. There were no sandbox opportunities and the participants didn't seem bothered at all by that, so I quietly stepped away.

    I tried a Traveller game with some local folks. The referee was enthusiastic and I attended two sessions, but I didn't really click with the group. There wasn't enough depth to the game to keep me interested and the other two players seemed to be less than intrigued by the setting and possibilities.

    A friend of mine started a Traveller game earlier this year and my wife and I attended two sessions. We were having fun and starting to come together, and the referee cancelled the game due to time constraints.

    My Taveller 5 stuff will arrive some time after the new year. Given my general disillusionment with tabletop RPG gaming, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it outside of using it as a springboard for software development projects.

    Outside of moving to Calgary or meeting new people, I can't see myself participating in a tabletop RPG. In a way, Alexis has spoiled me by raising my expectations for a game group. When he and I first met, his writings had had a profound influence on my game and how I looked at gaming. I started and ran the most ambitious campaign I'd ever attempted. After that, all other games I've participated in have fallen far short of my expectations.

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  11. One live game full of ex-coworkers, One live game full of current co workers, One 'live' game over Skype with friends from college, Twoish games on RPOL and the online game.

    Ex co-workers comes out to about 2-3 times a month playing primarily Savage Worlds. We've touched on Rifts, Palladium Heroes, and one session of 3.5ish (Adapted for lets start in under 15 minutes.)

    Current co-workers ran a few sessions of Pathfinder, but the GM/some of the players didn't have the energy to keep it running. We're now switching over to the new Star Wars RPG Beta. Ideally it will run weekly to every other week.

    College friends run weekly to bi-weekly depending on attendance and touch on a variety of games. A homebrew White Wolf with some strange worldbuilding game to set up the world, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, my modified Savage World and 4th ed DnD. Upcoming will be another Savage Worlds game.

    The twoish games on RPOL are actually three. A DnD 3.5 of some quality and regular posting (For RPOL standards, 1-2 posts per week), a DnD 3.5 of poor posting but high quality (1 post a week to biweekly), and a GURPS game of poor quality with stupidly fast posting rate. I just don't know how to get out of that one politely... I'm trying to think up some non-lame BS to get out of that grade school nonsense. Technically I'm on and off with other games testing the waters for good fits and trying to help out friends running games, but those are the current ones.

    And then the blog game which if anyone wants to follow is actually linked on the sidebar. ;)

    And that sums it up for me.

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  12. Only playing 2 D&D campaigns this year for 40 to 50 games.
    Last years there were 2 D&D, 1 world of darkness, 1 CoC. Probably about 60_70 sessions. D&D only would have been just shy of 50.

    There's plenty of active play out there. There's an old guys basketball game I now qualify for (being old) that only get about a dozen games a year, lat I heard basketball was more popular than RPG but its easier to find folks to play D&D with in my age group (or willing to play).

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  13. I'm in one rock-solid biweekly game that's been going for around four years now, and another that is on a 'schedule as you can' basis and averages one session a month since 2006.

    So around 30 runnings so far in 2012.

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  14. Not as much as I want to is the short answer, that owing mostly to the fact that myself and all of my players but two have families and these two, at least, have significant others. I'm guessing just at or under 20 full runnings so far split between my normal campaign and two or three solo sessions I ran for my wife. At best I can hope for two or three more before year's end.

    Every year for the past 3 or 4 I've been telling myself next year that number will be closer to 30 than to 20 and every year summer and the holidays pretty much put a stop to any kind of twice-monthly routine.

    Still, we try and for the most part the sessions are worth the wait in between.

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  15. Your poll on the sidebar appears to be having issues.

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  16. Blogger appears to have wiped the numbers. Nothing I can do about it.

    Thanks for trying, guys.

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  17. I participate currently in four campaigns. Three of those I am running and one I am playing. Two of the campaigns (both D&D 3.5) are irregular affairs, played once a month at most. The other two are weekly to bi-weekly, one is classic D&D now turned into an AD&D campaign, the other a 'Das Schwarze Auge' campaign, a native German roleplaying game. Altogether, I would estimate at least 40 sessions this year, probably even a little more than 50.

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