Without question, people did not take me seriously.
I would expect to hear voices shout, "Not me, I'll play this game forever!" Those who would say so, who would not give the matter the introspection it deserves, are either young, unimaginative or still living in their mother's basement. Gentle reader, be you 15 or 45, you CANNOT know what you will be doing ten years from now.
I do love this game. And I can say with some assuredness that I will be running it six months from now. But should something happen - should my circumstances change, should it come about that I obtain a different position or find success some other place than here, I recognize that I may have to give up playing this game, because it would be impractical to continue.
The example I gave my partner Tamara, over the weekend, was this: Suppose that someone who knows me encourages me to submit my resume for a position that they feel I would be suitable for. And suppose this position involved giving seminars, where information was imparted about the business I work for, to various people, including travelling ... the sort of thing that would be 10 days on and 4 days off.
Offered this sort of position, which is entirely possible, I can tell you that something I would not 'feel' like doing during those four days off was further presentation, ANY presentation, including D&D. Sorry, but that would be the facts of it. I might work on maps, I might write a post, I would probably write something fiction and out of fields, but I probably would mostly veg and get quiet time.
Why would I take such a job, if it involved the likelihood of killing D&D for me? Because I'm 49. I'm well aware, more than any other time of my life, that the time is coming when I will be overlooked where it comes to hiring. That is a reality. At 25 I could quit jobs on a whim and never worry about finding work in a day or two, for I was skilled and smart and able to make myself liked whenever it mattered. At 49, those things matter less, because I work for, and apply to, people who are younger than me. People who visibly flinch when I mention the 80s.
The gentle reader had better prepare for it. The brilliant self-employed people in technology and research I knew 20 years ago are struggling to keep their households together, for what was brilliant in 1993 doesn't meet the expectation quite so easily for them today. The business I spent fifteen years breaking into, journalism, crashed and burned five years ago just around the time I was making a good living at it.
The world changes. And its a gawddamn good thing the world changes. I am thrilled to be alive in this world, and not the world of 1981 - to begin with, there were no blogs in 1981. There was no possible way to get a consensus against whatever company-fostered D&D there was, no way to posit an alternative, no way to show thousands of people my maps, or chat about philosophy of gaming, etc. The laptop did not exist as a tool, nor did Excel (shit, in 81, even LOTUS didn't exist, which I learned on incidentally). Nor did every convenient tool for generation that we have now. Yay for change.
Change is relentless, however, and all those decrying the possibility that they would EVER quit playing D&D do so in the safe and secure belief that no one will EVER come up with a better, more astounding version of the game, as though DDO is automatically and without question the highest state of gaming that a computer can offer. That's the sort of dull bovine perception of change that I do expect of the unimaginative. The reader claims to be involved in a hobby requiring imagination and yet, somehow, THIS escapes you? Gad, what fools read this blog.
While the fan boys and gamers argue the moronic divisions between narration and simulation, people having nothing to do with this game are building the applications that will DESTROY this game, as you or as anyone knows it. Believe it. Prepare for it. Open your gawddamn eyes.
There are others coming along who will smack you right in your blind face if you don't.
