Only So Many Campaigns

As my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign inches ever closer to a conclusion after 10 years, I've found myself pondering the thorny question of what RPGs I might like to play in the future, whether with the players of House of Worms or any others. 

It's not as if there's a lack of games to choose from. There are likely more roleplaying games available today than at any point in the hobby’s history. Nearly every day brings news of a new game, setting, or ruleset, some elaborating on familiar themes, others staking out new ground. It’s an embarrassment of riches, especially compared to my earliest days in the hobby, when the available options were comparatively few and each new release felt like a major event. Now, it's easy to feel numbed – even apathetic – by the sheer volume of choices constantly thrust before us.

Yet alongside this wealth of options comes an unsettling realization: there is no way, not even theoretically, that I could ever hope to play even a fraction of them. Once upon a time, I might have imagined otherwise: that somewhere in the limitless expanse of "someday," I would eventually get around to all the games that caught my eye. Middle age has disabused me of that illusion. Someday has become today and the horizons ahead are no longer limitless.

As I've explained before, I always begin a new campaign with the expectation that it'll last for years. I like the slow unfolding of character and setting, the accumulation of shared memories, the way a world becomes real only after dozens, even hundreds, of sessions. It is in the long campaign that the deepest magic of roleplaying reveals itself. However, long campaigns require a major investment of time – and time is no longer the seemingly endless resource it once appeared to be. With every passing year, the opportunities for beginning (and, more importantly, completing) such campaigns grow fewer.

If a single campaign takes, say, several years to reach some kind of conclusion, how many campaigns do I realistically have left in me? Ten? Five? Fewer? Suddenly the question of what to play takes on a new and somber weight. Every choice I make about what to run or play necessarily means closing the door on countless other possibilities, not just new games, but even beloved classics I've never had the chance to experience properly. RuneQuest, Fading Suns, DCC RPG, not to mention my own Thousand Suns and Secrets of sha-Arthan – all beckon, but each can only be answered at the expense of the others. Each campaign undertaken is a silent farewell to others that will never be.

This isn't just a reflection on the state of the hobby, though it certainly speaks to the oversaturation of the RPG market, where even the most discerning gamer can feel lost amid the noise. The reality is that many of the games published today, for all the passion that went into their creation, will barely be remembered a few years hence. New games will push aside old ones; fashions will change; once-hyped titles will slip into obscurity, their creators moving on to their next project, and the hobby shifting its gaze. Our entertainments, like ourselves, are fleeting.

By their nature, all entertainments are ephemeral. New games, new editions, new settings will continue to be born, shine brightly for a time, and then vanish, just as we all will. There is a poignancy in realizing that, just as the wider world moves on without regard for our preferences or our dreams, so too will the world of gaming. I regularly hear people claim that a new Golden Age of Gaming is upon us and that may indeed be so, but I can only grasp a tiny part of it before my time runs out.

It’s a strange thing to realize that, even in play, one must prioritize. One must decide what matters most: the games whose rules intrigue, the settings that still catch fire in the imagination, the experiences that promise more than mere novelty. There is a temptation, one I felt strongly in my youth, to want to sample everything, to dip a toe in every pool, to always move on to the next new thing. But eventually, if one is lucky, there comes the wisdom to linger, to dwell, and to savor a few chosen things in greater depth.

I don’t know exactly how many campaigns I have left. I hope it’s more than a few. I only know that I must choose them with care. In a hobby bursting with possibilities, it’s no longer enough to simply ask, "What looks interesting?" Instead, I have to ask, "What is worth the time and attention I have left?" What imaginary worlds do I want to live in for a while, what adventures do I want to undertake, what memories do I want to create? 

There are only so many years in a life – and only so many campaigns in a lifetime.