One Shots, ADD, and Consumerism

Over the last decade, I've developed a practice that's worked well for me. Twice a year, I do an inventory of the two book shelves that contain my RPG collection. Any games or game books I've not used in play (or even in "research") go into the garage. Every few years, I then do an inventory of the games in the garage and if, as is often the case, I hadn't sought out or thought about the games in question, they go into a pile to be sold or donated. Similarly, if I buy a new game or game book, it has to fit onto those two shelves I've reserved for this purpose. If they can't do so, I make room by consigning something currently occupying the shelves to the garage, just as I would during my semiannual inventories.

In the past, this practice would have horrified me. I was convinced that I needed every single game or game book I'd ever bought, having, in the past, got rid of a book that I later decided I shouldn't have. I felt that the only thing worse than getting rid of a book you might later want is buying something a second time to correct your mistake. The results of this line of thinking were obvious: shelves filled with games I'd not looked at, let alone played, in years. It was frankly ridiculous and indulgent and, looked at objectively, there was no justification for it. Games are for playing, after all; if I wasn't playing a game or had no expectation that I'd do so in the foreseeable future, why was I keeping it around? 

I've never really been a collector of anything, in the best sense of that word, but I've frequently been an accumulator – the kind of thing that's only possible when one has too much disposable income and no concerns about storage space. In recent years, my tolerance for this has declined considerably, influenced in no small part by my increasingly strident belief that RPGs are best enjoyed in the form of long campaigns. In three months, my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign will celebrate its six-year anniversary. That campaign is a continual source of joy to me and I am deeply grateful to the players, both past and present, whose participation in it has enabled it to keep going for so long. As things stand now, I see no end to the campaign, though, if it were to end tomorrow, I would not only consider it one of the highlights of my decades in the hobby but would soon thereafter start up a new campaign that I would hope to last just as long or longer. 

My perspective on RPGs has been transformed by my experiences with the House of Worms. I find the prospect of "one shots" generally underwhelming and a symptom of "gamer ADD" that sometimes seems the norm these days, flitting from one game to the next, never sticking with one for more than a few weeks or months at most before picking up a new one and starting again – serial monogamy in ludic form. I wonder if this style of play has become facilitated in part by the plethora of RPGs now available, with new ones being published on a regular basis. The choices available to gamers in 2020 is a veritable deluge beyond the wildest dreams of gamers two or three decades ago. The allure of so many RPGs is powerful – I've felt it myself – and, with so many options readily available, why would one settle for just one? Why play the same game for years on end when there are so many other imaginative products to sample? It's little wonder that long campaigns are so uncommon.

A few months ago, during a pause in the Forbidden Lands campaign I've been playing in for a year and a half, I offered to run a few sessions of Old School Essentials for the players, to fill the gaps until our referee was again available. We played, I think, three sessions, completing an adventure, at the end of which all the players expressed a desire to continue, having enjoyed both the scenario and the characters they'd created. We didn't continue, as the Forbidden Lands campaign resumed, but the fact that the players expressed the desire to do so demonstrated, I think, the powerful appeal of something more than a one-off. 

The truth is I already have more roleplaying games than I could ever play, even after winnowing my collection down to only a couple of shelves (and, realistically, that's still a lot RPGs). There's no question that some amazing new roleplaying games are being produced today and, from time to time, I come across one that truly grabs my attention. Believe me: I understand the attraction of new games and the desire to play them, but I try very hard to remember how many RPGs I already own – too many, if measured by the simple standard of how long I've spent playing some of them. If I narrowed down the number of games I had to a mere handful, say, D&D, Empire of the Petal Throne, Traveller, and Pendragon (or Call of Cthulhu), I'd have enough material to keep me busy for the rest of my life. I have no need for any more RPGs and, most likely, neither does anyone reading this post.

My point here is not to disparage anyone who owns more than three roleplaying games, enjoys playing one shots, or has made a hobby of collecting, none of which are, in and of themselves, bad things. Rather, it's to emphasize the fact that, just as talking (or writing) about RPGs is no substitute for actually playing them, neither is amassing huge libraries of them without using them at the table (real or virtual) for an extended period of time. My collection of games is vast compared to what I owned when I was a young person, when I spent untold hours playing them – and rarely got bored of doing so. Nowadays, I sometimes get the sense that, with the increase in the number of games available, gamers tire of them so much more easily and our ability to stick with one for more than a few months is diminishing. It's a shame in my opinion, given the joys to be had by playing in lengthy campaigns with the same group of players. My hope is that more of us will recognize this in the coming year and, instead of making a hobby out of consuming games, we'll play them with renewed fervor and tenacity.