Well my gaming group has been on a hiatus for about four months now. The only gaming I do is DM a game at the teen club which is only once a month. All of us have different things going on in our lives, school, jobs, etc. We hope to get back into things during the summer. I’ve talked to everybody and they are all excited, and have missed doing this. Hopefully everything works out schedule-wise in order for us to get together.
Our group has gone through different stages with players and several games, going from in person to going online etc. When we first started there were 8 people (1 gm, and 7 players – varied in age) and we played Dungeon World. During one summer, the four older players of the group decided to get together and play D&D 3.5 (consisting of my brother, 2 other players, and myself) My brother was the DM and he ran his own campaign. We really enjoyed playing that D&D game, but it wasn’t just because of the game. Don’t get us wrong we liked playing with our other members, but we could do more now that there was less players and it was better with it being all older kids.
Our group turned into 5 members (1 GM, 4 players, the older players). No we didn’t kick the others out, we wouldn’t do that. The others just had other things come up and didn’t show up again. which in a way is good cause we all like a smaller group. In the beginning we got together every other week to play (twice a moth) on Saturdays. Then the Library RPG Club started up and they hosted that on Saturdays. Sticking with the every other week idea we had rpg club then we had our personal group. Which actually meant our group was gaming once a month.
Then one of our members moved to a different state, so wanting to still include her we went digital. We all got G+ and roll 20 which was a new thing we had to learn. Along with that we moved on to a new gaming system, Castles and Crusades. The campaign we played was Drow Wars. We didn’t get far in it, probably five sessions or so. Afterwards our GM started getting busy with different things, job/projects etc, so he’s focusing on that. Us player were like “well what should we do now” then we were like, “hey what about that D&D game we played back in summer”
My brother took out his notes he had made and put on the DM hat again. Us players got out our character sheets and got re-familiarized with the game. We have had several sessions and are now level 4 (level 5 or 6 for one player). One more session and we will be finished with My brothers campaign. This will be the first time, we have never finished a game before. After he is done I will be taking the reins of DM and he will get to participate as a player.
I am very excited to become the DM, as I need the practice, so I can become stronger. I will be making my own campaign as well and I hope the players will enjoy it. I’ve got lot’s of cool ideas and things that the characters can do. Creating this new world has been a very fun process to make, many places and stories to be revealed. And of course if our regular GM decides to run again that is totally fine with us. He is a wonderful GM and would love to have him back, but as of now we are content with our D&D game.
Let me know how your groups have changed over the years. What different games have you played? Is your group an in person game or online? What things have you had to deal with? Do you have the same GM or a new one? Do you play in multiple games? Share your stories with me.
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My group has actually yoyo’d.
I’m 42
I had a steady gaming group of one sort or another from around 1982 until around 2002. Each group iteration lasted anywhere from 3-7 years usually with some common members transitioning as the group gained and lost people but a couple times it went through a full reset where I ended up putting together another group.
In 2003 I got a job on the East Coast as a consultant and I (the GM and host) took leave of my small town here in Oregon. For ~5 years I had no gaming other than MMOs. It was a poor substitute. I tried a program called Kloogewerks, but it wasn’t the same.
Then my wife and I moved back to Oregon and in 2006 our son came home so I stopped traveling.
I got back in touch with a few friends and we put together a gaming group. I was a player for the first time in many years and I was loving it. Unfortunately a variety of things from the GM and wife getting busy to some personality conflicts between some of the other players and that group started to break up.
Then 4 or 5 years ago I got involved in G+ and I learned about hangouts and I backed this thing called Tabletop Forge. TTF started out strong but then merged with Roll20 and all-in-all it was a good thing.
At that point I was in touch with my GM from the game I played in a few months before (a friend of 20+ years) and a friend and her hubby I met on the east coast. One night while we were playing WoW, or maybe Left for Dead 2 I asked “Would you all like to try this thing called Roll20? I want to run a Traveller campaign and it looks like a fun fit.”
All 4 of them said yes and so began my 2 year Roll20 Traveller campaign began. It was a LOT of fun. Then, my friend in NJ got the news that her husband was likely to lose his job due to the District Manager wanting to purge all the long term employees in management. I jokingly suggested “You guys should move out here to Oregon!”.
Six months later, my Roll20 group is meeting in meatspace here in Oregon. We started meeting every other Saturday and I topped off the Traveller game. We added a friend fro NJ that moved out here with my other friends and now I am GMing a D&D 5e game on alternating Saturday nights with 6 players.
I also run a Shadowrun 4th Edition campaign every Tuesday night for my NJ friends and the roommate that came with them as well as the occasional game of Numenera.
Crazy yeah? 😀
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Sad to say I haven’t done much gaming this year, one session of 5e has been it so far. I haven’t been able to get the internet since we moved way back in September and I just haven’t had time to get up to the LGS. About three years ago, I was running a pretty successful Castles & Crusades game set in Ravenloft using MapTool and Skype. I had a great group of consistent players, but, again, moving and not getting back online killed that. Not all hope is lost, however. I am planning on running some short sessions for my two oldest children (seven and five) and I would also like to run demos for C&C and All Flesh Must Be Eaten at the LGS. I should have internet again soon for some Roll20 gaming (which is the easiest option for my schedule). Until then, I have been steadily working on a homebrew setting.