Grognards: Experience with Quitting

[Gray]

I'm not certain if I fit Grognard status either. To the OP, I'd be curious if you are running a homebrew, or prewritten modules. I burnt out for a while with 2e, but I was writing all the campaign stuff myself. 3.0 brought me back to running games. Then about a year ago I was getting burnt out again, especially when the campaign reached 20th level. A year later, that campaign is still sitting in the middle of a big cliff hanger. But I found Pathfinder and it is a refreshing break from writing my own stuff.

[Gray]

Lilith wrote:

I wonder if she'll make me a Sihedron blanket for me...

A Sihedron blanket would be sweet. I don't quilt but a few members of my family have an artistic or craft talent. My grandmother makes great quilts, and a cousin is picking up the hobby. Maybe I can convince my cousin to make one.

[Darkjoy]

I am going through a major DnD slump DM-wise, I've got no inspiration whatsoever to restart my campaign and with a sudden crush on Dark Heresy I have decided to quit the campaign and do 'something' else with my gaming group. I might return to DnD, but for now I am thinking about playing Traveller, Conan, Dark Heresy. Here is hoping that my group like those games otherwise a new DM may be in order.

I still play DnD but even that doesn't seem to fill me with excitement, it may be that that DM is going through the same phase.

[Kruelaid]

I ditched D&D for about 20 years.

During the hiatus I played numerous other games.

[Geoff Davies]

I haven't played D&D in ages, although I still read the books and daydream about it.

I used to love it - played as often as possible, spent all my free time drawing floorplans, rolling up NPCs and characters, collected hundreds of miniatues. However, my family always moved around a lot, and as you get older I've found it more difficult make gaming friends without feeling like a bit of a tool.

I played a bit in university, but mostly, I just read games magazines (Dragon, White Dwarf, etc..) occasionally and did more gaming-related things which you can do on your own - Warhammer appealed to me for quite a while, and I bought rulebooks and read white dwarf, even bought full games, if only to paint some miniatures and try to make terrain models which captured the fantasy elements I remembered loving from D&D and from the memories that playing created.

Video games were a great substitute - no other people required! - and I still play them to this day. I saw 'Oblivion' at a store, and promptly went out and got a huge HDTV and an xbox360 to play it on - that's really been my only gaming experience lately.

About a year and a half ago, when white dwarf became a complete waste of money to buy (ie. I could read everything in the magazine by the time I walked back home... abd I live 10 minutes from the magazine shop) I picked up Dragon and Dungeon instead... and was instantly hooked. And then they stopped publishing them... And seem to have re-awakened the long-dormant D&D/Fantasy gene in me that can't be satisfied by staring at a television or monitor.

Now? I'm trying to find a good 'warband'-style tabletop game with RPG elements that two people can play - so when my daughter goes to bed, my wife and I could play for an hour or so before crashing for the night... Is D&D (as it is today) a good option? Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

We live in a very small town, several hours drive from what I would call 'civilization', and we're looking for 'burst experience' gaming - an hour or two (maximum) before we reach a lull where everything can be put away (the joys of having a toddler...)

Any advice would be much appreciated...

[flash_cxxi]

I left D&D (and RPing in general) after I left High School. Stuck with it for a couple of years, but cards took over our interest and with the coming of 3.0 I lost my interest altogether. I wish now I had kept up with my Dungeon and Dragon collection, I would have had quite a decent run if I hadn't of stopped buying. Funilly enough it was Paizo that got me back into RPing. I happened to see an issue of Dungeon in the Newsagent's and thought I'd pick it up for nostalgia reasons (and because it had a city poster map, Issue 131 for those interested). This got me slightly interested and so I then bought a Dragon Magazine (Issue 343) and this led me to buy the 3.5 PHB, which led me to start buying Dragon/Dungeon again, which led me to buy more 3.5 books (including all the Eberron Sourcebooks), which led me to Paizo, which led me to Pathfinder, which led me to broke but happy. ;)
I still play some card games, and when I expressed an interest to my "card friends" as my wife calls them, in D&D again, they invited me to play with them and now I am trying to influence them into Pathfinder once our current FR Campaign wraps up.
So a shift in our group's interst after High School led me away from D&D (and most other RPing) and into CCGs but an interst in CCGs with a new group eventually brought me back into D&D. I've been back in now for just over 2 years after an absence of around 10 years.

[lynora]

Gray wrote:

Lilith wrote:

I wonder if she'll make me a Sihedron blanket for me...

A Sihedron blanket would be sweet. I don't quilt but a few members of my family have an artistic or craft talent. My grandmother makes great quilts, and a cousin is picking up the hobby. Maybe I can convince my cousin to make one.

Oooh, a Sihedron blanket would be sweet... but quilting not so much my thing. Piecing the squares when you have an astigmatism and wouldn't recognize a straight line if it bit you (and yes I did use a straight edge to cut and followed the little guide on the sewing machine to make sure my seams were straight) is an exercise in frustration. But I embroider like nobody's business, and I have a really big piece of green fleece to use as the background.... darn you for giving me crafting ideas. : )

[CourtFool]

Geoff Davies wrote:

Any advice would be much appreciated...

I would recommend Prose Descriptive Qualities (PDQ) System Core Rules as a free, rules light rpg. Character creation can take literally five minutes and you only need a couple d6's. The rules are so light, it is almost free form.

For more flavor there is
Truth & Justice
Questers of the Middle Realms (a good humored poke at D&D)
Dead Inside: The Roleplaying Game of Loss & Redemption

...and of course...
Monkey, Ninja, Pirate Robot: the Roleplaying Game

[Axcalibar]

Gray wrote:

...I'd be curious if you are running a homebrew, or prewritten modules.

The only prewritten module I've ever run is "Escape from Zanzer Tem's Dungeon", converted to 3rd edition. In fact my first D&D campaign sprang forth from it. Since then everything has been homebrew.

Of course, my idea of game preparation is to remember what happened the previous session, then make things up as I go. I rarely take notes, but keep an overarching storyline in mind. I put more thought into my campaign world than the game itself. Recently I've been reimagining Heroshi as a fantasy setting set apart from D&D.