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So, me and my friends were talking about doing a game in the near future, and were trying to consolidate our schedules. While we did finally find a few hours for MTG, we couldn't find anytime for a really RPG sit down.
Except with our mornings. Assuming we sleep 8-9 hours, we could actually accommodate 5 hours for gaming. But none of us want to wake up and then game.
Does anyone else find this to be true? Is the idea of gaming at dawn awful? Do you game in the morning?
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Its not the morning I avoid, its the sun.
That said, the few times I've tried gaming in the morning the not so morning people a bit grumpy.
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Gaming at dawn?
Just being awake at dawn is an awful idea!
I think it could be down to gamers tending to have more active imaginations, which means we sit up way later at night than we should, milling ideas over in our heads (or just playing games)
I tend to spend most of the morning in a somewhat groggy state, hoping my brain will eventually decide to join me.
If I'm actually doing anything around 8-9am, it usually means I haven't slept yet :)
I'm guessing that you're still young. I'm a morning person now, and have been for 20 years, but I absolutely was not when I was in high school and college.
When you get to your late 20s, then at least some of your friends will be morning people.
Like Haladir, I became a morning person after I finished college and approached thirty. Some days I wish I could sleep in, but between 7 and 8 is my waking time.
A lot of it comes down to habits and sleep hygiene. Essentially, if you follow a consistent bed time that allows you to actually get enough sleep, you eventually stop being sleep deprived and having to sleep in to make up sleep debt. Sleep hygiene also does wonders for how good you feel throughout the day.
But, to more thoroughly answer your question: gamers tend not to be morning people because they stay up late. It's really as simple as that.
Afternoon is my peak time of awakeness, but my games are generally at night. I'm in college, so that's when everyone is generally done with work/classes.
But, to more thoroughly answer your question: gamers tend not to be morning people because they stay up late. It's really as simple as that.
Yup. On weekdays, my alarm is set for 5:45 AM. (I have to get the office open and ready for customers at 8:00, meaning I have to be there by 7:45 at the latest.) I usually go to bed at 10, and it's not a problem. Of course, on nights I stay up to midnight, getting up before 6 is a bit harder.
My most productive part of the workday is from 8:30 to 10.
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Gamers tend not to be morning people because they stay up late.
Yes, and I wonder why. What drives us to be such night-owls?
Also, I'm nearly 30, and I should be regulating my sleep, you are correct...but I am still in college, earning my degree at UW (wooo go Huskies!), so no rest for the grad student...
I dunno, perhaps gamers are more of the night owl type, but I think its more a social habit thing; having social activities at the end of the day rather than at the beginning.
The majority of us are conditioned to work earlier in the day and indulge in leisure activities later on in the evening. It's the same pattern for movie theatres; there are a lot more evening showings that morning ones, and I don't think we can generalize that "people who enjoy movies" are not morning people.
RPGs require a significant amount of time and intimacy, which is easier to find at the end of the day. This is different from video or computer games which can be interrupted, played in smaller increments and squeezed better into the day. Thus I've seen just as many people playing video games in the morning, afternoon and evening, given that they are not working.
But otherwise if you buy the night-owls = dreamers and early-birds = doers theories, gamers are usually more of the dreamer type...
Definite night-owl here, and nearly 30 myself. I've started getting to the point where I wake up earlier than I used to - Saturdays when I didn't work it wasn't unusual for me to not get up until 10 or 11, but within the past couple of years that's shifted back closer to 9.
That said even on working-day mornings, when I'm up at 7 and at the office by 8.30, I'm still "barely functional" until about 10 AM. Part of it probably is my sleep schedule - I seem to be utterly incapable of falling asleep before midnight unless I'm sick. Any attempt to go to bed earlier, unless aided by illness, just ends up with me tossing and turning until the normal 12.30/1-AM-ish time that I always normally drift off.
Me too. When I go to sleep before midnight I either won't fall asleep or I enter nap phase and wake in two or three hours.
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Oh yeah. I'm actually not sure which is worse, the "lay there for hours waiting to fall asleep" or the "fall asleep but wake up far too early and can't get back to sleep". Both leave me shaky and nervous til somewhere around noonish, then zombie-like the rest of the day.
I usually sleep like a rock the night after though.
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I also have problems with sleeping in general - often I wake up multiple times each night, sometimes to fall asleep soon again, sometimes having to go through the whole falling asleep process again...
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Part of it probably is my sleep schedule - I seem to be utterly incapable of falling asleep before midnight unless I'm sick. Any attempt to go to bed earlier, unless aided by illness, just ends up with me tossing and turning until the normal 12.30/1-AM-ish time that I always normally drift off.
Was like that until 35-ish. Then it started to be rougher going on 6 hours or less per night, so i had to change my sleep pattern a bit. Still if I'm not careful, I end-up with a week like this (mornings start at 6h30 because of kids/school/work etc):
Monday: Ok, let's be reasonable today. bed at 10 pm
Tuesday: Hey, that was a good movie! bed at 11h30 pm
Wednesday: Worked late today. bed at 1 am
Thursday: Stupid addictive computer games! bed at 2h30 am
Friday: It was nice to see Mathieu again! bed at 4 am
Saturday: Bah, tomorrow's Sunday; I can sleep-in a bit. bed at 5h30 am
Sunday: Oh, god, I'm so tired! Crash on the couch at 8h30 pm
Monday: Ok, let's be reasonable today. bed at 10 pm...
I think part of it is definitely to do with work and changing schedules. I used to love sleeping in, now I'm awake by 7 pretty much every day, sometimes much earlier. On weekends it doesn't mean I'm out of bed, but I'll be awake and working on some writing or reading something until it's time for breakfast... Most of my friends are still uni students though, and even the ones who aren't anymore have only started working in the last year, while I started a full time job straight out of high school 6 - 7 years ago... so they're all still very much in the habit of sleeping late on weekends, which means they need the afternoon to get stuff done, and so we don't start gaming til late.
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It helps I do not and will not have kids. So I'll luckily be able to avoid that bit of the issue.
I remember a long time ago....when I was 20...some friends and I had a game in the evening and we gamed all night and into the next day. We did that ONCE. I guess because of college habits and later work habits, gaming has happened in the evenings. People have had school or work. There have been the rare weekends, but it still ends up being evenings, but we end up having longer game times.
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Morning people are an artificial construct made so the serfs could work more daylight hours (in feudalism era).
I'm a morning person. I am nearly always up and about by 7 AM, but when I try to game way past midnight, I'm always the first in the group to pass out (unfortunate because I'm the GM). However, a few hours later I'm awake to wake up my friends and get the game going again!
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Its not the morning I avoid, its the sun.
Tell me. When has a giant ball of fire ever been good?
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When it struck your enemies.
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I am also a morning person. I sometimes think I am solar powered, I light up the room as soon as the sun peeks up and I am out like a light when the sun turns in for the night. I can and do adapt to the night life when I have to but I prefer the quiet moments in the early morning when all the world is just starting to stir to life and the promise of a new day is ahead. It really is too bad that games don't run in the morning, I would play.
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I prefer the quiet moments in the early morning when all the world is just starting to stir to life and the promise of a new day is ahead.
That's a great time for a walk... Before going to sleep.
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This Sunday, got up at 6.30am, left the house at 7.00am, gamed from 8.00am to 12.30pm. No grumpiness, maybe a little bit tired at first but nothing a Diet Coke couldn't handle. I think most of us who played are agreed that the morning sessions work well as they leave us the rest of the day to be with our families. "Most gamers aren't morning people" is, I would suggest, a facet that most gamers also play computer games (me, not so much anymore) and there can be some very late nights on that.
I'm a diurn gamer; my perfect time to play is between 16:00 and 22:00; I also prefer open, well-ventilated and well-illuminated rooms to play (or gardens. I love roleplaying outside during the summer). After that, engines start to fail and all NPCs start looking the same.
That said, I could not for the life of me play before 12:00.
That said, I could not for the life of me play before 12:00.
One of the best scenes I participated in was around 7 or 8 AM...
The session started before the midnight, however, and it was the climax of campaign. Or technically, after-climax and burial of one of the PCs that turned against the rest of the party before the final battle.
I've pondered the OP too. I'm a morning person; I'm up and awake before 5am, despite my actual alarm being set for 5:15am. On the weekends, I sleep in until 7am, maybe 8am if it was a late night before. I've wanted, for years, to have a late morning/early afternoon RPG session on the weekends, instead of the latest possible time in the evenings, and I've found amongst my fellow gamers, I am alone in this.
When we game, for some odd reason, we game as late as we possibly can. We also start as late as we possibly can that will still allow enough time to play a session. If we're "supposed" to start at 7pm, it's going to be 7:30-ish, or even later(despite us all actually showing up at 6-ish), depending on what the DM has prepared. As a time-obsessed early bird, this annoys me to no end.
Thing is, nobody is busy during the weekend afternoons. There's literally no reason we could not meet up around noon on a Sunday and game until the early evening, breaking off for dinner and such. No reason at all, except our habit of doing every single doable thing in the course of the day, and putting gaming dead-last, causing sessions to run late every single time.
I take that back a little bit; we did an early game once. We were supposed to meet up around 10am, people actually showed up between 11am-noon, and we gamed into the early evening. It was awesome! We got way more play time in(almost a full 7 hour session), than the usual 2.5 hour rushed late evening game, and everyone agreed it was great. But, for whatever reason, we've just never done it since. My friends just flat out refuse to be productive before the afternoon, even if it's supposed to be fun.
The RPG hobby is one that generally is learnt whilst at school/college. Time during the day is limited so desire to play would mean that evening games are favoured, which can run on until participants get bored/fall asleep (whichever happens first). Lack of other commitments would encourage this.
We game late, but this is due to familial commitments.
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I've pondered the OP too. I'm a morning person; I'm up and awake before 5am, despite my actual alarm being set for 5:15am. On the weekends, I sleep in until 7am, maybe 8am if it was a late night before. I've wanted, for years, to have a late morning/early afternoon RPG session on the weekends, instead of the latest possible time in the evenings, and I've found amongst my fellow gamers, I am alone in this.
When we game, for some odd reason, we game as late as we possibly can. We also start as late as we possibly can that will still allow enough time to play a session. If we're "supposed" to start at 7pm, it's going to be 7:30-ish, or even later(despite us all actually showing up at 6-ish), depending on what the DM has prepared. As a time-obsessed early bird, this annoys me to no end.
Thing is, nobody is busy during the weekend afternoons. There's literally no reason we could not meet up around noon on a Sunday and game until the early evening, breaking off for dinner and such. No reason at all, except our habit of doing every single doable thing in the course of the day, and putting gaming dead-last, causing sessions to run late every single time.
I take that back a little bit; we did an early game once. We were supposed to meet up around 10am, people actually showed up between 11am-noon, and we gamed into the early evening. It was awesome! We got way more play time in(almost a full 7 hour session), than the usual 2.5 hour rushed late evening game, and everyone agreed it was great. But, for whatever reason, we've just never done it since. My friends just flat out refuse to be productive before the afternoon, even if it's supposed to be fun.
I had the same issue with Friday nights. It hurt staying up to 1 or 2am. I reformed a new group and we meet every other Sunday at 10am and go until 3 or so. It is pretty great! I feel awake, we get some focused gaming in, make a little snack thingy for people to eat. Its a really good time. I find then I can get some errands or projects in the afternoon done as well.
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Most of the Saturday/Sunday options don't work for my group - we have players who work on Saturday mornings and afternoons, and Sundays are taken up by church services, as well as one player who is out of town/away from his computer all day most Sundays.
Between that, work, and school for those of us still in school, weekday nights ended up the default only availability.