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I get distracted by all kinds of things. Various home projects, BBQing, daughters, Archer, chores, Fallout Shelter... the list morphs over time (especially since I always get bored with any video game I play). However, no one effs with my RPG time - there are no distractions. Not for this and not for GoT. It doesn't take a back seat to anything except the periodic holiday family get-together, and others in my group usually have the same thing going anyways. My non-gaming friends don't ask why I'm busy on a Sunday, the kids don't complain (much) anymore, I even go to gaming while I'm on-call. Yes, I will schedule ahead and cancel myself for something important, but generally I do everything I can to make it to every session.
There was a time in my 20s during which I didn't have a gaming group, but to be fair I was in a metal band that had all kinds of D&D undertones... and overtones.
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Child of the 70's, so we still played outside and used our imagination for entertainment. My cousins were early adaptors of any new fad, video games, toys, etc. and when D&D became more mainstream they jumped on that too. Then they moved on to other things, but I was hooked. I love the creativity of character creation, and the socialization of playing with like-minded deviants. Electronic gaming still hasn't caught up with tabletop imho.
I'm with Bob here. Child of the 70's and we didn't have a video game until I was 14. We didn't have cable until I was in college, and we only got 4 channels....5 if you stood just right and adjusted the aluminum foil on the antenna. We played outside. We poked dead things with sticks. We ate berries, and smooshed them and smeared them all over our faces to play at being Indians. We imagined and told stories of what our GI Joes and Star Wars people were doing. In school, every once in a while, the teacher would roll in the TV and we'd watch The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe or the animated Hobbit or Lord of the Rings. My grade-school teachers read to us over rest time. My mom, made up bed time stories...not read...made up.
As such, I was taught from a young age to imagine, to explore, to create and to tell fantastic stories.
While I like my video games, I gravitate back to the tabletop RPGs. I can tell my stories, I can hang out with my friends, I can be creative. I can explore places I have not been. Heck...I can CREATE places I have not been.
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I do both
and they are both fun
I don't know that electronic gaming will ever catch up with table top. And I think that is really one of the reasons that the table top game is still so valid. The theater of the imagination has no limits. There are no objects in the table top game that a character can't interact with. There's no, "sorry that's not actually a table you can use because it's not an 'object' in the game," moments. There's no chasm that you can't figure out a way across. Also, there is something to be said about the fact that the table top game does NOT have a "save" point. There's a lot more at stake in a table top game because your character can actually die, and never come back (or the cost to bring them back is unreachable at given level).
That's only part of why I play though. The game is addicting! You think it isn't? Take a look at these very boards, and look at all the people who come here just to have a venue to play in! Or, spend their down time at work (guilty) perusing the boards just to spend some time thinking about the game when they aren't allowed to play it. The game is a drug. A real drug. People empty their wallets to play it. They know they're going to empty their wallets to play it, and sometimes they empty their wallets against better judgment (guilty) to play it. There's some euphoria this game creates that is unmatched by any other thing.
That's why I play.
I came to the game in the early 80's. Much like Devastation Bob actually. Rich cousins into every new fad showed us how to play one long night in their RV on a family vacation. And except for a somewhat lengthy period of my late 20's and early 30's (college, marriage, young family), I've never looked back. Even when I wasn't playing, I was still watching the hobby from the periphery.
Why play? I haven't found anything else that matches the table top role playing game for seemingly endless joy. Even with all the hours put in to GM, those moments at the table when the BBEG gets what's coming to him/her can't be matched.
That's just my 2 cp.
I'm fairly firmly of the digital generation (well, early edge anyway), and I only started playing tabletop a year or so ago. But I've always been a voracious reader, and stories are one of my greatest pleasures in life. What could be better than an activity centered around collaborative storytelling? :D
And I sort of like that modern technology has only served to make tabletop more popular and widely available, with things like Roll20 and play by post in online forums. I don't know many people who play in my area, and my group can only get together once a week, but with play by post, I can get my fix constantly. >:)
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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I play (and run) RPGs because I like fantasy stories, and RPGs let me experience those stories with a very specific level of agency.
You see, on one end of the agency spectrum, I can read books and watch movies. I have no agency. The story exists completely independently of anything I say, do or think. This often frustrates me, when I watch characters do things that make no sense (such as ignoring an obvious solution to a problem, or behaving inconsistently with their established personality) just because of what looks good on camera or makes a cool scene. But no matter how much I yell at the screen, those people still do stupid things that the character wouldn't really have done in that situation.
On the other hand, if I were to write my own novel/screenplay, I would have COMPLETE agency. Everything happens EXACTLY as I dictate it would happen. This avoids the above issue, but it also means that there's no surprises, no tension, no "I can't believe that actually worked" moments, and so forth. I might be able to provide those moments to a hypothetical reader of my work, but I don't get any of it for myself, because I'm deciding all the outcomes.
But RPGs? They occupy a space in the middle. Since I get to choose what my PC (if I'm a player) or the NPCs (if I'm the GM) are going to do, I never have to yell "WHY DON'T YOU JUST DO X YOU IDIOT?!" Instead, I can just say "I do X." But at the same time, I also have the opportunity to be surprised (whether by success or by failure, or by the actions of my players if I'm the GM), I get to experience tension, and so forth.
So, in short, RPGs are my medium-amount-of-agency narrative outlet. :)
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I play the MMO Star Wars the Old Republic - but it doesn't cut into my pen and paper RPG time. I love the MMO, but I agree that MMOs will never catch up to pen and paper games. You get a limited choice of characters which many others also play, all carbon copies. Your role playing is extremely limited, even on so called RP servers. It takes little if any imagination. So online games cannot compare.
Another child of the 70s I played D&D in one version or another most of my life until I was about 35. Then I dropped out of playing an RPG for about ten years. I discovered Pathfinder in '09 through an old friend and have been playing regularly ever since.
Why play? I am a 51, disabled woman who is very creative. It has to go somewhere, why not my home brew game? I love adventure paths, so I run one of those too. I am currently playing in Wrath of the Righteous, which appeals to my "knight in shining armor" heroic fantasy interests. It's in my blood. I can't not play.
Well, off to prep for Sunday's Giantslayer campaign. Then some Star Wars. All in a day's "work".
My gamers became akin to a bowling team or a poker group, When soldiers come and go, and your free time is more or less synchronized, you have this block of a couple of years to build together before going onto your separate ways after the service.
Video Games build on instant gratification, it isn't until you go into Clans/Raids that teamwork and social skills develop, but that lack of personal interface can both speed things up or be detrimental. It is easy to be brave, strong, and blatantly a jerk and whatever type of deviant you want to be through that gap.
Unless the other Players/DMs are easily cowed, the group is supposed to work together interpersonally, with a lot of give and take. I've run into people with acute social dysfunctons, and while it's easy to label them as Aspies, its even harder dealing with them, including them, and when I have to, removing them. But, that one good Player or DM you are adventuring with can make it worthwhile.
Coming to Magic the Gathering to D&D, Dark Heresy, WFRP, and subsequently Pathfinder, I realized that my train of this kind of development led me to being too competitive like a lot of Gamers, and its gotten me in trouble with Players and DM alike. I've had to adapt while retaining my core, and it has been pretty good since.
For a lot of introverts or just plain nerds/geeks, RPGs give us another method to interact socially, or just escape, like a good book, but now a communal experience akin to childhood where everyone gathered around in class for storytime.
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It's the only creative outlet I really have now, as well as giving me time to share with my friends. And I think it's also become a habit, I've done it for 30 years now. W/out D&D, PF, or Call of Cthulhu, I'd do nothing but watch tv. People tell me I should be a writer, but I HATE writing so that's out. So, like I said, this is my sole creative outlet.
Edit: And like some of the others mentioned here, my childhood predates the internet, home computers, and cable tv. We had 3 channels and we had to go outside to turn the antenna to pick one of them up. I grew up on a farm which was half field, half woods, so I spent uncounted hours exploring and "cataloging" insects, rodents, snakes, lizards, etc. We played army with sticks for guns, hide and seek in the hills behind the house, explored caves, hunted, and fished. I was also a voracious reader of scifi and fantasy, so my imagination was fueled by many, may things.
I was always into tabletop RPG's but only really started when me and my friends decided to pick it up. In fact, I had owned the Pathfinder Core Rulebook from days gone by, and never used it cause at that time I had no idea what I was holding would be one of the most popular current RPG's of this era.
I agree with many of the reasons that people have listed above, and for me I have been a video gamer more then I have ever been a tabletoper, but it adds something new to what I do.
It started in the 80's. Someone bought the boxed set and we played the game. I was already heavy into reading fantasy and science fiction books. My best guess for why I play is the social life. My friends played the game. When I went to college, there was the Mt. Pleasant Gamers Association. While all the fun people were out getting drunk at the parties around campus, we were playing role playing games. HAZZAH! :D
For the socialite in me it sort of goes downhill from there....
Because video games are too linear. With a GM, I can try whatever strategy I want. Ask anyone who's played with me. I come up with weird strategies.
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I started because it lets me vent the weird and unique ideas in me than video games or simply writing can't. It's so much easier, and enjoyable to make an weird and awesome character, then interact with others for the story than create it all myself. I'm young enough I don't know a world without the internet or cells phones, but that doesn't mean I cant enjoy a good roll or garbage roll :D
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I don't know that electronic gaming will ever catch up with table top. And I think that is really one of the reasons that the table top game is still so valid. The theater of the imagination has no limits. There are no objects in the table top game that a character can't interact with. There's no, "sorry that's not actually a table you can use because it's not an 'object' in the game," moments. There's no chasm that you can't figure out a way across. Also, there is something to be said about the fact that the table top game does NOT have a "save" point. There's a lot more at stake in a table top game because your character can actually die, and never come back (or the cost to bring them back is unreachable at given level).
That's only part of why I play though. The game is addicting! You think it isn't? Take a look at these very boards, and look at all the people who come here just to have a venue to play in! Or, spend their down time at work (guilty) perusing the boards just to spend some time thinking about the game when they aren't allowed to play it. The game is a drug. A real drug. People empty their wallets to play it. They know they're going to empty their wallets to play it, and sometimes they empty their wallets against better judgment (guilty) to play it. There's some euphoria this game creates that is unmatched by any other thing.
That's why I play.
I came to the game in the early 80's. Much like Devastation Bob actually. Rich cousins into every new fad showed us how to play one long night in their RV on a family vacation. And except for a somewhat lengthy period of my late 20's and early 30's (college, marriage, young family), I've never looked back. Even when I wasn't playing, I was still watching the hobby from the periphery.
Why play? I haven't found anything else that matches the table top role playing game for seemingly endless joy. Even with all the hours put in to GM, those moments at the table when the BBEG gets what's coming to him/her can't be matched....
+1.
The same idea, it just feels different. A high level Wizard can bend reality without limit (When a human is the limit, such as the GM, then there is no limit), while in video games you could do that but limited to the code programmed by the creator.
There is no such thing as "oh damn I screwed this up, better load from before". If you screw up, you better prepare for the consequences.
Every game i have played has been different, this diversity keeps me motivated.
Finally, to answer your question. I have always felt mother natures call, this way I could just put it in paper.
For fun, mostly.
Plus, tinkering around with mechanics and whatnot and testing them in play is a good way to hone my design skills and look into what works, what doesn't, and WHY in many different ways while I'm trying to get back in school for my last year.
I'm sort of the opposite of most people here, in that I find a well crafted video game much better than any tabletop session I've ever played.
Maybe a generational gap, but both systems have their merits.
Video games may be more linear and have more rules, but you know where you stand with one. You can't beg the computer to bend the rules just this once: These are the limits, now work within them.
Constraint can breed creativity in its own way, especially as far as puzzles go (Play Portal and tell me having a strictly defined set of limitations puts burdensome constraints on creativity).
There's also something to be said for instantaneous input, and games encouraging snap decisions. You don't get those moments in video games as often where you aren't quite sure what to do because you have to wait for input from 3 other people and then have a fourth approve it. You just DO.
Some may try to minimize that to "instant gratification", but that's really only part of it, at best.
When I'm in character, it bypasses my social anxiety, allowing me to actually interact with actual people. Then, once I've gamed with people, I feel comfortable around them in a way that would otherwise take months or years of regular interactions.
I get to safely practice and experiment with socializing, learning stuff I can apply with family and at work. (And which failures are funny vs awkward.)
The freedom of converting thought to action is exhilarating. Instead of spending ridiculous amounts of time and energy working up the gumption to do basic life activities, I get to experience going from any visualization to virtual actualization directly.
Spending time with friends interracting in person. Each of our games starts with a pregame meal, often a bbq or ordering group pizza. Any new players are recommended by a current (at the time) player because we feel that we should like the people we game with and want to hang out with them between games sometimes. I know, so old school :D
Sexual gratification.
"Peter! Not that kind of role-playing! And besides, a paladin can't even use a helm of disintegration."