It’s a silly question, but I’m confronted with a choice. I am gathering together a new gaming group and I find myself faced with two extremes: play a game that I can actively work on, so that play is work-related; or play a game that is dead and buried but close to my heart, for which I will have to do more prep and design work myself. Both games are solid games—both of them fantasy games with their own inherent settings (which may or may not be ignored)—and both of them are good… in their ways.
What would you do? How important is it for you to play a game that’s still “alive” in terms of product support and an active player base?
The question to answer is what is your goal behind playing? Do you want to play for pure enjoyment, or for productivity? Playing a game that will require design work on your part, but has only benefits to yourself and your group feels, to me, more like work for fun. It never seems like the work was wasted because I got the end output I desired. People enjoyed it. Playing something which entails work for productivity always seems more like work to me, despite the fun involved. Somewhere in the back of my mind I am always thinking “will that rule or system be useful enough to include” or “Is this power distribution to overbalanced in the player’s favor or in the GM’s favor?” or “Does the writing for this section convey the meaning well enough?” , etc., etc., etc., . . .
So it depends on what you really want to get out of the play.
When I’m playing games for pure enjoyment (something I make sure to do to keep my mind fresh and my desire to work on my own projects up), I generally don’t care what the current life of the game in the market is like, but if it achieves the results that I want. Do I want quirky sneaky ninja fun? Do I have the craving for more futuristic tech based stuff with plenty of combat and heavy gear use? Am I looking for deeper stimulation? If the game fits my mood and I can get people to play it, then I’m not worried if it has a current version. I just need to be able to get my hands on the materials to play it.
If you’re just playing for fun, I don’t think it matters much. However, if you can get double duty out of playing something you can also use for work, I’d go for that. There aren’t enough hours in the day as it is, and I’m all for such efficiencies.
Of course, I break this principle all the time myself. It’s important to try new things too, no matter if they’re directly work related or not.
For the past several years, I’ve only played two RPGs with anything approaching regularity: 1) Amber Diceless (which is dead from a publishing standpoint but has a thriving Internet community), and 2) a genre-mashup impromptu RPG I’ve been designing myself. So I guess I do both.
I don’t care much about product support. I’d rather use my own ideas than someone else’s. And if I _do_ want inspiration for my own game, it doesn’t have to come from supplements for that game: it can come from books or movies or by taking elements from a totally different game. But then I much prefer rules-light games, so I don’t need to go through and calculate the damage from a halberd versus damage from a longsword or arrow: if I needed such figures, I guess I’d rather have someone else come up with all of them.
I do get more satisfaction out of people having a great time playing the game I designed than I did running a game someone else designed. But then, I also feel more stress when I GM it, because if it goes poorly, there’s no one else to blame. 🙂
Hmmm. Maybe I should run an Amber game with StoryCards mechanics….
All that having been said, I just played Spirit of the Century and The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen (which may or may not be an RPG) for the first time last weekend and I loved them both. I definitely want to try more other games, but when I do the main result is finding things I want to use to refine StoryCards.
If you can have unadulterated fun playing the work-related game, I would go with that. Personally, my preference would be to play something unrelated for fun.
Also, how ‘alive’ a game is doesn’t matter to me. My games of preference being Amber Diceless and Everway. It does make it more difficult to find people to play with when you move somewhere new, though.
Games don’t die. If one has the documentary, playing an old game is exactly as easy as playing a new one.
Around here, most people don’t buy the games they play; it is usually the GM and maybe someone else who has the game. It all works fine.
As my work is nowhere game-related I can’t comment on that, but I like it, when the game or at least the background is “still alive”. The gaming does not stop when the seession ends. My players want to get involved and like to buy a supplement, read a novel or connect to an active online community if they enjoy the game.
It’s not a “must” but if I have the choice I would leave the old game for the nostalgia department of my shelf.
Lots of compelling positions here. My particular love for this one defunct system is, I think, going to end up determining my decision. The question left to answer is that of my new players’ preferences. I’m a reactionary GM, that way.
The other advantage I have on my side is that I already have one group that will play work-related games with me, so there’s that. I may be able to have my cake, as they say, in addition to eating it.
It’s not remotely important for me to be playing a game that’s currently commercially alive. Probably, playing something long out-of-print would make me feel somehow superior to the Great Unwashed. I’d play the old Victory Games James Bond game in a heartbeat.
When I think about the essentially identical question (except that it’s usually board games at my current job), I wind up wondering whether it was wise to make a career out of my hobby. And eventually decide that yes, it was. But still, that’s where my thought process always takes me.