This past weekend, Adam Jury wrote about a gamer he met who isn’t plugged in to the larger network. On Monday nights, I play with some gamers who are only loosely plugged in beyond their one weekly play session. Even I’m not plugged in like I used to be — I hardly post on RPGnet and its sibling sites, and I visit only occasionally (for a variety of reasons). I’m more and more aware that gamers fall into overlapping clusters, rather than any master network. The local game store is one cluster. The audience that strives to reach a mass consensus opinion about Exalted (or what have you) at RPGnet is another. The Exalted community at the White Wolf forums is still another one.
Being plugged in requires a lot of jacks.
Are you plugged in?
What about you? Why or why not? What does it mean to you to be plugged in?
Not plugged in, at least not in terms of traditional RPGs. Now that I have a family, full-time job, etc., meatspace gaming is much harder. RPGs and communities that lend themselves to online play via virtual tabletops or Wave or whatever else really could reach thousands and thousands of new (or returning, in some sense) players.
I used to be plugged in, in some way. I knew a lot of tabletop gamers, and talked about RPGs a lot.
Now, I’m essentially unplugged. Even those I used to talk games with, now we talk other things. It’s getting harder to find gaming groups here, and the budget doesn’t allow buying as many books as before.
Times change, and not necessarily for the best. :-/
Here’s something that’s of great interest to me, Kyle and serial (and anyone else): If you’re unplugged, or mostly unplugged, how did you find us at Gameplaywright, and what are you doing here?
I do think I’m plugged into the MMORPG community, and I’ve tried worming my way into understanding game design a little more. So last year, I had gotten into the Metaplace alpha and poked around some of the blog recommendations and so forth around various communities. I latched onto this one because of the conversations about design, particularly where it touches upon new ways in which we can tell stories.
So I guess I’m here because of storytelling, and because I want to be plugged in.
Plugged in? Me? I am insofar as I keep up with what RPGs are coming out, but I play relatively few these days — it’s mostly D&D and GUMSHOE — though I get to play twice a week, which is wonderful.
My diminished plugged-inned-ness comes, also, from the fact that I no longer feel the need to debate RPGs with strangers online. The hobby is big (and possibly drifting apart) enough that consensus is unlikely and, besides, unnecessary. It is many things to many people. I’ve been proven wrong in enough of my opinions and anecdotal evidence about the hobby that I no longer chase the wild goose of mass consensus, and thus I have less need to be plugged in beyond my own immediate needs.
For example, I’m comfortable with the rulings that go on at my game table, so I don’t need to chase validation for them elsewhere. And I get to play enough that I do not discuss games just to fill the void that comes with not getting to play. I discuss games because I am genuinely interested in the subject matter — but my discussion no longer plugs me into some of the forum-based communities of which I was once a part.
I got partially unplugged for a variety of reasons and found myself healthier and more autonomous as a result.
I was totally out of touch”unplugged” for many years, never even heard about 3.x rules until a month before 4e was announced at GenCon. Now I watch a lot of forums, chat with those whose products I enjoy, run my own website that is D&D related. Real Life has caused my involvement to drop off drastically recently, but hopefully things will get back to normal soon.
I am plugged into my niche of free RPGs. You have to be, really, as free RPGs appear online and only online. They pop up all over the place, so I try and steer them to a free RPG community that might help them as it can be quite lonely being a free RPG author.
I’m semi-plugged in. I found this site because it’s linked to Will’s, who sometimes is referenced on Justin Achilli’s blog, who I read because he used to post stuff on LJ back when WW used LJ as a communication media.
Having said that, I find that there’s not much out there that interests me. I only seem to find D&D sites, and i’m not much bothered about D&D. I don’t have the time or emotional energy to go into my ‘local’ (20 miles away) gaming stores and my regular gaming group are so passive and cow like that they don’t have an opinion.
Why is ‘being plugged in’ so important nowadays? The hobby thrived without a need for constant blogs and discussions, and i perceive the nosedive in interest follows a similar path to the amount of information we can gather on the hobby.
It’s like people started spending more time writing about the hobby than actually playing it or buying product.
@Nook: Personally, I want to find ways of playing online, and I want to do that for non-D&D (indeed, non-fantasy) games. Give me SF or “modern” thriller-type games any day.