I have had the pleasure over the years to meet and play with a huge variety gamers. It is both the love affair with games and the friendships I have made over the years that has always kept me coming back endlessly for more. one of the best things about this hobby is the sheer variety of games that exist now. We game in a wonderful time.

Yet lately, I had been a bit disenchanted with a few things as a gamer. I love the games that I am currently in and the ones that I am running. They are healthy and doing well.
But a portion of the online community’s behavior that I have encountered has begun to make me wonder why so many people behave the way they do in this hobby.

Edition wars, System Wars, The dumbing down of RPG’s, the new era of Gamer vs Grognards. As a gamer and a blogger, much of this just gets old to hear it over and over again. Please, understand I have been doing this for my entire adult life as well as the majority of my childhood. These arguments and points of view come up over and over again. Always with the thought that if you are not playing the same thing the same way as everyone else. You must obviously be doing it wrong. The entire thought of that statement makes my head hurt.

It is human nature to cheer on things we love as well as to defend our love of something that others are not fans of. We want to make the person understand all of the great experiences and benefits of why we love this “Thing”. Often brushing aside valid points and flaws that might be pointed out about that product we love.

The Grapple rules are broken !
That system is the book of the month club.
That edition is an MMO not an RPG.
That system is Dumed down.
That game is too crunchy!

And the list goes on…..

This weekend I had the pleasure of hanging out with gamers from several diverse gaming groups. Each with their own blend of game rules, systems, and settings that the groups played. Everyone was eager to share their play styles and the stories that they were all deep into in their ongoing games. Many were your standard gaming fair variety. But there were a few that were deeply wild homebrew game! One player even spoke of a GM who ran a D&D game that he called Old school but had taken elements from every edition from 1st-5th plus Pathfinder and made their own Franken System.

Yet unlike the Internet, no one freaked out. No one acted like the thought of playing a different way was outrageous. In fact, everyone was more than happy to politely comment or question why they ran things the way they did. Suddenly I found myself in the middle of something unheard of, it was a discussion! Not only was it a discussion but it was deeply informative and very social.

It was Refreshing, invigorating and it was awesome! To see people actively discussing differing points of view in a large group and no negativity or malice to anyone. Not even when a couple spoke up and said they actually had the gall to not like but LOVE 4th edition D&D!

This was the thing I needed to refresh my batteries.