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Long Live Long Games
- Sagrilarus
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- D20
- Pull the Goalie
My biggest issue now is logistics. Four kids and two drivers means evening events need to be coordinated to make sure people can get where they need to be. The good news is that the logistics either work or they don't and I know that by 5pm. For me impromptu is actually better than scheduled.
S.
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- Michael Barnes
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- Mountebank
- HYPOCRITE
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Oh good grief, enough with the old man talk..."so...very...tired."
I have never in my entire life come home from work and thought "I'm too tired/mentally drained/whatever" to play a game. I work from home, I'm writing all day for a Satanic Fortune 500 insurance company and I take care of the kids almost exclusively because we don't have childcare and my wife is usually on a shoot or preparing for one. Granted, I'm not a nuclear physicist, an on-call trauma surgeon or a business owner but still...I actually have MORE time to game now than I did when I was in college, I was ways involved in making some film or another and had zero time for games. So I don't want to hear that my preference for shorter games is related to life stage.
My preference is because I've been playing games for damn near my whole life and my tolerance for bullshit is zero. I also do not give a flying shit about winning, which means all of this investment and engagement is really for something fleeting and meaningless. I am much more impressed by a game with one page of rules that provides a fun experience than one with 25 pages and a five hour playtime that breaks it's own back trying to convince you of how "thematic" or "narrative" it is.
When things get refined or honed, they get smaller. Game design is like a technology in that regard. If things are getting bigger and more Byzantine, you're going the wrong way. This is what happened with FFG- look no further than Horus Heresy.
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.. but I think it's hilarious that we argue about this stuff as if there is an actual answer. As if someone were actually going to be right.
Although I'm surprised where our brains go in the process and that can actually be somewhat enlightening for me even outside of gaming all together.
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Obviously when you say you don't have time you mean that you have other priorities. I could leave my family and band and friends and focus on games I suppose... not going to happen. But the fact remains that when I can squeeze in a quick game of something there is a huge part of me that longs for something more expansive. It may be nostalgia but that counts too.
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"When games like Silverton are gone from gaming, I will be gone with them."
I feel like that a lot, but I won't necessarily be done playing games, just done buying them.
There's no question that games are going smaller/sleeker, but there will thankfully (hopefully) still be the long game produced now and then.
To complete the technology analogy, perhaps some of us will end up the boardgaming equivalent to those folks hitting the internet with hacked Commodore 64s.
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Gary Sax wrote: If it was a different crowd, that crazy consimworld con sounds pretty fucking cool. A week playing the most insane experience wargames, many times in teams? Finishing whole campaigns? Part of me is titillated.
It IS pretty damn cool, any wargamer needs to put this con on their bucket list. We just wrapped up four straiht days of playing the first volume of the Finnish Winter War trilogy. After fourteen years this con is still one of the best weeks of my year.
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- ThirstyMan
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- D10
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If it was solidly in the summer, it would be a lot easier to make it and I'd go in a flash.
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Gary Sax wrote: If it was a different crowd, that crazy consimworld con sounds pretty fucking cool. A week playing the most insane experience wargames, many times in teams? Finishing whole campaigns? Part of me is titillated.
That would be totally awesome. All those great monster games....sigh.
I am going to take exception to Barnes insinuation that there is some sort of macho dick measuring contest regarding playing longer games. That's absurd and I suspect it was one of his throw away lines designed to get a reaction.
Look, there are good and bad games of all play times. Some long games are indeed long due to procedure, book keeping, excessive chrome or whatever. There are also utter shit games you can play in ten minutes.
Diplomacy is not a very good game. There is a reason the last time I went to an event to play it, I donated my copy to the group and walked out the door and have never felt the slightest urge to play it ever again.
However, if we limit our discussion to good long games, I'll take one long game over three shorter ones every time. The difference between an episodic TV show like Dragnet and one where the whole season is one story like True Detective. Both are good shows but I certainly become more connected to the longer story. Same with a game, a deeper story that has a greater hold on my imagination takes time to develop.
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JonJacob wrote: .. but I think it's hilarious that we argue about this stuff as if there is an actual answer. As if someone were actually going to be right.
Didn't you see my signature line?!
Seriously, I think we've had this long game discussion too. I wonder if anyone actually expects the entire thread to go, "Oh he's got the point there, he has. That wraps it up then. Good thread." I sure don't, but it's still fun. My favorite parts are when someone drops in and pulls a Tony Wilson from 24 Hour Party People: "You're just fucking wrong!"
If we were having these discussions sitting at a table in an actual room I'd half expect Karl Pilkington to fly through the window.
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