Sunday Gaming Decision
Due to various reasons, which I will go into below, I have been forced to make a decision about my Sunday gaming group.
One of my two, hopefully now three, gamers, Tammy, works in the IT field and is in a position of having to work on-call on various weekends. The problem is that over the last few years, her schedule has become somewhat unpredictable to the point where we may go four weeks not gaming, and then three or four weeks of gaming, and then no gaming for a long period of time. I'll start here by saying that I understand that Real Life(tm) gets in the way of hobbies, and that includes gaming, but being honest with myself, I can't do this...unpredictable gaming any longer.
There are several reasons for this, only some of which I'll detail here. First off, I run two groups - one on Friday nights and one on Sunday afternoons - and on the weeks where the two groups both play, I feel exhausted and totally drained of creativity when it comes to gaming. Having to grocery shop on the Saturday in between the two gaming sessions make things even more exhausting. And I can no longer let this interfere with and put pressure on my health. Secondly, the unpredictability of Tammy's schedule (such that sometimes I only get three days' notice that we're gaming on the Sunday) means that I'm either under stress to get something ready for a given Sunday or I've got multiple weeks where I don't do any work on the Sunday campaign material and have started to forget what I'm doing in any given game scenario for the campaign. The third thing is that I want some consistency to my gaming time and I want to be able to know when I'm gaming for periods in advance and thus be able to plan around it, both for Real Life(tm) stuff and for the gaming session(s) it(them)self(selves). I'm 68 years old and not getting any younger, and I'm tired of being at the whim of one player's gaming schedule. I don't think any of these reasons are selfish of me, nor do I find them unreasonable. With the new player, Caroline, hopefully joining the group on a permanent (or as permanent as can be in gaming circles) and the possibility of adding another player, perhaps two, gaming as regularly as I can on Sundays just makes...sense.
So the upshot of all this is simple: Starting on the 23rd of June, the Sunday game will be running regularly on a once every two weeks game schedule (barring illness, holidays, weather, or anything else that comes up), and will continue in that pattern for the foreseeable future. I'm hoping that Tammy will continue to play in the group, even though she may end up missing Sunday sessions, but if she chooses not to game with the Sunday group moving forward I'll understand that as well.
That's all I wanted to say, and all I've got.
One of my two, hopefully now three, gamers, Tammy, works in the IT field and is in a position of having to work on-call on various weekends. The problem is that over the last few years, her schedule has become somewhat unpredictable to the point where we may go four weeks not gaming, and then three or four weeks of gaming, and then no gaming for a long period of time. I'll start here by saying that I understand that Real Life(tm) gets in the way of hobbies, and that includes gaming, but being honest with myself, I can't do this...unpredictable gaming any longer.
There are several reasons for this, only some of which I'll detail here. First off, I run two groups - one on Friday nights and one on Sunday afternoons - and on the weeks where the two groups both play, I feel exhausted and totally drained of creativity when it comes to gaming. Having to grocery shop on the Saturday in between the two gaming sessions make things even more exhausting. And I can no longer let this interfere with and put pressure on my health. Secondly, the unpredictability of Tammy's schedule (such that sometimes I only get three days' notice that we're gaming on the Sunday) means that I'm either under stress to get something ready for a given Sunday or I've got multiple weeks where I don't do any work on the Sunday campaign material and have started to forget what I'm doing in any given game scenario for the campaign. The third thing is that I want some consistency to my gaming time and I want to be able to know when I'm gaming for periods in advance and thus be able to plan around it, both for Real Life(tm) stuff and for the gaming session(s) it(them)self(selves). I'm 68 years old and not getting any younger, and I'm tired of being at the whim of one player's gaming schedule. I don't think any of these reasons are selfish of me, nor do I find them unreasonable. With the new player, Caroline, hopefully joining the group on a permanent (or as permanent as can be in gaming circles) and the possibility of adding another player, perhaps two, gaming as regularly as I can on Sundays just makes...sense.
So the upshot of all this is simple: Starting on the 23rd of June, the Sunday game will be running regularly on a once every two weeks game schedule (barring illness, holidays, weather, or anything else that comes up), and will continue in that pattern for the foreseeable future. I'm hoping that Tammy will continue to play in the group, even though she may end up missing Sunday sessions, but if she chooses not to game with the Sunday group moving forward I'll understand that as well.
That's all I wanted to say, and all I've got.