Time Out!
By Cape Rust
If you are anything like me, you love to game. I am fortunate enough to be in a gaming group that meets once a week. I know some folks that only get to game once a month or gods forbid, a few times a year. As you start moving into only gaming a few times a year, your game sessions become even more precious.
My game time is my “guy” time. I am married to an amazing lady and have two awesome teenage daughters. Yes, my teenage daughters are awesome! Not many dads can say that. So while I enjoy being at home, I need some away time to slay some dragons or deck into a system to avoid black ice.
My group meets on Saturdays. My wife knows how much I enjoy gaming and gives me a weekly kitchen pass to pursue my hobby. I anticipate these weekly sessions and I generally start preparing for them a few days ahead of time, even if that preparation consists of reading a source book in the bathroom. This is all great, but sometimes as a gamer, I get so caught up in being able to game and wanting to game that I miss out on non-gaming activities. When running a game, I often forget to look ahead a few weeks or months and schedule in breaks in the game.
Every gaming group has a rhythm. Some go strong all year round and others wax and wane depending on the season. My old group in Key West started to wane from the second week in October through the new year. There was a bevy of activities on the island that could draw away even the most dedicated gamer. Towards the end of my time in Key West, we started to understand this pattern and tried to plan accordingly. Of course I promptly forgot all of this as soon as I left.
The last few years have been a huge wakeup call for me. Because of the age demographics of my children, I find that I don’t have every Saturday night free. If one of my daughters is performing on game night, I have a tough choice to make. Actually, it isn’t a tough choice, but I do hate missing a game. If you are running the game, you have a big say in when the game happens. Everyone understands that things happen and some game sessions have to be cancelled. People get sick, people have to work, and even bad weather can stop a game.
I have found that most gamers like me want to game no matter what! Like most addicts, I want my fix. But there is value in scheduling off weeks. I am not advocating trying to plan off weeks for the next six months at uniformed intervals, I’m talking about some common sense planning that will alleviate the disappointment some of your players will feel when a game is overcome by events.
To start planning weeks off for your group, it is important to understand the patterns of cancelations you’ve had in the past. I mentioned Key West and the lull we experienced from the end of October until the new year. If I was running a game, I would look at local activities and bounce them off of the outside interests of my group. The first major event in the Key West example is Fantasy Fest.
Fantasy Fest generally occurs around October 25th. There are festivities the entire week before the event and generally people are in no saps to engage in any activities the day afterwards. This would be the first session I would suggest the group take off. No matter what day of the week your group games, this would be a bad week. Then holidays like Halloween,Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years all put a damper on your gaming activities. The ironic thing about the holidays is it seems like there should be an abundance of time to game, but the rest of the world doesn’t see it way. Just looking at those holidays and events we have already lost a minimum 4 game sessions in a three month period. I would recommend figuring all of this out way before the “off” season begins.
While this might seem like a lot of down time, it is important to get this established as early as possible. If you are like me, programming in this break is a big deal. It acts as a form of expectation management. It is much easier for me to deal with the letdown of not gaming if I know it is coming. By planning these breaks, you stop quite a few other problems as well.
We understand that there are other things going on outside of the game, but when you are running a game and have spent a good deal of your time preparing for the next session and someone decides that they would rather head downtown to Fantasy Fest instead of showing up at the game table, it can bother you. Yes, you understand that these feelings are not logical, but you still feel them. If you decide that DES region is the better part of valor and cancel the session, you can avoid this situation.
These programmed breaks are great for the person running the game as well. If you are running the game, you can take the week off or use the extra time to come up with dastardly obstacles and bad guys for your players to face. I would recommend the break and would encourage you to close the books and do something completely not game related. Sometimes as addicts we don’t know how bad off we are until we get to push away from the table.
Even if you don’t have a down gaming season, these breaks are still important. Schedule a date with your significant other and cancel the session for that night. If you know there is a family event coming up in a few weeks, don’t try to juggle the event and your game. You will end up not enjoying either event and by leaving early and showing up late, you might cause resentment by family and fellow players.
While calling time-out might see abhorrent to dedicated gamers, it is important. These pauses give everyone a chance to recharge and can lessen the ill feelings that are caused by someone missing a session. It is hard to know when to say when and these time outs give you the break you might not think you need. When it comes to down time, plan it out and push away from the table, but only for a session or two. Roll well and Game hard!