The Queen of Wands Returns

[qos]

For the last month or more, I have been getting the sense that one of the things that needed to die in my life was my gaming group -- or at least my participation in the gaming. I wasn't entirely sure why, I only had the feeling that that part of my life had run its course.

But like most deaths, it was not something I wanted to contemplate. My gaming group has been a source of a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction over the years. It went into a serious decline about five years ago, exploded and then re-constellated two years ago, and I continued to play with two other people. One of the reasons I didn't want to withdraw from the game was that I didn't want to be the one who ended it for all three of us -- since although it is possible to game with two people, you usually want at least three. And I didn't want to face perhaps losing touch with those friends, since this has always been our primary form of interaction.

Well, Saturday night's session did not go well. Everyone behaved themselves, but it did not go well. And it wasn't much fun. Which has pretty much been our pattern for the past 6-9 months.

We finished the session, had dinner, conversed, then E asked for feedback -- which is part of our custom. J and I gave honest feedback -- which E partially accepted and partially resisted -- and then J told us that he wasn't having fun anymore, and he didn't want to keep playing. He did want to continue getting together with us, but we needed to find something else to do.

I felt both grief and relief, but the grief was muted somewhat by the awareness that what I would miss most were things which had been mostly absent from our games for a long time. J was right: it is time to do something else together for a while, and if we do game again we will need to get a few other people to provide balance, new energy and new ideas.

So one more thing has died -- and I suspect that there is still more to come.

Comments

[queenofhalves]

*hug*

that's hard, but i'm glad it has a forward-moving feeling for you.

[athenian-abroad.livejournal.com]

This happened to me a few years ago, though the experience was a bit different. The last game I was involved in was very good, and I found that, for me, the gaming experience was...complete. I don't game anymore because I have finished gaming. It sounds like you kept going beyond the point of completion, which probably feels sad, like a relationship kept alive on habit and inertia alone.

[qos.livejournal.com]

like a relationship kept alive on habit and inertia alone

That certainly comes pretty close to it.

I think there has also been our sense of genuine caring about each other coupled with the fear of how much we actually have in common, or what we would be able to do to continue the relationship, without the game.