I haven't played SR in years. Tonight I chatted with someone from my old gaming group and I realize how much fun I'd had back in the day, and how much I simultaneously miss gaming but at the same time probably wouldn't be able to take it up again any time soon.

I started out in high school playing SR2 during free periods with a killer GM, and eventually our games moved onto AOL IM. Initially it was just me and him, and I'd actually read some SR novels and had wanted to play for years before getting the chance. We occasionally had another player or two but in any case my characters died usually every 2 sessions. I still had a lot of fun, though, and I considered it good training for future games to be tactically meticulous. I still correspond sometimes in a very friendly way with my good old original killer GM. Man, what memories. For a short while my first girlfriend also played. Talk about memories.

I tried to start playing SR in college but things didn't work out so well. After a while I started playing on IRC. I decided to GM since nobody else was GMing. I really threw myself into the task and there were times when there was like 10 players and I was trying to run SR3. It was hectic, frantic, exhausing, but also a dream come true. Eventually, after a year or two, things settled down and I fell in with a group of people who were the most fun people I ever gamed with. Some of them have fallen out of touch, and I sometimes feel pretty sad over this, because I really felt they were awesome people. Others have more or less stayed in touch, but this was all complicated by my leaving for Peace Corps for 2 years.

Tonight I remembered all this because I was finally able to chat with one of the people from this group over AOL IM after literally hearing very little for years. This fellow is a great guy; when I was a grad student in New Orleans, and Hurrican Ivan looked like it might hit the city, I took a bus all the way to Rolla Missouri and he, an undergrad at the time, let me stay in his frat house for a few days. A truly kind soul, and a man I deeply respect for his technical computer skills which I feel I could never emulate.

Most of this gaming had taken place when I was a student. Once a week we would saddle up on IRC and play for five hours. IRC became my favorite medium for gaming, with more time to think, and more time to really describe carefully what your character was doing. I find I feel less comfortable with verbal gaming now, as I feel more confident with my writing and composition skills than with my acting skills. I also really love the convienience of IRC gaming. As a student I used to get a pizza and some beer and just nibble all night. Looking back on it this actually represented some of my most happy memories.

Now I'm back in the US but the old gaming group dissolved. There was some internal conflict which had been brewing gradually for years and the group first split, and then shortly afterwards disintegrated entirely. It happened just before I'd left for Peace Corps so in a sense I left "just in time".

Now I'm back in the US and it appears that I'll be starting an exciting new job soon. I'm currently living with my parents, which is good on many levels, such as paying back my student loans, and building a new relationship with them as an older and more mature person. Looking back over my life, it's actually been quite kickass, awesome, and adventurous in retrospect. I feel like I really have to give myself credit, considering that some aspects of it are interesting enough to have been a novel that could have held someone's interest, rather than the tired cliched crap that lots of people who share their biographies often ends up being.

But now that I think of it, I don't think that I'll really be able to get into gaming ever again. I'll probably be super-busy with the new job. I'll probably get caught up in activities with my family, rather than reveling in the air conditioned dark-room anonymity of IRC chatting as a student in a dusty student apartment; I'll probably have less of a sense of privacy. On the whole I'll probably have less time and I'd probably reconsider how to spend my free time.

Those gaming days, though, were some of the best times in my life in terms of companionship and fun. I don't think they'll ever return, so there's nothing to do but sit here, treasure the memories, and reflect on the transience and impermanence of life. Hell, in X number of years I'll probably die and feel the same way about so many other things.

If you spend all your time wallowing in the old days, you won't have any new experiences... you should know this with all of your travels. I think however you hit the type of nostalgia that plagues edition changes and life changes combine. Its not that people hate the new edition, its the "growing up and drifting" that causes them to think it'll change their whole world to see an edition change. You also hit on that comfort zone issues... I mean I can understand that having a long standing gaming group dissolving sucks... but you move and find new players. Some suck, some don't, it's a mixed bag of gamers out there.

However, living in that nostalgia will stagnate you fast, and bitterness about the change will keep you from finding fun out there. Life does get in the way of some stuff, but if you have good people around you, who are truly supportive of all you are, you find a way to still do things. I was out of all but casual gaming for almost a year after I moved into a new place. I really could have sold everything and completely gotten out of gaming at that point. I think if I had though, I'd be in a much less happy place than I am now. I guess I'm fortunate in the fact that I've always had a large base of people around me I enjoy gaming with, so it made it easier to get a group together, but it still took me going out and seeing who wanted to play.

It becomes selective after that. At this point I have 4 groups I could join. Unfortunately my time only leaves me with one group, though that might change soon as I get another group together. Plus casual gaming has opened up big around me. Lots of board gamers in my area, and I'm finding a new love of games I wouldn't have played otherwise.

There's plenty of chances out there if you let them in, to have a good time with any edition of the game. You have to be willing to put the time in and meet the new folks. Don't let the nostalgia fester and color your opinion of what you see. Its the people playing and running the game and the socializing with it that make it truly fun... if you let it happen.

If interested you could do play by forum. Fun, but with much less time requirements. Good if you're able to get online multiple times a day, but would never have the time to do a proper IRC type session. It's what I do now.

You pretty much have to be a small group or it'll move too slow. Pacing depends on exactly how micromanaging you need to be vs letting the GM go a bit. I find a group that posts maybe a half dozen times a day can roughly match a bi-weekly 4 hour gaming group for what gets done if you give the GM some slack to work through scenes and combat.

Thanks for the responses.

If you manage to find a few like minded people who are at a simmilar place in life as you then you'd probably be amazed at how quickly you could get a table top group together. I know that in my case my Fiancee and I just have an understanding that every Sunday evening from around 5-9 or 10ish I fuck off and go pretend to be an elf for a few hours. I look at it the same way as other guys would look at a weekly poker night or bowling league.

When I started here we pretty much played weekly. Then the person who was our main GM moved from New York to New Mexico. We still game, when one of us puts together an adventure and we will get together for a weekend of dice, food and drink, but it's only a few times a year. BUt we still play. Maybe you could do that? It doesn't have to be a campagin but a good session or two.

and remember, stay away from 4th Ed. do not go to the dark side.

Ha ha, indeed.

...yeah we had a great group together in college who managed to stick together for the most part in the years afterwards. Though people kind of went their own ways after school We pretty much all stayed in the region (Pacific Northwest) so we were still able to get together ever few weeks or so for another session. Finally people moved on and further away. Overall some of us had been together since the early 80s playing various other RPGs (like Traveller, Space Opera and a little known system titled Beasts Men & Gods) before Shadowrun hit the scene. Many cool memories.

We pretty much ran through every edition of Shadowrun through 3rd, with one of the longest running members even sticking around through 4th for a couple sessions until he and his wife moved to the country.

...alas all is not dismal as I recently found a new 3rd ed. campaign starting where I live (Portland, TT...er...OR) later this month. Time frame is 2055.

Fourth Edition was the only reason I got into playing Shadowrun after a fifteen year hiatus.

I haven't been active in SR in years, lately though, I find myself interested in the material again. Heh, even starting posting here again after like a 2 year hiatus.

4e changes to DnD struck me as hard, and are more of a recent situation. I've got the 4th ed DnD stuff, and I rather like it, but its a big change from 3e stuff. Same goes in a sense for my Shadowrun stuff. At the moment I only have like the first 2 or 3 4th ed books. I've got my stack of Pre-4th SR stuff in my closet. All the way back to the 1st Ed stuff.

Finding a consistent gaming community is rough here in Hawaii. In many ways you're forced to pick up newer editions if you want to find some groups. College groups are always going to exist, but since I haven't been in college for over 12 years now, if I wanna play with a college group, chances are they're playing newer edition stuff.