Now clearly my feelings aren't going to be shared by everyone, but I am rather thankful when August rolls around, from a gaming perspective.
While summer definitely brings some awesome gaming opportunities with the big gaming conventions taking part in this season, I'm so used to my home game kind of falling short in the the summer months. This is not a recent development by any means (I know some of my current gaming group reads this) and I recall this being a problem for at least the last decade or so.
As gamers age we do tend to pick up a great many non-gaming "accoutrements" that just, well......they just get in the way, namely spouses and children. I know most of us can't help ourselves......life just loves to get in the way of gaming, especially in the summer. Vacations, activities, hell....even the best movies come out in the summer!
Even when my entire gaming group was made up of childless couples or single folk we still had summer problems when it came to slinging dice. Didn't help we were gaming at the local university's student union....
Anyway, August is a blessing 'cause it's back to school season! Getting the kiddies back to the Monday to Friday grind seems to do wonders for gaming, even though it's usually on the weekends....I'm not quite sure how all the math works out, but from my experience it just does.
Now getting back into the normal gaming routine is one thing, but I really like this whole back-to-school season for another reason: school supplies.
July usually brings the back-to-school supply sales and by the time school actually starts in August the leftovers are available for a song. I still have a metric but-load (that's an actual gamer unit of measure, I swear!) of cheap-assed notebooks that I use for my games. This is the time of year to pick up on pencils, pencil boxes, paper, notebooks......oh the notebooks!
This is the time I get to buy colored pencils for making maps, notebooks for everything, dry erase markers, and gawd-only knows what else. One year I got a bunch of cheap thumb drives that I was able to hand out stuff all year long instead of having to burn CDs.
...and did I mention notebooks?
Yes, I have a problem when it comes to notebooks. I hate using loose paper, even if it's in a binder. I'll use notebooks for PC character booklets, GM notes, when writing 1st drafts of "stuff", and most importantly to collect ideas.
Seriously though, next time you're at Walmart, Target, or the like, hit up that Back-to-School display and see what extra crap they still have, and are marking down, that you could use at the game table. Even if you discount notebooks (which you shouldn't) I bet there are some goodies to be had.
Former college student here, but I whole heartedly agree on with the idea that School Time means consistent game time. By the time august rolls around, all the summer stuff you want to do is well over and everyone's normal routine can return to normal.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting with the slow down of fall, the normalness of regular activities can return.