Length or girth?

[osbad 4279xp 1]

OK, so I’ve gone for a clickbait title just to make @warzan titter, but it is a serious(ish) point.

Do you go for length or girth in your wargaming hobby?  By which I mean, do you do all-in (I could say balls-deep!) into one or maybe two games, or even just individual factions?  Or do you flit around and have wide and fluctuating acquisitions, playing and collecting various factions and armies for multiple games, always distracted by the latest new shiny?

And is there any correlation with your age and/or the duration of your hobby experience.

Thinking back over my gaming life which started as a 12-year old acquiring the Holmes Basic D&D blue boxed set in 1981, I find that as I have gone on I have moved from the former to the latter.  As a teenager I was so into D&D it was embarrassing – getting into world building and spending every last penny of my pocket money on modules and Imagine magazine and White Dwarf.

I then moved onto another game as circumstances changed and I came back to the hobby after a couple of decades out of it when I focused on historical re-enactment and focusing on one game – the Lord of the Rings in the early noughties.  At the time there wasn’t a lot of choice here in the UK and the other GW games left me cold, however, my sights broadened and around 2006 or so I got more system-curious and tried out Confrontation, Warmahordes, BfG, Epic and gradually spread my wings.  Now I have stuff for multiple historical periods and armies, and loads of different sci-fi, fantasy and pulp/weird games as well.

Nowadays I am a complete tart when it comes to new stuff.  I have a loft full of games and systems that I have painted up and played once or twice, or through a campaign and then left to gather dust as the new shiny comes along.  I just bought Strontium Dog yesterday having initially thought I wouldn’t.  But then in the shop, it was sitting there, and the starter set seemed all shiny and reasonably priced, and before I knew it, a few more inches had been added to the leadpile!

So this begs the question: “Why?”

Have I fundamentally changed in my personality from being a one-system guy totally focused on the one game and getting as deep into it as I could, to a multi-system butterfly gadding about like a promiscuous rabbit on speed?  Or is it something else.

I think, that perhaps it was always my personality not to focus too closely on one thing for too long, but back in the day, as a kid, money was scarce and fellow nerds to share the experience with even scarcer, so my urges were naturally constrained by circumstances.  And then in my early thirties getting back into gaming with LotR, my time was limited as I had young kids, and so I didn’t really have the time to branch out.  But now as an old fart with my 50th birthday looming and kids who by and large look after themselves (two of them can even drive themselves around now, and one is off to Uni in September.) I find I have more time available and more money too, so chucking a few quid and a few hours at a game system that will likely end up gathering dust after a while doesn’t seem like such a waste.

However, it may be that as I get older I value variety and begrudge the time that I could be spending experiencing new stuff if I spent too long getting deep into just one system.  My hours per week I can spend hobbying are more than they have been for years, but the years I have ahead of me before bad eyesight and shakey hands restrict my opportunities again are shortening rapidly.

Maybe its a little from column A, a little from column B.

Anyhow, just some musing from an old fart.  Thinking about how my hobby experience has morphed over the years and wondering whether it is shared, or whether I am just a weird freak of nature who is overthinking things!

[maledrakhParticipant 11996xp 1]

“got more system-curious”

 

 

well, that’s one way of putting it! ;D

[tuffyears 23171xp 1]

i just get what i like , and most of the time afford

 

[turbocoolerParticipant 4103xp 2]

I believe the limiting factor for most people is cost and then time.  I personally try not to be a “game” collector.  I know a lot of people who have a lot of miniature games and the very cool miniatures but many do not get played.  I have a friend who has a display for all his miniatures but none are painted.  To each their own but I try to stick with what I can play.  That means I am all in for the two systems that I play and that is it.  I like a lot of things, I simply avoid buying them because I know they would never get played so that makes for a waste of money and makes me sad.  If something does not get played often, I simply sell it.

[collins 16358xp 1]

It depends on the game to be honest. For example, if I can use everything I will buy everything as I have too much disposable income at the minute (can I get a ‘hell yeah!’ from the D.I.N.K.s here). for example, Imperial Assault. I never use all of it but if I was to play campaign a lot, or the App I could make use of it all. X-Wing I had it all until they released scum and I started to drop the game, its also the point that it became uber competitive and I felt the tourney scene changed for the worse. Walking Dead I play once in a blue moon, paint it even less but still buy everything. Star Wars Legion, I play all the time, own one of everything but only seem to play rebels so when ive finished painting the empire I may flog those.

basically you could say I am a collector through and through and suffer because of it, or at least my wallet does.

[angelicdespot 4689xp 1]

My story is similar.   Growing up I was mainly into GW games.   All of them, not just one, so that’s perhaps a little more variety than it might appear.   I also had a few different RPGs, and although I did play some DnD it wasn’t my first RPG and I soon found other games (and gamers) I preferred.

I dropped out and then back into the hobby and gradually branched out into exploring other games and periods – including historicals.

More recently I actively started looking for alternatives to GW and although I’m now happier with them and more interested in their games and settings again, I still appreciate a lot of other games and ranges.

Some things I buy because I think they’re so good they deserve support.   Some I buy in the (often vain) hope that because they’re more self-contained they’ll get more use than larger collections for bigger games.   Some I get because I’m a collector and interested in having a variety of things to dip in to.

[koraskiParticipant 1981xp 2]

It seems to me that as we age we tend towards wider experiences. We also tend to have greater resources to buy hobby stuff. When I was a kid I could eat the same few foods over and over. Now I get sick of stuff and crave new or at least different things. When I was a kid I could play Pac-Man or super Mario for HOURS. Today I quite often play video games a few times then move on. When I was a kid I had to save up for those D&D books or wait for a trip to my grandparents house and beg my parents to stop on the way at the one hobby shop in the area that sold lead figures. Today I either drive to one of several shops or just order new games online. At the same time I don’t have the time to devote to really delving deep into hobbies anymore. This leads to a wider but shallower spread.

[guillotine 16041xp 2]

I’m more of a girth guy. In my case, I don’t think it is so much about age but the industry enabling it.

A positive side effect of getting involved in multiple gaming systems has been the expansion of my social circles. I haven’t knowingly started new games to meet new people, but as it has happened I’ve started to appreciate it more and more. As you get older you tend to meet new people only through work, unless you have a social hobby. This is probably where tapletop games have had the most positive impact on my life.

[osbad 4279xp 0]

Good comments guys. The more I see the more I realise how we all do hobby differently but in very overlapping ways.  I guess the BoW community is one giant Venn diagramme! 😀

 

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