Many’s the night I would stay up until the wee hours of the morning painting miniatures, reading modules and rulebooks, solo playing wargames, and the like. On weekends, we would often have marathon AD&D games that would last ’till dawn, and *then* start a game of Avalon Hill’s Civilization or Titan. I had time to play monster games like SPI’s War in Europe. Really play them all the way through. And Napoleonics miniatures, and all the rest.
Alas, those days are behind me. Now that I’ve got a house, and a wife, and a kid, and a job… Not only don’t I have the time to pour into gaming in general, but finding those vast chunks of consecutive time is an almost laughable prospect. Even my conventioneering is a part-time affair; I almost always go to cons that are within driving distance of my house. I believe that I’m not alone in my demographically-induced gaming semi-hibernation.
But all that will change in 20 years or so. Once I and the rest of my demographic cohort begin to hit retirement age, all of a sudden I’m going to have again all those oodles of time I had back in high school and college, and money to boot. There will be time again for marathon games, and painting hordes of miniatures. Time to play wargames galore, and writing RPG modules and wargame scenario books. I’ll have the house paid off and the kid safely out of college. I will have…
Heh, my friends and I have already talked about this. Yeah, it is definitely something to look forward to! Now I just need everyone to move to the same retirement community…
Yes, but our eyesight ill be so bad that's we'll be painting and using 54mm. 🙂
I was just ruminating about gaming days gone by… http://digitalorc.blogspot.com/2011/05/creepy-night-gore-girls-gaming.html
Hey now, you're assuming that "retirement" will still exist… 🙂
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@Anthony Emmel – That's why he'll hire me to do it for him. Fingers crossed. 😀
I, as odd as you might think it is, know the feeling of lacking the time to do everything, too. But when you (we) do, you better save me a space at the all-night CotMA games… I suspect by retirement we'll even be on level 4! 😉
Don't think that I haven't thought the same damn thing. I'm going to be gaming in my golden years!
(Of course, I'm still a quarter century away from those golden years)
Yep, same dream here. 🙂
Someone (I don't recall who) previously posted about the OSR retirement home. Sounds like a great way to spend one's golden years.
I've been itching for retirement for 20 years just for that reason!
We have been thinking about designing special attachments for our rocking chairs on the retirement home porch which would hold our drink, character sheet, die cup, and rolling surface.
More gaming and more writing! Help me get to early retirement by buying my epic fantasy epub Rogue's Honor available now for the Kindle at http://amazon.com/dp/B004ZUWSCO
And beware sea wrights on a small boat…