A Good Weekend
So, we spent this whole last weekend up in Boston, gaming at the house of friends of ours in Newton with about 35 other folks that they knew. It was wonderful in a variety of ways, and some I hadn't expected. The great thing about K&P is that their good taste in gaming is only matched by their good taste in friends. (In a quality way, not a cannibalistic way, unless we're talking Cthulhu here, which was only Saturday afternoon.)
Sometimes, particularly at the larger cons, it becomes easy to fall into the general unattractive gamer stereotype, and become a little defensive about my hobby as something that people who "haven't grown up" or "have no friends" or "are strange weirdos who are probably all pedophiles" do. This weekend was a great antidote to that. The people I was hanging out with are creative, interesting, successful men and women (I think we may even have been majority female this year!) who do cool things with their lives and help a lot of people. There were multiple special ed teachers, someone who's thinking of becoming a high school counselor once her daughter's a little older, a future Unitarian minister, and a wide variety of people who do neat and complicated tech, business, or lawyerly things.
And beyond that, one of the most refreshing things about the weekend was having the chance to interact with 10 or 11 happy double-gamer married couples, who are rarer than you might think. It was really nice to see so many great models for successful marriages and families - to watch the couple with the five-month old trading their baby back and forth in the middle of slots, with remarkably little disruption to anyone involved (though the sight of a nursing mother playing a gruff male dwarven cleric causes some mental blinkage) - to see K&P trading off host duties without a qualm, and especially, in some ways, to see the closeness without clinginess exhibited by the various pairs. I didn't game with A. once this weekend, and that was fine - after all, I do almost every other time I game. As we move into the next stage of our lives, though, it's great to be reminded that there are many cool peers who make all these complex juggling acts work out somehow.
( Some cool Game Notes - mostly for El-D players )
Sometimes, particularly at the larger cons, it becomes easy to fall into the general unattractive gamer stereotype, and become a little defensive about my hobby as something that people who "haven't grown up" or "have no friends" or "are strange weirdos who are probably all pedophiles" do. This weekend was a great antidote to that. The people I was hanging out with are creative, interesting, successful men and women (I think we may even have been majority female this year!) who do cool things with their lives and help a lot of people. There were multiple special ed teachers, someone who's thinking of becoming a high school counselor once her daughter's a little older, a future Unitarian minister, and a wide variety of people who do neat and complicated tech, business, or lawyerly things.
And beyond that, one of the most refreshing things about the weekend was having the chance to interact with 10 or 11 happy double-gamer married couples, who are rarer than you might think. It was really nice to see so many great models for successful marriages and families - to watch the couple with the five-month old trading their baby back and forth in the middle of slots, with remarkably little disruption to anyone involved (though the sight of a nursing mother playing a gruff male dwarven cleric causes some mental blinkage) - to see K&P trading off host duties without a qualm, and especially, in some ways, to see the closeness without clinginess exhibited by the various pairs. I didn't game with A. once this weekend, and that was fine - after all, I do almost every other time I game. As we move into the next stage of our lives, though, it's great to be reminded that there are many cool peers who make all these complex juggling acts work out somehow.
( Some cool Game Notes - mostly for El-D players )