When your gaming is already restricted to a maximum of "Saturday night from 6:00 p.m. until everyone has fallen asleep," having even one session get knocked out (say, by going to a convention) will start a cascade of missing and delayed games. And since scenarios take two or three sessions to finish in a satisfying manner, this cascade combines into games taking FOREVARRRRRRR (tm) to get through.

Case in point: our group is currently 2/3 (or is it 3/4?) of the way through jamesbarrett's current Pathfinder scenario, which we started in what, February? Maybe March? Aside from one particularly railroady bit in the middle [1], it's an interesting enough adventure, but I'm starting to forget there was a time we ever played anything before it.

To do my best to scratch my gaming itch when there's no gaming to be found, I figured I'd get an early start on prepping for my next round as GM, which will be a return to my Ghostbusters campaign.

Well, that's done. And this weekend's game got delayed again, so it'll be the middle of May at the earliest before I get to use that prep I did. I can't prep any more! It would be wasted effort at best, or a muddy mess at worst.

Bah! And also feh. For all the advice there is about decreasing the "away from the table" part of gaming, I don't know of any good way to increase the "at the table" part!

-The Gneech

[1] Most RPGs are more railroady than they care to admit, and part of learning to be a good player is knowing when to stick to the rails and knowing when to jump them. However, one of my personal quirks is that when I find my character being yanked around by "grand mysterious forces beyond my reckoning," I immediately go all Jonah at them and start searching for the nearest whale. I think a lot of that has to do with why I play RPGs. I spend my whole waking life being yanked around by forces beyond my control. When I play games, I want autonomy, dammit!