Casting Shadows

There are many things which make me think of long-term gamers as a community, and events like #RPGaDAY2024 tend to show us those links, points of commonality, and lines of friendly and not-so-friendly division. I don’t really think about communities as being a unified body of like-minded individuals working toward common goals and a shared vision of the future. I think about them as groups of people who share passions, have relatable experiences, and who can recognize agreement as well as allow for agreement over disagreement.

Events like RPGaDAY aren’t year-long activities, however, and all year, from year to year and era to era, communities within that larger community take precedence in our bonding and banding together over the games we play. I enjoy how gamers can unite over games they loved as kids and haven’t played since high school. I love it when they bond over games they are playing now or over games that they have never been able to play. The tell-tale love of dice or the appraising eye when passing a bookshelf catch my attention. I smile when I meet people still playing the same game the same way with the same people even after the kids they grew up to have have grown up to have their own kids. I smile wider when I meet people still learning and sharing new games and new ways to play. I love the quest to finally get or finally replace a game, and I love the moments when new players join a group and later when they GM for the first time.

There are so many common experiences, so many things which draw us together and show us that there are connections, reflections, and vast potentials for interactions out there in the wider community, around us in the categories and vintages of games we are more often drawn to, and among us in the groups we choose to play with. Even when we game alone we are one of many legions of dedicated solo gamers!

Community has the capacity to engage with you when you least expect it. Some of its older members are thinking of a particular Python quote right now~