I Wish I Could Quit You...

...Dan Bellor. Oh wait, never mind, wrong blog. Hehe.

I love DnD. Probably too much. That is ok, because everyone has their own little obsessions. We're all obsessed with something that we find worth the effort and that obsession seems perfectly normal and right to us. Others tend to think we're bat shit crazy, but that is ok too, because we're all entitled to our opinions and whatnot.

I've spoken to my wife and Eric before, saying that I wish I could "quit" video games. Not because video games are for losers, but because I don't really like playing them. I like the stories that I'm told, or the visuals that go along with the button presses, or the quirky mechanics of some, but I don't like video games the way I like DnD. Never believe that this means I don't enjoy playing the games I do play, talk to me for five seconds about Fallout 3 or Disgaea and you'll know I love me some games.

The thing is though, video games and such are my band-aid for not playing as much DnD as I want to. I am the kind of gamer that wants to play DnD at least once a week for a couple of hours. I haven't had that kind of gaming lifestyle ever. So I play video games. Don't get me wrong, I've had fun with my Fables and Fallouts and Baldur's Gates and Planescape: Torment. Those are some fun times, but I'd much rather be playing a Planescape campaign or a Gamma World one shot, or building a campaign about the son of a god, or that sort of thing.

The other thing that comes to mind while pondering this subject is that spending one hundred and eighty hours on Disgaea means that I am not spending one hundred and eighty hours on DnD. I feel like my GMing style and skill are at a pretty good level of late, but would I be better if I had worked on scenarios instead of playing Mass Effect? Would my campaign information be more robust if I hadn't bought Feeding Frenzy and Feeding Frenzy 2 on Xbox Live arcade? Would I have all my traits and flaws and my campaign book done if I hadn't played The Pit and Mothership Zeta for Fallout 3?

...Yeah, they would.

I only really play video games that I know I'll enjoy, so I don't feel like my video game time is wasted time. I just feel like instead of spending fourteen hours on Fable 3 the other day, I could have finished the last few scenarios of this campaign. You know what I mean? There is a certain amount of guilt that goes along with fooling around on the 360 or Netflix instead of trying to flesh out my world. That guilt is a dangerous thing though, I don't want to punish myself. I don't deserve to be punished, I am a good and righteous GM with hit points and Charisma to spare.

I don't think I should focus all my free time on DnD, that is silly. There must be some moderation in my interests. Plus, I have a wife and friends and stuff and they're cool too. I do feel that maybe I can hold off on buying big name titles until a month or six have passed and they drop down a few bucks in price, it wouldn't be the end of the world. If I didn't buy every other arcade game that came out for the 360, that wouldn't exactly be the end of the world either.

I guess I'm not talking about "quitting" video games, but more about sort of altering the way in which I pursue video games. Although, I suspect I could probably never buy a video game again if I could play DnD on a weekly basis.