Let's talk about the cost of hobbies in terms of time. We'll loop this to RPGs, I promise.

Originally shared by Larry Spiel

Let's talk about the cost of hobbies in terms of time.  We'll loop this to RPGs, I promise.


I ran my tenth and final marathon earlier this month.  It just takes too much out of me.  Gonna change things up a bit.

A friend of mine once told me that people value either money or time.  It felt pretty true at the time, and still does.

Increasingly as we get older, I find many of us have the disposable income for the hobbies that interest us, but it's a matter of the time we have.  What a hobby requires, vs what we get out of it.  Last year I tried surfing for the first time and thought, "That was fun, but not fun enough to justify the time to make this a regular hobby."

RPGs can take a lot of time, although it doesn't have to be a lot of money.  For a lot of us, we read the books(150 pages?  Who wrote this game, Dostoyevsky?), schedule gatherings (cat herding), prepare the event (Do I have enough food?   Should I clean the bathroom?[YES]).  For many gamers, this is a very regular event.

And there was a time when, during most gaming sessions, I'd only occasionally be having fun as well.  This is the 4 minute/4 hour thing.  In a four hour game, I'd get four minutes of real fun out of it.

Then I discovered the games that really hit what I wanted.  For me, that was the indie/story games.  For others, it might be 5E, or Fate, or OSR.

Games have changed massively in the last decade and a half, and while I often talk about the things I love about that, in the end, they're trying to give you more for the time/money they cost.

Designers, back me up here.