What We Have Been Doing

Well it’s been over a year since I updated the blog, so it’s way past due to do so.

What have we been doing?
We kept playing 2E up until January when we had to stop due to number of players.
I had to stop DMing because my work and home life had gotten way too busy. I couldn’t even half-ass prepare a game night, much less update the blog.
I even stopped playing WoW, but that was more out of boredom and the cost of time invested versus time enjoyed.
So I handed over the DM reins to Dale. Then he got sick and basically we skipped nearly two months of playing. And that of course kills the mood.

Instead of calling nights off, we started playing board games. And we started enjoying that more than D&D.
D&D was becoming un-fun to us. It was almost turning into a chore. We goofed off more than actually played.
Discussions of how to fix it came up with nothing. We couldn’t agree on a version of D&D to play. Additionally, we weren’t sure we wanted to play D&D at all. Ideas of role-playing games other than D&D didn’t catch any traction either (spending money and finding time to read books isn’t as easy as I’d like).

But we did enjoy the board games.

It started with Mike, Aaron, and I playing Lords of Waterdeep a couple Fridays when Dale had to cancel at the last minute. Then we added Settlers of Catan. And we really enjoyed both games.
A few months later we tried out Stone Age, Arkham Horror, Eldritch Horror, Zombies!!!, Starfleet Battles, Ticket to Ride, Pandemic, No Thanks!, Discworld: Ankh-Morpork, Small World, Munchkin, Tsuro, Fury of Dracula, Zombie Dice, Castle Ravenloft, and probably a couple I’ve forgotten.
Each game was received with varying levels of interest, but we tried to give every game a reasonable chance. No one wants to spend $25-$80 on a game and never play it, and we were all pitching in and buying a game or two.

We’ve determined that Dale loves cooperative games and I’m not a fan. Dale likes the teamwork while I feel that playing against a set of rules is not fun.
Settlers of Catan and Lords of Waterdeep are probably our most liked games.

But we can’t keep this up.
Mike and Will have not shown up much since we stopped playing D&D. And we’ve had few people join us to play board games.
The advantage of board games is that you don’t usually need to learn a ton of rules like D&D does and you don’t have to worry about showing up from one week to the next and lose out on XP or story. So that allows some freedom of who can join in.
We’re still a role-playing group, so we’re probably on a time limit of when we need to choose to switch back to RPGs or just disband (again).

We discussed this for a bit a week ago (we being Aaron, Dale, and me).
The conclusion we’ve come to: After the shiny newness of D&D 5th Edition has worn off, we’ll take a solid look at it.
We’ll get the general views of people on ENWorld and others, and see what their collective opinions are.

If 5E has been a big success, we’ll give it a chance.
If it’s received a neutral opinion, we may still give it a chance.
If it’s flopped, we’ll have to go back to the drawing board.