On Thursday of last week, I finished the second draft of my first novel. This weekend I sent it off to a proofreader, and once the proofread pass is finished I’ll send it off to beta readers. I’m unbelievably stoked and absolutely fucking terrified.
I find myself, this Monday morning, reflecting on all of the things going on in my life now that I’m looking forward to beginning my second novel. If you’ve read my blog you know that my obligations and hobbies are pretty much split between writing, podcasting, video games, comic books, and poker. There was once a time where the biggest output of effort (aside from my marriage, of course) was a live-action roleplaying game called Amtgard.
I attended my first LARP in my sophomore year of high school in 1992. It was the Yakima, WA chapter of a national game called New England Roleplaying Organization, or NERO for short. For people who don’t LARP, the hobby is vilified as quite possibly the nerdiest endeavor one could partake in. It is seen as being populated by closeted dorks with no social skills who are outcasts even amongst their own hobbies.
For me this couldn’t have been further from the truth. When I began playing NERO I was about as introverted and awkward as a nerd could get. Playing that LARP – and several others since – was truly what drove me out of that shell, out of my comfort zone. LARPing forced me to get out of my house and interact with other, like-minded people, and I credit it with being the catalyst that completely changed my personality.
Once I moved away from home to go to college, I wasn’t able to attend NERO anymore, and I missed it. For almost two years I wasn’t part of any live-action games at all. When I met my ex-girlfriend, she had been part of Amtgard, a LARP that started in El Paso, Texas in 1983, for several years already. It wasn’t the same as NERO – being much less roleplay oriented and more geared toward live combat games – but it was something.
I began playing Amtgard in 1996. I played consistently for eleven years until “retiring” from the game in 2007. Over the course of that time I founded a chapter that is still running strong to this day, founded one of the longest-running recurring campout events in the Pacific Northwest, and was a fixture of the game in this area the entire time I was part of it. It is a humongous part of my history, and a formative piece of my life.
Toward the end of my time in the game, my mood began to sour. As with any major hobby, there are people who take it too seriously, and whose lives become so wrapped up in it that they know no other form of personal gratification. For them, the game is no longer a hobby – it becomes their entire self-worth. It was those people – while few, very loud – who began leaching the fun out of the game for me. I was there to gather with friends, play a game that I enjoyed, and have a good time. They were there to advance their reputations by any and all means necessary.
In 2006, I ran my last major event in Amtgard before retiring from the game. 90% of the event was extremely successful, in the face of some bad apples striving to ruin it. In the closing minutes of the event, that group decided to vandalize a state park structure as a parting shot toward me on their way out of the event. With my mood already soured toward the game as a whole, dealing with the fallout from this action was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I lasted less than a year in the game before finally calling it quits.
Amtgard was a huge part of my life. It was my dominant hobby and the foundation of my entire social circle. I knew that leaving it behind was necessary, but it crushed me at the time. It was like leaving my family behind. It hurt. A lot.
Over the next several years, my attentions were diverted from the game I’d left behind. My parents both passed away about 2½ years apart right after leaving the game, I was hired into a job I’d been striving to get for quite some time, I began writing more regularly, and I started a podcast. I filled the void with a lot of things I realized I’d been missing over the years, pouring my efforts into creative pursuits that I’d been setting aside in favor of the game.
Looking back, I realize that I may have actually hamstrung my real life in the late ‘90’s by being too active in my hobby. I loved Amtgard for what it gave me – hell, I can directly attribute it to meeting my wife – but, in retrospect, I allowed my career pursuits and even my last few quarters at college suffer in favor of putting my time and energy into the game. And I only realized that fully once I found out what my life was like without it.
There have been several times over the last 5 years that I’ve thought seriously about going back and becoming a regular again. I can never seem to find the time now, though; those extra minutes and hours now being filled with the things that are fulfilling me domestically and creatively. But I still have those urges… To hang out with the old crew, to get drunk around a campfire telling stories, to hit people with foam-padded sticks, to continue my journey toward awards and honors within the game – namely the Knighthood I never attained.
Never has that pull been stronger than in the last few weeks. I was reminiscing with a few friends who were also long-time Amtgarders, while also trying to explain the game to some people who were not familiar with it. It was like a flashback to the innumerable times I recruited a new player into the group that I was running at the time, or explained the game to onlookers while we were playing out in the park. The nostalgia ran high, and I felt the undeniable pull to go play again.
And I had a ton of fun doing so. I went out to the park and reminded myself how old and slow I’d become, how sedentary my lifestyle is without it. It’s an extremely physical game and I wasn’t up to it, but I pushed myself anyway and had a blast. I capped off the night by hanging out with a whole group of other long-time Amtgarders, some of whom I hadn’t seen since my exit in 2007.
I was hyped again. All the long-dormant neurons were firing, pulling me back toward the game that I’d once loved and lost. I thought about fighting more, making new garb, and going to campouts. I thought of all the fun I used to have… and all of these thoughts immediately led into all the anger at everything wrong with the game as a whole.
See, Amtgard isn’t just a fighting sport, it’s also got a huge element of in-game and interpersonal politics. The interpersonal politics are inherent in any large group activity. Friendships bloom and die, rivalries grow and fester, relationships burn bright and flame out. The in-game politics – each group is run by elected officials – are more prevalent, and tend to bleed into and poison the interpersonal ones. Again, this isn’t a new thing for any group (just look at the recent trials and tribulations of the SFWA). I found, during my time in the game, that the game’s politics hold an unreasonable sway in many players’ lives and that they dictated the course of too many friendships and rivalries.
Over the last two weeks, I’ve realized that none of that has changed. The game is still the same game it was when I started playing 17 years ago. The politics still dominate and the drama still runs high. Many of the older players are still playing, and new players are entering the fold all the time, but the game never seems to advance or recover from the things that spoiled my enjoyment of it.
Every time I return I’ve been greeted by varying numbers of older players who politely grill me about whether I’m coming back full time and what they can do to draw me back in. Every time this has happened I’ve wondered why they’re pushing so hard. I mean, I won’t deny that I may have had some influence on the game in my time, but no one cared when I left. I didn’t burn out… I faded away.
And then it hit me: it’s desperation. The old guard in the game are – just like in real life – longing for times past, when things were “better”, and desperate to commiserate with people who know of the glory days. I saw the same thing amongst the “old timers” when I first joined the game, and now I see it from their point of view – only I’m on the outside looking in. I see a game that is struggling with the exact same problems it had when I was a noob, just under a different regime. I realize that Amtgard has never changed – but I have.
So now, although I’m not facing the same decision that I had to make in 2007, I’m facing the next tier of that same process. I don’t believe I have even the time to devote to being just an Amtgard player. When I left it, so many years ago, I replaced it. There is no longer an Amtgard-shaped hole in my life. Although nostalgia will pull at that wound, it’s been stitched up, healed, and well scarred over.
I now sit, scratching at that scar, wondering if I ever completely left the game like I wanted to. Like I needed to. Amtgard was a part of me all through my twenties. But I’m not in my twenties anymore, and with a five-year separation from the game, I can’t say it has a place in my thirties. I think, maybe, it’s time for me not just to leave the game, but to leave it behind.
