"Why did you stop playing a game or era?" Topic

In my life, I have been very interested in a game or era and then lost interest. Has that happened to your gaming life? Why?
a) It got too expensive.
b) The game got too boring.
c) The game company changed the rules and I don't like the new rules.
d) My gaming friends lost interest in the game.
e) I lost interest in the era.
f) The rules got boring.
g) The wargame company stopped supporting the game.
h) I can't get the miniatures any more.
i) I don't know why.
j) All of the above.
k) None of the above.
l) I have never lost interest in a game or era.

Dear Peterx

Purely a function of time. I haven't lost interest in any of my areas, but sometimes I put down an era for a few years while I work on another era.

"Up at Bat" now are

18th Century
American Civil War
Between the Wars.
Far ancient times
WWII naval.

In abeyance which I am reconditioning the armies or making major work on but haven't done much with for four years is

Thirty Years War
Renaissance (Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries
18th century naval with large ships (11 to 12" long).
Sieges of the 18th century.

Languishing for over a decade

Sci fi
Al Kayda's Christmas.
Colonial
Hoplite Warfare

In some cases it is loss of opportunity, which typically involved me moving out of the area.

Loss of interest generally came about from playing a game to death.

C. more often than not.

Also, and not listed, while no period that interested me ever became boring, I have reached a point of satiety on several. I think in some ways I wargame to better understand a period or culture, or to feel as if I do. When that is done I move on, although it is with satisfaction, not boredom.

C, E and G.

I have put some periods into storage after burning out on them. Painting and basing a few thousand 15mm Trojan War figures, building ships, the citadel hill of Troy, etc and playing numerous games, not to mention the research, and I've had my fill of Late Bronze Age for a while.

Arthurian Britain is on similar hiatus.

Chinese civil war is on hoild due mostly to a lack of opponents.

40K and Warammer I stopped playing because my regular opponents moved away, I got sick of GW pricing and "codex creep', and really don't enjoy playing with the current locally available players.

So a mix of reasons.

M. Old games never die. They go on the shelf and may come down again sometime as available time and the muses may allow.

sometimes I just feel I have already done everything I can with it

N) The rules we were using never appealed to me and I chose to stop playing while I looked for a set of rules that seemed appropriate.

1) Found them but moved in the interval or the other players insisted on staying with the original rules.

2) Never found the right rules (Holy Grail syndrome??)

Sometimes E or G (as in the company disappeared and the rules languished.)

Always "d". I have never lost interest in "an era" or period of history that first attracted me (so, "L" too)….

I had a huge ACW collection but once I started playing SYW and Napoleonics I found I never played ACW. If I was going to play Horse and Musket I wanted the full combined arms feel. So after several years of inactivity the ACW collection was sold off and funded acquisition of a ton of ancients.

For me, it was the French and Indian War. I bought a ton of figures, painted them all up. Played all of the major battles and still felt pretty good about them. Then our group played a long but very satisfying campaign game that was very good and went to completion with a British win. After that, I had felt I did everything I could with the period and I sold it off.

So it was the great campaign with a rare finish, but at the end of it, I knew I couldn't do anything more or different. The campaign went the way it did because of how the British reacted in the actual war and our campaign, even though there were some twists, went almost the same way. There were truly some great games including the 1st and 2nd battles of Albany where the first battle resulted in Albany under siege and the second game broke the French hold on it.

For the curious, we used the campaign game from Habitants and Highlanders but counters from Wilderness War from GMT.

LOL! So a long winded way to say, E!

And poor Samurai and medieval never had a chance. Painted them but never got more than mildly interested in a game with them,
Larry

L, although I reallyt ought to!

Realizing
1 not enough space to store ( several removal=)
2. That there are only so many times a year to do everything and if letting myself spread out then will never be efficient with anything.

3. Sometimes bored or ( ww2) finding out from research that well, as the man said in WO40 that we can't do it properly.
4 from 4 new stuff pushing away old ones. E.g. awI sold as was played very few times and sort of nearly always the same. Though have all to switch from battles to Sharpe practice level.

K – oh shinny syndrome. Always end up coming back to an era though the rules may change.

d) I don't get to game much now so if the lad's are not playing it neither am I.

Just doing Napoleonics, WW2 and Dark Ages now as a result (but still having a great time)

I stopped playing FIW at brigade level once I ran out of battles.

I used to do a lot of 18th Century Europe (Seven Years War, etc). But the guy with the largest collection of figures moved and no one else wanted to take up the slack.

I have dropped a period in the past if figures were no longer in production, changes in rules made them unplatable to me, lack of rules or belief that the period was unplayable after having researched the period. Also dropped a period if the painting became boring (primarily anything after 1914).

a, c and d (FOW).

I may stop playing a game because i get bored of it or something 'better' comes along or my circumstances change. I don't have time to spend an entire week playing a seven player game of Third Reich any more (althogh one can reminisce….).

As for a period, that is much harder, sometimes the spark just goes.

Availability of figures, specific rules is largely irrelevant. Rules come and go, figures last forever and I couldn't give two hoots if a rulers writer releases 'new versions' if the old ones aren't broken.

If all your pals decide that they want to play something you don't like, that is a different thing. Go along with it or get new friends, depends how willing to compromise you are.

"The wargame company stopped supporting the game."
What? Do people do this? I am flabbergasted…
What is this "support" these people feel they need?

I;Not really sure why. Stuff happens.

J. The game got too "gamey".

K. All my gaming buddies moved away.

Time, and I'm retired now, but ECW, I lit that fuse and it burned and burned and burned until I could cite far far too much drivel. I literally dug a hole in it and came out on the other side of the world. I was an insufferable bore. So I sold 1200 15mm Essex and most of the books, prints tapes etc I collected in the ten years of my obsession. Now I find myself doing the same thing with the Crimean war and that isn't nearly as deep, so yeah, I'm in a funk…….. Thank god for SAGA.

Agree with Time, or rather the lack of it. It all takes so long to prep, paint, etc. If I ever get to retirement age then I'll still have plenty to do, but at least I may get the odd game in by then

I used to have MAW, AWI and others. No group to play so I sold.
Here are reasons as well.

Gaming group slowly went to nothing.
Loss of gaming space.
Tired of playing solo.

Having a grandson drop a box down the stairs, snapping all my FreiKorps 15 SYW troops at the ankles.

I did once buy some American Civil War figures and a few sets of rules, but ended up not liking any of the rules, so I just gave up on it.

Ditto for Franco-Prussian war actually.

(d) On two occasions,

The University wargames society only played ancients. Never really like the period but played because no one seemed to like the Horse and Musket periods I was interested in namely 7YW & Napoleonic.

When I moved here the main gaming group I played with was heavily into DBM ancients. Same thing. Took me a little while to find the right 7YW & Napoleonic group again.

Got tired of the rules and a few of the people(They kept changing the rules.)

ECW…looks great but the battles were dull.

Lost interest in a gaming system, closest answer would be F. The games were extremely well supported, but no one could seem to ever settle on some of the finer points of the rules. Newbies would always ask the same questions, and after a year of devotion to the system I still didn't have a grasp, and I felt like even the game designer didn't totally get it since his answers were inconsistent. My games got bogged down and lost the fun factor, especially with large numbers of figures. I finally threw my hands in the air and designed my own game that could handle full squads easily.