On March 27, 2009, I sent out an email asking a number of my male friends and relatives if they would be interested in participating in a monthly GNOME (Guys' Night of Monster Evisceration). The idea was to get together with other men, hang out, do something that we enjoyed, eat food that was bad for us, and have fun. As none of the men I invited were that interested in sports, hunting, or other traditional guy outings, the suggestion was that we would play D&D, a game that I knew several of us loved.
We've played as pirates, raided ancient trap-filled tombs, fought ancient dragons, taken portals to other worlds, ridden the winds on air ships, fought with foul-mouthed monkey-pirates and stopped evil plans to rule the world. In all, I believe that we've had a pretty good time.
The biggest problem has been scheduling. Because D&D is episodic, when one person can't make a session, it's difficult to play on with the story without them. For a while, we actually had two campaigns running depending on who was available. The confusion behind that was almost as bad as when we go for months without meeting. In either case, we spend a good deal of our time figuring out what we have done before (even with a well-kept adventure journal available to us), a while catching up on any new news since we have last met, and some amount of time eating. This has made our sessions even more sporadic, to the point that we haven't met for several months.
I don't want to give up on this idea. With the release of the highly praised 5th edition of D&D, I would like to reinvigorate the concept of the GNOME once again. I feel that part of the problem may have been the time that I was (or wasn't) willing to invest considering my difficult schedule, but my connections with my friends is more important to me than petty calendar disagreements.
I will make certain that the GNOME lives on.
We've played as pirates, raided ancient trap-filled tombs, fought ancient dragons, taken portals to other worlds, ridden the winds on air ships, fought with foul-mouthed monkey-pirates and stopped evil plans to rule the world. In all, I believe that we've had a pretty good time.
The biggest problem has been scheduling. Because D&D is episodic, when one person can't make a session, it's difficult to play on with the story without them. For a while, we actually had two campaigns running depending on who was available. The confusion behind that was almost as bad as when we go for months without meeting. In either case, we spend a good deal of our time figuring out what we have done before (even with a well-kept adventure journal available to us), a while catching up on any new news since we have last met, and some amount of time eating. This has made our sessions even more sporadic, to the point that we haven't met for several months.
I don't want to give up on this idea. With the release of the highly praised 5th edition of D&D, I would like to reinvigorate the concept of the GNOME once again. I feel that part of the problem may have been the time that I was (or wasn't) willing to invest considering my difficult schedule, but my connections with my friends is more important to me than petty calendar disagreements.
I will make certain that the GNOME lives on.
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