In 2025, I’m playing shorter games with fewer players
Two over four because sometimes, less is more.
There’s a lot of inherited wisdom when it comes to RPGs. But like all wisdom, it’s contextual. When I play games these days, I’m playing online. Every week; at least we’re supposed to, per my calendar. Sometimes with people that I’ve known for years, sometimes with people that I’m meeting for the first time. Because this isn’t everybody’s context (and was nobody’s context for most of the hobby’s history), I’ve had to figure out what worked for me. And one thing I’m figuring out is that sometimes less is more.
On Fridays, I’ve been playing Apocalypse World: Burned Over with three old friends. We start at around 9 pm (because two of us are in India but the other two are in the UK), and we wrap up around 11. That’s two hours with 30 minutes of catching up, give or take. You know how it is: “How was your week?” “It was a week.” Somehow, it’s always a week.
