Blogging is Bad for Gaming

But I wouldn't have it any other way

What I mean by this is that (for me anyway), blogging can take away time from actually playing games. This thought struck me because I played a game for the 6 x 6 Challenge last weekend. I had time to play another scenario but instead chose to take the time to blog. Because my WISER rules are simple and quick-playing (games last around 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the scenario), I actually spent more time writing than I did playing! If I didn't blog, I could fit in a lot more games.

But that is not something I want to do. I have found blogging to be one of my favorite aspects of the hobby. In a TMP thread about the most satisfying part of the hobby, I wrote:

I get the most satisfaction out of creating and recording stories. I enjoy the world-building aspect, setting up the scenarios, playing the game to see what happens, and then developing the story to go around the game. I use my blog to record these stories.

 I expressed a similar sentiment in a retrospective about Diplomacy. Back then I stated:

My favorite part of all those campaigns was the newsletter that I wrote to describe the events. As a result, Diplomacy transcended from a mere game to an epic story with heroes and villains, triumphs and tragedies.

 You may be able to tell that I like blogging because I actually have 3 blogs - my wargames blog (where this is posted), my RPG blog, and my LARP blog. Because I like blogging, I can get a little long-winded sometime (such as this, a post dedicated solely to an introduction to a dungeon crawl scenario).

Anyway, the short version of this post is that my blogging may prevent me from completing the 6 x 6 Challenge but I wouldn't change a thing.