How Old is Too Old to Play RPGs?
I'll join the chorus of 'No such thing as too old'. I was introduced to RPGs in junior high, spent junior high and high school playing D&D/AD&D. After I got out of high school, I kind of tired of the D&D focus on 'kill the monsters and collect the gold'. My younger brother introduced me to a new GM (who went on to become one of my closest friends), who was playing his own home-brewed fantasy system that was part Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing system, part FASA's Star Trek RPG (I don't remember the name...it wasn't Starfleet Battles, as that was more akin to Battletech...but it could be used in parallel with Starfleet Battles if you wanted to make a larger, expanded campaign), and a few bits and pieces he spliced on out of his own imagination. I had all but given up on role-playing, prior to that, and he totally reinvigorated my interest in it.
I've played a lot of different games since then...WEG's Star Wars, a few different editions of Shadowrun, tried getting back into D&D a couple of times (it just never clicked again for me), Palladium's fantasy system, RIFTS, GURPS, OWOD, etc...the ones that I always enjoyed were the ones where the GM was more focused on the role-playing and storytelling than the crunchy parts. I've been in a few games on here that were, technically, running under some kind of rules system...the GM rolled the dice as appropriate so the game looked, from the outside, kind of like a freeform game (players said what they wanted to do, the GM decided if a roll was warranted and--if needed--rolled it, and then posted the reactions to the players' actions, so we as players never had to worry about dice) and they were among my favorites.
As I've gotten older, however, I've found that I have less time available to devote to leisure activities like RPGs...so, I tend to stick to systems that I already know well, unless the setting of the game so intrigues me that I decide it's worth laboring through figuring out a new system (and I am infinitely grateful to those GMs who have held my hand and coached me through getting adjusted to a new system!) I don't do any table-top gaming anymore because, for me, it was as much or more about the chemistry of the people involved than it was the game, and now that I live an hour or more away from any of my old gaming friends, I don't know anyone that I have that same kind of chemistry with. I don't necessarily have that kind of chemistry in most of my games on here, but since I don't have direct interaction with the other players, I can fake it (or by the time I've typed up the snarky comeback to something they've done or said, I've had time to consider whether the backlash will be worth enduring and the answer is always 'no', so I delete it). I have good enough chemistry with enough of the other players that I stick around...and, occasionally, I stumble into a game where everything clicks with everybody and I absolutely love the game and everything about it (those are usually the games that end up with the GM having to discontinue things because RL has reared its ugly head and demanded their attention elsewhere.)
But as long as I can find people that I enjoy interacting with, rules that I can make sense of, and a setting that engages my imagination, I'll be gaming until my pilot light goes out forever.
