The wife and I received a bunch of free tickets to the Kansas City Renaissance Festival and since we couldn't use them all I offered them up to my current gaming group. Even if we could go multiple weekends to use them up, we don't want to. While the RenFest is fun, it's fun in small quantities for us as we are former SCAdians and we've "been there, done that" A LOT. Offering up the tickets to my friends, I was reminded why many hobbies are a lot easier than playing RPGs around a table. I've seen the following exchange happen anytime I have offered up RenFest tickets, or a day that I was going to play paintball, or run a D&D/CP2020/Rifts/Champions campaign, or go see a movie, or go to a book signing, or go to a Con (gaming, comic, or otherwise), or any other geeky pastime.
A month before the event - "You're doing what? Dude, I have ALWAYS wanted to do that! Count me in, I'll be there!" All of that I'd hear from about 10 people.
Three weeks before - "I'm still down, can't wait for it." But now I'm hearing this from only about 8 people.
Two weeks before - "Well, I really need to mow the lawn and give the cat a bath, but if I get that done early, I'll be there." And now we're down to only 5 people.
The week before - "I've been fighting a cold, and I've been meaning to visit my mom." Now 7 out of the original 10 people won't talk to me at all, and the last 3 are really cagey when I do talk to them.
The day of - One person (or none at all, which was always far more likely) shows up to join me to do whatever it was.
You may scoff and think that's not true, but I've seen this over so many years for so many different activities, that this is how I played paintball for a solid decade: I'd put it out when and where I was going to play, and then I'd go play with no one joining me. I'm just lucky that I was living in a city that the local paintball fields had decent enough "rec" or "walk on" players that I'd still get to play. If I had to count on my friends showing up to play, I'd have been out there all by my lonesome because for the longest time, it was whoever showed up at the field, and none of my friends who said that they always wanted to play and this would be the best weekend to give it a try, blah blah blah. I learned long ago, that if I depended on others to pursue my hobbies, I would be sitting at home most weekends, not doing much of anything.
Which is a huge problem to play tabletop RPGs - you kind of need other people to show up to play or run an RPG. Oh sure, these days you've got Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds to play RPGs online, not forgetting MMORPGs and solo play videogame RPGs, but if what you want is that face to face connection, good luck getting a group of folks to show up consistently for long periods of time. What do you do? For me, I run as many games as I can and try not to be the one that is texting everyone the day of the game to say "sorry, can't make it, see you next week". I have had to do this - had to do it this past weekend, in fact, but I already had one player out of state, another who could only be there for 2 out of 5 hours due to a wedding, and still looking for a replacement for the 5th member of the group, so when I really didn't feel ready to run the game I dropped the text to everyone - but whether I've been a player and especially when I'm the GM/DM/whatnot, I just keep trying to be the most dependable of the group.
Please, don't get all disheartened and think it's something beyond your reach, otherwise none of us would have a gaming group to play with/run a game for. Just realize that people are never as brave to try new things, or as desirous to go live an experience, as they first profess to be. And for your other hobbies or geeky pursuits, those that you can pursue without your friends, you have to understand that even though you find them the most fun ever and said friends may even profess to want to do them with you, said activity may not be actually enjoyable to them and you may have to form new friendships in that hobby. Have no fear, you will make new friends, it may take some time, but it will happen.
To the rest of you out there, please, if you were excited about doing or trying something a month before, just go do it. As long as it's legal.
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