Welcome to February. Everything sucks.
Now that is obviously hyperbole, but let’s be honest… there isn’t a whole lot going on this time of year. At least here in the northern hemisphere, February is the middle of winter. It is generally cold weather, mild at best in the southernmost areas. Rain is abundant in the south, and the weather gets progressively worse the further north you go.
Unless you live here in the Pacific Northwest, where we mostly just get rain or maybe ice. It’s cold, wet, and very, very boring.
Now that’s the important thing to take away here: February is boring. So very, very boring. We’re basically stuck in the house, with nothing to do. Sure, there are Hardcores that go out and find the snow we get up in the mountains, so they can go snowboarding and such.
Screw the Hardcores. Bunch of outgoing jerks, if you ask me. The rest of us are content to binge some streaming content and just ride through our Seasonal Affective Disorder like normal people.
But I digress.
What does all of this have to do with gaming? Well, let me tell you! One of my biggest problems with the winter months, and February in specific, is that they suck for tabletop gaming. Sure, you can play online with other misfits, but I’m talking about actual tabletop games… in person groups, you know, at an actual table?
Winter sucks for playing tabletop games in person. As a forever GM, just getting people to show up during February is a damn miracle, let alone on time. Travel sucks, getting people just interested in leaving their homes in winter weather makes that infinitely worse. The last time I was able to play in-person with my old group, with all of them actually showing up in person and relatively on-time (don’t get me started) was in mid-December 2019.
February would have been completely impossible. Sure, my wife and I would show up, as would my brother (since we played at his home), but expecting anyone else to show was just out of the question. And this is in my experience basically the norm.
Now this is why I suggest everyone play online, if they wish to play TTRPGs in a group. It is more than just convenient, at this time of year, it is just common sense if you want people to regularly show up!
Anyway, it has been a very long time since I played in a TTRPG group (long story), but I have thought about forming a new group online, and now is frankly the perfect time to do it. February drives so many of us inside, but we still want to play TTRPGs, which leave them the best option to play online.
The only problem I have is that players online like using virtual tabletop software, and I’d rather just play over Discord. February might be dark, cold, and lonely, but it isn’t so much so that I can be bothered to learn to use some new software!
