The Benefits of a Lifestyle Game

I'm a person who enjoys change, or hates monotony or sameness, so playing the same game time after time no matter how good it is would drive me out of gaming. I do play games I rate as great often but I don't over-play them, I need variety in life so I have a large collection that I try to rotate through the games and play them a few times before moving to the next. Variety in life also means I just don't game, I have to have other interests and activities to keep myself sane whether it's my sports fan addiction (too old to compete myself) or music fan or finding out there TV series and even documentaries to keep on learning.

Last night, my league wrapped up the Championship (and Sacko) matches for...
DreadBall.

It's our lifestyle game. We were collectively joking yesterday; we're probably the only DreadBall group in the world that has maintained it's membership and played seven seasons within 5.5 years.

The game ain't perfect, but it's damn good. And with like minded sports nuts - super super fun.

For those that want to get into the weeds:
Champ - Human Corporation. Undefeated season at 7-0. First season coach.
Sacko - Sphyr (i.e. shark men). 1-6. First season coach.

I fielded the Z'zor (i.e. bugs). 4-2.

The other huge advantage of lifestyle games is that you can move to a new area and normally tap into a group playing your game of choice/

I guess ASL would and should be considered one of the defining lifestyle games.

Certainly to be good, you must play semi regularly or you begin to forget the rules. And even though every game is about squad level combat in the mid 1930s to the early 1950s there is so much variety within those confines and so many scenarios that even if you were to play it twice a week you'd never play every scenario before you up and died.

There are tournaments all over the world you can attend and, at least in my experience, everybody is very welcoming and friendly.

True, it is a high up front cost to get into the game but if you chose to make it a lifestyle, in the long run, youd spend less than a cult of the new person.

I haven't made it a lifestyle personally. At least not yet. But I donenjoy it a lot.

My lifestyle games have always been on the video sort. NHL 93/94, PGA golf. With the advent of on line multiplayer things Gears of war 2, Final Fantasy XI, SOCOM, Pinball FX2. 99% of the time in a co op environment, teaming up in us versus them.

I think the biggest advantage is, simply, that you are playing the same game more often and good games get better if you know them well.

Ancient_of_MuMu wrote: The other huge advantage of lifestyle games is that you can move to a new area and normally tap into a group playing your game of choice/

Though I had a weird encounter with that back in my Magic days. I played Magic with a core group of friends and a small league at work. We occasionally went to events in our area.

When I moved and talked to other Magic players, I found out that they played *completely differently* than how we did. Not in rules, but in how they approached the game. I got asked, "What colors did you play?" which baffled me. When I said "all of them?" it confused them, thinking we sported five color decks all the time. People in my new area had favorite colors they played and disregarded everything else. They also had decks that were more or less permanent, only getting changes when a new set introduced cards that worked in them. My old group, we built decks of whatever colors we wanted to try at the moment, played them, tore them apart, made different decks, etc.

The thought of playing against the same decks and colors over and over didn't really appeal to me, and I didn't see how that would even work. Why would I not just create a deck that easily takes down whatever it is you're bringing out regularly, even if it can't do anything else? It was weird to me, but I got out of Magic shortly after that and have no idea which approach was more common.

I started playing Magic during Arabian Nights. The people in my rpg campaign at the time all got into Magic, but they didn't like the deckbuilding concept. They just played large five color decks, and when they got some new cards, they would pick out a few cool ones and throw those in their big decks. I wasn't sure about Magic at first, so I only bought two starter decks and four boosters. Because I didn't have as many powerful rare cards as the other players, I insisted on playing 2- and 3-color decks. I kept winning, so eventually everybody in the group reluctantly started building more focused decks. Then they started playing other people in local stores, and really had to take deckbuilding seriously or quit playing. I bailed on Magic during Ice Age. The Magic players were too serious and intense, so the games became unenjoyable. Meanwhile, some great multi-player CCGs were coming out and attracted the more reasonable players.

My biggest lifestyle game was Jyhad, and it went out of print several years ago. But a new company picked up the rights and published a small fixed set of new cards, along with two fixed sets of reprints from the last set published before the game went out of print.I picked up one of each in June. The cards were perfectly acceptable additions to the game, but they were also boring. The designer of the new cards played it really safe and made a set that added nothing interesting to the game except some new card art. I didn't feel inspired to build new decks or even add these cards into existing decks. I didn't even feel inspired to play again with my old decks. Some guys from my second Jyhad group got together and played a few games that included the new cards, and haven't played since. I guess we have all moved on with our lives.

Shellhead wrote: My biggest lifestyle game was Jyhad, and it went out of print several years ago. But a new company picked up the rights and published a small fixed set of new cards, along with two fixed sets of reprints from the last set published before the game went out of print.I picked up one of each in June. The cards were perfectly acceptable additions to the game, but they were also boring. The designer of the new cards played it really safe and made a set that added nothing interesting to the game except some new card art. I didn't feel inspired to build new decks or even add these cards into existing decks. I didn't even feel inspired to play again with my old decks. Some guys from my second Jyhad group got together and played a few games that included the new cards, and haven't played since. I guess we have all moved on with our lives.

It's a shame about the new VTES sets isn't it? Our group was playtesting the first online set which was originally more interesting. Then some drama arose within the design team and many of the best cards were dropped in favor of the blandness we ended up getting. That was the beginning of the end in my interest in the new sets.

One problem with lifestyle games comes directly from my days playing Jyhad/Vtes. We had a pretty solid group that wasn't really into powergaming (since vtes is sort of broken balance wise - stupid dominate!), so had lots of room for experimenting and deckbuilding. Then a new player shows up who is both a powergamer, extremely slow, really bad, and annoying as shit. Then he came... every week. Played the same deck over and over until the game became obnoxious and monotonous. I slowly stopped showing up, but at least I was able to sell me collection for a decent sum before I had to move it across the country (to then sit in a closet unplayed).

It's great when you have a lifestyle game group all on the same page, but that's a really delicate thing. Someone stops showing up or someone new starts showing up and it can all come crashing down. I guess that's most evident with rpg groups.

I'm in a spot where I could sell off a lot (like a lot a lot) of my conflict-driven games and just play Cthulhu Wars and Blood Rage 95% of the time where the situation would allow it.

I've gotten a bit curmudgeonly and mostly just want to play games I already like. Occasionally I'll take a flier on one, but it was pretty telling that I created a list of games to play at Dice Tower Con this year. My wife saw the list and said, "We've either played or own almost all of these." And I was like...."Yep."


So while I'm not at lifestyle gamer yet, I'd like to say I'm slowly morphing into having a "lifestyle selection" of games that most of the time, if you press me, that's what I'd rather be playing.

Ancient_of_MuMu wrote: The other huge advantage of lifestyle games is that you can move to a new area and normally tap into a group playing your game of choice/

It's the age-old of question of choosing games or people. I like some people who love shitty games, and there's shitty people in games that I love. Heroscape was a rarity when it comes to having a great community, but I struggle to find the time or space to be good at it anymore.

D&D 5e is easy enough to learn that you can get existing friends and family into it, but it can put a lot of burden on you as a DM, which is how it becomes a lifestyle game.

Count Orlok wrote:

Shellhead wrote: My biggest lifestyle game was Jyhad, and it went out of print several years ago. But a new company picked up the rights and published a small fixed set of new cards, along with two fixed sets of reprints from the last set published before the game went out of print.I picked up one of each in June. The cards were perfectly acceptable additions to the game, but they were also boring. The designer of the new cards played it really safe and made a set that added nothing interesting to the game except some new card art. I didn't feel inspired to build new decks or even add these cards into existing decks. I didn't even feel inspired to play again with my old decks. Some guys from my second Jyhad group got together and played a few games that included the new cards, and haven't played since. I guess we have all moved on with our lives.

It's a shame about the new VTES sets isn't it? Our group was playtesting the first online set which was originally more interesting. Then some drama arose within the design team and many of the best cards were dropped in favor of the blandness we ended up getting. That was the beginning of the end in my interest in the new sets.

One problem with lifestyle games comes directly from my days playing Jyhad/Vtes. We had a pretty solid group that wasn't really into powergaming (since vtes is sort of broken balance wise - stupid dominate!), so had lots of room for experimenting and deckbuilding. Then a new player shows up who is both a powergamer, extremely slow, really bad, and annoying as shit. Then he came... every week. Played the same deck over and over until the game became obnoxious and monotonous. I slowly stopped showing up, but at least I was able to sell me collection for a decent sum before I had to move it across the country (to then sit in a closet unplayed).

It's great when you have a lifestyle game group all on the same page, but that's a really delicate thing. Someone stops showing up or someone new starts showing up and it can all come crashing down. I guess that's most evident with rpg groups.

That is a great point about lifestyle games in general, that one bad player can ruin the local lifestyle group. We had a guy like the one you described. He was a traumatized and disabled veteran who served in Iraq. One of our more socially clueless Jyhad players got him interested in the game, and he never failed to show up for the Wednesday night group. Unfortunately, he was usually a gloating winner or a very sore loser. When that interesting Imbued set came along, he quickly turned against it and would actually rage-quit a game if anybody at the table dared to play an Imbued deck. I loved Jyhad enough to tolerate him for a couple of years, then finally gave up on that group. Once in a while, I play boardgames with that crowd, and he has shown up a couple of times. If we're playing a co-op game, he's okay, but still obnoxious in any game with player conflict.