The costs of gaming

I am a gamer, and I spent quite lot of my spare time gaming. And thus, I thought it would be nice to have a look at the costs of my hobby, financial and otherwise, if only to rank it with other pastimes. This list only refers to pen-and-paper, classical table-bound role playing games. Not to WoW (which costs a lot more time, and your immortal soul), not to tabletop games with lots of small plastic soldiers (which can become quite expensive) or collectible card games (ditto), and nothing else (get your mind out of the gutter). Also, it is purely subjective and anecdotal – possibly, it would be cheaper to hunt gold-plated dolphins from a speedboat made from diamonds and supermodels.

Time – This hobby appears quite time-intensive – in fact, this seems to be the reason why most people hang up their dice bags (that and a sore lack of being awesome). If you take you gaming serious, reserve about four hours a week, uninterrupted, mostly on one evening. Add about five to ten full days during your weekends per year for those special occasions where you play your five-year old campaign with the hardened criminals from your student days or one-shots with people who have been reduced to one-shots but still like to roll em bones once or twice a year.

Double that time (at the very least) if you are a game master – while most of the preparation will happen in your unconscious, that copious jungle producing all those neat new species of ideas, you still want to hammer out the details, think about your set-pieces, create maps, hand-outs etc. This can be quite time-intensive, but can be mitigated by spending some cash for pre-made adventures. If you are that kind of person.

The time investment of the players is comparable to…any other serious hobby. If you play any sport semi-competitively, you will have a very similar schedule, with weekly training sessions and competitions on some weekends. Game masters will spend much more time, but then they want to, mostly.

The only problem is syncing all players’ date planners, something many sports teams get done with a minimum of fuss, week in, week out.

Comparable to: Volleyball in a semi-serious team hungry for the local finals

Money – RPGs are potentially very, very cheap compared to any other hobby. I have a sizable collection of rule- and source books, and I use maybe 10% of all the stuff I bought over the years, with about half of it rotting away in moving boxes. I feel that I am luxuriously equipped for following my hobby. Nonetheless, all the money I spent since I started playing pretend with a grimly furrowed brow would not buy me a halfway decent motorcycle, plus paying for said motorcycles upkeep, or a surfing board plus the travel expenses to get to the exciting beaches. It is surely cheaper than a pack-a-day smoking habit. Gamers kvetch about 40.00 Euro rulebooks – 40.00 Euros buy 15 meters of rope and nothing else if you are into climbing up and down mountains. Recently, I splurged 70 Euros on a dice bag which I will probably use for the next twenty years. 70 Euros will get you one measly locomotive, if you are a H0 enthusiast, and a lopsided smile if you are into old paintings or sports cars.

Of course you can spend ludicrous amounts of money on this hobby if you choose to – it will certainly add variety to the hobby and make your job as a game master much easier. But, in contrast to many other hobbies, the economic entry level is laughably low, and costs can remain well within the Spartan boundaries of the pocket money doled out to a teenager growing up in a protestant household.

If you go full austerity, all you need are some sheets of paper, pencils, and some kind of no-cost random number generator. You could probably play RPGs in jail without too much fuss.

Comparable to: Something between chess played with a set made from breadcrumbs and an old mattress, and chess played with heirloom pieces, with a serious library on the subject on stand-by.

Space – Here we come to the first spot where gaming might be more “expensive” than other hobbies. While you just seem to need a table to seat all participants, you also need some privacy. Gaming is not exactly a spectator sport, mostly because the topics discussed appear morbid or even criminal to the casual observer. While you could host a game of Human Occupied Landfill at a open-air pool or a session of Dark Heresy in a public park, this might elicit hostile reactions by other visitors – thus a secluded space is needed. But you don’t need an ocean beach, or a mountain range, to enjoy gaming to the fullest. And while some privacy is surely a good thing, it is not absolutely mandatory – as for some other pastimes.

Comparable to: Learning languages for fun

Natural resources – Gamers sure kill a lot of trees with all their books, and those dice are made from – wait for it – plastics, so when the oil runs out, we will all be flipping coins to find out if we hit that ork.

In fact, I spend much time on the computer, researching for my own scenarios, reading pdf.s, looking for funky images etc. And - as we are finding out – the internet don’t come cheap energy-wise. It would probably less resource-intensive if I did yoga or some such. Still, compared to most sports and high-octane hobbies, gaming has a negligible carbon footprint. It possibly is worse than collecting stamps, but certainly ranks above collecting exotic fishes.

Comparable to: Playing World of Warcraft, stopping after five to ten hours a week, which no WoW-player ever does.

Health – A real weak spot of the hobby. If you are into gaming and nothing else, you can basically watch your body rot away with each passing week. Many outdoorsy hobbies are much better for your body (until you fall from your bike and get a nice open fracture), and serious gamers tend to be in bad shape. So it is mandatory to get out of the basement some hours each week – you will also find that a well oxygenated game master is a sharp game master.

Comparable to: Watching TV – for fun! No, seriously, gamers should spend some times doing sports.