Agenda

I guess all you 9-to-5ers are a little miffed this wasn't a three-day weekend, but them's the breaks (sukkas). At least you still have today to sleep it off. Imagine my poor neighbors: it started raining - like torrential downpours, spitting lightning - almost 10 minutes before darkness fell, and lasted well into the morning hours. That means all the kids who were only allowed to pop-off a few bottle rockets and firecrackers, and hold sparklers "until it gets dark," got shafted, so they'll all be out, shooting the $300 worth of grab-bag fireworks they couldn't shoot on the right day (which isn't even the right day, come to find out). A perfect day for a hangover.

I will be playing what is shaping-up to be our final D&D game. Depending on any number of things, me and my former neighbor may continue to run his character, or he may retire him to an NPC full-time. Actually, the neighbor who is moving out-of-state (the one who complained he couldn't get into it because he "[had] no imagination") expressed some remorse at having to give-up on it before really having the chance to play, so I'm going to give it an earnest go once more tomorrow.

As I said earlier, I have an entire piece on why the next generation - the generation to which these two fellas belong - didn't take to tabletop RPG. It is bolstered entirely by an article I know I read on either CBS or ABC News some years back. It was a very detailed piece about how the new generation (today's 20-somethings, by my best estimate), quite frankly, lacks imagination. The long and short of the study showed that "Generation Y" (or whatever) excelled at tasks they were given, but absolutely failed - fell flat-on-their-faces, failed - at any task for which they were not given explicit directions.

Because there's so much going on and the piece is actually (supposed to be) the final in a series, and because this whole experiment is going to occupy no small amount of room across the site, I'm touching on this now to start getting the theme into the heads of any readers we have here representin', yo (Generation Y - or whatever they are called): Gen-Yers have no imagination!

Of course, my tack remains the same: they simply haven't been informed that they have one, and that it is patently okay to exercise and enjoy it without further instruction. Because I failed in my attempt to do so with my small group, I want to publicly examine the spectacular wreckage; I already know what I think - and I feel this attempt proves it - so I want to examine it in the public's eye so you can (hopefully) respond.

You can go back through the posts (which will be indexed in months [possibly weeks, depending on the volume] to come) to see that I came to this project with the best of intentions, though my lack of preparation - in all forms, all the way down the line - is almost solely to blame for not getting things off to a better start. We're going to be elbow-deep in autopsy, so it will all be borne-out, and I plan to be brutally honest about the whole thing: were I not certain that Gen-Y has been "nurtured" in such a way as to render them useless at tabletop roleplay gaming, I would say my lack of preparation was solely to blame. There is just too much to overcome when it comes to newbie Gen-Y players.

I think I can prove that introducing any group of Gen-Yers to tabletop gaming outside of a convention is a doomed venture. They are hopeless without complete instructions and raised to expect to be entertained; they will not function well in a shared-entertainment or -responsibility situation because they lack direction, as well as the initiative, and possibly insight, to form their own.

But I'm also going to sleep for as much of the day as I can, because it's supposed to be hot and I have two fans and a 110 window unit running off the same outlet in my kitchen.

© C Harris Lynn, 2009