Gateway to the Minimalist Gamer Lifestyle

I've been obsessed with minimalism recently (the lifestyle, not the music...although I am a huge Philip Glass junkie). It's a hard thing to attain if you are married with kids, but the mere concept of a minimalist lifestyle just exudes a sense of weird freedom. But how does one reconcile minimalism with the natural predilection for collecting crap that comes with being an old gamer? I mean....I've got three shelves' full of just D&D 5th edition books! An entire additional three shelves filled with OSR and indie books. I don't even know where to start.

The OSR certainly offers a starting point. If one were hypothetically capable and willing to stick to a set of rules such as White Box you could conceivably eliminate a lot of that clutter. It sounds cool, until I start thinking about how awesome it would be to get my group to play, say, a Razor Coast campaign. Then I realize I'd be using S&W Complete, which means I'd have the Tome of Horrors Complete, and Monstrosities, and all that other stuff....that's a lot of paper. In the course of this exercise I'd start thinking about the warlock I want to stat out and then realize there are no warlocks in White Box, which reminds me of why I play D&D 5E. Suddenly things get complicated.

Savage Worlds is actually well suited to minimalist play, barring the fact that you need to haul at least the poker chips, cards, core rules and up to four or five genre books around for the full experience.

Many other games, such as Pathfinder, GURPS and even D&D 5E now are diametrically opposed to this concept, even if they manage to come fairly close --one can argue that you only really need 3 tomes to run all the D&D you want, even if you would be empirically wrong because gamers always need that one extra tome.

This is not the first, second --or even third-- time I've thought about this subject. Clearly I need to find some sort of point of balance between "stuff" and "life." Then again....maybe not all stuff is life, but perhaps all life is stuff. Hmmmm.

So I don't know how to reconcile my existing lifestyle and hobby with the precepts of minimalism.  It seems to come up when I realize I am statistically more likely to die by being buried under an avalanche of books than of natural causes.

Maybe I'll make this my official New Year's resolution (nine days late): set my goal to see how close to the minimalist life goal I can get.

Minimalist Gaming--possible, or just another pipe dream?

If they had a show for Game Hoarders I might be a good fit. I suspect that other bloggers and OSR people online might be a much better fit than me....I've moved across a few states over the last two decades, and that has at times forced me to consolidate my vast collection of books and games, plus my efforts to migrate to electronic readers at least cut down on the number of books I have filling shelves (if not games). But I really do have too much.

I've been thinking about how nice it would be to just keep cutting down until I am at last at the "essentials." D&D 5E would be my natural choice....but could I really give up thinking about 13th Age? Savage Worlds seems to be the best fit for what I need for all-purpose multigenre gaming right now....but BRP and GURPS have long and steady histories with me (even if I haven't run GURPS since 2008...sigh). Call of Cthulhu remains my go-to for horror gaming, but could I really give up Kult, Chill, Cryptworld, Unknown Armies and more? What about all the superhero games I've collected but suspect I'll never, ever get to play?

Minimalism is hard for gamers. But it is a thing! People do it, and find their lives simpler and possibly better for it. I have at least one long-term friend who I believe is an excellent minimalist, though he may not know it.

I am tempted by the concept, which is tough, because I grew up in a family which could give most hoarders a run for their money. I'm already downright reformed compared to other family members in my life, so relatively speaking I'm already a borderline minimalist by their standards. But to a true minimalist I'm a nightmare of rolling paper and collectibles, an Id-like monstrosity of content and memorabilia from the Forbidden Apartment.

If I go through with this, I may have a lot of stuff on ebay again soon. I've already decimated my Pathfinder collection (twice, but it kept growing anyway) and I'm eyeballing everything else. It would be nice to move to a more "dedicated" stance with a handful of treasured, much-played games rather than the current problem I have, of way too many games dividing precious time and interest too thinly.

Stuff to consider....

Glassworks

It's Sunday Evening! Time for some more Philip Glass. This time, his passage from Glassworks of the same title, followed by Metamorphosis, one of my all time favorite pieces (and one of Glass's works which was featured in an episode of Battlestar Galactica. The one where Starbuck was stuck on lifeless Caprica).

 

Philip Glass, Minimalism and 1000 Airplanes (on the roof)

I had mentioned that I liked Philip Glass. That's a mild understatement...I believe I have just about all of Philip Glass's music which he wrote, orchestrated, performed or was even in the same room as. If you don't know much about Philip Glass (outside of the fact that his music occasionally graces Verizon and car commercials) you can check out a free sampler over at Amazon here called "The Orange Mountain Music Sampler." This'll give you an opportunity to experience the grandfather (although not the originator) or modern minimalist music in action.

Here's a sampling of one of my all time favorite works by Philip Glass, from the soundtrack to the science fiction play 1000 Airplanes on the Roof. This was the first CD I purchased back in 1988-89 along with my first CD player, and I still have that CD today.