Forum Dueling Basics - Dead Weight

It sinks like a stone in water, a bird that just got caught in a hail of rounds from a duck hunting party. It isn't graceful in the least. It's monstrous, bulbous, and it's crashing with the finesse of a cannonball at a diving competition in the Summer Olympics. It's dueling and role playing, and it's in decline, and fading beneath the waters like a sad little wet dream by a teen ashamed to have been caught with a mess in his bed. If you ever stopped to look at role playing and dueling, you'll even see it isn't the once vibrant, living being of sunshine and rainbows it once was. Instead, you see a husk, a decaying and malnourished creature barely surviving on the limited scrapes fed to it by the few still interested in the art, and even their interest is waning.

But the question is why? The answer is actually simple: lives. All those teens who found their mainstay on the boards in dueling and role playing got on with their lives. They got jobs, went to university and college, dropping dueling and role playing like so much dead weight. The sadder part, though, isn't that these intrepid creationists who built up the art left, it's that they didn't bother to pass it on to anybody else. They just left, ran off the track with the baton and forgot to give the next runner in line a chance at equaling or besting the record. No, instead you have the current generation of role players and duelists that are lackluster at best, and when one of those so highly esteemed in legend for their prowess in the art happens to come on by, all they can do is complain angrily that something they spearheaded with such ferocity is being destroyed.

Sad, really.

Now, the bad part on my behalf is that I'm being hypocritical in a sense. I'm just as bad as any other person who happens along and complains about how good the old days were compared to how they are now. I'm one of those people who found a job, found a life, grew up and moved on. But I still have the spark, somewhere, and maybe if I can revive that little bestial thing, I might return to my former glory and actually deserve the respect that's been given to me. A dream, but a start.

So, how do you fix this problem? Well, the current role players and duelists could just learn how to write in the first place, and learn to put some effort and love behind what they do. That would work, but only so far. You can't convince all the people who left to come back, either, to fix the problem themselves. Their lives interfere, and whatever takes priority in their life, be it their job, their spouse, their gaming habits or even children, would take precedence over dueling and role player. In the end, it really falls into the hands of the current and new generation. They have the opportunity to build on or destroy what the previous generation did. You could also cut out the older folks who don't do anything other than complain (myself included), which would improve things as well.

Several things you could do. They might work, might not. But it's not in my hands to decide what goes down. Your problems, you fix 'em. I'm just the advice guy in the corner.