I just thought about this again, and it’s a slightly disturbing thought to me for some reason: I’ve been on the design team, and am listed in the Concept and Design section, for three White Wolf core books (Mage: the Awakening, Changeling: the Lost, and Scion: Hero), yet I’ve only ever played one of them (Scion), and I only played that once.  I’ve never even completely read through the others to see what they turned out like.

If I were to find that one of the designers of a game never played the final product, I would be pretty surprised.  And a little let down, if I were a fan of that game.  But honestly, I’ve had little time to roleplay recently, and recently I haven’t really been inspired to do so.  I’d love to get a regular Scion game going, but most of my friends here are enamored with D&D, and my second group is on Exalted (which is one of my favorite games).

When I do something, I do it.  When I used to play Magic, I had the rules for every card memorized that was in the tournament type in which I competed.  When I played Mage: the Ascension, I knew the rules forward and backward (I think Ian is the only person I’ve met who knew the rules at least as well as I — hi, Ian!).  I’ve had a problem playing Exalted lately, because I don’t know it nearly as well as I used to.  I can’t really stand to do something halfway.  So I end up just not doing a lot of things, because I know I don’t have enough time to devote to doing them well (or at least, what I consider “well”).

But I digress.  I suppose my overall point is that I feel somewhat like a hypocrite for having helped design games that I’ve never played, and in all likelihood won’t (though Changeling does seem really frackin’ cool, so I’d at least like to try it some time).  I feel… almost a sense of obligation there.  Or rather, as if I’m shirking an obligation.  Is that weird?