This is frankly the best damn session report I’ve read in my entire life. At 36 pages long, it is an superbly well-written essay about the psychology of gaming, friendship, and the sheer ridiculousness of a certain monster wargame.
“Troy,” I said, “the reason I want so much to play this game is because nobody wants me to play this game. There is virtually no person you could present this to without getting a stunned, pitying look in return, and that ticks me off. It ticks me off because what so freaks people out is the time involved in this endeavor, time. Everything in adult life is designed to steal it away from us, and my God, look how we go along with the scheme so willingly.
“‘I have no time for such things anymore,’ we say, and then we spend our afternoons making our lawns pretty and shopping for junky Ikea furniture and ferrying kids to soccer games and gawking at cable TV, and above all, working at jobs we never really wanted. ‘Sure,’ we say, ‘when I was young and didn’t have all these responsibilities, I could spend hours doing this kind of thing. But that was then, and this is now.’
“Well, Troy,” I went on, “I want to be the guy who suddenly, at age 42, does spend hours doing this kind of thing, if only to feel what it’s like to take back a little piece of the soul I’ve sold to the company I slave for, to the obligatory evenings with people I’m not sure I even like, to daily errands, the lines at the DMV, to tax forms, to tedious family visits. This game is a slap in the face to all thinking creatures who live in such dire fear of the sands sifting through the hourglass. Playing a monster war game on this scale is ridiculous, a waste of energy, a waste of time, and so I want to do it. Let spite rule the day, Troy. Let’s learn and play A World at War!”