Reply #56: To be honest, it wasn't quite like that.

[NewJeffCT]

In 2001-2003, I hardly had any time for gaming because I had a new job that required crazy hours, including a lot of weekends. I managed to get in some "guest" gaming appearances here and there where I would run an NPC for a night, but that was about it.

Then, we had our daughter in 2003 and, despite having a new job, I was too worried about my wife, my baby and my mother-in-law to have a lot of time for gaming.

Then, when things started settling down at home, the DM in my old group went down for major surgery in 2004 (hip replacement, despite being like 33 at the time) and then had his other hip replaced a year later. He had thought after the first surgery, he would be okay and back to gaming within a few months, but he never really recovered... With his personality, he was really the focal point of that group.

And, he still has not really recovered and will likely be bedridden for life. He can raise his head and move his arms, but is otherwise not mobile at all and has to lay flat on his back. He still games on occasion, but has a table over his bed and rolls his dice on that table. I'm actually going down to visit him Sunday night.

And, where we lived before, we had a terrific basement for gaming, but I kind of knew we weren't going to live there for very long, so I didn't really have a big desire to go out and start gaming if we were going to move and break up the group in a few months.

So, it wasn't really until we moved to our new house that I thought maybe I could find time for gaming again.
And, since we had never really had many gaming sessions at our old homes, I figured it would be best to ask first before committing to anything.