An Epiphany

Within the last two years I've purchased and sold both Exalted and Arcana Unearthed. And not just the core books either. For Exalted I also got ahold of the Dragonblooded fatsplat and a half-dozen other supps. At one point I actually owned the entire AU line: the corebook, both published modules, the GM screen, the setting gazetteer, even the official cardstock counters. I came real close to getting an AU game going, but at the first hint of trouble I aborted. But now that I've got more points of contact with the local game community, I've been experience pangs of regret over selling my Exalted and AU stuff. I keep thinking that maybe I could get a game going of either of these now that I know so many more local gamers. I've been telling myself "Maybe I could just use the Exalted corebook and not go supplement crazy." And I alternated between "With the new Arcana Evolved edition coming out, the old version of the game ought to be cheap to get" and "Hey, you could get in on the ground floor of the new edition and just pretend you didn't waste all that money on the original!"

But it occurred to me today why I'm really interested in these two games (and maybe Blue Rose too, for that matter). I want to play these games. I want to be a player, not a GM. Moreso than most any other game I've encountered, these games speak to me as a player. The combination of crunchy rules, high action, and ubercool setting makes me to fill in a charsheet and go nuts. As a GM, that trifecta scares the crap out of me. I can handle any one of them and on a good day I can keep two of them in the air, but I just can't juggle all three of them at the same time. It took me a long time to figure out why I've had this complicated attraction/repulsion reaction to these games, probably because I've so long been a GM first and foremost that it just never occurred to me that I might have player preferences that diverge from my GMing preferences.

So now that I know what's going on inside my own noggin, what can I do about it? Is there something more pro-active I can do other than laying in wait and keeping a keen eye out for new campaigns for these games? I dunno. But at least I won't be blowing any money on the rules in the meantime.