In my hobby room, there’s a strange stack of books that has built up over the past year or so. It’s a collection of recent purchases or arrivals from kickstarts and backed projects. It’s also an accumulation of the books that I keep nearest to my computer desk whereat I will play online.

Across the room from the desk and the stack, there’s a sofa bed in front of which is a cushion which I prefer to sit on when I am praying, reading, or meditating upstairs in the quiet. From this vantage, this morning, the thing that stood out to me was the prevalence of Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition books in the stack.

As I have said before, Traveller was my first RPG experience back between 1977 and 1980. The universe of the Third Imperium was something that caught my attention from about 1983 onwards. I have been wanting to play there ever since. Except for brief forays via one-shots, this has not happened.

When I began the final season of RPR, back in April, I was fully open to the idea of setting up a game in the Third Imperium universe. Circumstances changed as I closed the face-to-face table in Nottingham and regained the time at the weekends. It wasn’t long before I was invited to play in a Star Trek game. This is the ebb and flow of the hobby.

But sitting there looking at the books, my heart ached for that Otherverse. I don’t have room in my life for another table so the likelihood is that my dream of travelling to the Solomani Rim – again, spoken about through the last season of the podcast – is dying. I’ve pondered the possibility of playing there solo, but past experience has not been positive in sustaining such a game.

So I’m left staring at the strange stack of books and wondering why I have them. There’s no space on the overcrowded shelves in my hobby room. Something else would have to give way to allow parking space to those tomes. The reality is that, given the way in which both tables I am involved in play, we are not likely to use much of any of my 25 other shelves of RPG books that are not GURPS.

The collection has value to me, of course. There are books which hold deep affection and memories. There is the hope that I might find time and the group to revisit some or all of these fantastic Otherworlds at some point before I pass from mortality into immortality, going into the true undiscovered country.

Perhaps it is enough to dust them off and thumb the pages.

To engage in the dream of play and indulge memories from an age before technology tempted us to such isolation. Maudlin, perhaps. Yet, as I was looking across the room, the ache to reach out and play was as strong as ever. I can’t help wondering if the desire to visit fantastic realms far beyond the bounds of reality is ever more than distraction from the loneliness I’ve always felt.

Whatever it is, this strange stack of books – messy, haphazard, disjointed, and obsessive – is a reflection of my hobby yearning to stay alive. While I am experiencing deep enjoyment with my current RPG campaigns – Karameikos that I run and Star Trek that I am joining – there is always the undercurrent of ‘what’s next?’ Perhaps that’s just who I am.

Game on!