# What are we forgetting to remember?



## Morrus (Sep 4, 2013)

Well, certainly for myself, that applies 100% to music.  I just don't have any kind of connection with it.  I really think that it's the digital nature of it and ease of access; it's no longer special.  Stumbling across an old record, cassette, or CD -- that's different.

Objects have value, for sure.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 4, 2013)

> How are you storing your stuff? Do you revisit those old pictures, and gaming materials? Does looking at them on a computer feel like something is lost in translation?




This is my gaming man-cave.  There are many like it, but this one is MINE.




Besides the obvious, there a folders and other organizers containing tons of PCs, NPCs, and adventures & campaigns from 30+ years of gaming, covering @100 RPG systems...and homemade additions to games like Star Fleet Battles and whatnot.  Most of it is handwritten, but some things were done on my Apple IIe or one of my Macs.

All of it has value to me, and I do sometimes go looking at it just to reminisce.

Over the past 10 years, though, almost all of my homemade gaming output has been done on a Palm Tungsten, an iPod Touch or iPad2.  Almost none of it exists as hardcopy.  OTOH, those files are almost always within arms reach.  I can't say they have the same ability to reach the emotional centers of the brain as a piece of stained paper with teenage scrawl on it, but it is no less stimulative of my creative impulses...and because I, too, have reeeeeally bad handwriting, it is often much more USEFUL.


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## sheadunne (Sep 4, 2013)

A few minutes ago I was just browsing through my PDF collection and looking through the old X modules. I came across Lathan's Gold, which I remember running for myself many times when we were moving between locations (military brat). It brought back some good memories, mostly remember by the images. My nostalgia for gaming experience comes from the art work associated with the book attached to it. I can google Elmore, Easley, Caldwell, and others and remember a particular time in my gaming life. I get zero emotion or remembrance from a character sheet, game notes, etc, which is probably why I had no trouble switching to digital when it became easy to do so. I can certainly appreciate those that need the tactile sensation to bring back the memories.


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## Janx (Sep 5, 2013)

I do get what Rel is saying.  All this digital media takes up zero space.  It's easy to NOT notice it.

It lacks physical presence and thus has a lower chance of triggering that nostalgia feeling.

On the other hand, I assume video gamers are able to get some of that feeling when they play old video games.  Which are primarily virtual objects.


I think a related question is, do you take care of your stuff?

Does it hold value to you for more than its immediate usefulness?

Or if you break it, is it no big deal because you'll just buy a new one?

I write this in the light of a florescent desk lamp that is probably more than 50 years old.  I've had it for at least 30 of those years and I've never changed the bulb.

I think there's something to be said for old things.


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## billd91 (Sep 5, 2013)

Janx said:


> I do get what Rel is saying.  All this digital media takes up zero space.  It's easy to NOT notice it.
> 
> It lacks physical presence and thus has a lower chance of triggering that nostalgia feeling.




One thing about items with a physical presence, different senses can interact with them, triggering different memories and deepening the connection to the object. The feel of the cover, the crinkle of the pages, and the spell of the paper. Those may change a bit over time as the materials age and perhaps a bit of basement dampness seeps in, but you've still got more tools connecting you to the item than just your eyes. And if smell is involved, they say scent can trigger the deepest emotional responses.


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## Scrivener of Doom (Sep 5, 2013)

*



			How are you storing your stuff?  Do you revisit those old pictures,  and gaming materials?  Does looking at them on a computer feel like  something is lost in translation?
		
Click to expand...


*
For about a decade I lived between two countries - Australia and Singapore - and so had things scattered between the two locations. I made a concerted effort about five years ago to try and centralise as much stuff as possible... which worked out well because two years ago my wife and I moved to the Philippines.

One of the really big differences with Philippine culture compared to any other culture I am familiar with (not just Western culture) is that everything here gets destroyed really quickly. Things simply aren't valued; even old photos become origami in the hands of (unsupervised) children. 

As a result, before I moved all my gaming supplies and other books here I built an extra building as part of our compound. I've got about 70 linear metres of shelving lining the walls and I have all of my gaming books and miniatures nicely sorted and ready for use. And, of course, nobody else is allowed in here without me and I have the only keys.

Having this "man-cave" with such easy access to all my old stuff - with so much shelving I have plenty of storage space - is perfect for reminiscing and revisiting old stuff. I enjoy doing it, but I also have everything as PDFs and enjoy simply reading old adventures and whatnot on my tablet if I am having trouble sleeping. I don't necessarily feel like something is lost in translation, although I greatly prefer reading PDFs on my tablet to reading them on my laptop.

As for old photos, I really don't have any. I've never been a photo person but now that I am married and have a son it's become a bit of a necessity... with Facebook filling the role that photo albums would have filled in my parents' generation, or my generation if I had been married earlier.
​


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## Fetfreak (Sep 5, 2013)

Sad gamer is sad...

I understand what you are saying. I have several folders of character sheets and sketches. Every year, I go through them with my girlfriend (another gamer) and we decide what is a keeper and what isn't. Couple of years ago a friend of mine was selling his rpg books, because he went digital. I bought all of it. I couldn't help myself.

I just love books and I could never throw them away. The smell, wrinkles, old stains, yup nostalgia is there, especially since we are gaming less these days.


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## Jhaelen (Sep 5, 2013)

Rel said:


> Does looking at them on a computer feel like something is lost in translation?



Not really. I get much the same feeling of nostalgia when reading some of my old texts filed away on my pc. One of the first things I do after getting a new pc is to copy the entire content of the old pc onto the new one. Since hard drive space increases by about 8 times from pc to pc, this is no problem at all. When browsing folders looking for something, I stumble over all kinds of stuff: excel sheets with esoteric calculations, inventory lists, game aids and guides, photo collections, notes, articles and letters. From time to time I get lost in the past and start searching the internet for things that used to mean a lot to me, e.g. not so long ago I installed an emulator to re-play decades-old favorite arcade games of mine. Luckily, pretty much everything is preserved on the internet, even if I haven't been able to hold onto it until today.


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## Rel (Sep 6, 2013)

I wonder if part of this is generational.  I'm 42 now and I'll bet a gamer who is 25 has a lot fewer hangups about storing all of their stuff digitally.  They may also be more used to going back through old stuff in a digital format because it is the norm for their generation.


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## sheadunne (Sep 6, 2013)

Rel said:


> I wonder if part of this is generational.  I'm 42 now and I'll bet a gamer who is 25 has a lot fewer hangups about storing all of their stuff digitally.  They may also be more used to going back through old stuff in a digital format because it is the norm for their generation.




While it may be true generally, don't really know, the last group I gamed with, all 30-50 year olds, were all digital.


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## Ketherian (Sep 6, 2013)

Rel said:


> How are you storing your stuff?




Then: Giant 4-drawer filing cabinet of doom; many (many) 3" 3-ring binders. Duo-tangs and pretty blank-paper books.
Now: Tiddlywiki, directories full of PDFs, and Obsidianportal.



Rel said:


> Do you revisit those old pictures, and gaming materials?



Often, especially when seeking inspiration. 
I'll go through the remnants of the black filing cabinet (now just a few loose folders I've not yet scanned), sources in print that I don't have the digital versions of, old game logs (written in blank paper books). And I'll run searches on PDFs, stumble on old files, load old images...



Rel said:


> Does looking at them on a computer feel like something is lost in translation?



The first few times, yes. But that feeling has faded.
Now I can get just as nostalgic over computer files as over hard-copy.
Sometimes I think it's more a mood thing. Some days I want paper. I write in my blank-paper books, make lists, print out copies to mark-up; and other days I just keep notes in files on my computer or on the tiddlywiki for the campaign.

I like the lack of back problems (from lugging all my source material about), the speed in which I can put stuff away (I only dig out the sources I don't currently have electronic copies of), and the ease of finding stuff (I <3 search). 

One thing I do have though is a backup drive. Not DVDs. Because my backup is just another drive on the network (copied twice - once on the network, once not) - it's a contiguous mass of my gaming history, so access is easy.


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## Kobold Stew (Sep 7, 2013)

This is a great post, and I am shamed that my instinct was to bookmark it and add it to my e-Reading List, so that I would remember to find it again. That impulse proved your point.

Your point about nostalgia offers a counterpoint to the ease at which so much information is now available, eroding one aspect of geekiness. Both are areas where the work of finding and learning obscure information is rewarded.


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## Henry (Sep 7, 2013)

Even most Gen Y'ers I know seem to have a stronger nostalgic connection to physical objects than digital media, and i think it's the whole Limbic System thing, as billd91 touches on. However, though i've had to rid myself over time of most of my less used gaming junk, i still have a small core of old stuff in a binder from days past I keep and pull out about once a year to rifle through on average. 

I still have the one copy of my home-printed terribly unoriginal campaign setting sourcebook from my early 20s when I had delusions of being a game publisher.  (think Dragonlance mixed with Forgotten Realms and you've pretty much read it already.)


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