Here is a throught for you Terry, nearly everyone who if most active on these boards are GMs. I have the impression though that although we all used to play almost weekly when we were younger or at college now we find it harder to find the time with work commitments, family life and the miriad of other things that put demands on our time. It also seems that we are all getting older, there are less young players and GMs coming through and none of us are elvish. The group I play in, in shadow world, meet a few weekends a year and then play all weekend probably cramming in 36hours of play. The quality of play first thing in the morning and after midnight is probably not what it could be and certainly not what it was when we were younger. This is a touching tail I know but it has a point. We have massively toned down the level of political intrigue type adventures we do because we cannot retrain the more subtle clues over the months between sessions nor can we spot the more subtle hands at work after midnight on the second day of play nor can we always make the connections between events that may happen relatively quickly for the characters but a long time apart for the players. I can, however, beat the doodoo out of a war troll at any time of day or night though.
We are working our way though the Curse of Kabis, we have I beleive, four parts now of the scaptre. That has taken five years of human time to get that far but we are on day 126 of the characters adventure. I know this because my character has kept a journal of everything they have done. I type it up after the session and share it with the GM and players as a memory jogger of what we did the previous session, rather like reading the minutes of a meeting, but also the GM corrects us if we have made a glaring mistake that the characters would not have made such as confusing two NPCs or blaming the wrong person.
If we are a representative sample of your audience keep us in mind when you are weaving your plots that at times we love to feel important mingling with the elite of Kulthea, visiting remote and mythical places and saving the world, but sometimes we just want to hit something really, really hard because we are not allowed to hit our bosses and/or employees (delete as applicable).
I know this does not apply to every GM and player and some of them are young and have razor sharp minds and thrive on political intrigue and subtly, to them I say 'just you wait'.
