Who Plays Games With You?

Despite specific comments to the contrary, I have always assumed that people at this site are usually playing games with their friends. But maybe that isn't the case. After nobody showed up for my annual New Year's Day gaming event (this has happened once before), I started thinking about my gaming friends. A few are close friends, some are not so close friends, and some are honestly just people that I have played a bunch of games with in the past. I rarely play games with random people anymore, because I rarely spend time in local games shops and never go to conventions anymore. I don't have a significant other or kids, or any other family members with any real interest in gaming.

Who plays games with you?

Almost exclusively people I know. I don't enjoy tabletop games with random people outside of a demo situation.

My "game group", if you can call it that, consists of two people, and we don't do much outside of that. But I have other friends that have gotten interested in board games because of me, so that has been nice.

A pretty wide swath of people. Most often are two regular groups; one of which is made up of two people that I met through other hobbies (sports) and two more people that I met through one of the other friends. The other group is three friends whom I originally met through an RPG campaign but have since been long-time board gamers. My two regular/irregular two-player opponents are one I met through one of those second group friends and another I knew from my GW days. All of them are people that I do things outside of games with, although less frequently than before.

There were a couple really active groups/Meetups around here that showed up in the local stores (we currently have four(!) in our area) and that always meant including not only people I wasn't that familiar with, but also people who would literally just walk in off the street. I have no problem with either. Those groups aren't as active, but I still just show up at one of the stores sometimes with a couple things in tow and can usually find takers.

I'd like to play more often with my girlfriend and her son who currently lives with us, but they're not as interested as they used to be these days, but it still happens occasionally (a lot of the testing I did for my review of Godsforge came through games with them.)

Mostly myself. Unfortunately, like many hobbies, your best bet is to seek out other hobbyists to enjoy it with. I have lifelong friends that I made through gaming because we also did other stuff together. And friends I've met otherwise who have come to play the occasional game. But if I want to "play games" then I'm going to a listed game night or convention to meet other hobbyists looking to do the same. Yeah, its a total crap shoot but in my case, I'd only go now if I'd planned specific games (with whomever). So I'd at least know I'm not stuck at the Stefan Feld table. The randomly selected games bother me more than the random people.

Most of my gaming is with family. Around various holidays, I get to game with my sons who are 24 and 22. My parents will play some games during the holidays as well, or when we visit every other month. I play games with my girlfriend. We are still trying out various games to find which ones work for us both. Patchwork and Quest for El Dorado have been favorites so far. I picked up a copy of Votes for Women, but we haven't had a chance to play it yet.
In the RPG realm, I play/run Pathfinder 2e with a colleague that I teach with. We play/run games at a local gaming store and have players from the community. I am wanting to run some Knave 2e for the Pathfinder players.

3-4 Years ago, it was a pretty diverse group of people. Alot of gaming with the family, and a couple guys from work. There was a gaming group at the library that I helped start, with some very active members who became friends. We'd play at the library, at the local game store (which was a great store) and at people's homes. I also had a guy who had alot of the same interests in wargames/2 player conflict games, so we'd play at homes or at his office at the college.

Since then I've moved to a much smaller town. I have one guy at work I play games with, he and his wife comes over about once a month for a gaming evening. Other than that, my kids have started to enjoy various boardgames, so the ones they are interested in get played often.

I have a semi-regular weekly game group that is either friends, or people I've become friends with.

I have a similarly-composed online RPG group, also semi-regular and weekly.

Then I play with family about weekly (much lighter stuff).

About once a month I go to a community game day and play with strangers a bit. I am not super invested in this, as I get enough gaming for the most part, but sometimes it's fun. It's also convenient for getting games to the table that require larger player counts. Or for promoting games I think should be more popular, or games my local group isn't into.

No complaints.

I have the usual suspects: My friends-Nathan, Tricia, Eddie, and Kelly. Wife plays with us as well. And, when he's in the mood, The Boy joins us for Game Day

My Game Days are usually monthly, when everyone's schedules are available. However, there are months where we do not play due to life.

I used to be a barfly when I had games stores that weren't longer than 30 minutes to get to, but now they are unicorn level rare in my area, and I'm not driving 3 hours round trip to go to Baton Rouge to go to Little Wars. I still miss doing that, but that time has obviously passed.

Before Covid, I was part of a weekly game group that would regularly have 20-25 people come to play. While they have started back up after the pandemic, I haven't really gone back (the group had gotten too big with too many people that I didn't enjoy playing with).

There are about 10 people from that group that spun off into a different group that meets semi-regularly (4 to 6 people on average).

But by far my most consistent gaming in the last year or so is with one particular friend. He will come over on a Saturday and we will play 2 player games for 8-10 hours. I have played more 2 player games in the past year than in the decade before that.

I have a several different gaming...outlets/orbits/dunno what you call them

I have two different local opponents; we get together weekly, on average 3 times per month for one guy and about twice for the other. The first is guy mostly Ameritrash/heavy Euros/sci fi stuff, we play for 3-4 hours Sunday afternoons . The second guy is more hardcore 2P stuff - last year he accounted for most of my WAR OF THE RING, COMBAT COMMANDER plays; we wrap up a day with a game or two of INNOVATION. Today we played Star Wars Rebellion .


Anothor group meets somewhat regularly, maybe twice a month, to playtest hex and counter wargames. We recently finished A WINTERS VICTORY ( grand tactical Napoleanics, battle of Eylau ) and we are about to start playtesting a new version of John Butterfields HELLS HIGHWAY .


The last is the con circuit. Last year off the top of my head I spent about 31 days at conventions, most of which were either small invite only or small size ( under 100 people ) . The only real "big one " was WBC for 9 days. Other than WBC, all the plays at the cons were almost exclusively with either players I have known for years, or with players who were vetted/vouched for by players I've known for years. WBC is the only con I'll take a chance gaming with randos, but even there its somewhat limited. Open gaming, which is half my time there, is only with known quantity players. The events, with requirements players know the rules, as well as time limits, minimize the damage any particular rando can do, so to speak.

I go to my local card game shop to play Magic (Commander) with a lot of the same people 0-2 times a week. It's all right I guess. I'd love to convert a small number of them (like 3-5) to Summoner Wars, but it seems highly unlikely.

There are some local game groups that I have historically gone to play other games, but they a) play a lot of games I'm ambivalent towards (EUROS) and some that I like (ROOT, HEAT, THUNDER ROAD) and b) Meet on the day my kid has swim lessons.

I started playing 5e D&D with some folks in a long running string of campaigns spanning back to before the pandemic. D&D is fine I guess? The people kind of annoy me on some levels but are generally fine? It's a once every month or two commitment at this point so I don't want to bail.

I play games with my girlfriend and the kid. We were into ABANDON ALL ARTICHOKES for awhile, but now we're jamming SPLENDOR. I win almost every time, but the kid is often the one getting closer.

My game of choice is Summoner Wars (duh!). Been playing online mostly. Made some decent online friends there which has led to me being very active on the discord and starting the podcast. I have one game running at all times with my 21 year old nephew who I taught the first edition to when he was around 8.