Games Nights

To me, it's not much different to other social activities...

Read more...

Thanks for this Oliver. Reading this I got that warm, comforting game night vibe. Do you know, I have noticed before that when I drive along certain routes I get this unexpected emotional boost? When I asked myself why I was feeling that way, I realised that it was because it used to be the route to a game night.
I do feel that the simultaneity of Tabletopia adds something but I usually end up on BGA because it's just easier. It's frustrating not knowing what other players are doing on their turn (reading the log feed is a bit of a drag). Thanks for the good read

A big part of game night for me is the face-to-face interaction, and the chit-chat at the start, the end, and in between games. I haven't tried online boardgaming, but I did try online role-playing in early 2020, and I hated it. I didn't feel engaged with the other players or the game or anything, and kept wanting to do other stuff on my computer instead, like listen to some music or read reviews or do some shopping. Fortunately, I am a big fan of co-op games, and nearly all of them work well as solitaire games. So during this pandemic, I have replaced game nights with solitaire games.

Before the pandemic, I only had one regular game night group, plus I occasionally hosted themed gaming days. That regular group may not regroup after the pandemic, because the hosts got married several months before the pandemic and then had a kid last summer. I think the kid recently turned 1, so probably still quite the handful for them.

I was thinking about starting my own monthly board game night, but a couple of new friends that I made in 2019 have expressed interest in playing Call of Cthulhu. I have been running Call of Cthulhu on an irregular basis since the early '80s, so I have a lot of material ready to go. This article caught their interest:

www.dicebreaker.com/games/call-of-cthulh...thulhu-dnd-japan-rpg

I'm in the UK and I started back with my two house-based groups back in May when our restrictions eased, one's three of us in my house and the other one is up to six in other houses. We've nearly all been double-jabbed (one to go) and most of us keep external contacts quite low for the time being. But there's another group in town who meet at a pub and they have recently commenced again as well so people are filtering back in to a near-normal hobby life.

So jealous of that gaming community you have there!

It's lovely to read all of your comments. Everyone gets something different out of their games nights, but for many of us it gives us a good feeling.