The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Boardgames: How and When do you play?
TinMan1997
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I was thinking about this while posting about Elchfest in the "totally awesome boardgame thread." For those of you who do play board games (or card, or other non-paper-and-pencil tabletop), how do you get people together for this?
Ways I've seen this happen:
1) Spontaneous- you've got friends over and someone says, "Hey, let's play Catan!" This may have happened with Monopoly as a kid, but I don't see this happening anymore in grown-up life.
2) Get people together for a game- Call four buddies and invite them over to play X (A specific game that is decided on ahead of time). Maybe throw in dinner as part of the bargain. This would work for me, but part of the fun is selecting the game, and it is hard to get non-hardcore gamers together to play something new.
3) Regular gaming group- the same four or five guys get together once a week and play a game.
4) Games party- This is what I've seen the most of in the last couple of years. Big invite, get 10-20 people over and have three or four tables going at all times. Everybody is invited to bring games over, and tables sort of spontaneously pick 'em. Usually there is one lightweight table (Fluxx, Munchkin), one middleweight table (Catan, Puerto Rico), and one brain-burner table, with possibly a filler going on.
I used to game with my sister and her husband, but they just left the country and my wife and I can't really go out late anymore because we've got a kid and no babysitter. Consequently, we're thinking of doing gaming at our place in the next year.
How do you guys pull this off?
Ways I've seen this happen:
1) Spontaneous- you've got friends over and someone says, "Hey, let's play Catan!" This may have happened with Monopoly as a kid, but I don't see this happening anymore in grown-up life.
2) Get people together for a game- Call four buddies and invite them over to play X (A specific game that is decided on ahead of time). Maybe throw in dinner as part of the bargain. This would work for me, but part of the fun is selecting the game, and it is hard to get non-hardcore gamers together to play something new.
3) Regular gaming group- the same four or five guys get together once a week and play a game.
4) Games party- This is what I've seen the most of in the last couple of years. Big invite, get 10-20 people over and have three or four tables going at all times. Everybody is invited to bring games over, and tables sort of spontaneously pick 'em. Usually there is one lightweight table (Fluxx, Munchkin), one middleweight table (Catan, Puerto Rico), and one brain-burner table, with possibly a filler going on.
I used to game with my sister and her husband, but they just left the country and my wife and I can't really go out late anymore because we've got a kid and no babysitter. Consequently, we're thinking of doing gaming at our place in the next year.
How do you guys pull this off?
TinMan1997 on
0
Posts
Now that we're all old men (25+) with jobs, we don't really have time for the regular RPG sessions we used to have, which is a damn shame and something I really miss.
We mostly do board games now. Either it's a handful of us with one or two games picked to play ahead of time, or we gather 8-10 people at a time and have a somewhat democratic vote as to what to play, divide into 2-3 groups, and play several games at once.
My house is full of games. Board games, video games, you name it, I got it. So anytime anyone's at my house, there's a 95% chance games will be played.
I also invite my crew of old college buddies (and their girlfriends, and my in-laws, etc.) over at least twice a month, for an all-day get-together revolving around games. There's usually 8-12 of us at these types of get-togethers.
Then there's the "planned-ahead-of-time" game, which is really the only way you can ever play monster games like Die Macher and Roads & Boats. They happen from time to time, and whenever someone has a particular game they want to play.
And the big gaming gatherings happen once a month, at least. In fact, I'll be hosting one next weekend. It's the "Super Fantastic Gaming Hour" (I didn't name it), an open-invite OKC area monthly gaming gathering. The last time I hosted I think we had 24 people show up.
And then, there's the gaming cons (note: I'm talking about social get-togethers specifically about playing Eurogames...not GenCon or DragonCon). I hit at least one or two of these a year. They typically run from Thursday through Sunday, filling up several large conference rooms in hotels, and have attendance in the hundreds. My next planned con will be BoardGameGeek.CON in Dallas, Nov 9-12. Attendance was capped at 400 this year, and they're already sold out.
But people are busy and have busy lives. A regular session is tough to keep going. I find that generally my tabletop gaming happens whenever somebody decides to make enough phone calls to get everyone together, which is far too infrequently.
Even if I could go without my dining room table for a week, the pieces wouldn't be where we left them within 24 hours of walking away from it.
We usually do a combination of 1, 2, and 3 -- we've got a couple of friends who we generally play with, and it's usually "come over Saturday and we'll play Civilization or something." Then, when they show up at 3:00 Saturday instead of noon like they were supposed to, we hit the games closet and try to find something we can actually finish before I'm ready to crash for the night, because Civilization just takes too long to start later than about 1:00.
Something obvious that I forgot to include previously-
x) Put the baby to bed, play a game with the wife.
I don't do this nearly as much as I like, but we probably get in somewhere around 8 total games / month out of the following:
Lost Cities
Through the Desert
Hive
Fjords
(and when I can beg, plead, or otherwise cajole)... Dracula
I'm never going to get my wife into videogames, as she just shows no interest, but we can usually squeeze in a few of the above as long as we get the kid to sleep and have fed ourselves by a reasonable hour.
...looking forward to seeing if the presence of this board keeps me off of boardgamegeek, or has me linking there more often.
It's nice to say that I own it, though. $50 nice.
/cry
Yes, having kids (I have two of them) and a job really isn't really helping when you want to do... well, anything.
On the other hand, I can at least try to turn my kids into gamers and in a few years I will always have enough people for a 4-Player game :P
Mind you I really have little excuse. I live in Seattle, there ought to be gaming groups galore I could join in on. Though getting to them could be a problem (I don't drive, till I moved last year I didn't need to).
You actually had an A&A game that lasted more than two hours?
Man, you should play with my group. I think they can play four to six games in a night.
The war begins on the first turn in our group. That goes for Risk, Supremacy, A&A, Fortress America...you name it. I've seen an A&A game that was over in two turns.
but even 3 player descent will be magnificant on a 10'x10' war table:)
I'm trying to imagine this.
I mean, France surrenders. That's a given. But after "France surredners"... two turns?
Gamertag: Cunning Hekate // League of Legends: FeroxPA
I'll bet that there are several that to which you could bus. What sort of gaming are you looking for, and are you over 21?
caffron said: "and cat pee is not a laughing matter"
Online, Bretspielwelt is supposed to be good, and there are tons of links on Boardgamegeek to other such places.
For me, though, the real fun of tabletop is having the other players in the same room.
Yep.
It's completely possible to wipe out Germany and Japan in two turns if you do it right.
Don't ask me how, I suck at the game. I just know it was over in two turns. I know because I was in the bathroom and they were done by the time I got out and made another pot of coffee.
The best part of the night was when we decided that purple cubes didn't represent cloth, but instead represented pornography. I highly recommend it.