Over the years, I’ve been a part of a lot of groups. Friend groups, D&D groups, Overwatch groups, fighting groups, so on and so forth. They’ve always been a great way of collecting people for various purposes and I’ve enjoyed my memberships, even when I haven’t exactly been interested in the purpose of the group (like how I’ve pretty much only played Magic: The Gathering in order to participate in my friends’ activity). The only group I’ve never really been a part of that feels like an actual lack in my life is a “gaming” group. Not a video game group. A tabletop gaming group. Or board gaming. Or both, which is what I think of when it comes to this undefined type of “gaming.” I’ve almost always had a Dungeons and Dragons group, even a few that met weekly, and I’ve been a been a part of an unfortunately short-lived Tabletop Gaming group, but I’ve never had a group that would, as I’d define it anyway, get together on a regular schedule to play whatever games we’ve got. Tabletop games, board games, card games, or whatever. Any kind of game, really. I’ve been a part of groups that have talked about becoming gaming groups, but even the ones that eventually met up never made it through the first game, much less into a second game. At this point in my life, though, as I think about my ever-growing collecting of tabletop roleplaying games and board games, I find myself wanting a group that can just get together to play whatever. I have so much whatever and I’d really like to play it all some day, which isn’t really a pitch I’ve been able to sell any of my local gaming friends on so far.

I am currently running two games that meet at least once a month (though maybe someday we’ll get to actually playing each game every other week as I tried to schedule them), which just isn’t enough game time for me. At one point in the past year, between what I was running and what I was (often infrequently, due to common scheduling concerns) playing, I was in five concurrent games. I had a lot of good game stuff tumbling around in my head and even though we all mostly played the same stuff, it was enough to have the opportunity to play anything at all. Now that I’m down to only the games I’m running, part of me really wants to see if I can drum up some local friends who’d be willing to show up every week or month to hang out, play some games of some kind, and help me work through the large stack of RPGs and board games I really want to play. It’d be really nice, on both the “help me play all these games I really want to play but need other interested people to actually give them an honest try” level and the “I want to spend more time physically around people” level. It’d be a win-win for me if I could find a group of people I trust enough to not carry Covid into my home. Which is the unfortunate rub I’ve run into every single time I’ve thought about doing something like this in the past. I’m just not sure that I’m willing to let any of the people near me into my physical space like that, when none of them take masking seriously and a lot of them have thrown all caution to the wind when it comes to the often-ignored pandemic.

I’ve thought a lot about doing something like this online, but I really miss the act of gathering in a space together to play games. I haven’t had that in years, aside from a short game that used to meet on infrequent Tuesdays between six and eight, which was hardly enough time to get together, eat dinner, and catch up on what happened last time before two of the players had to leave. It was still better than nothing, of course, and enjoyable in its own right, but it was never quite enough. My ideal situation would be me playing host (since I love having people over, which I’ve hardly ever done since) and an alternating group of game masters, so I wouldn’t have to ride herd on every single gathering. I love being the storyteller of course, but sometimes it is nice to sit back and play along with everyone rather than need to stay focused on keeping the group running on a mechanical, narrative, and social level. That’s incredibly rewarding work, moreso than any other kind of labor I’ve done, but it is still more work than playing is and sometimes it’s nice to not do work. Plus, part of the charm of playing a lot of tabletop games is how they change depending on who is running them. My version of Dungeons and Dragons is very different from any of my friends’ versions. My versions of Heart: The City Beneath or Blades In The Dark are very different from how any of the people I know would run those games. Variety is good in a group like the one I’m imagining and the changing of the storyteller would keep things fresh and people (me included) from burning out on running games.

Other than that, I don’t really have much in the way of hopes or expectations for this group. It feels like “Covid conscious” and “full of storytellers who are willing to run a game” is a lot to ask most days, but I’m not holding off on asking for more because of that. I just don’t really have more I’m looking for than that and “in-person.” I’ll take just about anything else. I mean, as long as there’s no hateful bigots, boundary-crossing players, fun-ruining aggressive players, or people looking for real-world drama rather than tabletop drama, which are all what killed my last few in-person tabletop groups. Can’t have any of that stuff. I’d rather have nothing than any of that. Someday, I’m sure, I’ll get back to this kind of gaming. Probably not until culture shifts such that I’m not the only person around being Covid-conscious, science shifts such that Covid is completely eliminated, or I wind up in my own house with a super-powerful air filtration system and a heated patio with easy-to-use Covid tests I can make my guests take before they enter into my home. I’d love that last one, but I’ll take what I can get, you know? I’m not super picky. Just incredibly cautious about a potentially debilitating virus and yet still eager for some kind of physically present social life via local gaming.