Boardgames To-Go

Introspective Tripe

I told you this was coming, right? Last month I finally went to the Gathering of Friends, the event many would call the pinnacle of hobby boardgaming. While I had a good time meeting a number of folks, especially ones I'd "known" via email for years, I didn't have quite the thrilling time I was hoping for. I thought about it a lot afterward, and have figured out that this has a lot more to do with me than the event itself.

Let me emphasize that point: This is something very few get to even attend, you need to be invited, people have a great time, and Alan Moon clearly puts in a ton of effort to make it all work. You won't catch me bad-mouthing the event or the people, let alone my host. Still, as long as I've got this personal weblog I wanted to write something about my experience, especially when I learned that I may not be the only one that feels this way.

The most striking feeling was that I didn't fit in. Oh, I fit in enough, finding people to play games with and a number of folks I spent most of my time with. But I didn't just click with the group as a whole. I've got this weird introvert/extrovert thing where I naturally take center stage among people I know (even a big group), but in a room of mere acquaintances I clam up. This happens at conventions or conferences I've attended for work, and it happened here, too. That surprised me, but perhaps I could've anticipated it.

It's not just due to my own personality, however. Some of it is the character of the Gathering itself. I've heard it called "cliquish" even from people that attend. Perhaps that's only natural. Our niche hobby builds up around circles of friends. The Gathering even has that notion built into its name. It's just a combination of an ever-widening circle and a bunch of overlapping circles. Most folks are in one circle--some are in more than one. I guess I think of myself as being on the edge of a circle or two.

I've also got Geek Anxiety. Or maybe I'm a Geek In Denial. Some sort of pyschobabble could describe my condition. When I described the Gathering to my friend at work, I called it Geeks in Paradise. There's some truth to that, you know. Although the boardgaming crowd isn't as socially-challenged as the usual costumed characters you find at a game convention, these are still geeks. Most of them, anyway. Make no mistake about it, I'm a geek, too. I still devote lots of time to boardgames, my profession is engineering, and I could use a little more exercise & sunshine. However, at least I feel guilty about it. :-) And I'm trying to change. I think more of the folks at the Gathering don't feel that guilt. At least they don't when they're at the Gathering itself. Good for them! They're certainly entitled to feel welcome in that crowd. For me, though, I'm still self-conscious about it. This is another area where I'm not passing judgement on the folks at the Gathering, just noting the differences I felt. No one else seemed to want to watch the Lakers-Rockets game on Saturday night, for example. :-) I went up to my room to watch.

The biggest concern of mine about attending the Gathering is the cost. I don't mean the financial cost. These days I can handle that. But it still takes several days of vacation time, a lot of marital brownie points, and it blew a hole in my normal gaming schedule with my local friends. I hadn't anticipated that last part, nor how much that disappointed me. Even though I see those friends several times a month, and the Gathering crowd once in a blue moon, I still missed the regular game sessions. At home I get to have a weekly gathering of MY friends.

In summary, I was honored to be invited, very happy to meet (and re-meet) lots of email friends, and of course I got in some good boardgaming. But now I think I would've been just as happy to stay home, play some favorite games with my local friends, and not spend the vacation time, brownie points, and so on. Or more accurately, now that I've done it once to meet those folks, I'm not sure I could justify the trip again.

P.S. I trust that the people I played games with at the Gathering (including several in this photo) will understand that I had a good time meeting and playing with them. I tried to hang out with more of the folks who were married with kids, like myself. It seemed like we had more in common, even if they weren't feeling the same things I was.

Posted by MarkJohnson at May 19, 2004 10:38 AM