01516: Gaming is a Social Activity

Ironically, I've never played Dungeons & Dragons
This was a pretty good weekend. We had a great Houses of the Blooded game session last Saturday and Sunday was fairly light beyond a quick jaunt to Greenhills to meet up with our friend Zeki and his partner George. And I got a lot more sleep than I had expected, although most of the sleep was last night and not quite evenly distributed across the weekend.

In the past I have lamented how I feel guilty about not making more of an effort to socialize and try to meet up with friends. It's not like I was a wild part animal before versus the present situation. I don't think I've ever been overly social to begin with. But there are parts of my that think that I should be more social since it is somehow expected of me.

Thus it is with some irony that I've come to realize (and perhaps celebrate?) the fact that my most social activity actually turns out to be gaming. And I mention this is "ironic" mainly because the stereotypical notion of tabletop gamers are a bunch of antisocial geeks playing a weird game in their mother's basement. Far too often people claim that being a gamer is all about not having a life or something like that.

But on the contrary, it's a heck of a lot more "social" than just reading someone's Facebook updates or sending a text message. And in the course of my gaming life with Tobie, I've had the benefit of meeting up with different people ranging from old friends to total strangers, all tied together by the gaming experience. And no matter how little I know a player (or the reverse), it does not mean that our characters won't find a way to work together and achieve our objectives. Plus when you game with a person long enough, you do actually learn more about the other gamers involved.

So maybe I'm not as antisocial as I thought I was. In the past years since I started gaming thanks to Tobie, I'm met quite a number of new friends, enjoyed exploring different stories set in different eras and settings and of course had many, many adventures, all while sitting around a table.

So if you want another way to socialize and meet new people, you may want to consider joining a few gaming groups (and not just one). Expose yourself to different people, try playing characters outside of your comfort zone and you're going to have a lot of fun in the end. And it doesn't matter if you play complex tabletop RPGs or just gather to play Monopoly. Gaming is good for your social life.
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