Tales from the Tabletop: Roll a Crit on Community
I want to talk about how roleplaying and tabletop games have brought community and long-term friendships into my own life, and how annual trips to events like PAX Unplugged, Gen Con, and others allow me to see those friends (and make even more).
Now, when people think of tabletop gaming, they often conjure up an image of guys in a dark basement yelling about magic missiles. That may be the old ways of rolling dice with your buddies, but in this day and age, more often than not, the tables are as diverse as the world we live in. You might be wondering how something as simple as gathering around a table (real or virtual) can bring friends to you?
After all, don’t you usually reserve these kinds of things for people who are already your friends? Not necessarily. Some of the folks that have come into my life thanks to TTRPGs were people I’ve met, yes, but others weren’t. Some were folks I had the joy of meeting for the first time at a convention, or who even donated to charity for the chance to play at my current game table. No matter how we met, from that one session, friendship and camaraderie were rolled for a long-term campaign — rather than just a one-shot of character development.
And it’s not just me who has found community with folks who love a good roleplay session! So many others have found not just friends, but companions, buddies, and even their romantic other half via the connections made over a critical success (or even a critical failure). From these friendships came plans to meet at conventions, with contact information exchanged and soon, meetups at PAX Unplugged — one of the biggest annual conventions for gaming culture — being arranged.
Nerves were high for me when it came to meeting these online buddies IRL, but all turned out well, and new traditions were born! The worlds we built through these games are what brought us into these weekly sessions, fun that becomes annual vacations, with folks traveling hundreds of miles if it meant having a few days of togetherness.
The ways in which we bond during roleplay sessions can be intense, heartbreaking, affirming — and, sometimes, they can even transcend whatever we’re facing in the current moment. They can feel like being there is magic, a magic that locks in those friends for life. It’s what gets folks who have never met face-to-face to pack up and head out to Philadelphia, or Indianapolis, or Madison, all for a convention where the goal is to experience that trust and joy in person instead of just through a screen at a desk.That’s just one of the ways tabletop games can unite us, and I hope to see more of that as time goes on.
Many of us are looking forward to the winter weather, a time that means hours inside, slinging dice at a table (or whatever flavor of cardboard fun that you fancy). No matter what, I hope that your virtual time together with your adventuring party suffices, all until you can be together in person again.
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