"Holiday Gaming" Topic

In my house there isn't any. It's just too hard to get people to come to games with the Holiday season going, and everypone is so busy. We don't have games but a lot of my gaming buddies are good friends besides and we will often party together. I also often give my group Christmas presents. This is not a big thing as I do my shopping way ahead of time, and have a nice inventory stored up.

I'm presently shopping for 2016. Years 2015 are already bought and 2014 is done except for one new friend. I find this the best. When you go someplace and you see something that "Joe Yabatz" would like you buy it and put it away for them because when you get closer to Holidays and you go looking for it, it won't be there. Then there's the people I work with etc.

This year I FINALLY am getting to do some things I've been wanting to do for a decade. This includes using my gaming and painting talents to make figures from the Nutcracker ballet a foot or two high as hanging decorations, and of course start cooking for the Thanksgiving holidays a few days ahead so I don't have to do it all at once on Thursday.Most of the time it's not actually cooking, but prep-work, cutting, chopping, getting ingredients measured etc.

All of this causes one to think of the days to come and to reflect on how great the hobby is and how it is wonderful to have friends who enjoy it. A few of them are no longer with us and have moved on to better places but the ones we have I treasure. One of the great things is to have them over for social events and parties where we barely speak about games, but talk about life, holidays, family, and the good times of being together. Well--- yes--- sometimes we will play a board game or family game like Monopoly or "Lie Cheat and Steal" but everone gets in and it's a lot of fun.

Sometimes our friends from Florida will come up and stay for a day or two on their ski-trip to Vermont.

One day we had a big party before Christmas and about a dozen gamers and gamers wives were over when it started to snow. They got snowed in and we had to put up about 14 people, but we have plenty of beds and cots and couches, and a few airmattress', a wood stove, and of course, lots of food and wine. It was eerie hearing the wind howl and the scratching of the snow on the windows (you see my living room is 16" by 32" and it has a cathedral ceiling and there are floor to ceiling windows on all three sides, just windows, no walls. So it was really a lot of fun as we sat there and told stories.

As this holiday season advances, never forget that you all live in a small village of the people you know and love, and that the guy across the table ought to be someone you like, and if you don't like him, then try, because all we have in this world is each other.

And if you reject that, then be prepared for it is very likely you will be visited some night by three mysterious stangers.

Of course I like the guy across the table – if I don't I won't be playing with him or her again…

A dozen? Overnight? For my wife and I guests start to stink after three hours (Ben Franklin was off by an order of magnitude more or less). Granted, we both like our solitude.

As for Gaming, my friend and I took off this coming Monday and Tuesday to play the boardgame Afrika for the two days.

Otto, I can't understand a word you say when you mumble. ;)

Your holiday cheer is almost inconceivable, and refreshing to read. I am glad for you. The description of your living standard is enviable, if I could feel envy in the place of joy that someone is as focused on enjoying people and giving of gifts and hospitality. I am not quite so generously made in my parts. And I live in "respectable poverty", i.e. lack the means to put up guests like that. Nor do I wish to. Not after raising nine children in this not very capacious domicile!

Also, I have never had gaming friends that I was THAT close too. Hard to imagine, really.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you Otto, and to yours, friends and family alike….

Dear Dynaman

That saying is all too often true.

But what was I to do, turn them out into a blizzard? Have them drive home on treacherous roads in a snow storm? I live way out in the country amid high hills and twisty, curvy roads, and a long way to major highways.

dear Great War Ace

It was not comfy for any but it was safer. I live in a small house with only ONE guest bedroom, and ONE bathroom. And way out in the woods, and no hotels for 15 miles. But there were couches and cots and fold out foutons and we made do. The wargame room has a large wood stove, the living room a Rinnai heater and all were comfy.

By the morning the road crews had the road cleaned and a glorious sunrise made all visible so all could get home safe.

My nuclear family (four) are all gamers. My wife's peeps either are gamers or will game, except four of them (of 20 or so). My family (9) will game, except the two year old and one supervisor for said toddler). All my kids' friends that they invite over will game, and a few are gamers. Most of SWMBO and my friends are gamers, and the rest will participate.

Holidays (especially the other ancillary days around them) are game days chez nous.

All of this causes one to think of the days to come and to reflect on how great the hobby is and how it is wonderful to have friends who enjoy it…
…One of the great things is to have them over for social events and parties where we barely speak about games, but talk about life, holidays, family, and the good times of being together.

A good reminder to be sure. I've been blessed with a really good group of gamers these last 4 years who gather every other week and are very consistent. We're even meeting through the holiday season, though attendance will drop off. I wouldn't be half as involved (or having half as much fun) in the hobby without them, and quite a few of them and their spouses have become friends whom the wife an I socialize with outside of wargaming (though we do play alot of board games).