"Does gaming make for strange bedfellows?" Topic

If it wasn't for gaming, would you have any reason to hang out with these guys? Other than gaming, are they polar opposites?

yes

Usually yes. And knowing people different from me is an attraction.

It depends. Most of the guys I game with are friends with other shared interests, but a couple are only gaming buddys.

Yes, same for my other group hobbies. It is good to mix with people different to you, not healthy to live in an echo chamber.

I've met some lovely people that I never would of met if I had a "normal" life.

It has mixed me in with some people I would not have mixed with otherwise; sometimes good, sometimes not so good. They are generally gaming-only buddies, though, but I am pretty much a loner normally.

I have meet the greatest people though the wargame hobby.

I do enjoy that you can play at a table with a plumber, office clerk, PhD, career military, gov. worker and the whole variety of of a modern society.

We all just enjoy history and rolling dice.

Best people to meet and best hobby in the world.

Some yes, some no. About like work, actually--and several of my old co-workers were miniatures gamers.

Gaming has introduced me to a wide range of very interesting people who I probably would not have met before

Being a former career sailor my war gaming buddies allowed me to have friends off the ship. Shipmates come and go but, my wargaming friends are still here.

They are my friends first, fellow gamers a distant second.

No.

My circle of "real life" friends is very small, and while it is demographically very diverse, ideologically it is about as homogeneous as it possibly could be. That is the nature of the military, I suppose, even a goal.

Wargaming has brought me into contact with a whole host of great folks that I otherwise have very little in common with and likely would not have developed a relationship with, and I am richer for it.

Which is why I absolutely detest the political, non-wargaming topics that happen here on TMP. Due to the "politics to the death" nature of the internet we convince ourselves that the guy on the other side of the debate is a racist, mass murdering, *something*-phobic, *something*-phile that should be locked up (or worse), rather than a reasonable person with a different view.

It's really a ridiculous situation we find ourselves in, talking about vaccines, global warming, immigration, the right to own firearms, and various other political hot button topics on a website devoted to playing with toy soldiers, the internet helping to spin us out of control until we lose friends. There's no denying it; the talk gets heated on the message boards, guys start saying things they'd never be so impolite to say in real life, then guys start getting stifled, some leave, and some get kicked off TMP. Look around, we have lost a lot of good folks to this nonsense. I can count almost 100 guys that I used to chat with here on TMP that are now gone due to these blow ups.

And for what? What is it getting us? Nothing but acrimony and less wargaming/miniatures related discussion.

V/R,
Jack

Unless at a con, it's always been family first, then a couple of close friends scattered across the years.

Now that I am in the final game turns of life, the family all have their own families and all friends have moved away or passed on. Same for some family members.

So no strange bedfellows for me. I find it odd how many people now belong to 'game groups' but never refer to them as true friends. This is commonplace in board gaming especially. I guess it says something about our modern culture?

Just Jack – Well said!

Sometimes it has for me.

the majority of my friends have been so for 40 years most are gamers but we share weddings births and funerals we are family and that usually means we are strange bedfellow because we are not clones