Dangers of Lifestyle Games
The largest indication of a potential friendship is proximity. When you’re a child, friendship is as easy as the closest kid to you. Othering was as simple as looking down at the weird kid down the street; don’t feel bad, they felt the same way about you. As you grow older, proximity becomes more nuanced which unfortunately alienates more than brings people together. In school, being placed next to someone was the only gulf you needed to cross to see kinship. As soon as you are ejected from the common path, you find yourself suddenly placed next to someone whose life is at a different chapter, if not wholly separate book.
Paired with the devoutly religious while you are not or they’re having kids while you are currently single are two of the most common abrupt obstacles. Curiosity would bridge the gap between your new neighbour but I’ve found people’s first instinct is to alert NASA of your discovery of an alien in humiform shape. The weird kid down the street that you previously held at arm’s length has invaded your previous santisized exitence. If you want to discover your shared humanity, enormous amounts of energy needs to be expended to cross the distance and depending on whether you’re an introvert or extrovert, being neighbourly might be a bridge too far. Especially if making conversation is like pulling teeth and you ain’t a dentist.
Would you rather make conversation with a stranger or have a gleeful Steve Martin work your mouth hole?
You Passed the Pop Quiz
Frequently, the solution to complaints on the difficulties making friends is to pick up hobbies. For those who are lucky enough to replace their personality with a calling; such as with politics, religion or sports, making friends is easy. The rituals that form the basis for your assocation provide succor and an easily understood rule set of cheering or jeering depending on the latest update.
The rest of us have to go find something to make ourselves into. You could get lucky and have a bridge built for you with friends selecting the hobbies. If you’re still missing something, you go out to identify what you enjoy and if you’re anything like me, the gremlin that runs your brain is fascinated by cards, boards and games. Frequently, board gamers might threaten their friends with the fantasy of enjoying cardboard on their birthday and are often left disapopinted and confused on why their masterstroke hadn’t produced the desired results. Rushing to whatever Social Media they can stomatch, they beseech advice on indoctrination into the cult of cardboard.
Sage Advice
The cry is met with “It is easier to make board gamers into friends than to make friends into board gamers.”
Gamers might start with casual filth but they will naturally gravitate towards a lifestyle game. A lifestyle game is where the game is the point of the activity. Any board game might be played on a ‘board game night’ but only one board game will be played if the invitation is to a Dungeons and Dragons, Magic the Gathering or Warhammer 40,000 night. I name those because I liken them to McDonald’s, you can go into any city in the world and you will find your people.
Sportsball fanaticism with fantasy silliness is the basis for Games Workshop’s Blood Bowl
Lifestyle games are the natural prognosis for friendship. For those with zeal, such as the previous example of donning the vestsments of sportsball fans, it comes with reptition and devotion. A game asks far less but to complete the informal ritual of friendship, commitment is required and a lifestyle game naturally faciliates this. There’s a reason why I use board game nights to discover compatability with lifestyle games. It is easy to miss a night of board games, but I doubt a true believer would miss Sunday Prayer, Monday Night Football or this week’s Dungeons and Dragons.
Prognosis Ain’t Good
The danger of lifestyle games is that they add a vector to destablize your group of friends. People will come and go, that’s normal but misconduct of a games’ propritor is practically guaranteed. If Magic is your drug of choice and the news breaks that Wizards of the Coast employed Pinkertons to intimidate a fellow player to retrieve cards given out by mistake, your group is suddenly faced with a choice. You can boycott the product and implode an activity that was the bonds that brought you together or you can ignore Wizards of the Coast hiring a mercenary company that has been on the record for murder, witness intimidation and strike breaking.
I believe the popularity of Disney’s Lorcana is fueled in-part of Magic’s use of mercenaries. When whatever fiasco of choice happened with Dungeons and Dragons, more RPGs were launched as alternatives which further split the McDonald’s crowd. Instead of being satisfied with the lowest common denominator, people were spurred into looking at newcomer RPGs such as Daggerheart, DC20 or the MCDM RPG or the established DCC, GURPS, Mork Borg, OSR, Savage Worlds or any other alternative.
As per my brand, of course I’m going to make an attempt during a tumultuous time. The only caution I can leave you with is a transition to a new hobby is just like a church or franchise’s fracturing, you will lose people.
