One of the biggest challenges of hobbyist gaming is finding other like minded people who share your passions. Nerd-core is especially perilous because of the caliber of people that you might find on the other end of a forum post or a meet-up page. This is why it’s always tough to find good quality people who enjoy games and gaming in general. Here are some qualities that I look for in a gaming buddy.
1) Personable- This is by far the most important thing to me to find out about someone before meeting them face to face. This person needs to be able to put two sentences together that demonstrates he/she is able to communicate with the rest of humanity. Too often are nerds the types who can only speak in l33t and can’t talk about anything if they aren’t talking about something related to their character on World of Warcraft.
2) Has a life- The thing I hate most about some meet-ups is running into a whiny teenager who is pretending to be all grown up (when the whole point of the hobby is to be as un-grown up as possible). Unfortunately, it has happened more times than I care to recall. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I loathe meeting the beast from the basement; the thirty something de-sensitized male who lives in his parent’s house, reeks, and has an avid passion for anime. It’s always important to know the person have something resembling a life. A lot of nerds these days are growing up, they have jobs and families and are using the gaming hobby as a means to relax and have fun. It’s a progressive change in the winds and I hope it continues long into the future.
3) A sense of humor- The best people to play with are gaming for the joy of gaming. If someone can laugh at themselves when the game goes embarrassingly against them, you know you’ve found a winner. On the other end of the spectrum, if someone is declaring that they “will crush your soul and feed it to the hounds of the blood god Khorne…” you know you have a problem.
The challenge of finding a good gaming group is one I’m now facing. After living a year in the Los Angeles area, I have finally started to assemble a stable core of friends to start rolling some die with. I've just joined a group on meetup.com and they have some gaming events that I am attending in the very near future and I will be putting full reviews of my experiences and adventures here, hopefully I will meet some more people with this criteria, because Camelot is in need of some good questing!
Coming up later this week: I’ve been painting like mad!
No comments:
Post a Comment