By Adam Stewart
A few weeks ago I sat at my dinner table having a blast while my wife and three of our friends foiled my plans, rescued a bunch of kobolds (little dog-lizard people), and vanquished a small army of brutish trolls.
Our ongoing Dungeons & Dragons game had been building up to this for weeks. The players had captured two kobolds who revealed the trolls had compelled them to spy on the players’ village by holding their families hostage. The heroes decided that was unacceptable and set off to free the hostages.
The result was a big, long fight that the heroes barely survived. We finished much later than our usual game nights. But the next day, our group chat was filled with messages of relief, triumph, and excitement for the next D&D night.
And that is the point of this column. I’m not trying to sell anyone on playing D&D, or any other tabletop roleplaying game, but I think everyone should have something they regularly do with friends.
“We should hang out sometime” doesn’t carry any urgency. You can always convince yourself you’ll find time to spend together in a few weeks, when things aren’t so busy. How often does that actually work out?
A regularly scheduled group activity, whether that’s board games, bowling league, golf night, pickleball club, or something else gives you a routine and can help you find the motivation. Those nudges to spend time with friends can be especially helpful if you’re naturally introverted.
It doesn’t have to be an every week thing. For our D&D game, we aim for every other week, but between work functions, family commitments, travel, and illnesses, I would estimate at least a quarter of the time. (On YouTube, SciShow has an interesting video from earlier this year about how scheduling gets progressively more difficult as more people are involved in scheduling, and coincidentally host Hank Green uses D&D scheduling as an example.)
Having game nights at our dinner table has the additional upside of getting to enjoy hosting our friends. Michelle and I both like sharing food and drinks with friends, and game nights give us more opportunities to experiment with snacks. For special occasions we’ll even share a full meal. When we started our current story in July 2023, we had a scaled-down version of a banquet that took place in the story.
But back to my main point, quality time spent with good friends is priceless, and there is no good substitute for it. If you don’t already have something that motivates you to make time to spend with friends on a regular basis, I would really encourage you to find something that does.
It doesn’t have to involve pretending to be an elf wizard, but it couldn’t hurt.