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Speaker 0 00:00:03 I play lots of games when I was growing up. But board games were a special treat. There's nothing quite like feeling the glossiness of the cards in your hand, the rattle of the dice, the smell of the cardboard of a game that hasn't been opened in years, it's definitely a multi-sensory experience and nothing really beats sharing that experience with a few of your closest friends. Now I'm not going to dwell on it for too long, but the pandemic has changed in nearly every facet of our day-to-day lives. For more than a year things we could previously take part in with our friends and family face to face. We're forced to move to a remote setting or simply disappear altogether. So how do you get that multi-sensory social experience and make it so that it's pandemic safe?
Speaker 1 00:00:45 Everything that I had going on in person kind of stopped for obvious reasons. Um, but tabletop games are very easy to play online.
Speaker 0 00:00:54 That's already D'Angelo fourth year at Northwestern and co co-president of tabletop club.
Speaker 1 00:00:59 I've started a lot of campaigns. Uh, I've run a couple campaigns. Um, my longest running like campaigns and my best TTRP D sessions have come out of the pandemic
Speaker 0 00:01:12 Tabletop games, such as tabletop role-playing games, TTRP RPGs, if you will. And other such board games have had a bit of a Renaissance in recent years, DW reports an uptick in interest among adults recently after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, yet social gatherings have been restricted as of late. So how does this affect how much people play?
Speaker 1 00:01:32 We played more, um, but really it feels more like a relative more where everything else kind of slowed down and TTA RPGs. For me, at least we're able to stay at the same rate. Um, in terms of other kinds of tabletop games, things did kind of slow down it's for me, at least a lot harder to play a board game online. You have to find very specific resources for that, or you have to pay money for the best resources for that. Whereas tabletop role-playing games were, were very easy to just keep going at their usual pace and to increase, uh, as everything else kind of decreased
Speaker 0 00:02:08 Playing a board game or playing a table TTR BG, um, is a very like multisensory experience is a very social experience. So how do you try to emulate that if at all in an online setting?
Speaker 1 00:02:26 Yeah. Um, getting the, the social nature of a tabletop role playing game or a board game is definitely the hardest thing to translate. You can all still be talking. Um, but I'm sure you've experienced in a lot of zoom meetings. It is so much harder to have side conversations or to read social cues on when people are going to talk, it's a lot harder to kind of have that organic conversational flow, but you can still have conversational flow tangents are still very doable. Um, you can still kind of communicate, you lose the ability to kind of have some side conversations. Um, let's say one of the things that you really like, uh, about a game is the dice rolling and everybody kind of collectively watching to see what happens. So you can all kind of celebrate or, uh, grown at the, at the result that can be replicated.
Speaker 1 00:03:20 Um, there are dice rolling bots and, and various tools to make sure that that still happens for everyone at the same time. Uh, so that you're not just like rolling your dice and telling people what you, uh, what you got and kind of delaying how that goes. Um, for me, and for playgroups that I often run in, um, we ended up not emulating much of the social experience. Again, would use those dice spots to make sure that everybody was kind of participating at the same time. Um, but I know that for other groups, um, turning on video was very important for like seeing and interacting with other people and playing off of other people's expressions. For the most part I played without video, um, just letting everybody's voices speak for me that ended up being useful. Um, I often run tabletop role playing games, um, as a, as a GM or a DM, which means that I have to play a lot of different characters, which are distinguished in person.
Speaker 1 00:04:24 You can distinguish them with voices and some movement patterns, right? You can kind of mimic maybe the way that they would be sitting at a table if you yourself were sitting at a table. Um, for me, it almost felt easier with the video off to change my voice and change the character I was, uh, playing for, uh, for the players at the table, um, of just not having to change any mannerisms or put on any kind of character, just to change my voice, um, kind of treating it like voice acting, I guess. Um, and that way was very enabled for me. Um, but you do lose a lot by not sitting at a table together and having side conversations. Somebody brings the snacks. It's, it's a very different experience, but still, uh, still a very good one. I would say
Speaker 0 00:05:22 Over the past few months, tabletop has grown considerably when Northwestern reopened in-person classes last fall, tabletop assumed a hybrid approach offer both in-person and online.
Speaker 1 00:05:33 We have been getting a lot of traction this past fall, our first quarter back in person. And I think this kind of speaks to the fact that people really want to be back in person and playing these games in person, because there is that missing factor. But this past fall was the most campaigns we have ever hosted at once. Uh, and the most people signing up to play in campaigns we have ever had as a club. Um, as far as I know our event, attendance was extremely high for our weekly events. Our one shots where you could learn to play a game or our bring your own board game night, where everybody can just kind of bring a board game and play what other people bring. Um, everything was just being attended by so many people. Um, this quarter, most winter quarters, there's a little bit of a slowdown this winter quarter. There's been a kind of significant slowdown as we've gone back to the virtual, but things should be increasing again. Maybe as we go back to in-person, we're not really clear on that yet. We're going to start moving back to in-person events, uh, this week. Um, and we'll see how that goes.
Speaker 0 00:06:35 There's one thing that's constant. It's the human desire for competition, comradery and entertainment. And that's something that tabletop games Excel at for WMUR news. I'm Zach Macquarie.
