2020 was a tough year. It’s also the year I graduated from college.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, my classmates and I were pulled from the dorms and sent home before we could celebrate, remember, mourn, and codify the years we spent together.

We went from seeing each other every day, living together, and supporting one another through our final year of college to playing Animal Crossing over Zoom calls and waiting to see what the world would look like when we crawled out of our COVID caves.

Apart from the pandemic, I moved to California, partially to be near my then-girlfriend, only for her to break up with me over text. This sent me into a minor depressive episode as I desperately looked for a job. That took me months to find, and even then, it was seasonal.

I call this year of my life the wilderness year. Lots of tough stuff happened, and at the time, it felt like it would never end. If only I knew that if I just gave up and returned home, I would meet the woman who would be my wife and mother to our daughters.

She truly was, and is, the light at the end of the dark, dark tunnel.

But throughout this horrible, no-good, very bad year, there were moments of rest. Campfires in the deep wood. Enjoying friends in isolation from the world outside. A time crystalized and refined into a diamond shining on the black backdrop of the depression and horribly scary world events.

These events are very important to me. I’m extremely fond of them, and I miss them dearly.

I should explain that these evenings I’m talking about involved driving out to Simi Valley to my friend’s house, making or ordering food, crafting cocktails, and playing board games.

Board games are like nothing else.

Even other games like Video Games don’t match the level of intimacy of board games.

You’re sitting around the table with your friends, drinking a nice drink, having a side conversation about… anything, and playing a game. When it comes to board games, everyone at the table is doing the work of having a good time.

You have to be engaged; you have to remember the rules (or try to). You and the other players are the mechanics within the watch, making the clock tick. You and the other players are the background code, making sure the mechanics of the game are firing when they need to. You and your other friends are the custodians of the game.

I think that’s really special.

Again, comparing board games to video games, when you play a video game with friends, the game is doing most of the work, and it creates a space where you and your friends can enjoy yourselves. That has its place.

However, board games demand that you do something special for your friends. Physical, tangible, thoughtful.

And I’m experiencing withdrawals from that feeling.

The friends I played board games with the most aren’t in my physical vicinity. We all bounced to various parts of the country, but I do know more than a DND party’s worth of people I could invite over.

But it wouldn’t be the same. I miss my friends. The ones I feel completely comfortable around. The ones I spend years living with. The ones that gathered around the warmth of a board game and enjoyed an evening delving into dungeons together.

But it’s tough to get together, and it’s even tougher to get together with people I’ve hung out with a couple of times.

I could give so many reasons why it’s nearly impossible to invite people over for board games, and many of them are valid. However, I think it’s just going to take guts to sacrifice my time and invest in having people over.

I want to make a practical guide for how you can get your friends over and play more board games, more often. As someone who hasn’t had friends over for games in a handful of months, this is for me just as much as it is for you.

Shortly after moving away from my friends, I learned that board games don’t have to be a major event. When I lived in California, we were able to make themed cocktails and make it a moment. That’s just way more difficult and sets the expectations too high when you aren’t that close to the people coming over.

Do not fall into the common temptation to make your gaming time perfect. If you have the time to consider what foods match the vibe and flavor of Arcs, go for it. However, if you’re like most people (busy), you likely don’t have the time to make specialty foods and plan it like an event. So don’t.

Ask your friends to pick something up for you and your friends to eat, and split the bill. This will give you more time to tidy up. Provide something nice, like drinks, but don’t try to be the sole provider for the evening.

Most board games aren’t built for every situation. I learned this the hard way by asking my in-laws to play Wingspan with me. To me, it’s an easy-to-understand game, but… it’s a bit heavier for some people. It’s also the only game I brought.

Curation is important here. You don’t want everyone to show up and then start asking what they want to play on your giant spreadsheet of games.

Have some games out, let people look at them, share what each one plays like, and then decide from there.

Unless you planned the event around a specific game, this can be dangerous if you’re with newer people. I’ve done this before with Oath. I let everyone know that the game will take a very long time, about 6 hours, and they agreed to play, and it worked well! But it was also with my family, whom I know very well.

Curation is key here. Take out some games that range in difficulty and length.

Most people are interested in playing games in the evening. Think game night. This is an issue if you’re like me and have a toddler and a baby. We’re lucky if we’re able to start our evening at 8 these days, and that’s way too late to have people over.

We’ve had people over for game nights at night and it usually ends up fine, but I can’t tell someone with confidence that we’ll be able to start at a certain time. That means a lot of sitting around for them.

It doesn’t have to be this way!

Saturday mornings, Sunday afternoons, these times are great times to play board games. You don’t have to worry about people getting tired, and everyone gets to go to bed on time!

This one is kind of weird, but hear me out.

How much easier would it be for you to have friends over on a Saturday afternoon if you knew the house was tidy and dinner was already made?

For me, super easy! That’s a no-brainer!

Plan when you’ll be cleaning before people come over. I’m a fan of not keeping the house in perfect condition when people are over, but vacuuming and putting away children’s toys is a must. If I knew people were coming over I’d do all of this the evening before. Which means no TV show, no reading, no video games, just pure cleaning mode.

Planning dinner ahead of time makes it easier to enjoy time with friends without worrying about any time constraints. Make a big dinner the night before and eat the leftovers for dinner. Easy as that.

This one is… You might not actually want to do this. But it was the key to getting my old DND group consistent because planning is hard.

For my DND group, it was every Saturday at like 9 am. If someone couldn’t be there, that’s fine, but if multiple people couldn’t, we’d just cancel and pick it up next week. Having that standing meeting got us through a whole lot of sessions.

I don’t recommend bringing up “doing this again” unless things went well. Maybe 2x a month could work well for you. That’ll give you 2 opportunities, so if 1 falls through, just go with the other.

You may have noticed that all the pictures I included in this post are pictures of food. That’s cause I couldn’t find any pictures of my friends playing board games. However, all of the food you see in this post was made for or during board game nights.

The pie in the header is actually a Mountain Dew Ice Cream Pie with a Cool Ranch Dorito crumble crust. Yeah, it was just as bad as you’d think.

Spend more time with loved ones, play more games, and think more.