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SchemaLoad | on: Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?
I've been trying to do this. One thing I've observed is trying to arrange people to play board games is quite difficult because you can't predict how many people will show up. People get sick, misread the times, etc. And a lot of games are very sensitive to player count, so having 2 people too few or too many has the ability to make the game somewhat unplayable or risk people sitting out watching.

Easier to just host a party or meetup where you can over invite and if some people don't show up it's no issue.

neilk | parent | next
A friend of mine has this problem with their D&D campaigns. He makes huge efforts and there’s always one or two people who flake or don’t have the same commitment level. He’s gotten quite angry and sad about it.

He is trying something different now, to make a hybrid campaign where there’s a lot of one-shots in a broader story arc. It’s structured like missions in an ongoing struggle.

Maybe if you want to do board games, we need more games that scale up and down easily. I’m not a board game person, IDK.

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jimnotgym | parent | next
Could you be more flexible about what game you are playing depending on how many show up?
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LinXitoW | parent | next
Just in case you need some recommendations:

Party games: Scale well with more people, easy to explain

- Werewolf

- Werewords

- Codenames (favorite)

Beginner Games: Accept a decent amount, somewhat easy to explain

- Camel Up

- Flip 7

- Dungeon Fighter

- Ticket to Ride

Games that have nothing to do with your problem, but I just wanna mention:

- Everdell: Cute critters prepare for winter

- Root: Cute critters prepare for war

- Azul: Place fancy tiles that look and feel delicious

- Bohnanza: The best part of Catan without the bad parts

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stevage | parent | next
I host a lot of board game days and...yes.

One thing I do that helps is get people to RSVP with a specific arrival time, and do my best to have a game about to start around that time.

If you show up unexpectedly, then I'm not going to feel bad about you sitting out for an hour or more.

People unexpectedly bringing a partner/friend who is not really that into board games is the absolute worst thoguh.

thaumasiotes | parent | next
> One thing I've observed is trying to arrange people to play board games is quite difficult because you can't predict how many people will show up. People get sick, misread the times, etc. And a lot of games are very sensitive to player count, so having 2 people too few or too many has the ability to make the game somewhat unplayable

You're trying to arrange the wrong type of event. A board game group plays a variable number of games simultaneously to accommodate the number of players each game can support. A board game group does not try to fit everyone into the same game as a matter of principle.

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MrDresden | parent | next
I have a group of people who play boardgames in a turned based fashion over at boardgamearena. This solves the flakiness issue. The lack of direct social interaction is then made slightly better by having a chat channel where we chat about ongoing games.

We've been having ongoing games (around 2 going at every one time) since about a year now I think.

Still do in person games as well, but this at least keeps that group going through in-perwon drought periods.

gulugawa | parent
As someone who has tried to host events for specific board games, I completely agree. Most games I play are best with 3 to 4, and I will flat out refuse to play them with more than 5.

Now, I host meetups which typically get 8-15 people and multiple games, so an unpredictable player count is not an issue.