I regularly play with 4 modestly geographically separated groups (50 mile radius).  Each group (and each clique within each group) has evolved a notably different play-style for the games they play.  That’s what justifies most of the travel time and expense for me.

Kris,

Thanks for coming to CABS. I got to play-test your game and really enjoyed the experience.

You identified one of CABS greatest strengths: the large diverse attendance. If you like one specific genre or a wide variety of games, you can always find someone to share a game. The group is large, welcoming, and fun.

I hope to see you again,

Jim McCarty

Kris… Glad you enjoyed the weekend in Columbus.  Though I live in Cincinnati, I am a dues paying member of the Columbus group as it is a great place to play games!

Of course, I only have to drive about 80-90 minutes which makes it much nicer.  Next time you may need to look into staying the night - gaming often can go on until 2 or 3 in the morning!

Dale

I didn’t know we had royalty visiting, or we would have made everybody act nicer. :-)

Hmm, I play weekly with students at school, biweekly with what I think of as my “local group”.  Then I attend gaming about quarterly or so both with a cross-town group (for a gaming evening) and with a group about an hour away that takes up most of a Saturday.

My local group and cross-town group have about a 40% mixture rate, while the student and game-day groups overlap very little with any of the other groups.

Surprisingly, about all four groups have about 20 active members or so… which means we tend to have numbers in the low teens whenever we get together.

I regularly attend one game group’s sessions, but have been known to occasionally drive 25 miles or so to a neighboring group.  There are certainly other groups within a 50 mile radius that I could also visit here in the SF Bay Area, but I’ve not given that idea more than a passing thought, primarily due to time available (or not available).

In Berlin, there are enough gaming groups to play every night of the week, I’m told.
Many of us who design games meet weekly at the games cafe, mixing prototypes with published gameplay (or sometimes only prototypes), while many of the members of that group either host or attend other groups in homes during the week.  Then there are those like Thorsten Gimmler who make the rounds to the different groups, testing prototypes and bringing Schmidt/Hans im Glueck games that are hot off the presses.

I’m in the U.S. now for a few months, and have come to realize how spoiled I have become, as I’ve had to drive 1-2 hours to visit a few “local” game groups.  I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the time with the Queen City Gamers in Charlotte and the East Tennessee Gamers (last night!), though.  It seems that most Eurogame groups are hospitable and welcoming to outsiders.

I thought that Cincinnati was known as Queen City… guess there are quite a few in the U.S.!

Well, for what its worth Kris, my experience is much the same as yours.  The DC gaming scene is very deep, but you’d never know it from public gatherings.  Heck, we don’t even really have a convention.  But there are groups everywhere—groups of 8-20 people.  Many of us know each other online, but don’t really cross-pollinate.  There are exceptions, but taken as a whole, the rule is Balkanization. 

Jason