What to Do If... You Want to Start a Work Gaming Group

For many of us, we spend most of our waking weekday hours at work. Whether it is a massive corporate high-rise building, a sprawling business or collegiate campus, or a tiny Mom-and-Pop shop, we pass more hours at our desks or workspaces than we do at our own homes. We eat lunch at work (and maybe even breakfast and dinner), share semi-superficial feelings and thoughts with cubemates and co-workers, and we talk more to people we tolerate than to people whom we love as family members and friends (unless you are blessed with true friends at work).

With all of that said, you might as well make the best of your time at work, especially during your lunch break, by starting a board game meetup in your office. It is an excellent way to connect with fellow employees, especially employees in other groups to whom you might not talk otherwise. When I have scheduled and led board game meetups at my company, I have had participants from different groups converge to play. Then, whenever I was required to work on a project involving cross-team collaboration, those social connections were already in place, which made the collaboration less awkward and much friendlier.

Here are my steps for establishing a periodic board game meetup during your lunch break. These steps worked for me, and they may work for you, particularly if you are decidedly introverted and/or shy.

What to do if you want to start a work gaming group:

1) Choose a neutral venue away from work activities

A lunch room or non-windy outdoor area is convenient, but a nearby restaurant or fast-food diner is a bit better because potential clients would not see the event (some offices are sensitive to this).

2) Write an email or calendar invitation and target your work friends

Be sure to announce the venue and whether people should bring games and their lunch. Be discreet with your invitation; send it only to a few people, at first. Encourage your friends to forward the invitation to other interested parties.

In addition, something I have done is attach a PDF or Word document of game rules to the calendar invitation or email. Most of the time, people cannot be bothered to read them, but that is fine; even the attempt to share the rules conveys a desire to include each invitee and minimize meeting downtime.

3) As the organizer, supply the games

You may have to shoulder the burden of bringing and conducting the games. For me, this is a challenge because I am fastidious with caring for my games (note: I sleeve ALL of my cards), so I try my best to suppress my compulsive tendencies for the sake of engendering a love for games in others. 

Of course, if you have a work friend who is also a gamer, discuss with that friend which games to bring. Choose games that can be played in the time you can allot for the session, including time to set up and put away. It is a lightening of the soul to have a fellow gamer leading a second table of games.

4) On the day of the meetup, plan to be the first to arrive

Set up your game immediately because setup can take a while. I recommend a five- to ten-minute lead time before the official start of the meetup. As a professional courtesy, you should check with your immediate supervisor to ensure that he or she approves of your exceeding the allotted lunch time period.

5) Do not start the game explanation until all expected attendees arrive

It can be frustrating if you have to restart your game explanation three or more times, so stall early arrivals by engaging them in some light conversation. To stall, engage everyone in chit-chat, or ask focused questions about their gaming experience, such as, "So, what kinds of board games have you played before?"

This may seem like I am overstating the obvious, but many people often feel the pressure to start teaching a game as soon as possible, only to have to explain it again and again. My advice is to declare the time when you are starting the explanation. For example, if the meetup was scheduled for a noon start, declare to others by email or through conversation that the rules explanation will start at 12:05 pm. If you did manage to send a rules PDF ahead of time, you may have mitigated the inconvenience of repeated explanations, but do not count on that; most of the time, people are too busy to read game rules.

6) When all have arrived, keep your board game explanation as brief as possible

Try your best to spend three to five minutes explaining any game. I advise practicing your rules explanation once or twice to yourself; it may seem overenthusiastic, but practice saves you from sharing the wrong information or missing key rules. Also, play a game by yourself once or twice to understand the rules better.

If the explanation becomes bogged down, just tell the players that you will start the game and everyone will play a practice round or two. In addition, if, despite your practice, you take more than five minutes to explain a game, you may be teaching the wrong game. Remember that you only have a certain amount of time; choose games that not only can be played during a lunch break, but can be explained during a lunch break WITH enough time to play.

7) As you are playing, be mindful of everyone's schedules

Some people have "hard stops," so have a wrap-up approach in mind if your game goes long or if you choose an overly-long game. For example, you may score a game one or two rounds early. If the game is involved, you could take a picture of the board and then reassemble it during a subsequent session.

8) After the event is done, send a follow-up email to get feedback from the players 

Involving them in improving future meetups ensures that there WILL be future meetups. Be careful of people who do not approach this seriously and joke about it; just ignore their half-baked advice. Likewise, do not take to heart overly critical feedback; though there may be truth in their feedback, try to weed out the somewhat inflammatory remarks.

9) Be sensitive and inclusive towards interested gamers; be tactfully respectful towards uninterested non-gamers

One thing I should mention is the danger of work-based gaming groups: you cannot actively exclude ANYONE without severely affecting workplace relations. Be prepared not only to invite many people, but also to invite people with whom you do not necessarily get along. This may be a personal sacrifice on your part because you have to relate well with your co-workers to ensure optimal teamwork. Conversely, if one or more people do not want to play games, make every effort to remove them from your correspondences so that their inboxes are not clogged with invitations. These non-gamers may be extremely nice people who are too busy or are just not interested in board games. Respect them by assuring them that you would like for them to join, but you fully understand that they cannot or do not want to join.

A lot of these steps are simply practical advice, but I find that it does help to read advice in text. The key thing is to keep the event light and fun, which may mean that the games you choose may not be your personal favorites. I keep several games in mind for lunchtime sessions -- games that are fast, pretty, and/or easy to teach. As your group is solidified, you can start introducing more difficult games. You may have to devise a way to preserve each player's hands and items (maybe in paper envelopes) and take pictures of the board, but multi-lunch sessions are doable. You may also convert non-gamers if you are patient and respectful. If anything, a work gaming group is NOT primarily about the games; it is about building work relationships, even friendships. If you have that mindset, your gaming sessions may turn out to be rewarding and more enjoyable than if you focused on the games first and foremost.