Finding Community Through Gaming in 2025
Looking back on 2025, I played a lot of games. I made an intentional move to focus on community and friends over consumption and brands.
Why Bother?
There’s a version of gaming that’s purely consumptive. Back the new kickstarter, accumulate the pile of shame, buy every expansion for your primary game, go to conventions to see the new releases, move on to the next thing. Whether in person or on youtube, following the isn’t that different from other dopamine spirals. It’s fine, but feels hollow.
What I’ve been chasing instead is something real - actual relationships, shared experiences, communities that exist because people showed up and made them exist. The uncomfortable truth is that the communities I want to take part in often don’t exist yet. Someone has to create them. Someone has to keep them going. Last year, I decided that someone should be me.
Rolling Dice with Strangers
I spent a good chunk of this year co-running DMV RPG Open Table, an in-person tabletop RPG meetup serving the DC, Maryland, and Northern Virginia area. We came back from a winter lull and got to try a good number of indie games. Pirate Borg, Vaessen, His Majesty the Worm, and Draw Steel were personal favorites. By the end of the year we were back to having some regulars and – maybe a first time for me ever – sometimes a close-to-even balance of men and women at the table
Draw Steel at the meetup
Running a group like this has its challenges - coordinating venues, wrangling schedules, making sure new players feel welcome - but watching strangers enjoy a shared adventure outside of the temporary environment of a game convention has been rewarding. The saving grace of the meetup has been the rotating GM format … not always being on the hook to run has helped me keep the energy for game prep up.
Video Game Space Ships
On the digital side, I got back into Star Citizen this year, once again diving into a MilSim / role play organization focused on combined arms operations. It’s a different flavor of community gaming - structured training, assigned roles, coordinated fleet operations - but the core appeal is the same: doing things together that you couldn’t do alone.
A Perseus Gunnery event I organized for the org
Sustainability?
I’d be lying if I said this was all upside. The honest truth is that I don’t always know when I’ve overcommitted until I’m already there - stretched thin and probably ignoring other things that are equally valued.
New communities are hungry. They need energy to get off the ground and constant attention to keep going. I haven’t found the sustainable balance yet, but so far keeping the RPGs low-prep and avoiding an offiver role in the space org will hopefully allow me to break away and
What I’m Taking into 2026
I don’t have this figured out. The communities I want exist now because people - including me - decided to make them exist. That feels worth protecting, even when it’s hard. I’ll need to balance this with staying focused at work, getting a bit more exercise, and trying to get back to some of the better habits I had figured out earlier in the year.
I might make some changes, but at least I’m not sitting around saying “I wish I had” with regards to community. This is for fun, and it needs to not become work - but I think I’ll find the sweet spot.