Past games: Let's get together and meet for lunch or drinks and then go play a game. The game is secondary to hanging out, spending time with friends, etc.
Current games: Let's meet up at 5:00, be ready to play after 5-10 minutes of chit-chat. We'll play D&D, go home, and then not talk until the next game session.
This is common enough when you compare young gamers and older gamers. Like for me:
The Time Before Time: Middle and High School, Collage and a bit after. I played a lot of casual games. People would get together, talk, goof off, tell jokes, tell stories, and do a bit of RPGs too. And a few serious games.
The Keep at the Mall-(remember The Keep, WotCs offical brick and motor store for a bit) Young adult. I played a lot at the mall, outside the game stores. Mostly semi casual games, but some more serious.
The Living Years-adult and family. The Wasteland after the Fall of D&D after 3E. Time is Precious. With so many things going on in home life....it was hard to find any time to game. Worse, it was horrible to waste time. When you only have a couple hours to game a week, you can't have some fool disrupt the game with dumb You Tube videos.
Saw the Light- Adult. Had to make a change and make things work. Hard Fun rules. You show up on time or don't bother. You come to play, or go home. You want to goof off, stay home. And so on.
Into the Future- I run a extreme game by any measure. The words: Hard Fun Unfair Unbalanced Old School Unrated Dark game don't do it justice. I run a super fast game, for busy people. Players get seconds to act in encounters, or get skipped. And more.
Sidebar- There is a bit to add here by making a Community. During my Mall Crawling Years I started to encounter a lot of "lost" gamers. People with little or no social life, except for the game. So, I alone set out to change that. Getting all these gamers together fr all sorts of social things. Not just the game. Pool, trivia, and other activities. A big one for me was Movie Night: showing gamers all the movies they somehow missed. The Seven Samurai, Mazes and Monsters, Ladyhawk, Deathstalker, The Beastmaster and more.
By the time everyone had families, this became a more of an all day thing. People would come over at 7 am for a big breakfast and socializing. Then the non gamers would take the kids off to (where ever) and we'd game for a couple hours. Then have a big dinner. And a 'night' kid activity, or a movie for them and then some evening game. And plenty of people just slept over too, in tents or campers. In all it was a HUGE social activity, plus like many hours of game play.
Today, most of the "kids" are old enough that it's "not cool" for them to hang out with their families too much....at least not like the old days. So we only do the big, big, big get together s three or four times a year. Still a couple of my adult groups still do the whole day thing: Breakfast then non-gamers head to the day spa, mall, or candle party and we game for like ten hours.
You might just need a bit more Social Community in your life....
