Are your gaming friends exclusivley "gaming friends"?

[Qualir]

My gaming group is primarily the same group I have played with since 9th grade. Over the past 16 years we have grown apart in most of our interests and hobbies except gaming. The main reason I still game is to see these long term friends. Those few players that have left over the years have rarely entered my life again. We all work in different fields. Many of us are married, or might as well be.

When I do have parties, I invite all of my friends, gamers and nongamers. Sometimes they do not mix. Other times they mix and form new friendships. It's all good.

 

[Balrog]

My group falls in the #1 category. we average about 50/50 between ingame and outside of game activities.

Currently we have 7 members, of which one is semiretired due to the fact that we all live in Des Moines and he moved to Toledo, Ohio last summer. We still talk to him on a regular basis, and he will probably rejoin us in the near future once his job takes him back this direction.

5 out of 7 of us have been gaming together since about 1987 (including our friend in Toledo), and the other 2 are my brother-in-law and his friend from work. A couple of guys have gamed together since 6th grade, around 1983.

We spend alot of time together outside of gaming, maybe not as a whole group, but definitely we try to involve everyone in our activities. We go to each others weddings, go out to drink beer(or alternate beverage), go to movies, etc, etc.

Just this last week alone I spent probably about 8 hours with one friend and his wife at the bowling alley hanging out and having a few drinks. I went with the same friend and my brother-in-law to a movie Friday night. I spent Saturday evening drinking beer and playing a game of Civ2 Multiplayer with my brother-in-law, while discussing my campaign. Every other sunday 3 or 4 of us from our group play basketball with many other people. This weekend we happen to be gaming, and going to one particular friend's house who recently had a baby (err...his wife actually had the baby, just so ya know! ), and we will be grilling out food and spending time with this friend and his family as much as we are there to game.

Bottom line, many of us are over 30, and have many other things we can occupy our time with, yet we keep coming back to gaming and each other. Sometimes we have more fun on a particular night with the social aspect of the game then with the game itself, and for a couple of people, that justifies it even more.

 

[Galethorn]

I have several friends who all know one another. Back in 9th grade, we, as a group, decided to start gaming. Since then, they've brought some of their previously non-mutual friends to various games we had, and now we've grown to a group of about ten (though no more than six of us are usually at a session), from five originally. We would have been eleven, but one of the original five became a stoner, and sort of wandered off, and we haven't really talked with him in a few months. Anyway, the remaining four of the original five (including me) are almost done with 11th grade now, and we've got a couple of guys who started college this last fall, and we recruited some new gamers, along with people in our grade that have been long-time aquaintances that we only recently discovered to be nerds.

In any event, all of my friends are gaming buddies, but that's because several of them were my friends before we started gaming (in fact, I've 'known' one of them since we were a few months old), and the rest just sort of joined the group along the way, and came to be good friends.

Now, interestingly, the (we) original five started gaming because we had been playing MMOs and found them lacking. Well, and because that's what teenage nerds and geeks do on this island...not much to do other than gaming, other than talking about gaming, and having Lan parties...you see, in my social circle, a dedicated server gets a lot more people to a party than a keg would.

 

[SlamZanee]

Well I only have one "main" group of friends and they used to play D&D and stopped because a close friend suddenly ended his friendship with them and left a very emotional campaign dead (bout 5 years ago)....so there were alot of unresolved isues with it...eventually i got them to play again (bout 6 months ago) and they introduced me into the wonderful world of D&D (3.5)....unfortunatly we play very sparsley 2-3 times a month...from lurking here the past week or so it seems most play atleast once a week for several hours straight and im quite jealous...im thinking of finding just plain D&D friends so i can play the game more.

 

[S'mon]

Almost all the friends I keep in touch with are gamers, though some live in different countries now (I'm in London England, I have friends in Northern Ireland & Australia) and I don't regularly game with them anymore, except maybe by PBEM. So I don't really have any friends I don't game with, except for one very old friend I haven't seen for years so not sure if that counts...

 

[jeffh]

I think THAT is snobbish.

People are not socially equal, there are many that can play good, but fail misrably in one way or another in social events. Whether they lack social graces, attitude, health or hygene its not your fault. It is common sence not to take the pizzafaced Ubergoob to parties. Unlike most of those, I KNOW i am one of those types.

I simply don't see that. In my experience, with very few exceptions, the qualities that make someone fun to game with are the qualities that make them fun to do anything else with. (Which don't necessarily have anything to do with whether they "play good" in most of the usual senses - neither acting ability nor tactical brilliance have anything to do with it, though both are nice.)