D&D General How big is your gaming circle?

[Burnside]

Do most folks with larger circles interact with those gamers outside actual play, or would you count them as "just gaming friends"?

Like 70% friends, 30% gaming friends and/or clients. The pandemic has complicated my answer to this, because in some cases it has greatly reduced or eliminated other activities I used to do with a lot of these people, so gaming has become more of the context for our friendship that it was before.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Do most folks with larger circles interact with those gamers outside actual play, or would you count them as "just gaming friends"?

The online ones are gaming friends, pretty much by necessity. Some of them live on the other side of the continent, so it would be difficult to hang out with them on a Saturday afternoon.

The live (when that was allowed) ones turn into regular friends - we hang out for other reasons fairly frequently.

 

[Reynard]

Most of the people in my various are "just" gaming friends, but I'd say at least a quarter are ones I interact or have in the past regularly interacted with in non-gaming contexts. Either because we were friends first and then started gaming together, or more commonly because we gamed together, became friends, and now do other stuff or at least stay in regular contact and talk about our lives, politics, or whatever.

Like 70% friends, 30% gaming friends and/or clients. The pandemic has complicated my answer to this, because in some cases it has greatly reduced or eliminated other activities I used to do with a lot of these people, so gaming has become more of the context for our friendship that it was before.

The online ones are gaming friends, pretty much by necessity. Some of them live on the other side of the continent, so it would be difficult to hang out with them on a Saturday afternoon.

The live (when that was allowed) ones turn into regular friends - we hang out for other reasons fairly frequently.

I wasn't aiming for a particularly "hard" line between "fiends" and "gaming friends". My circle interacts a lot outside of the actual gaming, whether it is actually hanging out or trading memes on the discord. I have very few people I want to game with that I also don't want to interact with otherwise, and even fewer who I don't want to interact with otherwise but do want to game with.

 

[DammitVictor]

My current gaming circle consists of essentially my closest friends, plus my girlfriend's closest friends, plus a handful of people I gamed with years ago and I'm always trying to rope into one game or another.

 

[Burnside]

I wasn't aiming for a particularly "hard" line between "fiends" and "gaming friends". My circle interacts a lot outside of the actual gaming, whether it is actually hanging out or trading memes on the discord. I have very few people I want to game with that I also don't want to interact with otherwise, and even fewer who I don't want to interact with otherwise but do want to game with.

For me, online gaming has helped to continue relationships that might otherwise have fragmented. For example, I have friends and co-workers with whom I used to interact regularly in all sorts of contexts, but people have changed jobs, relocated, etc. I know that even though none of these relationships started because of gaming, without gaming it is very unlikely I would still be interacting with these people at length on a weekly basis. So in a way some "general friends" have kind of become "gaming friends"?