When you play in person, where do you play? (Poll)

[billd91]

Our general method is to play at the home of the player with the youngest kids and who need the most supervision by their parents.

 

[GM Lent]

I run two weekly DCC RPG games: one in person at a local goblin-themed coffe house/chocolatier (called Velvet, formerly known as Wilkins Coffee) and one online.

The coffee house is great, and one of the owners has even participated in the game a time or two. I used to run games at a local FLGS, but sheduling there became difficult and the owner is at some point going to implement a policy of charging groups to play there.

 

[Staffan]

Someone's home, sometimes the GM's and sometimes a player's.

I have a regular game on Wednesdays which is almost always hosted by a particular player. Sometimes he GMs, but usually not. I have another mostly regular game on Saturdays, which has recently mostly been board games as we lost one player to family/time stuff, which is hosted at my apartment (mostly because Frosthaven's not going anywhere else). There's also an intermittent game (about 1/month or so, though we've been on hiatus over summer) that sometimes is on a Saturday and sometimes a Sunday and is hosted by one of the two GMs running games.

 

[DragonLancer]

These days, we play at our FLGS as it is more central to everyone and they do a lovely menu.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

When playing in person, usually at a specific player's house because his house is exactly in the middle of everyone and is also well set up for gaming without causing chaos to the household.

We've looked at FLGS-type (including game cafes etc.) options but weirdly in London they don't seem to be great, though perhaps there are places I just don't know about.

 

[GrimCo]

At someones home. Be it DM's, be it one of the players. We rotate at hosting. Exception was when one of us had newborn/very young kid, then we would play at that persons house. It's practical. I can play and keep eye on kid (if he needs feeding, diaper change etc). It also gives wife free time to meet up with her friends.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm a forever DM who is really struggling to put together a new D&D (or other RPG) group after moving to Atlanta three years ago.

Part of it is the struggle of trying to schedule anything while also having a three year old child.

Part of it is that we live in a pretty tiny house with no sound insulation, so I can't host games after my son's bedtime. And to be honest, I just really prefer hosting a game that I'm running. It feels strange to me, for whatever reason, to hoist all my RPG stuff to someone else's house in order to run a game.

Now obviously that's not going to stop me from running a game, but it's definitely a hurtle I've had to get over.

I was wondering how common this is. Are most games hosted by the person running it? Or am I just spoiled by my years of child-free gaming?

For those of you who play in person, where are your games played?

I have run games where one of the players was the host and it worked ok. That even made it easy for him to have us come check on his place when he took a work trip since he had someone he considered trustworthy enough to have a key. That game started at a nearby FLGS and he suggested the move after he bought a house or got custody (I forget).

 

[Voadam]

Usually at my friends' (a married couple) house, sometimes one of them are the DM, sometimes another of us in the group is. The last year plus face to face campaign I ran was at their house. They have a young kid (kindergartner) and we play in their first floor or basement after the kid is down for the night upstairs.

They had 5e books there and a deep set of minis so when I was DMing I'd only bring the module I was running, my notes, and sometimes a specific battlemat or printed out map (and snacks ). In the pathfinder 1e era before they got their reaper minis when I was DMing I would also bring custom counters I made myself from internet image searches pasted into word documents for printing and then cutting out with scissors, about one page of specifically anticipated stuff for each weekly game. Sometimes a specific bestiary or d20 monster book for something I planned to use, but often just copied over stats from the PFSRD for easy portability to run encounters at the table. Once the 4e Monster Vault came out with its counters I got that and used those as minis for a lot of stuff.

In college I played in a group that met at a reserved room on campus or sometimes at people's homes. My Ravenloft campaign I ran was in my apartment which I shared with two of the players in the campaign.

As a kid I would haul around my AD&D PH, DMG, MM, and the module if I was DMing at a friend's house but I would host a bunch as well.

Not disturbing my wife and son in our townhouse is a big consideration for me not regularly hosting anymore. Also the limited parking in my townhouse community, I only have two spots and it is blocks away for the nearest street parking.

The last time I DM'd in my house it was games for my son and visiting family, sometime in the relatively early 5e era (sometime after Tales of the Yawning Portal came out).

 

[UnplayedRanger]

So I guess it's techincally "somwhere else", but we meet at the same house because they have the nicest and largest house to meet lol. They do play a lot, but have GM'd in the past. We tend to rotate who is GMing.

 

[Kannik]

When we play(ed) in person, we generally met at a one of the group member's houses and played there continually/regularly no matter who was running or what game/campaign was being run. Every so often we might meet at a different house for one reason or another, and occasionally the location of the 'regular' spot would shift to another house and then we'd continue to play there (until it shifted again).

What would change, of course, is where we sat. The GM obviously moved, but like so many other groups when a particular campaign started, we'd all choose a chair and then sit there pretty much religiously whenever that campaign was played. So even when we were switching campaigns every week, you'd always sit in Chair A for Campaign A, Chair B for Campaign B, and so on...