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Monday, August 3, 2015

Gen Con: This Is My Tribe Redux

Diana trying on some
of my old costumes.
So I wanted to post a quick follow-up to the article from last Thursday... I intended to post a few Gen Con "on location" articles, but... you know... Gen Con. I still intend to post an overall recap, but wanted to comment on something that happened to me.

Saturday was a hard day at the con for me.

Over Friday and Saturday, there were a few events to which I had signed up that failed badly to meet some expectations, which put me in a bit of a mood. On top of that, I was feeling a down because my wife could not be there with me, and my little ones are just too small for us to manage a four day convention... Seems like every little girl or boy at the con reminded me of my son and daughters.

So I was really missing my family and feeling a bit lonely at the con. It's hard to be one guy along among 60,000+ people and see so many groups of friends together having fun, playing games, and laughing. I had an unusually strong feeling of "odd man out" syndrome.

I met Jim shortly after this photo was taken. :)
source: @JimZub
It was getting late Saturday night and I went back to my room really tired and was feeling a bit empty. But I couldn't let this feeling pull my con experience down, so I marshaled my internal forces and headed down to the lobby to make something of my Saturday late night.

It was then I met +Jim Zub (@JimZub) who invited me to play Skull and Roses with him and his friends. Then I also met (re-met) Kevin Zim (@toggleGaming) who also invited me to play Mysterium with a group of his friends.

These guys really saved my Saturday night. Instead of feeling lonely and blue, I was back in that happy space where a sense of belonging comes from that shared social experience with fellow game enthusiasts.

Thank you for that, guys. It was just what I needed.

Final Thoughts


If you are at a con hanging out with friends and playing board games, or just out at a board game MeetUp and you see some lone guy or gal looking on curiously, invite him or her over. Introduce yourself and your friends. Tell them about what you're playing and invite them to hang out. Bring them into your tribe. It might just make their day, or entire weekend.


I hope Jim and Kevin don't mind I've co-opted their tweets for my post. Let me know if you guys want me to alter the post in any way related to your tweets/images.
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