The group predates me actually joining it, which is why it’s still called the Thursday group despite meeting whenever Wendell’s garage is free and my sleep schedule allows, which lately means Tuesday afternoons, the one stretch of my week where I’m awake, showered, and not due back on shift for another eight hours. Nobody’s bothered to rename it. I don’t think anyone will.
Wendell hosts because his garage got finished with actual insulation a few years back and has a folding table big enough for the sprawlier games, the ones that need real elbow room. He works a normal schedule, nine to five, which means every session is a small act of accommodation on everyone else’s part, arranging around the guy whose body thinks two in the afternoon is roughly equivalent to their seven in the evening. I’ve apologized for this more times than I can count and at this point people just wave it off, which I appreciate more than I’ve probably said out loud.
There are five of us most weeks, sometimes four, occasionally six if someone’s cousin is in town and wants to see what the fuss is about. We’ve been playing together long enough that I can predict, with something like ninety percent accuracy, who’s going to flip the table strategically on turn one of a negotiation game and who’s going to spend twenty minutes agonizing over a decision that objectively doesn’t matter much. I used to find that predictability a little dull, honestly, the same personalities hitting the same beats session after session. Now I think it’s the actual point. A stranger at the table changes the whole texture of a game, sometimes for the better, but there’s something specific and good about playing a heavy cooperative campaign with people whose instincts you already know cold, where half the communication happens without anyone saying a word because you’ve been reading each other’s tells for two years.
We’re six chapters into a campaign box right now that I won’t name because half the group reads this site and I don’t want anyone strategizing off my write-up before we’ve finished it. It’s going slower than it should, partly my fault, partly because Tuesday afternoons only happen so often and a campaign with real stakes deserves more than a rushed hour before I have to leave for shift. I’ve floated adding a second session some weeks. Nobody’s taken me up on it yet. I think everyone secretly likes that this is the one thing in their week that isn’t trying to be efficient about anything.