The worst game night I ever ran... and it was my own fault

I planned this big board game night for like 8 people last Saturday. I had all the popular games ready, Catan, Ticket to Ride, Codenames... the usual stuff. But I made the mistake of letting everyone pick what to play as they showed up. Three guys wanted to play a heavy euro game, two girls wanted party games, and the other folks just wanted to drink and chat. Nobody could agree on anything for forty five minutes. By the time we finally settled on a game, two people had already left because they were bored. The whole night just felt like herding cats and nobody really had fun. Has anyone else dealt with a group that just could not agree on a game? How do you handle it?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_viola1d ago

Oh man, that's a tough one! I remember one time I invited like six friends over for a game night and spent way too long planning the snack spread. I thought everyone would be into this old obscure card game I found at a thrift store, but three people showed up who never played anything more complicated than Uno. So there I am, trying to explain rules for 20 minutes while half the group is just staring at their phones. Halfway through the first round, someone spilled guacamole all over the instruction booklet and we just gave up and ordered pizza. It's like, you can't force people to be into the same stuff, you know?

blake_murphy611d ago

My buddy did something similar with a bunch of coworkers once. @the_viola, he tried to get everyone into a complex board game and half the people just wanted to play charades. The game ended up being a huge mess, someone knocked over a drink on the board, and they just switched to watching a movie instead. It's always a gamble trying to pick one activity for a group, you never know who's gonna be into it or not.