By: Declan Hertel
Entertainment Editor

It’s an oft-repeated notion that our generation spends a great deal of time with its nose lit up by the glowing screen of a smartphone, engrossed in some form of social media. Repeated just as often is the idea that we’re becoming an “anti-social” society because all our socializing is facilitated by a divide: you, to your Facebook, to my Facebook, to me.

I believe that while there is a great deal of old time fear-mongering about the downsides of social media, I would find it weirder for there to be absolutely no correlation between high use of social media and decreased interpersonal skills.

So in this time of interpersonal divide, how can we find a new way to foster true human interaction, to get us to communicate face to face with no divide?

Tabletop games.

That’s right. Board games, card games, roleplaying games, the whole bit.

“You want to turn me into some gross nerd, Declan? Well, I’m not doing it!”

Pipe down. I realize that there’s a stigma around board/roleplaying games: that those who play them are—as you, hypothetical dissenter, describe them—gross nerds. But think about video games, the fastest growing form of mass media in the world, and the main interactive experience of our culture. To paraphrase Anthony Burch, the lead writer of Borderlands 2, a video game which passed 13 million copies sold in August of last year, “it’s astounding that video games got the ‘socially-acceptable’ checkmark when board games require you to not be a [creative expletive].”

Kids and adults alike sit in their dark rooms staring at a screen, lobbing homophobic insults, racial slurs, and general horribleness at each other. Maybe it’s okay because nobody really believes in the very real power of cyberbullying, or maybe it’s just kids being kids.

The fact is that it sucks. Hardcore. Don’t get me wrong, I love video games and spend a great deal of time playing them. But the normalcy of abhorrent behavior in player-to-player interaction can’t be ignored.

Board games require you to behave yourself, you savage. You can’t sit around a table with other people and behave poorly toward them. They’ll kick you out and/or won’t invite you back. Roleplaying games require that you work together with all your other players to tell a good story and have a good time. If you don’t, you aren’t going to have a group for very long.

Even in the moments of nigh-bearable tension, you aren’t allowed to fly off the handle and accuse your opponent of sodomy and sodomy-related acts. This is a serious plus.

I’m going to avoid going on a rant about how the (really not good) board games you knew as kids are not the board games of today; about how there is a tremendous amount of money and creative energy fueling a practical-games renaissance; about how there are roleplaying games of all shapes and sizes and types for anyone interested in a little Saturday night improvised escapism. This paragraph was a decent crash course in that stuff.

These games are social activity in a box. Get all the satisfaction of playing a challenging game, while getting all the benefits of real human interaction.

I personally believe that my board and roleplaying games hobby has done me real good. Since playing more of these games, I find it far easier than ever to talk to people, and especially endure high pressure situations. Why? Because in roleplaying games, communication is paramount, so you have to get good at it, and in board games, you learn how to function gracefully under pressure in the presence of others in a low-risk environment.

These sorts of benefits are even backed up by science-type people: recently, a study from the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, sponsored by the National Library of Medicine, showed that roleplayers to have a greater level of empathy than non-gamers. This makes total sense to me: roleplaying games revolve around a group of people working toward a single goal.
Of course this would foster empathy. Not seeking to understand and work together with your fellows is the number one way to get eaten by a dragon.

Tabletop games, I believe, will make you a better, more socially capable person. What they won’t do is turn you into a gross nerd. The stigma is slowly dying. If we can push it out the window for good and let board and roleplaying games come into their own, I think we’re one step closer to salvaging an increasingly divided culture. So grab some friends and go kill a dragon. You’ll be glad you did.