Socializing

This may come as a shock to those of you who know me only from GenCon (or other shows), but I'm an introvert.  Rather an extreme one, at that. Aside from interaction online and at conventions, I don't spend much of my own time dealing with people.

In fact, gaming is my social outlet.  It's one of those activities that really needs other people to be viable as a hobby.

And no, this is not going to be yet another "care and feeding of introverts" post. There are enough of those out there already. Not only that, but if an introvert is gaming, it usually means that they have already shored up their defenses enough to game with you. And, realistically, you shouldn't be treating them any differently than you do an extrovert.

Gaming has been very good for me on that front. Especially our regular Wednesday evening gathering. When I first hosted Game Night, it wasn't unusual for me to retreat to my room after an hour or two while others continued playing in the front room.  As time went by, I retreated later and later until I eventually stopped retreating altogether.

It's because of gaming that I have a social life with real face-to-face people instead of just faceless anonymous internet folks.

That is part of why gaming is so important to me - it's both the focus of and the root of my non-internet social life.