Board Game Cafe's 'Learn To Play' Table Becomes Accidental Support Group

A board game cafe's designated "Learn to Play" table, intended for teaching new games to walk-in customers, has evolved into an informal support group for people struggling with board game acquisition habits and the social consequences thereof. The transformation began when a staff member teaching Agricola observed that two of the three learners had begun sharing personal stories about their game collections rather than learning how to feed their virtual families. "I was explaining the harvest phase and one of them said, 'Speaking of harvest, my wife says I need to harvest some of my unplayed games or she's leaving,'" recalled staff member Jordan Meeple. "And then the other one said, 'Mine too.' And then they hugged." The table has since become a weekly gathering point for what participants call "the Unplayed Shelf Support Circle," a group of six to twelve regulars who meet Tuesdays at 7 p.m. to discuss their relationships with board game collecting. Common topics include: the guilt of owning more games than can be played in a lifetime, the compulsion to back Kickstarter campaigns for games that duplicate games already owned, and the development of persuasive arguments for why a new game is "different enough" from the fifteen similar games on the shelf. "We played a game once," reported regular attendee Phil Token. "Someone brought Codenames. We played it for ten minutes and then spent two hours talking about how we each own three copies of Codenames and can't explain why." The cafe's owner has designated the table as a permanent fixture, noting that the group purchases more snacks per hour than any gaming table in the establishment.