Tonight we hosted our fourth Upland Community Game Night at Upland Community Church (and my seventh community game night helping as a host with three at a friend’s church). Each time we host these events we get better at it. And I truly can say WE. I am the champion for the event at our church, but I have so many volunteers now helping me setup, prepare snacks and beverages, greet attendees at the door, teach games, and help tear down. Huge thanks go out to all the volunteers who help make this event a success. I had more time to enjoy talking with everyone who came and seeing how much fun they are all having.
For those interested how we host these events, I wrote about our setup and hosting ideas earlier. Still following those same ideas and guidelines for this fourth event and feeling more comfortable with the events. Setup and teardown have become much quicker through familiarity and many more volunteers helping out. I felt much more relaxed this time and even got to play few games, as I felt comfortable that others were teaching games and managing the hosting duties.
Games played this time included
- Adrenaline
- Beyond Baker Street
- Captain Sonar
- Codenames
- Diamonds
- Dixit
- Dominion
- Junk Art
- Just Desserts
- Fluxx
- Forbidden Island
- Quiddler
- Scrabble Book Lovers
- Small World
My wife even caught me laughing at the end of the night. I was all hyped up on sugar from cookies and playing the stressful and hilarious Captain Sonar for my first time with my daughter and a great group of friends.
I now have bins and bags of games stacked in my living room waiting to be unpacked tomorrow. It takes a lot of planning, communicating, preparation, and work to host a community game night, but it is so rewarding. Having a team of passionate gamers volunteering to help host the event really made the evening a success and felt like much less work for me that previous game nights. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and am already looking forward to our next community game night this summer, planning for July. I would love to hear your stories about hosting your own community game nights. If you have questions about hosting an event like this, feel free to ask. I am not an expert but I am willing to share what has and has not worked worked for us.