BLAH: History of a Gaming Group

BLAH stands for Boston Ludophiles, Andrew Hosting. I hosted gaming sessions at my place in Boston, MA on most Wednesday evenings between July 2000 and December 2002. I stopped hosting because I moved, that seemed a logical time to stop, and there were by then plenty of other groups on the Unity Games calendar.

Birth of BLAH

I became a regular at SSG, which Dave Bernazzani used to host at his place of work on Saturday evenings. I started thinking of hosting sessions myself, partly for the selfish reason that I didn't have a car at the time, and hosting solved the transportation problem, for me at least.

On Saturday July 15, 2000, there was for some reason no SSG. I sent out an invitation via the Unity Games list, and got all of 2 postitive responses. So Jonathan and Tamara came over, and we played Hera & Zeus, Caesar and Cleopatra, Settlers of Catan, and Through the Desert.

We also talked about my hosting regular sessions. Jonathan, who occasionally attended various groups in the Boston area, helped me settle on Wednesday as an evening not already "claimed" by an open group. Now I just needed an acronym. I went with BLAH: Boston Ludophiles, Andrew Hosting. BLAH II was the first Wednesday session of many.

Statistics

Stats I'm sure of:

• Number of sessions: 110
• Lowest attendance: 2
• Highest attendance: 13 (that's capacity, if not overcapacity)
• Game played at most consecutive sessions: Puerto Rico (15 consecutive sessions)

Things I'm sure of, but can't quantify:

• Most sessions attended: Richard Spoonts, who was almost certainly the only person to attend more than half of the sessions (disqualifying myself from consideration)
• Most popular designer: Reiner Knizia

Guesses:

• Number of games played: around 800, maybe getting near 1000
• Number of different games played: certainly in 3 figures, perhaps around 200
• Number of different gamers: around 90 (but it may have just made three digits)
• Amount spent at Andre's Cafe, the wrap place round the corner: $1500

Session Reports

I posted reports for the last eight sessions to the Unity Games group message board. Here are the links to those eight reports.

• BLAH CX, the last session for the group, at which the host was touched to receive a gift
• BLAH CIX
• BLAH CVIII
• BLAH CVII
• BLAH CVI
• BLAH CV
• BLAH CIV
• BLAH CIII

Prior to that, I posted reports at my former gaming web site, which was on AOL. I decided not to migrate the whole site over here, but to keep a select half-dozen reports. I've retained the style sheet and other aspects of formatting I used to use, but trimmed some of the links and other references to AOL. Here are the reports that made the cut:

• BLAH C, the hundredth session
• BLAH LXXXVI, which drew a capacity crowd of 13, including my parents
• BLAH LIX, the first BLAH with double-digit attendance
• BLAH XXVIII, the first of many BLAH sessions attended by Richard, and the one at which he learned Setters, among other games
• BLAH IV, one of the early sessions with a theme
• BLAH I, the very first session, and the only one to be held on an evening other than Wednesday

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