Some Time with Old Friends

Friends are the best part of gaming
I just spent eight days gaming and visiting with my two oldest friends and am reminded how much I owe to gaming. I met these guys way back about 1975 playing a TSR micro-armor game called Panzer Warfare. The friendly local hobby store owner had asked a group of his customers to exchange names and contacts and we got together for some face-to-face tabletop gaming. Panzerblitz and other historic boardgames and some miniatures like Panzer Warfare and Empire Napoleonics.  When I learned about D&D and acquired the white box, it was these guys, well, mostly the younger ones who were about my age, who worked to figure out the game and fell in love with it.  These were my earliest gaming buddies and great memories I have of gaming with them, sitting round the table, telling stories of other games, joking and poking fun at each other and everything else it seemed.  Over the years I have met many friends through gaming and often those friendships have extended well beyond gaming.  It wasn't long before several of us young gamers found we had lots of interests in common, started hanging out even when not gaming and formed friendships outside gaming.  The two fine gentlemen I recently spent time with have been my closest friends for forty years. Without a shared interest in gaming, we might never have met...probably would not have since we went to different schools.
I wish I could write about the white box games we played on this last visit, but there are not any.  I offered to run such a game, as I always do when we get together (about twice a year now), but what we played were mostly modern boardgames - Zombicide, Runebound, Advanced Squad Leader, Lord of the Rings Living Card Game and others.  We still sat around the table rolling dice, telling stories and joking about everything. We also talk about families, politics and all the rest that old friends do, and not just while gaming. The real value in gaming is the friends we make.