Who makes up YOUR community?

[daboarder]

Hello all,

I wanted to discuss something that I feel is an interesting point that needs to be mentioned regarding the community that participates in this hobby.

Recently after responding to a typically disparaging comment of the community by another poster, it occurred to me that the people I game and hobby with are a collection of both diverse and extremely highly qualified people. These people aren't the anti-social basement players that you might think, they come from a wide variety of jobs and backgrounds.

My regular gaming mates include 5 chemists, an investment banker, a chemical engineer, a mechanical engineer, two biologists, a lawyer, a nurse and 2 people in post production television.

This is by no means the extent of people I game with, merely the people whose careers I know a bit about.

So what about you, share with us (without giving away personal information of course) WHO makes up YOUR gaming community?

[DarkLink]

The group that I hang out with consists of a civil engineer, a senior manager for state healthcare, a construction manager for building projects, a boxing coach/sushi chef, a software developer, a construction worker turned school teacher, a metalworker, a guy who writes gambling laws and regulations, and a few people who I have no clue what they do. About half of us were in the military in one branch or another.

Outside of the club, after going to so many tournaments, there are far too many people to list. Roughly 2/3 are generally chubby in stereotypical nerdy fashion, but there are plenty of reasonably athletic individuals, and probably 85% of them are socially competent and can carry out intelligent conversation on a wide range of topics that extend to non-nerdy things.

[40kGamer]

My community is highly diverse. We have a mix that includes college students, retail & service industry workers, government managers, police officers, lawyers, CPA's (charter accountants), business owners and corporate CFO's/officers. It's quite amazing how our hobby can bring this group together as we would not normally have reasons to interact. One of the things I enjoy most about our hobby is that we can assemble to debate, argue and play the games we all love as equals. I find it fascinating when people describe our community as composed of socially challenged nerds... They're hanging about but in general that's not what I see at all.

[Cutter]

A lieutenant colonel, a couple of university lecturers, a lot of software engineers, a few retail managers and Mr. X.

Mr X doesn't appear to do anything for a living, a gentleman of leisure, we'd all love to know where the money comes from, but we're too polite to ask.

In a given year Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 probably account for 10% to 20% of what we play, the rest being historical 15 and 28 mm, sci-fi 28 mm, boardgames, roleplaying games and of late X-wing.

As a community we're currently most interested in Dungeon Saga and Kings of War Second Edition, both from Mantic Games.

Several of us also game online together, though no one any expressed much interest in Warhammer Total Warhammer.

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Additional: none of us game with strangers, none of us play in competitions or tournaments anymore, most of us haven't stepped inside a GW store in years, possibly decades for a couple.

++

Our most vocal GW opponent is the most senior of their ex-staffers we have, former regional manager.

[Lost Vyper]

An unemployed scum (me ), when i gotta job, it´s in retail (store manager, customer manager etc.). One works in wholesale, and we have a commercial flight pilot and then let´s just say one works for the (shhh...secret....) government...our guest star (who plays few times a year with us, cos he lives few hundred kilometers from here) is a chef (i think?).

- LV

[Zaonite]

My local community is made up of bar workers, a legal consultant, a local politician, a flgs owner, a software engineer, a database engineer, an industrial chemist (me), retail workers, warehouse workers, a professor of mathematics and an electrician.

Very varied group to be honest.

My old gaming group while I was at uni consisted of teachers, uni students, a call centre worker, a chef, a hotel manager, a chemical engineer, a police officer, two chemists (not pharmacists), office workers, a librarian, an engineer and a supermarket supervisor.

[Chris Handley]

For my part, since the end of my time in uni as a undergrad (since during and before then most people I game with were school/uni aged or working at GW, as I did part time during uni), my gaming group (this includes playing rpgs too) has included;

PhD students (myself being one) in science, office works for various corporations, computer game artists, computer games playtesters, computer game designers, retail managers for non-hobby companies, finance based contract worker, lighting engineer, and soon to include more PhD students, and university lecturers (my field is computational chemistry).

So all in all, quite diverse, with leaning towards players being in the science and tech industry, arts based in some manner, and also a good number being into alternative electronic/goth/industrial music.

[Psychosplodge]

I haven't done any regular serious actual gaming in years, but the people I did play with back in the day went on to become 3x engineers(various disciplines) a marine biologist, and a traditional artist/photographer.
The last people I played games with were a media graduate, a history graduate and an archaeologist.

[Path Walker]

Eccentric Billionaires

[Arkhan Land]

every one I play 40k with is a musician with half of them having jobs in music the other having odd-day jobs carpentry/etc