You seem to do a fair bit of gaming in public. When I read of such situations, I'm always curious about the reaction you get from others (e.g., the other bar patrons, your bartender/server, etc). In general, what has your experience been? Personally, I'd enjoy reading about this in every post.
I've enjoyed your blog; thanks for posting, and keep it up.
Thank you so much for the kind words! And that's true, my husband and I play games in public frequently. In general, our experience has been great. We are lucky enough to have some pubs in the neighborhood that encourage gaming, but we also often play at restaurants, cafes, and bars that don't specifically encourage it. I think Seattle is a pretty gamer-friendly city, generally.
Even when we not in a board game specific pub, the servers don't usually act especially surprised by us. And if they are surprised, it's in a positive way, where they ask us about what we are playing and seem interested. I've never experienced a negative reaction from a bartender/server or from other patrons. They are either neutral or positive.
I think one reason we have had such good experiences with gaming in public so far is that we are careful to be considerate and play only in locations where it doesn't seem like we'd be distracting people or messing with the atmosphere (like at an especially elegant restaurant), and we avoid monopolizing a table by playing a long game in a busy restaurant unless it's a board game specific cafe, and if we are at a game cafe where longer games are okay, we make sure to continue ordering food/drinks.
We often get interested looks and questions (always friendly) from other patrons when playing games in public. On a couple of occasions (like in local pubs where we bump into other regulars frequently), some other patrons were so interested in our game that we invited them to play, and we ended up with new friends.
I'll try to cover that aspect of gaming more often, since you're right that many of my games played are in public, and that might not be as common for many people.
