Last month my wife and I decided to host a game day at our house in an effort to groom some people to play with. The first one was fun. The second one was better still.

Grinnell is a college town of about 9,000. We're an hour from Des Moines, Iowa City, and Cedar Rapids. Most of the gaming we do is in Iowa City or Des Moines, and we're grateful for those opportunities. We have 3 couples on our street we occasionally play with. None are as hardcore as we are. One of the couples introduced us to Acquire, Clans, and several party games. In turn, we've introduced them to quite a bit. Another of the couples comes from the card game/word game tradition. They're willing victims when we can corral them. Anyway, mostly it's my wife and me in 2-player games. Increasingly, we can't get our 15-year-old son to sit down with us. Our 17-year-old daughter has Down Syndrome and many of our games are not a good fit for her.

We're trying to nurture some gamers. We thought the best way to do it is to make blanket invitations up and down our street. Let them know the types of games we'd be playing. The fact the people mostly know each other makes it less threatening to them and more fun. They can come for a friendly gathering of neighbors, and if they happen to get exposed to a game, well so be it.

I made a chicken tortilla soup. My wife baked some of her world-famous cookies. We put out some snacks and drinks and opened the door at noon. The plan was to go from noon to nine. People could come and go as they wished. They were encouraged to bring a drink or snack of their own. We ended up with at least 28 people of all ages. I don't think any of them belong to BGG (yet).

The purpose of this list is to encourage others in similar straits to give it a try. My comments about the games will probably be a little spare.