RSCO Feature: Tabletop Games Club

Bella Lee, Staff writer

If you’ve had a stressful day of classes and want to wind down, look no further than the Tabletop Games Club. This club meets every week to play an array of table-top games, from board games to card games. Its advisor is Court-ney Lang, assistant professor of Communication.

This club is incredibly unique to the university, and unlike other academic or professional development clubs, Tabletop Games Club exists for recreation and fun. Tabletop Games Club plays a variety of games like “Magic” to “Dungeons and Dragons” and all in between. The club is one of the few clubs on campus that has been able to maintain primarily in-person meetings in a pandemic world. “In the beginning, we held meetings on Zoom and we still can if the need arises,” said Mitchell McQuaid, senior Public Health and Criminal Justice double major and president of the club. “We would play Cards Against Humanity online for a while if it seemed like we wouldn’t be able to meet in person.

There were also plans for purchasing a tabletop simulator for the club, but thankfully we’ve been able to meet in person since.”While this semester has been unique to such a degree, the club ensured they took full advantage of what they could. For example, the club has been utilizing table-top simulators so that members could play their favorite table-top games such as “Dungeons and Dragons” virtually in place of the traditional in-person contact that the game requires.

Currently, the club has access to both “Dun-geons and Dragons” and “Dragons Beyond Master Tier.”Competitive card games have seen a resurgence in the club, ranging from “Magic the Gathering” to “Vanguard.”Justice Alleruzzo, a senior Communication major and vice president of the club has been managing a Dungeons and Dragons campaign from previous years, but a second campaign is slowly rising in popularity. This one is managed by Eli Neun, freshman Archeology and Anthropology double major. The club meets in Hirt L118 on Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m., although members will often branch out and meet outside of that time frame.

Members are encouraged to join in on games or even bring games of their own, whether it be a classic game like “Monopoly” or popular card games like “Uno” or “Apples to Apples.”While the tabletop games club currently does not have any set-in-stone plans for the remaining few weeks of the semester, the e-board is hopeful that the future of the spring semester gives leeway for new opportunities. If you are interested in joining the club, be sure to reach out to McQuaid at mmcqua15@lakers.mercyhurst.edu. Come to meetings for a night of fun and relaxation!