When Do You Play the Three-Hour Games?

The bigger 3 hour-ish type games slot into my group's standing monthly Wargame (or wargame-adjacent) night. One guy hosts, it's always a Fri/Sat night starting at 7, game choice at the primary table rotates among participants. Based on the number of players the main game supports, there's often a spinoff table for a 2P/3P game.

Or someone just gets a bee in their bonnet to play a specific thing, sets a date, emails looking for people on a first-come/first-served basis.

It would be awesome if I could know:
1) Who was coming to a game night more then a few hours beforehand.
2) Could actually figure out what game we're going to play (or even who is playing together, as we often have two games going).

If I had both of these, we could potentially speed up setup and have people do some homework to prepare. But again, that is a luxury I do not have...

cdennett wrote: It would be awesome if I could know:
1) Who was coming to a game night more then a few hours beforehand.
2) Could actually figure out what game we're going to play (or even who is playing together, as we often have two games going).

If I had both of these, we could potentially speed up setup and have people do some homework to prepare. But again, that is a luxury I do not have...

2) I'm getting comfortable with the idea of focused invitations for the purpose of playing a specific game at a specific place and time.
1) This is the ongoing struggle.

I like using Facebook these days to schedule a game, but words mean different things to different people. For some people responding to a Facebook event, Going means going and Maybe means maybe. But for other people, Going means maybe and Maybe means can't go but embarrassed to admit it. For general gaming, this is okay, but it's going to make it tough to schedule a six-player game of Dune.

Shellhead wrote: But for other people, Going means maybe and Maybe means can't go but embarrassed to admit it.

Man, that is diabolical shit right there. Some people are in need of serious social shaming.

Shellhead wrote: 2) I'm getting comfortable with the idea of focused invitations for the purpose of playing a specific game at a specific place and time.

Yeah, my weekly game night has been ad hoc since the inception, and that probably won;t change. I keep trying to get together a 2nd game day/night once or twice a month to target a specific game/event, but so far life/kids/spouse have prevented that from being a reality. Maybe someday.

On topic, played Black Rose Wars last night for the second time, took about 4 hours to completion with rules explanation (one new player, and I was admittedly rusty). I had been avoiding bringing it due to the fact I knew it would run long, but one of my players has been asking for it for months, so I gave in. Still had fun, which is all that matters.

We play 6pm to 10:30, but it's hard for me to talk people into committing to that big a title. I find the easiest way is to sit down to "learn" the game and usually someone will join me. We have enough people coming that there's not a need to have everyone playing the same thing all the time. Makes it a little easier.

But yeah, pre-scheduling for a particular title is nice. That happens on the May Getaway weekend all the time.