Board games are for everyone. Not only the people who own shelves of them, already know the rules, or have been playing since they were small.

Two things stop most people

You do not know what to play. Standing in front of a wall of boxes with no idea which one you would actually enjoy, or reading a rulebook alone and giving up on page four.

You have nobody to play with. A good game wants three other people, and most of us do not have three other people free on a Friday.

Neither of those is about whether you would be any good at it. Everything here is an attempt to answer one or the other.

It is not one night a week

A weekly meetup is where this started, not what it is meant to be. The aim is more nights, of more kinds, run by more people. A Saturday afternoon for the long games, a weeknight for the short ones, an evening aimed at people who have never played anything past Monopoly. If you want to run one, that is the point rather than an imposition. Say so and it goes on the calendar.

Meetups. Somewhere to turn up, already on a date, with people who will teach you what is on the table. Bring a game or bring nothing.

Shared shelves. Collections sitting in people’s houses, listed and searchable, so a game you have wondered about is a game you can ask for. Games are better played than owned.

Finding players. Say which game you want to get going and how many you need. Somebody else has been waiting to play the same thing.

The games are the excuse

Nearly everyone who comes lives a few miles from everyone else and would never otherwise have met. People arrive for a game and leave knowing people. That is the part worth building, and the games are how you get there without anyone having to make small talk first.

Come alone. By the third night somebody will know your name.