You Gotta Fit Everybody At The Table
By Ciarán Laverty
We got a new table in our kitchen the other day but it’s quite a sophisticated bit of kit. You can extend it from a basic circle shape into more of an oval by unclipping some clasps on the underside and revealing a foldaway middle section that you can secure in place. It adds enough length that you could fit another four people comfortably around the table, pushing its maximum occupancy up to eight. While I think that’s sophisticated, it’s nothing new. Both my grandmothers had tables that fold at the edges to help accommodate smaller or larger groups, and so this foldaway mid-section seems almost like an unnecessary modernisation of an old trope. It belies something kind of eternal about humans though: We’re always expecting company. Accommodation is the name of the game, and it always has been.
While the folding-edge tables that reside in every pensioner’s home may no longer serve their intended purpose, that of filling more bellies at the holidays and on special occasions, the core of their design remains integral in many ways, and especially in gaming spaces. I look at my Secret Hitler box and see that it can accommodate between six and ten players. That’s a lot of bodies to fit around a table, and given the complexity of some modern games, I wouldn’t anticipate seeing a gaggle of toddlers sat on the floor accusing each other of being fascists. More and more, games are being made for adults, by adults, with all the profits going to adults. The pitfall is that adults have busy lives, unlike children who can all be dumped at a daycare and left to play pass the parcel for eight hours. It’s not easy to get a group of adults together consistently, and nowhere is this exemplified in greater fashion than in the case of game nights.
I have known the horrors of assembling a gaming party since I was about fifteen years old when I first started playing Pathfinder with some friends. And wouldn’t you know; we played on one of those old-timey tables with the folding edges. Week after week, the party would consist of three people, then five, then three again, then six, and on and on ad infinitum. The table would be raised on one half, then fully collapsed, then raised on both halves… you get the point – it was hectic. And quite the strain on the poor, innocent table. But it soldiered on, and still does, and so the tenacity of such designs and their ability to accommodate varying numbers of people has been a staple of my gaming experience from the outset. So, with all that in mind, let’s talk gaming tables.
The dream of every gamer is to eek out a space in which to play games, and while standard adjustable tables afford a decent amount of give in the conservation of home-space, they are ultimately still suited to typical home-life. The other option then, is something like the Ironside gaming tables from BoxKing. These are adjustable in more ways than one. With an extension pack, you can even make the table longer to suit your needs, should you find yourself catering to large groups in dining or gaming.
Ultimately, we play games in our homes with family and friends in much the same sorts of ways that we would gather for celebrations or festivities. There’s no reason why those two worlds need be divorced from one another when their central application, a table, can be made to suit both ends. My extended family and I always end up playing board games over Christmas holidays or birthday celebrations. We’re constantly discovering new games and trying them out, and the ability to accommodate as many people as possible is always pertinent. On top of that, with the abundance of games being played and revisited, it always helps to have storage solutions and other accoutrements to make the experience as enjoyable as possible. A place to keep the games, holders for dice, cards, pieces, and whatever other odds and bods might be flung willy-nilly around the table – and things to aid with comfort too. All those old foldout tables are solid wood, and usually harbouring a few stains and detritus from dinner during my gaming sessions, so somewhere comfy to rest your arms is a plus. With the Ironside table, there’s any number of options for prioritising comfort during your gaming sessions, like cup holders or a playing mat, because there’s nothing worse than a crick in the neck from staring down at cards, books, or whatever else you might have to keep your eyes on.
When all’s said and done, you can return your table to normalcy and make it a place of dinner times and homework, rather than murder-solving and dice-rolling. The functionality of everyday life is best suited by the ability to adjust, and that should be reflected in as many places as possible. It’s a sentiment that clearly goes back a long way, seeing as how those folding tables at my grandmothers’ houses are at least fifty years old; sixty at a push. But we needn’t confine ourselves to the oversights of the past. The future can be a more inclusive place, where we can endeavour to marry the functionality of the day-by-day to the jolt of surprise that comes with a damned fine session of gaming with family and friends. In this day and age, it’s better to be ready to have fun at a moment’s notice, and to do it in style if you can.