Welcome back to Part 2. In the previous post, I focused on how my life as a gamer blossomed over this decade, expanding from TTRPGs being a hobby I enjoyed with my close friends at home to stepping out into the larger gaming community—locally and online—and into a wider world. For this very reason, over those 10 years, I played TTRPGs with more people than I had before, or since.
These were the years of Geeknics and convention games. I can’t recall how many people I played with at those. I also played games at Gen Con with strangers and with old friends. I particularly remember playing a Psi*Run demo (one of my favorite pick-up games to this day!), and the Savage Worlds game David A. Miller ran for my friends, where the system first truly clicked for me! You can read about Gen Con 2011 and the friends I met there in this post from back then.
That energy eventually carried over into other local projects. Desde la Fosa was a smaller group where I made new friends and played with old ones, with whom I had never rolled dice before. For a while, Desde la Fosa was my second gaming group, and I had never had two regular groups running simultaneously before. The aftermath of Hurricane María eventually broke us up. We played a few times after—no streaming, just gaming—but it fizzled away. I am still in touch with AJ, Felipe, and José, the core team that started the project, even though two of them have moved off the island. José is currently a regular player in my weekly campaign. But near or far, they are family.
As this post focuses more on my regular gaming group, the closer, more intimate group of friends I sit with every week to play games, it is important to talk about family. Not wanting to sound too much like Dominic Toretto of Fast & Furious fame, the players at my table are, in many ways, my family. The family we choose. Close friends who are more than gaming buddies; they are an important part of my life.
So, who were these people? What did I play and who did I game with from 2007 to 2017?
The Hideout of the Mequetrefes (Again)
In 2007, I was running my weekly homebrewed campaign at Sammy’s house. Since Sammy had a dedicated game room, and I could not say no to someone who wanted to play, the number of players ballooned from six to nine at one point. I wish I had pictures of the group playing there.
José Fernando, Piwie, Karlo, Luis Alvardo, Luis Lao, Pierre, and Victor were the original players. Sammy and Carly eventually joined the campaign. It lasted over two years, so there was some ebb and flow in the player roster. Victor did not finish the campaign; Pierre and José, I think, were absent for some time, but at the final session, we had eight players at the table.
Sadly, as the campaign ended, Sammy and I had a falling out. We had very different personalities and senses of humor, as well as different boundaries around family outside the game. Sammy would relentlessly make fun of everyone, and I was not willing to have people in my life who were not part of the game made to feel uncomfortable. So, I packed my things and moved on.
This was very hard. Sammy was a close friend, but we could not reach an agreement, which created a schism. We remained friends, and I’d like to think we mended fences. We played on occasions two or three times more over the years, but we saw far less of each other. When he passed, he left a void that continues to be felt to this day.
I was planning a Star Wars Saga Edition game with some of the other players at Sammy’s house, including Tato and Peter, with whom I had traveled to Gen Con. Sadly, this was not to be.
Back Home
We had not played in my apartment since 1999. I cleaned up the guest room and turned it into a sort of game room. This change splintered the group. Sammy, Carly, and Piwie no longer played with us. Other players emigrated, but one rejoined: Guaro returned to playing with us. For the first time in a long time, my core group of players was only five people: Guaro, José Fernando, Luis Alvarado, Luis Lao, and Pierre.
We played Star Wars Saga Edition, which was a LOT of fun. I wrote a series of posts about the game’s setting a while ago. You can find the first one here. Regardless of the split, the group slowly but surely began to grow again.
D&D 4th Edition and More
When D&D 4th Edition came out, we were alternating gaming locations, sometimes playing at Guaro’s house. His mother had dementia, and if he could not find someone to look after her, we’d play at his place. If memory serves, we played the first session of my Points of Light campaign, the Tenedal Valley, at his house.
Our group might not have loved the 4th Edition, but it grew. Fernando and Raul began playing with us. Raul would come and go, but Fernando has been a mainstay in the group since 2008. Also, the first player I met through Puerto Rico Role Players, Yamir, joined the group!
This was a wonderful time. Not only did we play D&D 4e for about 7 months, but we also played a secret TORG prequel using d20 Modern (I never told them it was a prequel to that game!). I was a player in Pierre’s d20 Modern Zombie game and Luis Lao’s Mutants & Masterminds game.
By 2009, things were changing again. I met my wife, and we moved in together. I gave up playing other games and settled back into my one-gaming-night-a-week routine. We were still playing in my apartment; we gave up on 4th Edition and began playing Pathfinder 1st edition with the Playtest rules.
This was the beginning of a long-running pirate-themed campaign that ran from 2009 to 2014.
Pirates and Lairs
The Jade Island campaign was the 6th campaign set in the current version of my long-running homebrewed world, created in 1987. In many ways, the weekly group meeting to play every Tuesday in 2026 coalesced in this campaign. Many players had been part of the regular gaming group before, but the current core of players really came together here. Of the current regular six players, four were part of this campaign.
Guaro had made a character to play with us, but he was a no-show when the campaign began. Sadly, we lost contact with him around 2010.
Fernando, José Fernando, Luis Alvarado, Luis Lao, Pierre, and Yamir were the original players. Not long after, Carlos joined the group. I have known Carlos since the 90s, but he had never sat down to play with us. He originally played as a guest character and quickly joined as a regular player.
Yamir moved to the mainland US but joined a short-lived play-by-post version of the same campaign. He played only a few years with us, but his creativity and his character became part of the lore and history of the world. The play-by-post included friends from Puerto Rico Role Players, old gaming buddies from the 90s, and Sara, who would eventually transition from the virtual game to the regular in-person group.
By this time, the game had moved from my apartment to Fernan’s house. We were not the only gaming group playing there, and we affectionately called his house The Lair!
There, we played the Jade Islands campaign, a Mutants & Masterminds campaign as an interlude between the two halves of the pirate campaign, and when that ended in 2014, our first long Savage Worlds campaign: the Wanderers of the Outlands, which ran from 2014 to 2016. I wrote a series of posts about that campaign on this blog; you can read the first here.
Some friends stepped away from the group and have not played with us since. Luis Alvarado left during the Mutants & Masterminds game. Pierre also stopped playing; real-life responsibilities kept him busy. He is currently in the US, and we text every day. They are both well, but we still miss them at the table!
Other long-term friends came to sit at the table. Hector is another longtime friend who only sat to play with us years after we met. Our youngest players, Mariana and Edgardo, who we met through Puerto Rico Role Players, also joined our game, bringing in new blood, new ideas, and new friends to the table.
New Editions and Disasters (these two things are NOT related)
After D&D 5th Edition came out, we began a campaign using the system in 2016. The usual suspects were at the table: Carlos, Edgardo, Fernando, Hector, José Fernando, Luis Lao, Mariana, Sara, and Fernando’s wife, Naida. Richard, another friend met through Puerto Rico Role Players, joined when Sara and Hector had bowed out.
In 2016, Tony, another legend in the TTRPG scene in Puerto Rico, visited from the mainland, and we had a get-together dubbed Tony Con at Jaime and Carmen’s house, where dead friends met via Puerto Rico Role Players. We played D&D 5th edition, which Tony still doesn’t like, being the Pathfinder diehard, he is! Along with Tony José Fernando, Tato, Angel, Luis Alvarado, and Sammy played that day. This was not the last time I played with Sammy, that would be in 2017 at The Gaming Pit, but it felt like a reunion with long-lost friends.
Also in 2016, I celebrated my 30 years as a gamer (like I am doing now at the 40-year mark!) with a game at Carlos Steffens’ house, where we played the D&D Mentzer Red Box adventure using The Black Hack rules. My TTRPG community organizing and my private enjoyment of the game had met, and this was a great time of gaming in my life.
Throughout all these years, we had friends who visited and played guest characters, like PJ Deyo and Luis Miranda, who played in the pirate campaign (Luis came back for the 5th edition campaign as well). Javi Vidal joined us briefly for the campaign but had to move on shortly after. Mariana and Edgardo moved to the other side of the island and would connect to the game online to play with us.
Despite the changes and new players, we had left behind the growing pains of a new system and finally found our game’s stride. I was really enjoying the campaign and playing a bi-weekly game at The Gaming Pit with the Desde la Fosa crew. What could go wrong?
Well, Hurricane Maria arrived in 2017. But that’s a topic for the next period in my 40 years as a gamer.
Final Thoughts
Despite the grim closing of this decade of gaming, the changes that María and other disasters would cause in Puerto Rico and in my life, this was a magical decade of growth, expanding circles of friends, and a wonderful feeling of community that continues to this day.
I am lucky this way. I started gaming with friends, and then the people I met through the TTRPG hobby became close friends—my extended family. I am grateful for each one of them. Thanks for being part of my life.
The Stats (2007-2017)
- Total Campaigns: 9
- Years Active: 30 (Consecutive play from 1986 to 2006)
- MVP Systems: D&D 3.5, 4th and 5th editions, Pathfinder, Mutants & Masterminds, and Savage Worlds
What about you? How has your gaming group evolved over the years, and have the people at your table become your chosen family, too? I’d love to hear your stories in the comments!
