Clue, Risk, Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, these kids have it all. Give them a game, they can beat it. The one puzzle the Table Top Gaming Club can’t solve, however, is how to go on without a physical table to gather around.

The St. Thomas Table Top Gaming Club is a club dedicated to board games, card games and role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. When the club could meet in person, members played all types of games over convo hour, a period from 11:35 a.m. to 1:35 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. However, the transition to meeting online has not been an easy one.

“As our name states, we are Table Top Gaming Club, not Online Gaming Club,” junior and club vice president Zach Hammes said. “Finding online versions of these tabletop games is a little tough, especially if they cost money.”

Hammes remembers the in-person club meetings of the past, when the whole club would gather on Wednesdays in Murry-Herrick.

“We’d probably have about 20 to 30 people on a given Wednesday show up to play games,” Hammes said. “We had a bunch of different little groups that would play individual games.”

Along with finding free options for online meetings, the club has also struggled to form friendships over the internet and to get students to come to their virtual events.

“We are able to form those bonds and connections and start new friendships, but there is just that in-person factor where you actually get to see the person behind the mic, and actually interact with them in person,” Hammes said. “It is fundamental to this club and without it, it is not the same.”

The club had to manage a shift from a physical to an online environment. Junior and volunteer coordinator Veronica Freund assisted in setting up the first few meetings.

“I think we ended up playing Among Us for those first few games because it was new, and people knew how to play,” Freund said. “As the semester went on, I found different games that we could play and brought them to the club.”

Junior and treasurer Evan Derrick also helped with the setup. As of this semester, both Derrick and Freund have had to fill the role of secretary alongside their original roles.

“For those first couple weeks, it was really kind of like ‘OK, what can we play?’ This sounds fun to play. And then we announced the game for that week. There wasn’t too much organizing of space and everything like that,” Derrick said.

Last semester, Freund was unable to organize any volunteer events for the club.

“In all the past years that I have been in the club, the charity event has been held through Extra Life, which is a charity that uses tabletop gaming streams to raise money for children’s hospitals,” Freund said.

Due to the pandemic, Freund says that Extra Life has restructured the way it runs charity events from in-person tabletop streams to streams of online video games.

“I was hoping this semester we could get something together to participate in Extra Life. Albeit virtually, we can maybe have some streams or a D&D one-shot that gets posted on Twitch,” Freund said.

The club now meets over Discord, and while numbers are lower than they once were, the club has managed to create a tightly knit community online.

“I think in general tabletop, especially during this time, is a great way for people to stay connected and have fun with each other,” Derrick said.

Owen Larson can be reached at lars6521@stthomas.edu.