I'm feeling a tad burnt out with my boardgame group.

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Just to clarify, I'm in a board game group with my closest friends right now, and I'm enjoying it just fine. We've been doing it every Thursday for quite a few years now, but lately I've been feeling a little burnt out. In the last year and a half a friend from church has been attending, and he has really spiced things up. We now have a
points system, a good prize for the winner every week, and a bad prize for last place that's something edible and awful that he or she is filmed eating or drinking.

Recently we decided to roll over the points for this year and today we had a playoff game because everyone voted to have one. I actually held the most points this year for winning the most games, and originally the plan was for first place to get a grand prize, but then everyone decided to do a playoff game instead and my reward for winning all year ended up being starting with a slight bonus in the playoff game. I even almost won too at one point, but ended up being fifth.

Anyways, I'm slightly unhappy because though I'm actually not that upset about someone getting the grand prize (and am happy for the person who won), I don't appreciate that now I'm apparently in fifth overall for 2017 even though I was first all year. It's just semantics, I know, but I'm just not happy with the principle of it and just wish I could be acknowledged as first overall even if I didn't win one particular game. I didn't say that to my friends though. I decided to keep that to myself because it's silly. The whole point of this game night thing is to have fun after all, and I did.

Still, I don't think that's the reason why I'm feeling burnt out. I've been playing board games every Thursday for a very long time, and even had a game night this week. Maybe I'm just at the point where I need a bit of a break. Also, I just spent practically my entire weekend over at a friend's house. Yesterday I spent almost 3 hours playing an Exit game with some of them, then tonight I spent several hours over there again.

Maybe this feeling of being burnt out will pass. I think I might be an ambivert who has just spent a little too much time in social settings. Maybe what I'm feeling right now will pass come Thursday. But what if I still feel burnt out then? Part of me is kind of feeling like maybe I should take a break, or maybe come some weeks instead of every week, but I'm not sure if that will mean drifting a little bit away from that core group. I chose to have friends and I don't regret it. I'm just thinking I might need a little bit more space than I've had lately. Any advice?

I get like that with performing music. It's a major obsession and my main social activity- the one thing that gets me out almost every week. But after a while I'll have nights where I can't really face the noise and chaos of it all. And it'll start to get to me that someone got rapturous applause for an awful rendition of "Wonderwall" but people were talking at top volume all through the tricky new song I was trying out... Having a break for a couple of weeks seems to make me more thick-skinned, and actually a bit better at the social stuff.

I'd like to either start or join a board game group, but maybe something less high-pressure than you're describing. (I'm not that competitive, I just love how games work.)

Playoffs suck! They make the rest of the year pointless.

That they do, and actually, getting a slight handicap is detrimental as it makes everyone target you and still doesn't guarantee a win in a game with a large luck component.

Lol, a group like the one I attend isn't for you. I'm actually long since over the whole playoff thing now, but I'm getting more and more disgruntled with how the group is being run. It actually used to be about having fun when we started. It's not that anymore. Now there's a whole point system, a news text that comes out every week recapping the events of the game, including who won and who lost, and a video of the person in first place being presented with a good edible prize and the person in last eating the bad prize he or she has "won". One of our group members has actually left the group over our point system as he thinks it sucks the fun out of playing games.

The thing that is bothering me lately is that we now have a system where everyone has to vote over how things are run, which is good and bad, but if I don't agree with something but the majority does, I pretty much have to deal with it. We've also had a system lately where games are being nominated by people, and then the winner of the previous game night decides what we play.

Tonight the majority wanted to play Apples to Apples, but the previous winner picked Superfight, so we played that. I proposed a motion to change that to the rest of the "council", as we apparently call ourselves now, and thankfully the majority seems to be in agreement over that. My proposals were that games should be chosen more democratically, and also that when we have big groups of 8 or more we shouldn't all have to play the same game. Democracy seems to be working here, but I'm not sure I like that things have gotten so out of hand that we have to vote on so many facets of what should just be a thing we do for fun.

Ok, things have been fine for a while, but I'm really starting to take issue with how things are being run again. It seems like we spend so much time "proposing motions to the council", and discussing this and that, and when we do play games I've been having less fun than when things were less formalized. I can't just up and leave the group, because my bible study is also a part of that, which I do lead. Also, I think it's great that my friends and I have this time of week to get together. So many people get so caught up with life that they don't make the time for friends and I really feel like I'm lucky I'm not one of them.

But, reflecting on it again as the group currently stands, I definitely wouldn't join a group like this with strangers, acquaintances or even tertiary friends. If I came to a meeting of such a group I probably wouldn't come again. I can't simply resign. There are aspects of our group I really like, but for the most part, I'm just not enjoying it anymore.

I'm in a bit of a bind and could use some advice. Right now the best solution I can come up with after racking my brain is being honest and bringing it by "the council". Man, I hate having to call my group of friends "the council". Anyways, what I'm thinking is I should let everyone in my group know how I'm feeling and hopefully they will be willing to work with me to find some compromise. At the very least I can gauge how others are feeling about how things are being run.

It used to be fun. We just played games, and that was it. We also took more time to talk to one another. I don't think we talk much about anything other than group politics and the games themselves. I just wish things could go back to how they were or change to at least be more enjoyable than they are now. I'm troubled. Any advice would be appreciated.

Wow, I'd love to have a group of friends called The Council. We could secretly rule the world together!

It does sound like you guys are shifting away from being friends and moving towards coworkers or a regimented group of players. It is fun when they new person comes in and shakes things up but the charm certainly wears off after awhile if it starts to feel more like work and less like fun. I think you are right, that you need to discuss this issue with your friends. Or if you have the people, split off into the "casual" group and the "council" group. I've been gaming for 25 years now and the most fun I've ever had was just letting things go and we play what we enjoy, sometimes we have to play a game we don't like as much as others but everyone got a turn and we didn't worry about winners or losers in the long run.

Well, there's certainly a nice ring to being a "council member", but I don't want prestige if it comes at the expense of more important things. Also, councils are no fun IMHO.
Wow, I really want to go back to having that. It would be nice if we could just have people split off into however many groups we want by simply asking "who wants to play ___?" Heck, I'd love if we could also do other things with each other instead of just board games. Sure, we can make time at other points in the week, but that's increasingly difficult with our busy schedules. The current setup just doesn't allow for much flexibility.

Well, looks like I won't be going rogue, as awesome as that would have been. Actually, it seems others have disliked the council system too, but didn't want to say anything because it seemed like everyone was having fun with it, while others don't care either way. I'm glad I made the decision to talk to my friends. Rather than proposing we abolish the points, council and our news feed, I just suggested trying a month without it to see what people think. As the one who's largely responsible for all of the above is scientifically minded, I told him to think of it as a scientific study, except we are both the treatment and control group with time being the differentiating factor.

That's great to hear. I'm glad there was such an easy resolution and it sounded like you handled it well.