To satisfy your inner nerd today while having great times with friends and family, try these fun group hobbies. Each of these games can appeal to many different interests while having different levels of activity. The best part is they can be as diverse and different from original bases as you desire. As long as you’re having a great time, let yourself just enjoy where these fun group hobbies begin and end for some bonding and new memories. Challenge yourself and lean into your creative side!
This interactive table-top game has been the select choice for many for almost forty years! It’s a great way to spend an afternoon or evening with people you enjoy being around and even acts as a great medium to create several more friendships. In Dungeons and Dragons, or D&D, as it is most commonly called, you work together with the people in your group to overcome obstacles, defeat enemies, and explore a huge world of limitless possibilities that is set before you by a D.M., or dungeon master, who controls the structure of the story and events.
The best thing about D&D is that all you need to play is a set of role-playing dice, which is a set of seven dice, with each die varying in the number of sides and numbers they represent, and can be found at any local hobby shop for only a few dollars. In a game that is only limited by your wildest imagination, you create your own character to play with your friends as together you team up and play the story the D.M. has prepared, and you can triumph as heroes, or even villains. This fun group hobby can be as challenging and rewarding as your imagination lets it.
If you like science fiction and fantasy, a great way to have a deeper appreciation for your favorite sci-fi fantasy novels, games, and movies is to bring it to life and experience it outdoors. Gather up your friends with like-minded interests in the same pieces of sci-fi fantasy and act out some of your favorite scenes and moments in parks. The more in-depth you can make it, the more immersive it will be toward the characters and culture of the pieces. This includes more set characters, costumes and props. For this fun group hobby, the more immersive the better.
Costumes, props, and any fake weapons or tools you can make or buy and bring into your role-playing, the more fun! Get immersed in characters you are most interested in and act out those intense scenes and fight scenes as they appear or you imagine them. This group hobby also gives great opportunity to make the live-action role-playing, or LARPing your own with inventive characters and moments played out and gone in-depth about. LARP can be a more active, physical Dungeons and Dragons!
One of the most fun group activities can be not just binging shows together but getting together every week to watch the new, latest episode of a show you have grown interested in and love sharing as a group. Pick some different options of shows, including anime that you and several of your friends might be interested in, pick an afternoon or convenient evening and try one or a couple of them out. Discussing and getting excited and invested in a show together can be a really entertaining way to bond.
To complete your watch party, you can go all out for optimum entertainment and more immersion with themed snacks and drinks as well as outfits and costumes! Get inspired and if you’re up for it, consider enacting different scenes and bits of your show or shows that you really enjoyed or feel creatively inspired by. This fun group hobby is a great way to keep conversations before and after going and is great for individuals and their friends who like sitting down to a great anime or other show together. It’s also a nice way to stay close and have more regular time together.
Among the most popular trading card games played today, Magic: The Gathering, or often referred to as simply MTG, is a fun game to not only play the several different game formats of, but also collect and find rare cards for, which sometimes even hold significant monetary value! Having been around for almost thirty years, this game has over 20,000 different cards, all with different effects and abilities available to construct a playing deck out of.
MTG is a great way to spend time with friends, especially since the game has multiple formats, with most supporting up to ten players! I was surprised to find that many of my friends had already been a fan and played even before I asked about it, and it’s not surprising considering the game has approximately over 35 million players worldwide. Construct deck sizes ranging from 40 to 200 cards with your favorite wizards, deities, and everything else in between! Find unique combinations by yourself or use templates as you play with friends!
There are a lot of board games to satisfy any type of inner nerd. If you like wordplay games, try Scrabble, Boggle, Quiddler, or Scattergories. If you like acting and more active physical participation, try Pictionary, Charades, Taboo, or Heads Up! Acting and guessing games such as these also have some great variations on themes and topics you can try as well as to mix up the games for more game nights with the same or similar games. Try a movie theme, different media and/or company genres, sports, actors, holidays, and daily activities for some examples.
For people who love a bit of trivia play and competition, there are also a lot of great choices including Trivial Pursuit, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, (which is also another great word game), Fibbage, and Blockbuster.
If you like hobbies with more strategy and one-on-one competitions that can turn into a fun tournament between round winners, try chess, backgammon, or chinese checkers. Fantasy lovers may like more immersive character and environment games like Stratego, Risk, Settlers of Catan, as well as mystery choices like Clue!
If you are interested in a fun group hobby at different out-of-home locations, check out your local events throughout the year as well as some great year-round destinations. Have a laser tag group night and make it as immersive and creative as those who like alien hunting, sci-fi, and first-person shooter games. Try an escape room for some great strategy, environment and character immersion possibilities, and group bonding.
For local events at certain times of the year, try a zombie walk or haunted forest for horror lovers. Seek out haunted places and locations for a thrill as realistic as you desire. Seek out comic cons and/or anime conventions to go to as a group. Have fun dressing up and experiencing new cultures and interests at these or events such as Renaissance festivals. You might surprise yourself!
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