Without positive social outlets, teens and young adults can easily find their way to troublesome avenues of expression, a reality that NyE Communities Coalition staffer Dale Willis knows from experience. That’s why, with the help of grant funding and a lot of personal passion, Willis has brought a brand new recreation option to the town – Tabletop Game Nights.
Hosted each Wednesday, Tabletop Game Night invites young adults ages 14 to 22, be they novices or aficionados, to explore an array of games ranging from board games and card games to role-playing adventure games and more.
“We have a large assortment of your more traditional board games, such as Life, Sorry, Monopoly and Guess Who but a lot of our focus is on games that are more common among teens and young adults, such as Magic – The Gathering, Rifts, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Dungeons and Dragons,” Willis told the Pahrump Valley Times.
“As you get older, there is less to do in town,” he continued. “This is a better alternative than going out and getting into trouble. A lot of young people will find something, anything, to do, even if it’s not very positive or healthy. I know, I used to be the same way when I was younger, until I found a hobby that I loved to do that kept me out of trouble.”
Willis said the Tabletop Game Nights started as a small group of NyECC staff and members of the Youth WERKS program but after a year of ramping up the program, it’s now been opened to the public.
“Now we have it fully open each Wednesday and we’ve been hosting the public events for about a month and a half. We have had a good number of people who weren’t participants before start to come in and we’re always hoping for more members,” Willis said.
“And one of the things I really stress is, you don’t have to know how to play any of these games to come and have fun,” Willis added. “The entire group that we started this with, I taught them how these different games work. For a lot of people, their only barrier for entry to playing these games is, not knowing how. So, the more people we get, the more options and variety of games we can have, because we can all have fun teaching and learning from each other.”
Tabletop Game Night takes place every Wednesday from 5 to 8 p.m. at the NyECC Activities Center, 1020 E. Wilson Road. For more information call the coalition at 775-727-9970.
Contact reporter Robin Hebrock at rhebrock@pvtimes.com