On a Friday night in late August, a large event room inside Apostles Lutheran Church in Brandon is filled with the sounds of folding tables scraping the linoleum floor, the shuffling of cards, the rolling of dice and the low thrum of excited chatter.
Shayna Gurvitz, stands in front of a small stage, a growing pile of board games stacked behind her, and addresses the small crowd.
"Hey everyone! One, thank you so much for coming. I know people are still trickling in, but this is really exciting. I'm gonna have name tags here soon, and I will bombard you all to wear a name tag," she tells them.
Gurvitz, a clinical social worker and therapist, is wearing a black T-shirt with her new logo: a teal "meeple" with a heart inside. Meeples are vaguely people-shaped wood or plastic markers commonly used in modern board games to depict players.
"Mingle, play games. I'm gonna be around. I'm gonna be teaching some games at some point, hopefully, and then other people randomly know how to play all kinds of stuff. Do not be afraid to learn a new game. That is the point."
It's the first meet up for her new nonprofit, Board Game Therapy.
Every table is filled.
The benefits of physical gaming
If you search "the benefits of board gaming" on the internet, it turns up dozens of websites filled with listicles about which board games are good for therapists to incorporate into sessions with clients to help them with trauma, behavioral issues and anxiety, plus the studies that back that up.
Gurvitz said board games help with memory, problem-solving and social skills. She also says board games bring people together.
"I saw the impacts that it had [in my practice], and I was thinking about my own life," Gurvitz said. "I met my husband through playing a game. I met my two children by playing a game. I met my best friend playing games."
She's been using board games in therapy for years. Some groups across the country have been doing it for decades.
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And no, we're not just talking about Monopoly. There are thousands of games for all ages, experience levels and strategies, from hundreds of variations of classics like Life and Candy Land, to hobby-level games like Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, and Dixit.
At one table, Alex Rehor is teaching Red Rising, a game based off his favorite science-fiction book series.
"If you play a character on Mars," he explained to two other teen boys at his table, "that allows you to collect a helium, which gives you three points per helium. Certain characters allow you to gain or spend helium to do other things."
Rehor, 17, started playing games in therapy sessions and says it helps coax him out of shyness and isolation.
"It gets you thinking, it gets you strategizing, and that can really just apply to the real world. And it's also entertaining, so yeah."
But recent federal changes that make it more difficult for therapists to get board game sessions covered under insurance mean organizers have to get creative.
That includes Board Game Therapy, which is held every third Friday for free for the entire community.
"We've talked about wanting to do a community game night for a very long time and wanting to start this nonprofit for a long time, and so this was the push," Gurvitz said.
Rehor said he's glad his gaming can continue, even if it's not officially therapy.
"You're with other people face to face, you're interacting with them, and it's a lot more personal," he said. "You don't get that behind a screen."
Omari Green's sister also plays games in therapy. The 11-year-old said he was excited to tag along with her and his older brother tonight.
Together, they played giant monsters fighting each other to take over Tokyo.
"People can attack you, which you will lose hearts. So if you have zero hearts, you lose the game. And whoever has like 20 points, or if everyone's dead, that's how you win the game," he said, explaining the rules of King of Tokyo.
Fighting each other as monsters beats fighting as siblings, he said.
"I love using it with family therapy because it's a way of, especially in high-conflict families, of you get them together and you play a game. And it's fun, and they realize they can still have fun together," said therapist Kathy Dickson.
Omari can't wait until the next get-together on Sept. 18.
"If you ever want time with your family, you should come here. It's a really good place. I had a lot of fun here."
Fun and therapeutic for adults, too
It isn't just kids benefiting from game night.
Jessica Burbo said she struggles with board games — and real-life situations — if she doesn't know the rules ahead of time. Learning new board games helps.
"You get to kind of like have like some exposure therapy to, you know, work on things that maybe are a little harder for you."
Gurvitz said that's why tabletop games benefit people, even outside of therapy.
"We practice planning ahead, problem solving, paying attention, resource management, responses to when things don't go the way you want them to, perspective taking, which is a huge thing that people struggle with, honestly," she said.
"So it's an easy way to practice those skills in a safe environment and, you know, really just talk about how to apply them in real life. It's a bridge to talking to people and building relationships with people.
This board game meet-up is not therapy, and it's not a substitute for it either, Dickson said, but it doesn't take a therapist to see the excitement and blossoming friendships at this night's event.
"When you do therapy, even if you do like therapy in a board game, then you have a specific goal in mind. It's to address one of your treatment plan goals, maybe related to symptoms or a diagnosis, but there is a reason that the game is being played," Dickson said.
"It's to address a very specific thing for that client or family. But just game play in general, it has a lot of benefits that just happen on the side, but the first and foremost, it's fun and it's relationships and interactions with other people. It's getting out of the house, getting off of devices and doing it's going on analog. And there's so many benefits of that that we just forget about."
The nonprofit's plans to expand
Gurvitz says the night's attendance speaks to the growing need for accessible social events. More than 70 participants, ages 4 to 82, participated.
And the benefits of tabletop gaming won't stop with this gathering.
In the near future, Gurvitz hopes to teach therapists how to plays games with clients and facilitate these types of groups.
"I would love to just have a space where I could teach some professionals different things: how to read the rule books correctly, how to run a game, and [that] it's OK to not know, and how to be able to be like, 'hold on, let me look that up in the rule book.' "
She'd also love walk parents through various games, too, so they can play them at home with their kids.
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